Two Views Offered on Belhar

Two members of the Christian Reformed Church in North America recently held a wide-ranging discussion in which they presented opposing views of whether Synod 2012 should adopt the Belhar Confession as a new standard of faith for the denomination.

The discussion, which took place at Bethel CRC near Chicago, is posted as a video on The Network.

Speaking for adoption of the Belhar as a powerful statement on race relations and unity among believers was Rev. Peter Borgdorff, who represented the Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee for the CRCNA.

Rev. John Cooper, professor of philosophical theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, presented the case for adopting the Belhar as some kind of formal statement by the CRC. He argued against the Belhar Confession being approved as a fourth confession, which would put it on a par with the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort.

Rev. Cooper’s position was presented from his perspective. He was not speaking for Calvin Theological Seminary or any committee of the CRC.

Their discussion centered on the doctrinal and biblical basis of the Belhar, on how it addresses a contemporary sin, and how it emerged as a response to the policy of apartheid, the official sanctioning of the separation of races, in South Africa.

Borgdorff spoke first, telling the audience that this was the 59th time that he had talked to groups throughout the denomination about the Belhar.

"This is not a debate, but a discussion. Synod 2012 will need to choose one of two different positions," said Borgdorff, who is also deputy interim director of the CRCNA.

"The CRC has been talking about the Belhar since 1988. In 1990, synod said the Belhar was consistent with the teaching of scripture and consistent with our other Reformed confessions."

The Belhar is unique, he said, in that it is an "expression of the heart of a people speaking of their history to a new age . . . The Belhar addresses, in a significant way, the behavior of the church itself."

When he spoke, Cooper said that he doesn't believe the Belhar meets the same criteria that the other, historic confessions meet. The Belhar does not include a basic statement of the core Gospel, Reformed summary of the Christian faith, or a clear presentation of doctrine.

The Belhar is a document addressing and providing a persepctive on one issue, said Cooper.

By narrowing its focus, he said, the Belhar "doesn’t state the core doctrine of Christ. It is much more like the Barmen Declaration of the German churches that spoke out against Adolph Hitler. The Barmen Declaration focused on Hitler and was not made into a basic confessional standard."

Although there is nothing in the Belhar that contradicts the Reformed faith, said Cooper, the Belhar "is highly ambiguous and it reads more like the social gospel or liberation theology than a Reformed perspective on racial reconciliation and social justice based on the saving work of Christ for the church and God’s providence for society."

The Belhar addresses a crucial issue that the church needs to pay attention to, but it should not, he said, be accepted as a document teaching the tenets of the Reformed faith.

"If we adopt the Belhar as a confession, we are also open to the progressive theology and social ethics of some of the Belhar’s most vocal advocates," said Cooper.

Borgdorff said the Belhar, like all of the other of the CRC's confessions, emerged out of a specific historic context and is not intended to speak to all aspects of the Christian faith.

The Belhar was written in the 1980s by the leaders of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa. They say in their confession that, like Christian leaders centuries before them, they needed to confront a critical issue related to the Christian faith.

As a result, they came up with the Belhar, which addresses a world driven apart by conflict, injustice, racism, poverty, and oppression of the poor.

The Belhar Confession, says a CRCNA website, is "a biblically based doctrinal standard of justice, reconciliation, and unity. This confession is intended to guide not only the personal lives of God’s children but also the whole body of Christ as it speaks and lives out God’s will—'to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly' with God (Mic. 6:8)."

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

The Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, which came out of the DRMC, has asked the CRC to consider the Belhar and respond to it. The Reformed Church in America adopted it as a confession last year.

The Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa offered reasons why the Belhar was written in a letter appended to the confession as an important introduction to the confession itself.

"We are deeply conscious that moments of such seriousness can arise in the life of the Church that it may feel the need to confess its faith anew in the light of a specific situation," the letter says. "We are aware that such an act of confession is not lightly undertaken, but only if it is considered that the heart of the gospel is so threatened as to be at stake."

Among other things, the confession underscores for Christians that racial reconciliation should be a hallmark of their faith. The document is a specific response to the fact people upheld apartheid by interpreting biblical teachings in a way to justify separation of the races.

"The Belhar addresses certain gaps in our historic confessions, gaps that have become clear over the last several hundred years," said Borgdorff.

By closing these gaps, the CRC will send a key message of hope and reconciliation to other Reformed churches and organizations.

"God calls us to be with people who need to hear a word of hope," said Borgdorff. "We must bend our knees together and proclaim we have good news for everyone."

Cooper said the Belhar does proclaim good news and that news should be affirmed by the CRC, but not in the form of a confessional statement. He said the church needs to take very seriously what is presented and taught in its confessions.

"We can all affirm biblical justice and that racism is a sin. I think, though, that we will get greater consensus from the church if we adopt this in a different way and not as a confession."