Synod Provisionally Adopts the Belhar Confession
On Monday morning, General Synod delegates voted to provisionally accept the Belhar Confession as a fourth doctrinal standard of the Reformed Church.
The confession will be studied and used in worship by RCA churches, seminaries, colleges, and classes over the next two years.
"I want to thank this body for what they have done," said general secretary emeritus Ed Mulder after the vote. "I want you to know what this means in terms of our own integrity in standing in solidarity with the Uniting Reformed Church. They will be greatly encouraged. Personally, I say thank you!"
The Belhar Confession was first drafted by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) in South Africa in 1982. Its content is rooted in the struggle against apartheid in southern Africa, as both an outcry of faith and a call for faithfulness and repentance.
The confession was formally adopted by the DRMC in 1986, and in 1994 as the theological foundation for the new Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, a merger of the DRMC and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa.
"We have received the gift of the Belhar Confession," says Harold Delhagen, moderator of the Commission on Christian Unity, which recommended the confession's provisional adoption. "Now we will need to spend the next two years reflecting upon how we will responsibly accept its obligation to unity, reconciliation, and justice."
"You have recognized Belhar as a gift of God to the church in our day. That in itself was and is a very important act," said Piet Naude of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. "You have taken a small voice from the South seriously enough to say: 'We see in your faith our faith too.' Thank you for doing that, and therewith strengthening the church in South Africa.
"If the churches in the world do not demonstrate that we are counter-societies where there is no longer Jew and Greek, man and woman, boss and slave, how will the world believe in the power of reconciliation in Christ?
"The proclamation of Belhar that reconciliation is possible in Christ and that cultural and other 'natural' differences are gifts for the upbuilding of church and society should be heard loudly and clearly all across America."
Posted 06/11/07
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