One might have thought that the end of the Reformation period in the mid-seventeenth century would lead to a pause in the writing of confessions, since most people regarded the language of creeds and confessions to be durable enough to continue serving the Christian communities well. Indeed, many in the Protestant world regarded one particular Protestant confession or another as the final word on Christian teaching and could envision no possibility of ever needing to revise that statement. To return to a metaphor we have used in various parts of this book, the grammar of Christian theology seemed to many to be fixed. But as it turned out, such fixity was illusory, and in the modern world, under the influence of both Protestant pluralism and later Enlightenment intellectual ferment, a new grammar for theology began to emerge. This led to a renewed surge in confession writing, as the old, standard confessions gave way to new ones that tended to revise previous confessions or that addressed new problems. As two historians have suggested, the transition from Reformation to modern confessions was a shift from “we believe, teach, and confess” to “I believe; help my unbelief.”1
In this chapter we briefly survey the changing landscape of modern church confessions. We will explore those confessions in the West that altered their traditions to meet new circumstances. As we will see, nearly every Protestant tradition in America at some point changed, updated, or modified its confessional standards. Even some churches whose forebears had loathed any confession besides the Bible began to write confessions for the first time. Moreover, by the twentieth century, confessions had sprouted up across the globe, and so we will examine what non-Western churches offered as they began to raise their confessional voices.
This chapter will show that the desire to write confessions has actually increased in the last few centuries. The Catholic and Orthodox churches have certainly issued new definitions of their faith, but Protestants especially have rapidly increased their efforts to write confessions. The primary reason was that the Protestant fragmentation that began early in the Reformation crystallized into various denominations, and new missionary efforts exported the various versions of Protestantism around the world. New communities or churches often created new confessions. We will also note those cases where Protestant denominations revised their confessions, often to the point of creating a new standard for their churches.
Old Confessions, New World
Later in this chapter we will see that there were many tensions in twentieth-century confessions. These tensions actually started centuries earlier in Puritan England and colonial America, and so our story needs to turn back to the beginnings of the modern world. One important factor was the proximity of numerous confessional churches to one another. These churches had lived separately in Europe, but once Protestants settled in the New World, they now lived together. As a result, American Christianity was a welter of traditions that included Moravians, Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, German Lutherans, and eventually growing numbers of Catholics, French Huguenots, Dutch Calvinists, and many others. This was remarkably different from European church life.2 As a result, each church had to reckon with the possibility that laity might convert to another Protestant tradition. Added to this threat was a steady increase in what historians call the “democratization” of the New World faith—the stripping of authority from pastors, elders, and bishops, and the rising voices and opinions of those in the pews.3 Under such democratizing forces, the old bonds of confessional identity began to erode almost immediately.
Several of these trends had been present in England during the Puritan regime. Although Puritanism achieved a measure of success with the Westminster Standards, there were many groups that disagreed with some portion of its teachings. These dissenting groups fell across a spectrum, but historians refer to most of them as either Independents or Congregationalists.4 These churches were opposed to Anglicanism, yet they did not support every teaching in the Westminster Confession.5
In 1596, even before the Westminster Assembly, a small group known as the Brownists drafted A True Confession. This church was founded by Robert Browne (ca. 1550–1633), a Puritan who preferred a low-church version of Congregationalism to the established church vision of the Westminster Standards. Unhappy with their prospects in England, the Brownists made up the majority of those who left on the Mayflower in 1620.6 (Until Americans began to call them Pilgrims, the initial settlers in the colonies were often called Brownists.) But A True Confession revealed that while many wished to be Reformed, not everyone in England held the same views. The most important difference was that the Brownists stripped elders of the full power of ordination and excommunication, placing these prerogatives instead in the hands of “the whole body together.”7 They affirmed the value of ordination but expressed concern that authority held by only a few was ripe for abuse.
After the Westminster Assembly, other confessions were drafted in opposition to aspects of mainline Puritanism. In 1644, the First London Baptist Confession was drafted by Particular Baptists (also called Reformed Baptists).8 This was the first attempt by Baptists to express opposition to Puritan teachings on infant baptism, and it made sure in its preamble to deny any connection between its faith and Anabaptism. The framers insisted on their Reformed identity, but they disagreed with most of the Reformed tradition on infant baptism.
