As South African society continues to try to shake off the shackles of its apartheid past, denominations which have been segregated along racial lines are also struggling to rid themselves of racist connotations.
Conferences are administrative entities responsible for local congregations.
The Cape area of the Seventh-day Adventist Church incorporates Western Cape, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape provinces. The racial splits occurred in the 1920s. The three conferences met last month to discuss merging, but the white conference failed to get the 75 percent vote required by its constitution to disband, according to Pastor Garth Bainbridge, president of the white Cape conference. Unfortunately, we attained only 70 percent. We want to remove all racial connotations.