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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 November 2022
My first contact with the Bantu Presbyterian Church of South Africa (BPCSA, always known as the BPC) was in 1977. We had offered to serve the church overseas and had been approached Rev. Iain Moir, Africa Partnership Secretary of the Overseas Council of the Church of Scotland regarding a vacancy for Missionary-in-Charge of the world famous Lovedale Missionary Institution. Despite our initial concerns about working in apartheid South Africa we allowed our names to be presented to the BPC. I was about to complete my BD degree at Aberdeen University.
I was invited to go to Edinburgh to meet the Rt Rev. Jonas Khonyane, Moderator of the General Assembly of the BPC, who was on a visit to Scotland. Our meeting was cordial and I discovered some of the important background of the church I might go to serve.
The Overseas Council accepted our offer of service as a joint appointment and forwarded our names to the BPC which accepted us at their General Assembly in 1977. After a period at St Colm's College in Edinburgh (1977–8) we travelled to South Africa on 19 February 1978 and I was ordained a minister of the BPC on 12 March 1978 at Burnshill Mission by the Presbytery of the Ciskei. The rest is history …
This study is located within the discipline of the History of Christianity, a field that is broader than the traditional field of Church or Ecclesiastical History. The History of Christianity is a comprehensive field of scholarship that considers Christianity as an expression of faith that is found both within and beyond the institutional church. For example, in Africa, this is true of the phenomenon that is known as African Initiated Churches (AICs) which until recently were denied the name of churches and were often regarded as cults or sects and sometimes even as expressions of African Traditional Religion (ATR). As a discipline the History of Christianity draws on insights from the social sciences which moves it beyond its limited church theological definition. It also takes its relationship with the secular context seriously. Within the History of Christianity, this study engages the sub-field of the History of Mission Christianity. I believe that the history of Christianity is the history of the mission of Christianity.
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