Reading Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom.

There are stunning parallels in the Nationalist Party’s enforcement of apartheid in South Africa and Christian Nationalism in America.

“The function of apartheid was to entrench white supremacy … The policy was supported by the Dutch Reform Church, which furnished apartheid with its religious underpinnings by suggesting that Afrikaners were God’s chosen people and that blacks were a subservient species.  In the Afrikaner’s worldview, apartheid and the church went hand in hand.”

I wasn’t surprised to learn Mandela was given the name “Nelson” by missionaries who believed that “to be Christian was to be civilized.”  His birth name (he was born in 1918) was “Rolihlahla” which means “pulling the branch of a tree,” or as Mandela explains, it can also mean “troublemaker.”  In later years he certainly lived up to his original name making trouble for both Church and State!

Rolihlahla Mandela–an impressive and inspiring leader and human being.