Justice is the body of love. Love is the soul of justice. Justice is the flesh of love. Love is the spirit of justice.
You separate them, you don’t get either. You get a moral corpse. – Fa. John Dominic Crossan
Dear Caldwell,
As Presbyterians, we make it a habit to confess our faith. This doesn’t mean, however, that we go into a private booth and lay out all of our wrongdoing to a priest through a wire screen. To confess in our tradition is to state publicly what we believe, especially when the stakes are high. We pull from our various historical confessions on Sundays in worship in the “Affirmation of Faith,” joining our voices with believers and disciples who have stood up for what they believe at critical times in history, including the rise of the Third Reich, the tumult of the 1960s and times of division within the church.
On Sunday, we will begin using our newest “official” confession, the Belhar Confession, which we receive from the church in South Africa and its opposition to apartheid, the legal separation of the races there and the oppression of the Black African majority. The PC(USA) recently approved its addition to our Book of Confessions. The Belhar bears witness to God’s call to unity and justice in Christ amid division and diversity, which is what I’ve been preaching about over the last two weeks (last Sunday’s sermon on the web here). We owe thanks to Intern in Ministry Henry Trexler, who meticulously organized the lengthy Belhar into six units we will use into the Easter season. Please read his introduction to Belhar at bottom.
It seems only appropriate that we begin on this Sunday, as we welcome Presbyterian leader and Elder Dorothy (Dot) Counts Scoggins to the pulpit as part of Black History Month. Dot is an icon in our city who was one of the faces of the racial integration of the Charlotte school system. It’s been a blessing to get to know her amid the work of sounding the alarm on the re-segregation of our schools, far and away the most important issue of race and class facing our community (although this week’s events in redrawing our state’s congressional districts is equally alarming).. She embodies the courage and grace of how we can all act out of “love and justice,” as described in the quote above by Fa. John Dominic Crossan (which Kevin Martin used in his opening devotion at last night’s Worship Committee meeting).
I hope to see you Sunday, as we welcome one of our city’s true heroines. In Christ, John
A confession of faith arises when a threat to truth is perceived by the church and we must proclaim, (confess) who we are. Thus, confessions arise from particular places and events, but are seen as a reliable witness of faith for the church in all times. The Belhar Confession was written and adopted by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1982. Written originally in Afrikaans, the language which evolved from the Dutch of seventeenth century settlers and native African languages. The Belhar confession protested the sin of apartheid, the Afrikaans word for “separateness”. However, apartheid is never mentioned in the confession, rather, the creed is grounded in a deep Biblical, and traditional Trinitarian and Christological language. The themes of, Unity (not uniformity), reconciliation, and justice come from within the historical understanding of the Church. The presbyteries have voted approval and in 2016, a final vote of the General Assembly of the PCUSA will add Belhar to our Book of Confessions. Caldwell will affirm our faith using excerpts of Belhar confession for the remaining weeks of Lent and into Eastertide. – Henry Trexler.