He was the son of Richard Evelyn Burnett, a British-born bank manager, and his wife, Louisa Martha Dobinson.

The English speaking churches in South Africa were the focus of a strong opposition to Apartheid during the 1960s and 1970s, though they did not move from protest to resistance as a whole.

Burnett, at that time the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said at a synod meeting in Grahamstown that because of his position he could not lead such a movement but if nobody else tried to get it going he might consider doing so.

Burnett spoke from the chair, saying that he disliked having to apply for permits, but he thought it was part of his role in keeping the institutional church going.

Burnett's direct challenge was met by embarrassed silence and evasion; and at that moment the synod, black members as well as white, showed itself to be indeed trapped in apartheid.

[5] In an article published in 1974 Time magazine said: "While the Vatican seeks to rid Catholicism of any colonial taint in Portuguese Africa, the liberal Protestant South African Council of Churches has taken a bold stand against racism in its own country.

At a recent national conference, council delegates passed a strong resolution warning that racial tension in South Africa is leading to "violence and war".

The resolution reasoned that both "Catholic and Reformation theology" teach that Christians can only participate in a just war—and the requirements for a just war rule out fighting for "a basically unjust and discriminatory society".

The resolution noted that South Africa's Dutch-descended Afrikaners themselves cited British repression as the rationale for the Boer War against Britain and argued that "the same applies to the black people in their struggle today".