wfn.org | Title: Karl Barth Prize awarded to South African academic

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

11 May 2000

Cape Town - Professor John de Gruchy of the Department of Religious Studies
in the University of Cape Town has been awarded the prestigious Karl Barth
Prize for the year 2000. It will be presented to him at a ceremony in
Berlin during August.

Professor de Gruchy, a minister of the United Congregational Church of
Southern Africa, is world renowned for his studies on the work of Swiss
theologian Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor he influenced.
Both were noted for their opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany. Barth
was deported to Switzerland before World War II, and Bonhoeffer was
arrested for his opposition to Hitler, and eventually executed by the Nazi
government shortly before the end of the war.

Among Professor de Gruchy's unique contributions to theological scholarship
has been his work which drew parallels between the apartheid ideology in
South Africa and the Nazi doctrines, so comprehensively criticised on
biblical and theological grounds by Barth and Bonhoeffer, among others. He
applied their critique of Fascism to the 'false theology' of apartheid, and
his work was instrumental in leading the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches to declare apartheid a 'theological heresy' in 1982, putting
pressure on all the South African family of Reformed churches to renounce
apartheid.

The Karl Barth Prize was instituted by the German Evangelical Church in
1986 to mark the centenary of Barth's birth. Among previous winners have
been the theologians Hans Kung and Eberhard Jungel.

Rev Dave Wanless - Coordinator: Ecumenical News Network southern Africa
Tel & Fax: +27 (21) 683-9665
Cell: 082 958-6482
E-mail: davecong@mweb.co.za
Website: www.uccsa.co.za