Gendered images of God in the Belhar Confession (1986)

Abstract

The Confession of Belhar was accepted as a formal confession of faith by the 1986 General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church at its meeting in Belhar, a then ‘Coloured township’ near the Cape Town International Airport in the deep southwest of South Africa. In 2026, the Belhar Confession celebrates 40 years of formal recognition. This article explores the images of God in the Confession of Belhar that have gender references. Introducing the topic, literature addressing these gendered images of God in the Belhar Confession will be discussed. This will be followed by the main part of the article, which analyses the relationship between God and gender in the Confession and will try to answer the question whether sexist references to God constitute reality for the confessor.
Contribution: Finally, the gendered references of God in Belhar will be compared to images of God in the following four documents: (1) the 1994/2005 Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa’s (URCSA’s) Policy on Gender Equity; (2) the Open Letter from the men of the URCSA to the Women of the URCSA in 2005; (3) the Constitution of the Christian Women’s Ministries of the URCSA; and (4) the Acts of the 2022 General Synod of URCSA, the latest Acts of an URCSA General Synod available at the time of writing. This will be performed to determine whether a sensitivity towards gendered images of God has been established in URCSA documents during the 40 years since 1986, with special reference to the Confession of Belhar.