Dr. Mouw on the Belhar Confession

One of the issues facing our denomination this summer in Minneapolis will be lack of mosquito repellent. Oh, excuse me, my mind was wandering a bit back to my childhood encounters with what is affectionately known as the "Minnesota Air Force."

Actually, one of the issues facing us will be the adoption of the Belhar Confession into our Book of Confessions. Presbyterians are people of three books. Our primary book is the Bible, the Word of God. Our second is the Book or Confessions, which are faithful expositions of what scripture teaches, and guides for the church through the ages. Two creeds are universally acknowledged by Christian. Two are Protestant. And the other seven are from the Reformed stream.

The Belhar Confession comes from South Africa. You can read it here.It was written in a suburb of Johannesburg called Belhar in 1982, and was adopted by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1986. Originally written in Afrikaans, it has been translated into English. The themes of Belhar are unity, reconciliation and justice. You can imagine that these would be pressing issues in South Africa in the early to mid-1980's.

Dr. Richard Mouw (President of Fuller Theological Seminary) has a  great reflection on this subject here. His concerns are more succinct than my own, so I will highlight just a section of his writing.

I have said in the past that I don’t think this is a good idea, for at least three reasons. One is that some folks have seen Belhar, which had its origins in South Africa as an important theological word against apartheid, as now serving the cause of promoting same-sex ordinations and unions. A second is that I do not find Belhar sufficiently explicit in grounding its important message in biblical authority. And the third is that I worry about an ongoing confessional drift in those denominations, and wonder how adding yet another confessional document will mean anything important where there is already widespread ignorance of—and in some cases overt hostility toward—specific teachings in the existing confessional documents.

I think he nails it pretty well, especially the "confessional drift" in the denomination. If we are not holding biblical/confessional standards now, why add another confession? Thanks, Dr. Mouw, for a timely and thoughtful reflection. [SDG-JS]