For the second time in four years the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has begun the process for considering inclusion of the Confession of Belhar in The Book of Confessions. Following directly on the heels of Belhar’s failure to achieve approval by the required two-thirds of the presbyteries in 2010-2011, the 2012 General Assembly acted to initiate the constitutional process once again. 
There were several reasons for Belhar’s initial rebuff by the presbyteries, but a leading cause was the church’s unfamiliarity with the confession. A preface to The Book of Confessions states that when a historic document is proposed for inclusion in the BOC, its value “should be tested by a period of reception in the church. A confessional document should prove itself foundational to the church’s faith and life before it is proposed for inclusion in the church’s confessional standards.” A second look at Belhar provides the church with an opportunity to engage Belhar more fully and test it more carefully in order to determine its place in the life of the church.
The Confession of Belhar grew from the soil of opposition to the South African apartheid system. But Belhar was not addressed to the South African regime, calling on it to change, or even to South African society generally. Rather, the confession addressed the churches, calling on them to change. It was apartheid within the church that called for a theological statement addressed to the church. The PC(USA) should not imagine that adopting Belhar would be a comfortably righteous act, demonstrating our abhorrence of racism in America. Rather, adopting Belhar would be a confession of our own sin, an acknowledgment of continuing, systemic racism within our own body.
The Confession of Belhar calls upon a church that affirms it to reject any doctrine (or practice) that professes unity in the bond of peace “while believers of the same confession are in effect alienated from one another.” We may have moved beyond the days of formal segregation and explicit segmentation within our church, but their effect remains an insidious reality that must be confronted. If Belhar is to be more than a Presbyterian ornament, its critique of continuing, multivalent forms of racism in our church’s life must be acknowledged and its challenge met.
Belhar’s cri de coeur grew out of apartheid and speaks now to systemic racism within the PC(USA), but its challenge to pursue unity is not confined to that issue alone. During the first consideration of Belhar, the confession was criticized for making church unity an absolute imperative. That critique may say more about the fragmented and fractured state of our church than it does about Belhar’s call for unity, however. In its longest section, Belhar describes the unity it seeks:
… this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice, and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to the new humanity; together know and bear one another’s burdens, thereby fulfilling the law of Christ that we need one another and upbuild one another, admonishing and comforting one another; that we suffer with one another for the sake of righteousness; pray together; together serve God in this world; and together fight against all which may threaten or hinder this unity.
We need not go beyond the first few clauses to know that this is not a description of the PC(USA). Moreover, an honest engagement of these clauses and those that follow forces us to confess that none of us “earnestly pursues and seeks” this unity. Some of us are leaving the PC(USA), while others of us are content to see them go; some of us imagine that there is no pain in division, while others of us are determined to inflict pain; each of us blames “the other” for the wounds to the body while ignoring the infection that pervades us all. If Belhar is to be more than a Presbyterian ornament, its critique of our disunity must be acknowledged and its challenge met.
The Confession of Belhar declares that “unity can be established only in freedom and not under constraint.” The matters that divide us — from race and class to theology and morality — cannot be addressed by making statements or adopting regulations. The starting point is the gospel that calls us to repent of the way things are and travel together God’s new Way in the world. If we are willing to let Belhar help us do this we ought to include it in a Book of Confessions that will instruct, guide and lead us. If we are unwilling to confront our captivity to the demons of our own making we should not comfort ourselves with the empty gesture of tucking Belhar into the back of our dust-covered Book of Confessions.
JOSEPH D. SMALL, retired director of the Office of Theology and Worship of the PC(USA), served as theological staff to the 2008-2010 special committee on the Confession of Belhar.
