HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 4 Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu’s Lasting Legacy World’s Best Black Soul Crusader Dan S.B. Lephoko HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 4 Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu’s Lasting Legacy World’s Best Black Soul Crusader Published by AOSIS (Pty) Ltd, 15 Oxford Street, Durbanville 7550, Cape Town, South Africa Postnet Suite #110, Private Bag X19, Durbanville 7551, South Africa Tel: +27 21 975 2602 Fax: +27 21 975 4635 Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.aosis.co.za Copyright © Dan S.B. Lephoko. Licensee: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd The moral right of the author has been asserted. Cover: Designed by AOSIS. Created with the use of two images. The praying man, https:// Nicholas Bhekinkosi pixabay.com/en/dawn-dusk-fog-landscape-man-mist-1868418/ and an original image, is released under the Pixabay License which is free for commercial use and no attribution is required. The profile image of Nicholas Bhengu is the original photograph of Mylet Bhengu- Dlamini from the Nicholas Bhengu Foundation. Hepworth Bhengu’s Published in 2018 Impression: 2 ISBN: 978-1-928396-52-9 (print) Lasting Legacy ISBN: 978-1-928396-53-6 (ebook) ISBN: 978-1-928396-58-1 (pdf) DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK86 How to cite this work: Lephoko, D.S.B., 2018, ‘Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu’s World’s Best Black Soul Crusader Lasting Legacy: World’s Best Black Soul Crusader’, in HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 4, pp. i-330, AOSIS, Cape Town. HTS Religion & Society Series ISSN: 2617-5819 Series Editor: Andries G. van Aarde Printed and bound in South Africa. Listed in OAPEN (http://www.oapen.org), DOAB (http://www.doabooks.org/) and indexed by Google Scholar. Some rights reserved. This is an open access publication. Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), a copy of which is available at https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Enquiries outside the terms of the Creative Dan S.B. Lephoko Commons licence should be sent to the Rights Department, AOSIS, at the above address or to [email protected] The publisher accepts no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed in this publication. Consequently, the publishers and copyright holder will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this work. Links by third-party websites are provided by AOSIS in good faith and for information only. AOSIS disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third-party website referenced in this work. Every effort has been made to protect the interest of copyright holders. Should any infringement have occurred inadvertently, the publisher apologises and undertakes to amend the omission in the event of a reprint. HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 4 Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu’s Lasting Legacy World’s Best Black Soul Crusader Dan S.B. Lephoko Religious Studies domain editorial board at AOSIS Chief Editor Andries van Aarde, Post Retirement Professor in the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa Board Members Warren Carter, Professor of New Testament, Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, United States Christian Danz, Dekan der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Wien and Ordentlicher Universität professor für Systematische Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, University of Vienna, Austria Pieter G.R. de Villiers, Associate Editor, Extraordinary Professor in Biblical Spirituality, Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, South Africa Musa W. Dube, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana, Botswana David D. Grafton, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut, United States Jens Herzer, Theologische Fakultät der Universität Leipzig, Germany Jeanne Hoeft, Dean of Students and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care, Saint Paul School of Theology, United States Dirk J. Human, Associate Editor, Deputy Dean and Professor of Old Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa D. Andrew Kille, Former Chair of the SBL Psychology and Bible Section, and Editor of the Bible Workbench, San Jose, United States William R.G. Loader, Emeritus Professor, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia Isabel A. Phiri, Associate General Secretary for Public Witness and Diakonia, World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland Marcel Sarot, Emeritus Professor of Fundamental Theology, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University, the Netherlands Corneliu C. Simut, Professor of Historical and Dogmatic Theology, Emanuel University, Oradea, Bihor, Romania Rothney S. Tshaka, Professor and Head of Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Elaine M. Wainwright, Emeritus Professor, School of Theology, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Executive Leader, Mission and Ministry, McAuley Centre, Australia Gerald West, Associate Editor, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics in the College of Humanities, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Peer review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript was subjected to rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Justification Report This is a scholarly book that commemorates the legacy of Rev. Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu who was born on 05 September 1909 at eNtumeni, a Lutheran Mission Station in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was the founder of the Back to God Crusade in the 1950s that has become institutionalised within the Assemblies of God. He taught his church to be self-sustaining and he also encouraged material independence through hard work. He died on 07 October 1985 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa. Many people in Africa have been influenced by his rich legacy as an evangelist, pastor, teacher and church planter. Bhengu combined evangelism with development which was critical for the black people who were under a repressive regime in South Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa. He was a religious revolutionary who ‘planted’ more than 2000 churches in South Africa and neighbouring countries by emphasising non-denominationalism without pressurising converts to discard their churches to join any. He was determined to build a movement that would be a vehicle to reach out to the continent of Africa through his churches. The book aims at providing academics and researchers reference material of interactions between spirituality, church dynamics, socio-economic development and political environment. Its contribution to existing research with regard to the formative growth of Christianity in Africa is significant and innovative. The book’s target audience includes academics in the religious fields of missiology, church history and contextual theology, specifically researchers with intent to write scientific commentaries on the life history of Bhengu. Based on a qualitative research methodology, the author of this scholarly monograph conducted personal interviews using a structured questionnaire with specific questions designed to draw conclusive contributions for the subjects. Ethical clearance is endorsed by the permission granted by the subjects who were assured of the protection of their confidentiality as well as the published results in the book. This includes the audio-tape interviews of people in South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. These participants served as ‘co-researchers’ and they represent a cross-section of people who worked with Bhengu, family members, pastors, youth and women within the structures in Bhengu’s work. Interviews were also conducted with people outside the Assemblies of God with an ecumenical focus. These include Apostolic Faith Mission, Church of the Nazarene, Africa Evangelical Church and para-church organisations. The records of interviews – as well as written submissions, Bhengu’s taped sermons, telephonic interviews and annotated photocopies of primary sources – are in the possession of the author and they were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Pretoria. No part of the book was plagiarised or published anywhere else, except to acknowledge that sections of the book represent a substantial reworking of the author’s doctorate thesis, entitled ‘Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu’s Lasting Legacy’ at the Faculty of Theology, Department of Science of Religion and Missiology, University of Pretoria, South Africa. The author is a participant observer who has been a member of the General Executive of the Assemblies of God, pastor and worked with Bhengu over many years during his lifetime. Dan S.B. Lephoko, Associate Research Fellow, Department