Afrikaner Calvinism

Afrikaner Calvinism is a theoretical cultural and religious development among Afrikaners that combined elements of seventeenth-century Calvinist doctrine with a "chosen people" ideology similar to that espoused by proponents of the Jewish nation. A number of modern studies have argued that this gave rise to the Great Trek while serving to legimitise the subordination of other South African ethnic groups, thus laying the foundation for modern Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid. Dissenting scholars have asserted that Calvinism did not in fact play a significant role in Afrikaner society until the trauma of the Second Boer War, citing the fact that early settlers dwelt in isolated frontier conditions and lived much closer to pseudo-Christian animist beliefs than organised religion.

White settlement in South Africa may be traced to the 1652 arrival of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope, seeking to establish a refreshment station. The Company had its headquarters in Amsterdam and it was there that it recruited and equipped voyages for the Orient. Most of its Dutch employees were Protestant Calvinists; they were supplemented by Lutheran Germans and Scandinavians, as well as a large exodus of French Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution at home. Among their Afrikaner descendants, individual religious communities such as the Doppers became known for establishing their own doctrine in rifts with the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church), leading to the formation of the separatist Gereformeerde Kerk in the late nineteenth century.

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