GC30 Apartheid as Heresy (1984A632)

WHEREAS at its meeting in Ottawa in August 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), of which The United Church of Canada is a member, declared apartheid to be a heresy, and suspended from the privileges of membership in WARC the two Dutch Reformed churches, declaring them to be “oppressive and in error,” an action which has since been confirmed by many of its members, including the Black Reformed Methodist and Anglican churches in South Africa; and

WHEREAS the World Council of Churches in its assembly in 1983 in Vancouver also declared apartheid to be heretical;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the 30th General Council:

Affirm the action of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches which declared “that apartheid…is a sin, and that moral and theological justification of it is a travesty of the gospel, and in its persistent disobedience to the word of God, a theological heresy.”

GC30 1984 ROP, pp. 58, 360