Institute Offers Belhar Worship Resources

Seven new worship services posted on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s website are based on various themes found in the Belhar Confession.

Synod 2012 adopted the Belhar, a document decrying racism as a sin, as an Ecumenical Faith Declaration. Synod also instructed the church to find ways to incorporate the Belhar into the broader life of the church.

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship is doing just that with the new series of worship services.

One of the themes of the services focuses on Christian believers who are seeking such rightful things as the abolishment of racism.

These Christians may undergo many hardships at the hands of civil authorities as they stand up to fight for equality.

The theme of this service, appropriately, is suffering. Others touch on such topics as the triune God, the worldwide church, church unity, peacemaking, witnessing and suffering — all aspects of the Belhar.

Besides the Belhar, the material on the worship institute’s website comes from several places including African-American Church Worship Resources.

The worship institute’s aim is for worship planners to be able to create services using statements from the Belhar as well as appropriate prayers, affirmations, scripture readings, and benedictions or sendings.

In addition, a number of hymns/songs are suggested for each service, including some to be found in Lift Up Your Hearts, a new hymnal to be published this summer by Faith Alive Christian Resources, the publishing ministry of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC).

The hymnal is as a joint project between the CRC and the Reformed Church in America (RCA).

While Synod 2012 adopted the Belhar as an Ecumenical Faith Declaration, the RCA voted to make the Belhar a doctrinal standard in 2010.

As an Ecumenical Faith Declaration, the CRC asks its members to seriously and prayerfully study the Belhar, especially as a teaching about the sin of racism.

The RCA has put the Belhar on the level of the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort in making it a doctrinal statement.

The Belhar Confession has its roots in the struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa.

This “outcry of faith” and “call for faithfulness and repentance” was first drafted in 1982 and was adopted by the synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa in 1986 as one of its standards of unity.

In 1994 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa united to form the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa.