Ephesians 2:11-20
Breaking Down Dividing Walls
James Sledge June
21, 2020
Shortly
after the murder of George Floyd touched off waves of protests around the
country, I began to see people on Facebook and Instagram posting lines lifted
from the Confession of Belhar. For those who have no idea what that is, it is
the newest confessional statement in our denomination’s (the PCUSA) Book of Confessions.
We
Presbyterians love well-crafted and carefully articulated statements on what we
believe and what that leads us to do and be in the world. Our Book of Confessions begins with ancient
Creeds, the Apostles’ and Nicene, moves to a number of confessional statements
and catechisms from the time around the Reformation, then jumps to the 20th
century.
Even
though Belhar is new to our Book of
Confessions, it isn’t all that new. It took shape in South Africa in the
early 1980s when apartheid was still the law of the land there. It was written
by members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, originally the denomination
for those labeled “coloured” in the system of apartheid. This denomination was distinct
from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the white church.
The
Dutch Reformed family is one of our theological cousins whose roots go back to John
Calvin just as ours do. But I don’t think Calvin’s theology had anything to do
with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa developing sophisticated
theological justifications for apartheid that cited biblical evidence for a
divinely ordained separation of the races.
Of
course we Presbyterians did exactly the same thing during the times of slavery
and segregation. When I attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond (now
Union Presbyterian Seminary), Dabney Hall was a residence for some students.
Robert Dabney was a professor at Union who served as a chaplain in the
Confederacy, and who wrote stirring theological defenses of slavery and the
noble cause of the South well after the Civil War.
His
views held sway long beyond his time. My brother and I once found some of the
my father’s school work in a box in my grandmother’s attic. Amongst the papers
was some sort of quiz or worksheet where the correct answer labeled Blacks as
the accursed descendants of Ham from the biblical Noah story, part of the
rationale Dabney used to justify slavery and the marginalization of people of
color.
The
Belhar Confession correctly calls such foolishness sin and insists that the
Church is called to precisely the opposite sort of activity, to ministries of
reconciliation and justice. Even so, it took us Presbyterians until 2016 to add
Belhar to the Book of Confessions.