Afrikaners and Orthodoxy

Afrikaners are a Southern African people whose first language is Afrikaans, a language that grew out of the Dutch spoken by the 17th-century settlers of the Western Cape. Afrikaners have traditionally belonged to the Dutch Reformed churches, and only a very small number are Orthodox Christians. Since the late 20th century, Afrikaans-speaking converts have translated Orthodox services into Afrikaans and founded parishes in South Africa where Afrikaans is the main liturgical language.

Translation of the services

Two priests, Archimandrite Jacobus (Kobus) van der Riet and Hieromonk Zacharias van Wyk, have translated the Divine Liturgy and other services and hymns into Afrikaans. Fr Kobus, a former lecturer in classics at the University of South Africa, translated from the Greek. He was received into the Orthodox Church at the Church of St. Nicholas of Japan in Brixton, Johannesburg, and studied at St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary in the United States. Fr Zacharias has also adapted Russian church music for singing in Afrikaans. The translated texts and music are published online for any parish that needs services in Afrikaans.

On August 25, 2013, at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations (FAK) gave both priests a special award for their contribution to Afrikaans literature and culture through these translations. The ceremony marked the 80th anniversary of the Afrikaans Bible of 1933.

Parishes

Church of Alexandria

Within the Church of Alexandria, Afrikaans-language parishes were founded in the Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria, which also has parishes that use English, Greek and other languages. The first Afrikaans-speaking parish in the archdiocese was in Eldorado Park, in the south of Johannesburg, where Fr Kobus van der Riet worked to establish it.

The second was the mission of St. Theodore the Tyro in Stilfontein, North West Province, an offshoot of the Greek Orthodox parish in Klerksdorp under Fr Seraphim van Niekerk. The mission bought a disused Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed) building and rebuilt its interior as an Orthodox church, with an iconostasis. Archbishop Damaskinos of Johannesburg and Pretoria blessed the church on February 18, 2017.

In the Western Cape, Fr Zacharias van Wyk founded the Bedehuis Bethanië ("Bethany House of Prayer"), a mission to Afrikaans speakers with a church dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt in the Keurkloof valley outside Robertson. It was set up to make the Orthodox faith, which is almost unknown among Afrikaans speakers, known and available to them. It was a parish of the Archdiocese of the Cape of Good Hope.

Church of Russia

In 2022, the Robertson mission and a parish in Cape Town joined the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa, which the Church of Russia set up in 2021 in territory that the Church of Alexandria regards as its own. On April 3, 2022, Fr Zacharias served the Divine Liturgy in Afrikaans at the Robertson church. On the same day, the Cape Town parish of St. John of the Ladder, led by Fr Nikolai Esterhuizen, held its first Liturgy in Church Slavonic, English and Afrikaans.

On July 21, 2024, Fr Ioann Rossou, rector of the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Bloemfontein, served the Divine Liturgy in Afrikaans at the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in Johannesburg, with his parish choir singing in Afrikaans and Church Slavonic. The exarchate described it as the first Orthodox service in Afrikaans in Johannesburg, although the Afrikaans parish in Eldorado Park was already serving there.

See also

• Orthodoxy in Africa
• Paschal greeting (includes the greeting in Afrikaans)

External links

• Afrikaans Ortodoks (Bedehuis Bethanië, Robertson; services, prayers and hymns in Afrikaans)
• Afrikaners (Wikipedia)