The text was based on both the Brownist True Confession and portions of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The main purpose of the confession, however, was to offer a Baptist articulation of the sacrament of baptism—not only that it should “be dispensed only upon persons professing faith” but also that the mode of baptism should be “dipping or plunging the whole body under water.”9 What this confession neglected, however, was the Lord’s Supper. In fact, the confession does not mention the Lord’s Supper at all, making the First London Baptist Confession a monosacramental expression of the church. Other parts of the text needed editing also, and so a corrected and expanded version was released in 1689—the Second London Baptist Confession—which then was brought to the colonies and became the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742).10
Baptists were not the only community that revised or rejected some parts of the Westminster Confession. In 1658, a group of 120 pastors of Congregationalist churches gathered at Savoy Palace in London, where they revised and shortened the Westminster Confession into the Savoy Declaration. The main issue at Savoy was the role of synods and elders in governing the church. These pastors, too, stressed their commitment to the Reformed tradition, and the confession had a preface by eminent Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–83). But the Congregationalists who had fled to the New World also felt the need to make their polity clear, which they did in 1648 in the Cambridge Platform—the first confession written in the New World. We might describe this confession as an appendix to the Brownist True Confession, since it does not discuss doctrine and instead only addresses church polity and the selection of pastors. So while we can harmonize these confessions into a Reformed tradition, we should note that as early as 1650 there was no consensus on ecclesiology or the sacraments. Those churches that differed with Westminster, therefore, felt compelled to draft alternative confessions.
The main anti-Puritan confession from England was also Baptist. Arminian thought from the Netherlands found a home in England and became popular with some Anglican priests. It also became popular with some Baptists, who later named their churches either General Baptists or Primitive Baptists. In 1651, between the First and Second London Baptist Confessions, those who conformed to the Arminian faith produced The Faith and Practice of Thirty Congregations Gathered according to the Primitive Pattern. The confession is a series of seventy-five statements, most of them expressing Protestant views in general, though they focus on the Arminian view of free or resistible grace.
These confessions show us a key development for Protestant confessions. Rather than seeing Puritanism as the end of Protestant confessionalism, we should see this period as the beginning of something new: the separation of Protestant traditions into new denominations. The relatively small number of Protestant confessions gave way to new Protestant groups that embraced only parts of these earlier confessions. Moreover, churches increasingly felt free to revise historic confessions for their own purposes. As a result, the American colonies quickly became a tangle of denominations, each with a confession of its own.
American Confessions Revised
Perhaps the latest time at which we can identify only a handful of Protestant traditions is in the colonial period of America. Before long, however, the solvent of the new American ethos began to loosen the grip of traditional church authority. Movements such as the Great Awakenings allowed the laity to hear preaching as they chose.11 One of the first debates in colonial churches, in fact, was over how to view these revivals, either positively or negatively.12 These pressures in time led to the creation of new confessional churches, many of which revised their standards to fit the new spirit of revivalism.
One area with higher than normal interest in revivals was the region spanning Kentucky and Tennessee. The Presbyterian churches in these states clashed over the question of revival and the Westminster Confession’s teachings on predestination. The dispute ended in a schism in their ranks and ultimately in the formation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the early 1800s. The new denomination produced a new confession, which was simply the Westminster Confession updated to remove “the idea of fatality.”13 The new confession labors to maintain many of the teachings on God’s providence, but not a few of its changes mimic the Arminian critique of Reformed theology, some even going beyond the Remonstrance faith. For example, under the article on original sin, the framers confess only that humankind is “inclined to evil” yet still “free and responsible . . . without the illuminating influences of the Holy Spirit.” The call of God for sinners to have faith in Christ, like the Arminian faith, “is not irresistible, but is effectual in those only who . . . freely surrender themselves.”14
That some Presbyterians embraced Arminianism did not sit well with most Reformed theologians, who feared what seeds had been planted in their churches. The problem for some was due to confusion over the experiential faith affirmed in the Westminster Confession, which had described the need to internalize salvation and know the fruit of the salvation. To clarify this issue, therefore, the Auburn Declaration (1837) was drafted, which urges that “we bear in mind that with the excitement of excessive revivals indiscretions are sometimes intermingled.”15 The Auburn Declaration then sets out sixteen errors in applying the Westminster Confession to revivalism—problems that its framers thought forced emotionalism onto Christians in a way that led to works righteousness.
