Toringkerk

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Toringkerk
Location	Paarl
Country	South Africa
Denomination	Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk
History
Founded	1875
Architecture
Functional status	Church

The Toringkerk in the Paarl was separated in 1875 as the NG congregation Noorder-Paarl from the NG congregation Paarl, also known as the Strooidakkerk.^[1]

Like many other congregations, this congregation also owed its origin to mutual struggle and division.^[2] In addition to the longing for better spiritual cultivation in a town that was already getting too big for just one NG congregation, the deeper-lying cause of division in the Paarl was the awakening of a national consciousness among the Afrikaners in the second half of the 19th century.

From the struggle for the maintenance of the Paarl Gymnasium, the famous free church school for Christian and mother tongue education founded in 1858 by Rev. G.W.A. van der Lingen was founded, and what was described at the time as a "small island in the sea of anglicization in the country", the municipality of Noorder-Paarl was founded.^[3] The congregation was a strong supporter of the school from the outset and even accepted financial responsibility for the Paarl Gymnasium for the first 11 years of its existence.

Because the members of the congregation consisted of people who cherished the above-mentioned ideals for church and people and lived scattered all over Paarl, it is explainable why Dr. Andrew Murray and his fellow members of the ring commission at the time requested the church council of the Paarl to have the congregation separated without boundary lines. The church council agreed not to put any obstacles in the way of secession, otherwise there would certainly have been a split in the local church for the sake of the ideals of the Afrikaans language.^[4]

On 26 July 1875, Noorder-Paarl was separated without border lines and with 377 members. A few weeks later, the Society of Real Afrikaners was founded in the congregation to work for the recognition of Afrikaans as a written language and for the translation of the Bible into Afrikaans.^[5] All but two of the original leaders of the G.R.A. members of the congregation.^[6]

The Tower Church, a tower that is 57 m (187 ft), was only completed in 1907 and declared a national monument in 1982.^[7]

The membership was over 1,800 in 1990, but 1,300 in 2007, due to changed settlement patterns in the town. By 2014, it had dropped further to 1,181.