Cape Town
City on the south-western coast of South Africa. The Belhar Confession takes its name from one of its suburbs, where the synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church met in 1982, and Desmond Tutu died here in 2021.
The magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America reports that the Belhar Confession is named after a suburb of Cape Town, where a general synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church met in 1982 (The Banner, Study of Belhar Confession Urged (2007) first paragraph). In his Nobel lecture of 1984 Desmond Tutu described the daily demolition of shelters at a squatter camp near the city (Tutu, Nobel Lecture (1984), paragraph 2). He died at Cape Town on 26 December 2021 (Nobel Prize, Desmond Tutu, facts). See the Churches and Apartheid.
What happened here
- 1982 to 1986, firm dateThe Churches and Apartheid
Between 1982 and 1986 the Reformed world alliance calls the theological defence of apartheid a heresy, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church adopts the Belhar Confession, and the Kairos Document appears. The Dutch Reformed Church, which had sanctioned apartheid, later confesses it.