The most influential voice in the First Great Awakening was, of course, John Wesley (1703–91), an evangelist who wanted his ministry to be embraced by the Anglican Church. When the bishops in England stonewalled attempts to allow bishops in the colonies—a vital need after so many conversions—Wesley chose instead to form his own denomination, the United Societies of Wesley.16 The new church needed a confessional identity, and Wesley opted against a new one and instead revised the Thirty-Nine Articles. Theologians have long tried to notice differences between the two confessions—attempting to deduce Wesley’s intentions for removing certain phrases of the Anglican confession—but the most important addition was a comment on the new United States. The Revolutionary War had made it awkward to affiliate with the English heritage, and Wesley offered a clear statement that “the said States are a sovereign and independent nation.”17 It was unclear how an affirmation of American government qualified as a confessional standard, but Wesley seemed to want his churches never to mistake the English origins of Methodism for anti-Americanism.
Anglicanism did eventually establish a bishop in America, although that church took longer to grow deep roots because of its connection with England. The Book of Common Prayer was updated in 1892 to what can now be described as the American version of the Anglican liturgy. One of the men responsible for these revisions was William Reed Huntington (1838–1909), an Episcopal18 priest who in 1870 published an essay suggesting that a “Quadrilateral” should serve to refashion Anglican identity in the New World. The four standards of the proposal were (1) the Bible as the ultimate standard of the faith, (2) adherence to the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, (3) two sacraments, and (4) a church structured around the episcopal system of the ancient church. The standard here has been noted for its anticonfessional posture, its minimalism, and its cutting back from even the Thirty-Nine Articles.19 The Quadrilateral, however, became a rallying point for modern Anglicanism, and it was adopted by the General Convention in America in Chicago (1886) and by the Lambeth Conference meeting of Anglican bishops (1888), and it has ever since been known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.
Perhaps the most strident alteration to a confession, however, occurred with the formation of American Lutheranism.20 In the early 1800s, Lutheranism divided over the legacy of Luther and his unique theology. In the 1830s, German immigrants and descendants in the state of Missouri—not far from the revival heartland of Kentucky—formed the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.21 They were keen to remain faithful to their heritage, especially the Book of Concord. On nearly every theological subject, they stressed the long centuries when Lutherans had always rested on these confessional standards.
In almost direct opposition to Missouri Synod churches, the mainline American Lutheran Church drew up the Definitive Synodical Platform in 1855. This became the first Lutheran confession since the Formula of Concord, and, in fact, it overturned several key articles of the historic confessions. The opening remarks cite the fact that the German church had done likewise, and so this new confession shares its view that early Lutherans had reformed only “the greater part of the errors that had crept into the Romish church.” Now the Definitive Synodical Platform sought to make further changes, the bulk of which pertained to worship and sacraments. The confession removes any suggestion of baptismal regeneration or superstitious practices related to the Mass or exorcisms. Perhaps the most radical changes, however, were central to Luther’s own beliefs: the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and the necessity of good works. The framers protest that “our writers are falsely accused of prohibiting good works,” and they give several pages of argument about the necessity of holy living.22 On the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, they take the critique further, and noting that although Lutherans had taught that Christ is physically in the bread and wine, they claim instead, “for this view we find no authority in Scripture.” They note that they are not alone on this point, since the desire to reform this teaching “was manifested in Melanchthon himself.”23
Not all denominations in America had historically embraced confessions. In particular, those churches descending from Anabaptist communities found the need in the New World to write confessions for the first time. The Moravians thus wrote their Easter Litany (1749), and the Mennonite Church slowly adopted the Articles of Faith written by Cornelis Ris (first edition, 1766). Even the Shaker community, founded on rigid ascetical principles as it eagerly awaited the millennial restoration of Christ, drew up its Concise Statement of the Principles of the Only True Church (1790). The Shaker confession, in fact, says nothing about traditional doctrine, but affirms only that there are four dispensations in God’s plan—the fourth and last culminating in their own church. Similarly, the Seventh-day Adventist Church added its confession in 1872, which describes its framers’ position on the Sabbath and the end times.
