Comment on "confessing church"

Semper Reformanda leader notes that the Lay Committee's "Confessing Church Movement" will be presented to all PC(USA) congregations, and offers reasoned arguments for responding to it.

The author has asked us to make clear that this is written as her personal opinion, and not as an expression of the views of Semper Reformanda.

[4-4-01]

from Barbara Kellam-Scott

Just about a week after they first published the "confessional statement" of the Summit Presbyterian Church session, as narrowly "approved" by the Presbytery of Beaver-Butler, the Presbyterian Lay Committee has transformed that out-of-order action into "The Confessing Church Movement: A Service of the PLC" and a model offered to the rest of the PC(USA). [Go to www.layman.org and you can't miss it.] The PLC's service to the church includes a letter that is apparently being sent to every congregation and a "sample session resolution." And yes, they do fully intend the historical referent of "Confessing Church"; they explicitly attempt to identify their "movement" with Barmen.

The PLC does display its usual savvy in avoiding the Summit overkill of superceding the entire denominational constitution. But they still also avoid any reference at all to our existing "constitutional standards" that had seemed so important to the PLC over the past 5 years. Instead they offer 3 concise "assertions" (although the cover letter proclaims that the 24 members of the Lay Committee do confess and the sample resolution asks a session to confess and to urge others to renew their commitments to these confessions):

	"That Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the way of salvation."
	"That holy Scripture is the triune God's revealed Word, the Church's only infallible rule of faith and life."
	"That God's people are called to holiness in all aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate."

While these new specifications of the Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith avoid some of the errors of the Summit statement, they still seem to me to go beyond the bounds of Reformed theology and to beckon Presbyterian governing bodies beyond our established and shared constitution.

Does "Jesus Christ alone" leave out YHWH and the Holy Spirit? The other two are never mentioned in the sample resolution or the cover letter, and the "triune" in the second assertion is the only reference to the Trinity as a whole. Do we presume to know even what salvation means, let alone whether there's more than one way to get it?

If I confess the second assertion, am I not in conflict with my affirmation, when I was ordained and again each time I've been installed, that I "accept[ed] the Scriptures ... to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal and God's Word to [me]" [G-14.0207b]? I can't find the word "infallible" in the Book of Order, and in the Historic Principles of Church Order, where I do find the Scriptures as our rule, it is of "faith and manners," and as an admonishment that "all Church power ... is only ministerial and declarative" [G-1.0307].

The sample resolution also asks sessions to "announce our commitment to the Confessing Church Movement" (which goes undefined in that document) and "implore all Presbyterians who share these historic Christian convictions" to, in addition to "renew[ing] their individual commitments" to the three new "confessions," "declare that they will not ordain, install or employ in any ministry position any person who will not affirm them" and "urge the 2001 General Assembly to instruct the General Assembly Council to require that all program personnel uphold these confessions and ensure that these confessions are followed faithfully in all programs and policies of the Presbyterian Church (USA)."

So this movement wants to take us beyond constitutional standards on whose office is regulated by higher governing bodies, in addition to establishing new litmus tests as the basis for such regulation. Would my congregation no longer be able to employ a Jewish neighbor to provide child care during our Worship, and instead have to ask another Christian to violate the commandment against Sabbath work?

All right, I'll admit I've pushed the statements beyond the intentions of their authors. But every one of our sessions and presbyteries is going to receive this proposal. Every one of us needs to be ready to point out its errors, beginning with the establishment of confessional and disciplinary standards outside the denominational constitutional process. The Lay Committee informs us, in its accompanying "news" story, that "The elders of Lancaster Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery of Western New York have adopted and transmitted to their presbytery a similar evangelical statement, titled 'The Lancaster Affirmation'" (although that document is not provided). The Lay Committee will not allow us to ignore it. It will be at GA, and may well be introduced in the General Assembly Council. We must be ready with the calm, reasoned responses to set it aside.

The Irreverend Ms. Barbara Kellam Scott
Writer, reader, elder, hoper-in and prayer-for Shalom