Abstract

GRIBBLE, Jayson; JACOBS, Dewald  and  THYSSEN, Ashwin Afrikanus. Unfinished business: Considering the Belhar Confession's prophetic critique. STJ [online]. 2023, vol.9, n.3, pp.1-21. ISSN 2413-9467.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2023.v9n3.a8.

In this essay, we seek to relate the prophetic critique of the Belhar Confession to several matters that could be classified as "unfinished business" for the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). In particular, we argue that Belhar - which has been a confessional document of the church since 1986 - speaks to several ongoing issues which impact South Africa and URCSA in particular. For the sake of this essay, we focus specifically on the "unfinished business" of Belhar as it relates to patriarchy, within the context of femicide, the question of the inclusion of queer bodies within the body of URCSA, and the continuing societal problem of xenophobia and Afrophobia in South Africa at large.

Keywords : Belhar Confession; URCSA; prophetic critique; patriarchy; queerphobia; xenophobia; racism; Afrophobia.

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