One of the earliest groups to embrace a confession was the Quakers, who had settled largely in the state of Pennsylvania. Established during the English Civil War, the Quakers referred to themselves as the Religious Society of Friends.24 Their confession—A Confession of Faith Containing XXIII Articles (1673)—describes “the anointing, which they received” as the inward manifestation of Christ.25 It espouses some of the same views as Arminianism, proclaiming that grace and love are universal, but also stressing that God “enlighteneth every man.”26 Most striking is the affirmation that, after the resurrection, those “that have done good, [will go] unto the resurrection of life.”27
Churches in the twentieth century followed this same pattern, writing their own standards where they had possessed none previously. For example, the twentieth century was shaped profoundly by the Pentecostal movement. Emerging in the late 1800s, born from the Second Great Awakening, Pentecostalism first received national attention at the Azusa Street Revival (1906–15).28 The Pentecostal form of worship was much like a Quaker service, though with a strong emphasis on speaking in tongues and miraculous healing. From these grassroots movements arose denominations such as the Assemblies of God, which was one of the earliest Pentecostal denominations. The Assemblies of God formed in 1914 and two years later drafted A Statement of Fundamental Truths—the first Pentecostal confession. The confession made sure that its churches knew that this was “not intended as a creed for the church, nor as a basis of fellowship among Christians.” Still, its framers do claim that its theology “is held to be essential to a full gospel ministry.”29
On most points of theology, the Assemblies of God confess their Protestant identity. They affirm the Trinity, original sin, and justification by faith.30 They include, however, articles about distinctive Pentecostal beliefs on worship. In fact, A Statement of Fundamental Truths was the first confession to require “baptism in the Holy Ghost,” which is “indicated by the initial sign of speaking in tongues.” The framers affirm traditional practices of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but they add that miraculous healing “is provided for in the atonement, and is the privilege of all believers.”31 They end the confession by affirming the resurrection of the dead and restoration of creation, but they add a specific article that churches must affirm “the premillennial and imminent coming of the Lord.”32
It might be expected that denominations in the New World simply carried over their confessions when they emigrated. However, in almost every denomination, there were additions to older confessions that addressed new situations or changes in belief, and in some instances, new confessions were written at the formation of new denominations. Indeed, the period from 1650 to 1900 did not see the end of confessions but a rapid increase of churches writing new confessions.
The Catholic Faith and Ecumenism
For several centuries after the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Catholic Church took no positive steps toward other Christian traditions. The single issue that dominated the papacy from 1750 on, in fact, was the question of how to combat the rise of Enlightenment philosophies and the encroachment of political power into church matters. These issues were the central reason for Pope Pius IX’s calling of the First Vatican Council (1869–70) to deal with rationalism and materialism. The pope had good reason to worry, since he had lost nearly all the territory known as the Papal States—the midsection of the Italian peninsula controlled by the pope since at least the eighth century. At this point he controlled only the city of Rome itself, and the papacy would soon lose even that (although in the early twentieth century it was given the small territory of Vatican City as an independent state). Within the church, there were also siren calls to embrace the new views of rational thinking and materialism—views clearly in opposition to Christian orthodoxy. For Pius, these problems were grounds for a more aggressive war.
In the run-up to Vatican I, Pius IX waged war on two fronts—philosophical and political—through two major promulgations. First, in 1854, he promulgated the bull Ineffabilis Deus, which made the belief that Mary was conceived free of sin official Catholic teaching.33 Almost immediately, those in the Catholic Church who wanted an updated theology, more in step with rationalism, recoiled at this teaching. In response to this, Pius then issued his Syllabus of Errors in 1864. This document listed not only naturalism and “absolute rationalism”34 as problems facing the church but even “moderate rationalism” and those who would say that “Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same Christian religion.”35 Even before Vatican I, therefore, Pius already embodied the sterner posture of Catholicism—one that allowed for unity only for those who submitted to the church.
Vatican I was called in the spirit of this protest against secularism, and this was the first council since Trent more than three hundred years earlier. Following the direction set by Pius, the council issued several rulings, the most important of which was The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ in 1870. The council saw its role as extending those heresies “condemned by the fathers of Trent.”36 The document walks through Catholic claims about the authority of St. Peter and the way that authority was passed down until the modern papacy. The council then concludes with a final word on the “infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff.”37
In the twentieth century, the Catholic Church turned away from merely rejecting modern theology—though it never liberalized—and pursued more ecumenically open relationships with other Christian traditions. The door to this was opened at the Second Vatican Council (1963–65), which Pope John XXIII called, he said, to let fresh air into the church. One of the most debated statements of Vatican II was Lumen Gentium, which seemed to offer a new path toward unity with Orthodox and Protestant churches. After defining the church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” the document goes on to say that “this church, set up and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church . . . outside its structure many elements of sanctification and of truth are to be found.”38 One of the most debated religious issues in the twentieth century was how Catholics were to understand the words “subsists in,” though many found it generous enough to open dialogue with non-Catholics for the first time.
