Moving Against the Tide : Assemblies of God Polity at the Loggerhead with South African Socio and Theo - Cultural Reality

Abstract

The arrival of foreign missionaries played some significant roles in the formation of the Assemblies of God (AOG). The new Pentecostal denomination was originally a church of blacks, though under white control. In 1925, the Americans and Europeans in this church organised themselves as South African District of the Assemblies of God, and AOG in America recognised AOG of South Africa as a separate national church in 1932. This article traces how AOG evolved by entrenching a ‘Group” system significantly divided along racial lines. This status quo has marked AOG as a racially divided church regardless of South African socio-cultural and theo-cultural realities in the changing demographics since 1994. This structure is the polity that reflects South African Apartheid legacy of separate development – the compromise between unity and mission.

Keywords

• Assemblies
• Church
• Race
• Mission
• Unity
• Pentecostal