Dutch Reformed

Only a few of the country's religious groups have adopted policies that are more favourable towards the community, among them the Dutch Reformed Church and the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

The Dutch Reformed Church was in 2019 forced by the courts to reinstate a policy it had introduced four years earlier, but then scrapped, allowing same-sex marriages and for gay and lesbian pastors to be in romantic relationships.

His father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, and his mother was a Mennonite, although they were not particularly observant.

As a fourth-generation West Michigander and deacon in her Dutch Reformed Church, Scholten says she is confident that her reputation will usurp what she describes as “baseless attacks by someone that has no connection” to the district.

Throughout the years of struggle, clerics were at the forefront, raising their banners — Methodist, Catholic or Anglican — against the white authorities who sought biblical justification for apartheid in the teachings of the segregated Dutch Reformed Church.