Belhar Confession Available Online for Study

Congregations of the Christian Reformed Church are being offered an electronic version of the Belhar Confession so that they can to begin discussing it in preparation for Synod 2009.

The Belhar Confession was approved recently by the Interchurch Relations Committee (IRC) of the Christian Reformed Church. After holding focus groups and asking churches across the denomination to review the confession, the IRC is recommending that this year’s synod propose to Synod 2012 the adoption of the Belhar Confession as part of the standards of unity of the CRC (as a fourth confession).

“We want to encourage a denomination-wide discussion on the IRC proposal to synod,” says Peter Borgdorff, ecumenical officer for the IRC and executive director emeritus of the CRC.

“Please note that a three-year discussion period is built into the proposal. Because the first official significant step is at Synod 2009, we judged it best to distribute the report by this means. It is being sent to all CRC congregations, classes, and pastors.”

Originally written in Afrikaans and accepted by the synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) in South Africa, the Belhar Confession is named after a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, where a general synod of the DRMC met in 1982.

Among other things, the confession underscores for Christians that racial reconciliation should be a hallmark of their faith. The document emerged out of the DRMC’s fight to help end apartheid, the policy that used biblical teachings to separate the races in South African society.

The Belhar Confession says that Christians should reject any doctrine that sanctions “in the name of the gospel or of the will of God the forced separation of people on the grounds of race or color.”

The CRC has been asked by a group of Reformed churches in South Africa to consider making the Belhar Confession one of the church’s formal creeds.

Contained in the report is a summary of focus group responses to the Belhar:

• The participants were unanimous in the conviction that the CRC should develop a meaningful response to the Belhar Confession.
• A few of the participants suggested that the CRC receive the confession “as information and with appreciation.”
• A number of participants suggested that the Belhar should become the “the fourth confession” of the church.
• There was broad consensus that synod will need to be very conscious of the impact of any decision made concerning the Belhar Confession – an impact within the CRC as well as with  respect to the CRC’s ecumenical partners.
• There are no overriding theological issues in the Belhar Confession that would prevent the CRC from adopting or strongly endorsing it.
• But if synod judges that adopting the Belhar Confession is problematic, then it is desirable that the Belhar Confession at least be endorsed by synod as an important statement on church unity, reconciliation, and justice. For more information, e-mail [email protected].

To obtain an electronic version of the report, which contains the confession itself, visit: http://www2.crcna.org/site_uploads/uploads/resources/synodical/IRC_Appendix_-_Belhar_Confession_Report.pdf.

—CRC  Communications