INTERVIEWS

 

Interview with Prof. Klippies Kritzinger

 

 

M. Laubscher

Department of Practical and Missional Theology, University of the Free State. E-mail: laubscherm@ufs.ac.za; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4240-1991

 

 

 

J.N.J. (Klippies) Kritzinger is an emeritus professor of Missiology at the University of South Africa (Unisa). His doctoral thesis in 1988 was on Black Theology. His fields of interest include liberation theologies, interreligious encounters, and intercultural theologising. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Unisa from 1999 to 2001, and editor of the journal Missionalia from 1992 to 2009. He is an emeritus minister of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), which he served from 1993 to 2015. He is also involved in the Northern Theological Seminary (NTS) of the URCSA in Pretoria.

You may perhaps wonder why another interview with a White, male, Afrikaans-speaking, and Reformed theologian. This will be an extremely simplistic and unfair reading about whom it concerns and about what is at issue. He does not deny any of these markers. On the contrary, he knows them all too well. This is indeed another kind of "Pleased to meet you", because he knows about, and is known for confess-acknowledge-and-recognise. In addition, as "another" White man, I am extremely grateful (and inquisitive) to ask him more about this.

Our conversation was held nearly a year ago, and yet it feels like yesterday.¹What Prof. Kritzinger shares with me in this conversation is not necessarily surprising and new - his life and work bear witness to this. Other authors such as, for example, Cobus van Wyngaard, have also written considerably about this - yet there is something in this conversation that I still remember. Looking back, I recognise many of my thoughts over the past twelve months in the echo of this conversation. Kritzinger himself later acknowledged in the interview: there is often, in a momentary twinkling of the eye, an "accidental" conversation that influences one's path profoundly and for ever. Such temporary moments are sometimes timeous, and thus strangely enough have everlasting significance.

In our discussion, Kritzinger refers to a twenty-minute long (and since then a significant) discussion he, as doctoral student, had with Dr Mpho Ntoane over a cup of tea in 1986. Dr Ntoane, a South African, did anti-racism work for the World Council of Churches in Rotterdam. While listening to how Kritzinger tells him about his thesis, Ntoane suddenly asked him: "Klippies, you are writing about black theology - the struggle of a Black person who tries so hard how to be Christian in a racist society - [but] are you also trying very hard to be a White Christian in a racist society?" Kritzinger then realised that this was on his mind and in his life every day, but he had not yet mentioned this in his thesis. There and then, in an apparently brief and innocent conversation, he experienced an "epistemological conversion". "I realised that I cannot study black theology and omit my being White, because then I am not honest. I then added a chapter in the thesis on 'White responses to black theology'". Neither resistance, nor sympathy is the issue, but solidarity is, "How we as White theologians can be in solidarity with black theology must be developed by way of a liberating White theology."

Being curious to hear more about this, I ask Kritzinger about this key insight in his thoughts. He answers as follows:

"Acknowledge that we are White and what this means (in other words, what this did to us and to others) to be able to then be White in a more liberating fashion. We will not be able to do this if we simply talk with each other. Neither will we be able to be so if we only talk with Black theologians - and they do not want to talk with us all the time. This is about getting that delicate process going, in which, for instance, we do liberating white theology in Afrikaans, and our Black colleagues do liberating black theology in Zulu and Sesotho; and we all do liberating theology together in English. Not only in respect of language, but also in terms of men and women, gay and straight; briefly, all the cracks in our society can be addressed in this manner. Indeed, we already do so, but perhaps not deliberately and in an organised way. I think that this is what theology should do."

During the interview, phrases such as "the father of White liberating theology" come to my mind; yet I realised how misguided this may sound. I thus probed him to tell me more about his updated insights, when he realised, in the 1980s, that we have a responsibility to be not only in solidarity with black liberating theology and be educated by black conscious intellectuals to realise what is going on in this country, but also, as a White Afrikaans-speaking male theologian, to be self-critical about our identity, tradition, and community. This conversation taught me that the importance and value of black liberation theology is not simply for Black people who are suppressed, but also for White people to see their full potential humanness (with shadows and blind spots) for what it is, and for what it can be. For us, Black liberation theology is (still) a mirror in which we can see ourselves - meaning the self, each other, and others.

Besides the need for liberation from self-consciousness and self-reproach/ hate of being a prisoner in (a dominating and suffocating) White Afrikaner identity, I deduce that he will also in time learn that neither utter denial and escape therefrom nor the mere acceptance of take-it-or-leave-it can be the desired path. It stands to reason that the alternative is not to translate/ continue our whiteness in apparently rescuing Black people, because this is most certainly not what is implied by this solidarity with Black liberation. On the contrary, for Whites, Black liberation is, unfortunately in the least, about their apparent white involvement in the matter, but much rather about whether they can indeed translate and imagine their solidarity in alternative (liberating and healing) ways of being white. Put differently, Black liberation does not require the Whites to liberate the Blacks (they can do this for themselves), but whether they realise that they need it just as much (if not more), and that we will be sufficiently humble and vulnerable to accept this kind of solidarity and mutual responsibility for each other. Briefly, I deduce that true liberation of the one justifies true liberation of the other - an "and-and", instead of an "if-if" - and thus, as it runs in different directions, it necessitates various accents and nuances, as liberation for White and Black is being accomplished.

In this instance, it is perhaps good to recall another refrain that was to recur a few times in our conversation, namely a definite doubt not to want to view yourself so easily as a "liberation theologian". Put differently, be cautious about such a label for yourself, because Kritzinger still remembers far too well how the last words in his thesis refer to Gustavo Gutiérrez, who would remind him all the time that one deed in solidarity with people in need is worth more than all the books in the world. A humble and vulnerable configuration, where we definitely listen more than talk, is what is now asked of us (as people in privileged positions).

The point of this conversation is probably becoming more lucid. Although it emphasises the importance and necessity of Black (and White) liberation more strongly, it is imbedded and interwoven in a much longer - chequered

- story. The remaining point is more reassuring, but our conversation starts and does not stop there. A life in theology was not always the plan. Although, as an 11-yer-old boy, he would often ride his bicycle to the neighbouring community (Aasvoëlkop) to go and listen to Uncle Bey's sermons, he lived for mathematics and science, and he wanted to be an engineer just like his older brother. He already had two years' chemical engineering behind him when, at the start of his third year, he realised that he was no longer motivated. His involvement as student in mission to the Indian community exposed him to the intellectual and spiritual challenges associated with Islam and Hinduism. Before long, as a student in engineering, he started reading the Bible with commentaries. The proverbial die was cast, and he immersed himself totally in the study of theology.

The latter statement can be quite misleading and deserves further explanation. Kritzinger is (still nowadays) everything, except shy and confused about this evangelical "mission work" of his, because, to him, it always concerned people. He studied theology not so much to be an academic (the "academics' academic" who squeezes out tons of articles a year), but rather to constantly move between people and communities; between theology/ academy and different types of people and communities at grassroots level. He did not leave engineering to become an academic; he experienced an early opportunity to specialise in Semitic languages, a temptation he had to resist. He is sensitive to using theology to serve the communities of faith. Consequently, half of his time and energy went in the church, and he definitely did not think that he took the academy for a ride. On the contrary, he states: "If I had to sit up there at Unisa every day, I would have become biltong." To him, it is all about a broad understanding of real and true community.

Nowadays, Kritzinger is truly known for this praxis approach: to break down walls, build bridges, and cross boundaries. Early on in his life, he realised that he would not learn theology (only) in professors Johan Heyns and Andrie du Toit's classes, or in Germiston's Asiatic Bazaar, but rather in the interactive space and movements in-between. We can move and push ahead, because the kingdom does not lie in the past ("creation"); it meets us from the future in a Messianic manner. In his first year, he found Heyns' motif of the kingdom exciting and healing; in his third year - and especially now under the influence of Moltmann and Pannenberg - it was soon clear to him that our primary identity does not hide behind us and should be sought in the history of the fatherland, but is much rather to be discovered in that new community which Christ established for us and continues to come from the future into our present.

This is the sketch (and story) of a White man. Yet different connotations emerge during the conversation. We can be "after whiteness" in more than one way - shaded or plastered in white. This means, among others, that the elephant in our room is least of all necessarily a white elephant (that can be brushed aside as simply a "white noise"). Kritzinger's life still talks to me about this, and I feel obliged to further think and write about it. Neither him nor I can escape from the fact that we are recognised as White Afrikaner males; yet this "raced body" - whether it is visible or not - is also a "graced body", a "raised body", that calls for other ways of being with each other in this apparent black-and-white world in which we presently live.

 

 

Date received: 8 November 2022
Date published: 14 December 2022

 

 

1 The interview took the form of an online conversation held on 9 November 2021. The recording of the interview is available at the following addresses: laubscherm@ufs.ac.za & actatheologica@ufs.ac.za.