One document that has become central to Catholic conversations with other traditions is Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry—sometimes called the Lima Document or the BEM—which was drafted in 1982. One might say that optimism was high after Vatican II, only to leave Catholic leaders frustrated over debates that they felt needed further clarification. These three topics—the two sacraments and ordination—were those most cited as barriers to unity. Today, the BEM document continues to be used in talks between Catholic and Protestant churches.
So far, however, the willingness of the Catholic Church to dialogue with other traditions has yielded uneven results. One positive result, which we already noted in chapter 5, was a joint declaration implying that the Assyrian Church of the East—often called Nestorian in Western textbooks—in fact does not affirm the teachings of Nestorianism. After a series of talks with Catholic representatives, both churches circulated their Common Christological Declaration in 1994, which claims that the fifth-century division between the two churches was largely due to misunderstanding the terms. This declaration allowed a millennia-old schism to be at least partially healed and was based on the willingness of the pope to use different theological terms than the church normally used for the sake of clarity in a certain situation. Similar conversations were held between Pope John Paul II and Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, leading to two documents both known as the Common Declaration (1994 and 1996). Neither attempted to bridge the divide between the churches, but both express an ongoing desire to see an end to the schism between them. It is likely that these continued talks will be part of the story of the twenty-first century.
Catholic agreements with Protestants, however, were both successful and unsuccessful. In 1994, for example, a group of evangelical and Catholic leaders met in the United States and drafted Evangelicals and Catholics Together (or ECT).39 The document was based largely on the need to stress a shared worldview during the culture wars brought on by the Moral Majority, and so ECT does not discuss issues from the Reformation, especially justification by faith. This omission led to criticism of the entire approach taken by ECT. Similar criticisms were raised when the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church issued the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999. The text paradoxically affirms accord on the doctrine of justification while at the same time stressing that the Council of Trent was not overruled. Indeed, it argues that the condemnations are still in effect and serious enough to serve as a warning to Christians.40 This uncertain language raised the alarm in Lutheran circles, but the document has since been embraced by the World Methodist Council (in 2006) and recently by the World Communion of Reformed Churches (in 2017).
Perhaps the best way to understand the Catholic Church’s stances in ecumenical talks is to recognize its need to affirm all prior decisions by the church, while also seeking to heal the schisms created in history. For this reason, any possible unity will always turn on the subject of prior confessional grammar, which will always be normative for the Catholic faith.
Global Confessions of Critique
One of the most important influences on the modern church has been globalization. We should remember that the church was very global in its first millennium, but for much of its second millennium, it was largely—though not completely—confined to Europe and then North America. Between 1850 and 2000, however, the church became largely a church of the Global South. This was perhaps the single largest change in Christian history.41 As the church grew in the south, it not only drafted new confessions, but these confessions often focused on issues not mentioned in earlier Protestant confessions, especially the concerns of suffering and poverty.
These new issues often led to confessional works that either offered a critique of Western oppression or searched their own confessional faith to answer a crisis. In the United States, for example, the African Orthodox Church was founded in 1921 as a response to the Jim Crow era. Its founders wanted to lay claim to their Christian identity, and they did so by rejecting the Protestant faith that had supported slavery in North America. The church’s confession, therefore, sides with the Catholic faith on most issues save the recognition of the pope as head of the church. The framers affirm seven sacraments, “reverence of relics of the holy saints of God,” and “the true doctrine of transubstantiation.”42 Methodist churches felt the same need for over a century. Black Christians who had converted during the Wesleyan revivals continued to endure racism, and they came to see their treatment as a betrayal of biblical principles. At revivals, all who received Christ were promised equality, but in the churches, things had never changed. In 1787, at St. George’s in Philadelphia, black members were dragged off their knees during a time of prayer and told to leave. Weary of such treatment, Richard Allen and others formed the Free African Society, which became the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination. In this case, however, creating an autonomous church did not mean creating a new confession; the AME denomination kept the Wesleyan revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles as its standard.
