Each Sunday during the church service we affirm our faith using various creeds, catechisms, and declarations adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as statements of what we believe. There is the Scots Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Longer and the Shorter Catechism, the Theological Declaration of Barmen, the Confession of 1967, and a Brief Statement of Faith.
And let us not forget the most well known of all; the one we know by heart: the Apostles Creed.
Pastors choose passages from these various documents to support and illustrate the greater message found in the remainder of the liturgy and the sermon. (Or in the case of the Apostles Creed we recite all of it.)
And this July, at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a special committee was appointed to consider a new confession. This document will seek to articulate Christian faith in response to contemporary challenges including racism, economic inequality, environmental degradation, violence, and political polarization. (Oh, my!)
Needless to say, the majority of these documents – which are bound together in a single tome called the Presbyterian Book of Confessions – can be difficult to read. The language is at times stilted, the sentence structure difficult to read, and the concepts convoluted and at times contradictory. While all are written with a solemn, reverent voice rooted in Biblical authority and Reformed theology, the centuries-old phrasing and cadence inherited from Scottish and early American traditions can be hard to understand.
But I have found that the simplest explanations of what we believe, and why, is found in of all things the Presbyterian Book of Church Order. These two books (i.e. Book of Confessions and Book of Church Order) together make up the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with one being the historical faith statements and the other being the practical rules for church government. But if you ignore the numbering of each section of the Book of Order and just read it as you would any other book, you will find beautiful prose, and well-written, simplified explanations of what we believe. I consider it an invaluable study guide, both as a guide to governance and for its theological underpinnings, and I think it will help you too in your faith journey.
Stand by. We are going to recite a bit from it during Sunday’s service. I hope you’ll agree.
Jeff Gray