Adoption By The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa
The URCSA (United Reformed Church in Southern Africa) has made it a prerequisite for the previously whites-only DRCSA (Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa) to join the united denomination that all of its members adopt the Belhar Confession. Although the DRCSA is eager to join the new denomination, it has decided not to compel existing members to submit to the confession. The DRCSA had offered to compel only new members of the DRCSA to submit to the confession, and to request existing members to submit to it voluntarily, but this offer was rejected by the URCSA. The URCSA's position was that all members of the DRCSA should be required to swear that the Belhar Confession is true, or face expulsion from the denomination.
The DRCSA's opinion of the Belhar Confession had varied over the years. Initially, the DRCSA rejected the confession as being a political document or as a statement of Liberation Theology. Some time later the DRCSA acknowledged that the document's contents were true, with the proviso that references in the Belhar Confession to "the poor" not be regarded as an implicit reference to non-whites. At the 2011 meeting of the General Assembly of the DRCSA, it was decided that processes to make the Belhar Confession part of the confessional base of the DRCSA should be initiated by its leadership.
Read more about this topic: Belhar Confession
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