The openness of the Book of Confessions is made clear in a formal statement addressed to candidates when they appear for their ordination: "This Church, under the authority of the Scriptures, and in the tradition of one catholic and apostolic Church...makes such other confessions as are from time to time required by the Holy Spirit."

As the Consultation on Church Union progresses, involving the formation of one church out of the Episcopal Church, the Disciples, the Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, and others, it will probably become necessary to draft a tenth Confession or even to reorganize the function and use of the Book as a whole.

The Barmen Declaration

The Theological Declaration of Barmen, like the Scots and Westminster Confession, involved politics. Barmen illustrates the importance of having an eye for the political and social issues that are close by whenever theological statements are made. Barmen, in Germany in 1934, was the meeting place of the first Synod of the Confessing Church. The Synod said Jesus Christ is the only Word of God that men are to hear, trust, and obey; the Synod condemned the suggestion that there might be any source for the church's proclamation other than revelation.

Standing alone, and not in the context of those gathered at Barmen, these statements sound like typical, orthodox, Protestant argumentation. It would be easy to offend a Catholic with such a statement; he might feel that it denied the validity of tradition in the Church. Such statements would be offensive to a Rabbi, or to a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a secularist. Unitarians and Friends could be upset by such a strong declaration.

Barmen, however, confronted the National Socialist Party, the Hitler Youth, and a group called "German Christians." The German Christians were extremists who combined theological liberalism with anti-semitism and nationalism. Resistance was organized under the leadership of Pastor Martin Niemoeller in the Pastor's Emergency Federation, and at the Barmen Synod the declaration was adopted according to which Jesus Christ is the only Word of God that men are to hear, trust, and obey. The pastors were harrassed, arrested, deported, called into military service, prevented from conducting services, not allowed to train theological students, and their churches were pacified by a government Ministry for Church Affairs. They were harrassed for over 12 years, until the end of the Second World War.

The troubles of the German Pastors and their people in the Confessing Church cannot be compared to the suffering of Germany's Jews. But the Synod made a declaratory statement about whom they would hear, trust, and obey which is one part of the Book of Confessions and the principal model for the Confession of 1967.

The Confession of 1967

The United States of 1967 is not the Germany of 1933; nevertheless, one may worry about the U.S. because of the direction in which it is moving. The Confession of 1967 is not the Barmen Declaration; but the similarities between the two are encouraging.

The purpose of the Confession "is to call the church to that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples today." In 1958 a drafting committee had been appointed to prepare "Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith." The committee worked for six years. In 1965 it proposed to the General Assembly the Book of Confessions, The Confession of 1967, and the changes in the ordination vows that would be required if the first two proposals were adopted.

Since the purpose of the Confession was to call the church to its contemporary mission, it was not written as a system of doctrine. It doesn't include all the traditional topics of theology. The Confession will be a disappointment to those who are looking for restatements of old doctrines or for discussions of contemporary theological questions. It will disappoint any who would like to find either a theologically liberal or a socially conservative point of view. The Confession is orthodox, trinitarian, and biblical. Its social point of view is more inclined toward humane, political activism and advocacy than toward welfare or control. It seeks peace, but it does not shy away from conflict.

The Confession's theme is reconciliation. It can be summarized this way: "In Jesus Christ God was reconciling the world to himself...Therefore the church calls men to be reconciled to God and to one another." An amplification of this statement, from a section of the Confession titled "The New Life," describes what the church believes its members ought to be doing as agents of reconciliation: "The members of the church are emissaries of peace and seek the good of man in cooperation with powers and authorities in politics, culture, and economics. But they have to fight against pretensions and injustices when these same powers endanger human welfare."

Form, order, institutions, and polity are treated in a section on "Forms and Order." The controlling concept is flexibility of institutional form for the sake of mission in the world. "The institutions of the people of God change and vary as their mission requires in different times and places."

The Church has been practicing this flexibility of form for some years. But now, with the sanction of the Confession encouraging imaginative use of time and resource, there will be more congregations without church buildings and ministries without congregations. The proper movement within a Christian's life, according to the Confession, is the familiar one of gathering and scattering.

Every Christian is expected to gather with others "...to praise God, to hear his Word for mankind, to baptize and to join in the Lord's Supper, to pray for and present the world to him in worship, to enjoy fellowship, to receive instruction, strength, and comfort, to order and organize (the church's) corporate life, to be tested, renewed, and reformed, and to speak and act in the world's affairs as may be appropriate to the needs of the time."