Abraham Faure (29 August 1795 – 28 March 1875) was a clergyman and author from

Cape Colony The Cape Colony (), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope. It existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three ...

, part of what later became South Africa.

Church career

Born in

Stellenbosch Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronouncing Gazetteer.
Thomas Baldwin ...

, Faure was educated in both England and the Netherlands and, with a strong

Calvinist Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...

background, in 1818 he was inducted as a

dominee In Christianity, a minister is a person authorised by a church or other religious organization to perform functions such as teaching of beliefs; leading services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals; or otherwise providing spiritual guidance ...

(minister) in the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, , abbreviated NHK ) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal famil ...

Graaff-Reinet Graaff-Reinet (; Xhosa: eRhafu) is a town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is the oldest town in the province and the fourth oldest town in South Africa, after Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Simon's Town, Paarl and Swellendam. The to ...

, Cape Colony. In 1822 he was called to the '' Groote Kerk in Cape Town'' ^{( AF)}, where he played a significant role in the first

synod A synod () is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word '' synod'' comes from the Ancient Greek () ; the term is analogous with the Latin word . Originally, ...

there in 1824. He remained a member of the church executive for 43 years. He married Geertruida Isabella Caldwell. His family was heavily involved in the Church and his relative Philip Eduard Faure was also a Doctor of Divinities and a Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Synod.

Political involvement

Politically Faure remained loyal to the British Crown on grounds that the Crown was part of the God-willed social order, expressing disapproval of the Dutch farmers who left the Cape Colony at the time of the

Great Trek The Great Trek (, ) was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial adminis ...

. His sermon on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Dutch settlers under van Riebeeck reflected social responsibility, this time the responsibility of the

for bringing the gospel to the

ormer Abalone ( or ; via Spanish , from Rumsen ''aulón'') is a common name for any small to very large marine gastropod mollusc in the family Haliotidae, which once contained six genera but now contains only one genus, ''Haliotis''. Other commo ...

slaves and the indigenous population.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faure, Abraham Cape Colony people 1795 births 1875 deaths Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa clergy Huguenots