Reading the URCSA Church Order with African Lenses: A Belhar Confession Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-4265/7014Keywords:
Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), Church Order, African lenses, Belhar Confession, Community, Ubuntu, UjamaaAbstract
There are individuals within the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) who claim that URCSA is not an African church in the real sense, as it ought to be. These claims have emanated from the narrow reading of URCSA’s Church Order from a European perspective. This article aims at exploring how one can read the URCSA Church Order with African lenses. The author will highlight the identity of URCSA, as was accepted by the 2005 General Synod of Pietermaritzburg, which is African and Reformed. In this article, the author will outline the three concepts that are recently underpinning the African philosophy, namely community, Ubuntu, and Ujamaa as the lenses with which to read the URCSA Church Order. The utilisation of these concepts as lenses will enable us to understand and interpret the URCSA Church Order in an African sense.
Metrics
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Leepo Johannes Modise
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2020-04-04
Published 2020-12-24