Johannes Du Plessis

Who was Johannes Du Plessis?

Johannes du Plessis was a South African theologian and Protestant missionary. Du Plessis is perhaps most remembered for helping lead an interracial coalition to push for reforms to empower black South Africans and lessen government discrimination in the early 1920s, such as by limiting the pass laws. He was ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, although relations between him and the DRC declined in his later life over his liberal and modernist theological views, culminating in an accusation of heresy and his dismissal as professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Du Plessis helped found the South African Institute of Race Relations, a liberal research organization, in 1929.