Boesak, Allan

(b. 1946)

   Theologian and Polemicist.

   Boesak was educated at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and in the Netherlands. After ordination in 1968, he returned to South Africa where he served a congregation and acted as a university chaplain. He was deeply involved in the anti-apartheid movement and he emerged as a prominent black liberation theologian. In 1983 he founded the United Democratic Front and he was elected President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1985. That year he was detained in prison for over a month in connection with his political activities. Among his books were Farewell to Innocence, Black Theology, Black Power and Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition. He espoused a nonviolent approach to liberation and was very much influenced by the thought of Martin Luther king. Sadly a scandal brought his career within the Church to a premature end.

   A. Boesak, Black Theology, Black Power (1978).