RCA Officially Adopts Belhar
The General Synod of the Reformed Church in America has officially declared the Belhar Confession – which the Christian Reformed Church Synod 2012 has been asked to adopt – as the fourth standard of the RCA.
The RCA has been considering the Belhar Confession since 1985, three years after it was written in South Africa in response to divisions in the church during apartheid.
The CRC has begun to hold regional meetings at which people have had and will have a chance to review and comment on the Belhar before the issue goes before Synod 2012.
After its official declaration, the RCA General Synod participated in worship and liturgy.
The RCA's 2009 General Synod voted to adopt the Belhar Confession as a standard of unity. The decision was approved by two-thirds of the RCA's 46 classes, which reported their votes to the 2010 General Synod.
In 2000, General Synod instructed the Commission on Christian Unity to commend the Belhar Confession to the church over the next decade for reflection, study, and response as a means of deepening the RCA's commitment to dealing with racism and strengthening its ecumenical commitment to the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa and other Reformed bodies.
In 2007, the RCA General Synod voted to provisionally adopt the Belhar Confession for two years of testing in worship, teaching, discernment, and confession.
The Belhar will join the RCA's historic standards: the Heidelberg Catechism with its Compendium, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Belgic Confession of Faith.
The Belhar Confession was drafted in South Africa in 1982.
Among other things, the Belhar says its purpose and lasting hope is "that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin," and it rejects any doctrine maintaining that racial or ethnic "descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the church."
The Belhar Confession is a statement about the gospel themes of justice, unity, and reconciliation. Once it was adopted in South Africa, churches there asked other Reformed denominations to follow suit.
