I have just finished rereading James Michener's historical novel, based on real history and culture, The Covenant. This quotation is from the flyleaf: "the tragic results of wrong decisions made by a fundamentally decent people in the serene belief that they are right." I would paraphrase this statement somewhat differently "the tragic results of demonic lies made by a fundamentally evil people who legitimated their ethnocentrism and oppression with distorted biblical beliefs, believed and implemented with great fervor."
1. First biblical lie---the foundational falsehood; that they, the Afrikaner people, were like Israel, a chosen people; this was a religious myth.
2. Second biblical lie---God made a covenant with the Afrikaner people.
3. Third biblical lie---As a chosen people, Afrikaners are therefore a superior people, above black African, white English and mixed coloreds. By the way, some Afrikaners contributed to this despised racial mixing.
4. Fourth biblical lie---superior people must not intermarry, must be segregated, to maintain their biological and social purity.
5. Fifth biblical lie---if required, Afrikaners can use violence---war, oppression---to maintain their superior position.
6. Sixth biblical lie---All of the above is God's will, divine social order, Afrikaner shalom, Manifest Destiny.
Americans led by the theistic Puritans who also saw themselves as God's chosen and superior people, brought with their revered Bibles generous amounts of British ethnocentrism and oppression. The deistic founding fathers added Enlightenment principles and superior Anglo-Saxon culture. The Americans began implementing their similar religious lies BEFORE the Afrikaners did so in South Africa.
Change some faces and places, and the Afrikaner and American patterns are tragically similar. For more on the deep-seated social evil embedded in American history, I suggest you read: Before the Mayflower, Myths America Lives By, A Different Mirror and The Wars of America: Christian Views.
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