Tell It Like It Is

Is there someone in your life who “tells it like it is”? I’ve always admired friends, mentors, and colleagues of mine who are an open book, who let you know what’s important to them, what bothers them, and what they intend to do. They don’t do this to seek sympathy or manipulate others—they just want you to know who they are, where they stand, and what they’re about.

As Christians in the Reformed family of churches, we believe that the church also should tell it like it is. That is, as Christians we begin to respond to our circumstances—to the political, economic, and cultural reality we find ourselves in—by pointing to our faith in Jesus Christ, explaining what we prayerfully discern to be God’s will for our world here and now, and announcing what we plan to do. Sometimes when Christians tell it like it is, it’s such a powerful statement that someone writes it down, and we hold onto these statements over the years as an example to remind and teach us what it looks like to live out the meaning of the gospel.

In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we maintain a number of these statements, which we call confessions of the Church, in a volume that is part of our church Constitution, the Book of Confessions. This book includes statements crafted in the early centuries of the church, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, together with statements that emerged from the Reformation era, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Shorter and Longer Westminster Catechisms. It also includes more modern expressions of the Christian faith, incorporating the Barmen Declaration, written in opposition to the German Christians who wanted to accommodate the church’s teaching and practice to Nazi ideology; the Confession of 1967, written by Presbyterians who articulated a way for the church to be faithful in a time of global cultural and political upheaval; and the Brief Statement of Faith, written in the wake of the reunion of previously separate Presbyterian denominations in 1983. The confessions are the story of a church that tells it like it is.

We do not change our Book of Confessions lightly or easily. An amendment to the Book of Confessions must be approved at one meeting of the General Assembly, ratified by two thirds of the church’s presbyteries, and then approved by the next meeting of the General Assembly.

 This April, the Belhar Confession, written in 1986 by members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa, received the necessary approval of two thirds of the denomination’s presbyteries. (It will need to be approved again by the General Assembly in 2016 in order to be incorporated into our Book of Confessions.) This confession, which emerged out of the era of apartheid in that country, affirms unity in the church as both God’s gift and a goal that the church must pursue through struggle and sacrifice “so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered.” It rejects “any doctrine which... sanctions in the name of the gospel or of the will of God the forced separation of people on the grounds of race and color and thereby in advance obstructs and weakens the ministry and experience of reconciliation in Christ.” It also affirms “that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged.” You can see how the Belhar Confession spoke powerfully for the gospel to people in a time and place where offical policy forced the separation of the races and the gave rised to injustice, and how it describes a way for the church to bear faithful witness in such a time and place. This is telling it like it is!

Still, this confession has received such wide support in the Presbyterian Church, because many people believe it can speak to us as well. What does it mean for the church to lift up and pursue unity in a time and place where politics and culture are becoming increasingly polarized? Is the church’s increasing marginalization an irredeemable loss, or does it provide a new opportunity to stand with those on the margins? The Belhar Confession will help us wrestle with our calling as American Christians in the twenty-first century.

If you want to learn more, you can go online to www.pcusa.org/belhar. There you’ll find videos, documents, and other resources explaining the significance of the Belhar Confession, as well as the text of the confession itself. If you want an easy, and powerful, introduction, scroll down to the video with three children in the preview image—you can hear the words of the confession spoken aloud in different voices and interpreted with images.

I am glad to be part of a church that seeks to tell it like it is, and to be faithful in many different times and places to the one Lord Jesus Christ!