Do Presbyterians need Belhar?

Internet image that highlights the central themes 
of the Belhar Confession. 

Some thoughts on why we desperately need Belhar, which I shared at the Presbytery of Chicago assembly on April 18, 2015, as we opened the discussion before the vote. The motion in favor of including the Belhar Confession in the denomination's Book of Confessions (BOC) passed, but I was surprised that there was quite a bit of pushback. The opposition proved my points beautifully: many still don't feel the urge to work towards racial reconciliation, and they cling to absurd arguments like we don't need to include someone else's creed in our book but rather write our own (forgetting that 9 out of 11 confessional documents in the BOC come from other lands, albeit, mostly from Europe!).

By Magdalena I. García 

There is a part of me

that wonders if we need

the language of the Belhar Confession.

Isn’t it enough that we have
the Confession of 1967

and the Brief Statement of Faith
in our Book of Confessions?

But then I look around our church 
and I realize

that we need all the words we can get

to stress the importance 
of racial reconciliation.

We need all the help we can get

to transform 
this very monocultural denomination

into the rainbow that God created,

and to fully welcome 
the diversity that surrounds us

in our cities and nation.

So I welcome the Belhar Confession.

And I love the way in which it reminds us,

“that unity is both a gift and an obligation

for the church of Jesus Christ.”

By the way, the word “obligation”

is translated into Spanish as “labor”,

and this enriches our understanding of the task,

because working towards racial reconciliation

is indeed labor, painful labor, dry labor...

as in difficult, complicated, exhausting,

and risky childbirth!

And, secondly,

I love the way the Belhar Confession

comes to us as a gift from South Africa,

and invites us to listen

to believers in the Southern Hemisphere,

which now represents the demographic center

of the Christian church.

I hope and pray that the Belhar Confession

will allow us to move into listening mode,

welcoming the voices from the margins,

embracing those who have been left out,

and partnering with them

as our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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