The most poignant confessional critiques came after the rise of liberation theology—a collection of ideas and teachings that called the church to address the severe poverty in South America. The Methodist Church of Brazil, for example, issued a call for “awareness of social responsibility” in its Social Creed of 1971.43 The Methodist church in Korea issued a similar call for social justice in 1973 in its Theological Declaration, as did the Presbyterian church of Cuba in its Confession of Faith (1977).44 In Honduras, the majority Catholic Church issued a Credo in Mass of the Marginalized People in 1980, confessing that God is “father to the poor, because all are of value in your eyes.”45
Even the Catholic Church has experienced schisms, notably in the formation of the Philippine Independent Church, which split from Rome in 1902 and has since become the national church of the Philippines (although the Roman Catholic Church has continued in that country and far outnumbers the Philippine Independent Church). The reason for its rejection of Roman obedience was the pope’s support of the Spanish occupation and oppression in the Philippines—a brutal regime that had ended only with the Philippine Revolution in the 1890s. In 1947, the church issued the Declaration of the Faith and Articles of Religion, confessing many traditional Catholic beliefs but coming to nearly Protestant views on some subjects. For example, the framers affirm the right of priests to marry and state that “salvation is obtained only through a vital faith in Jesus Christ.” The confession also rejects the use of the Latin language in worship, affirming the need for vernacular Bibles. The framers nevertheless retain seven sacraments, veneration of the saints, and the view that the altar is where Jesus is present in the sacrament.46
One of the more painful confessions written during this time came from the Presbyterian Church of South Africa between 1979 and 1981, as the nation struggled to overcome the ravages of apartheid. That church issued a Declaration of Faith that calls for Christians to affirm that God created humanity “to live together as brothers and sisters in one family.” The framers discuss the death and resurrection of Christ as achieving victory over division—“to break down every separating barrier and to unite all people into one body.” They then call on everyone in church and society “to seek reconciliation and unity.”47
Some of the confessions that offered critique managed to do so with a charitable spirit. For example, the Church of Toraja in Indonesia released its Confession in 1981, in which the framers attempted to explore their commitment to the Reformed tradition, while also rejecting what they found problematic in modern churches. They affirm the biblical canon and stress, as Protestant confessions had done, that the Bible alone is the standard for doctrine. But they add to this a strong counterclaim:
Exegesis is the attempt of believers to understand the word of God, so that it can be applied in their situation here and now. . . . The Bible is a book of the history of God’s saving activity, which calls mankind to believe. . . . The Bible is not a handbook of knowledge, and therefore it may not be contrasted with scientific principles.48
Other qualifications like this can be found throughout the Confession. The framers affirm substitutionary atonement, the three marks of the church, and a Reformed view of the sacraments, but they add to this the problem of “socioeconomic structures” in society, as well as “the inclination of man to misuse knowledge and technology for his own interests.”49
The Barmen Declaration
The year 1934 saw the drafting of perhaps the best-known confession of the twentieth century, the Barmen Declaration.50 The primary author was Karl Barth (1886–1968), likely the most influential theologian of the twentieth century (at least in European and American churches). Barth drafted the text in preparation for a meeting in Barmen, Germany, where pastors and theologians from a variety of confessional churches edited the text into its final form. That the statement involved the blending of Lutheran, Reformed, and other Protestant traditions pointed to a major new feature of modern confessions: the desire for ecumenical breadth. It is impossible to imagine the Barmen Declaration being written in earlier centuries. It proclaims that “we stand together” and “we are bound together” in a plain affirmation of a Protestant identity. The same traditions that once led people to shed one another’s blood over their separate confessions were now tied together with the softer bonds of Protestant unity. But the churches at Barmen also professed their willingness “to remain faithful to our various Confessions.”51
The origin of the Barmen Declaration was the rise of totalitarianism in Europe after World War I, which now seemed poised to launch a second war. For this reason, the confession attempted to give a prophetic call to all of Germany against “the ruling church party of the ‘German Christians,’” which Barth claims had abandoned historic beliefs for the sake of “prevailing ideological and political convictions.”52 This was no mewling attempt to admire the past and weep for the future; the Barmen Declaration was an assault on the modern notion that political life must encompass all aspects of human life. “We reject the false notion,” the confession continues, that the state “could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the church’s vocation.”53
Surprisingly, the Barmen Declaration never gives a full, theological justification for its claims. Instead, it anchors its political voice to “the confessions of the Reformation,” but leaves it open to each church to interpret this assertion within its own tradition. In other words, the paradox of Barmen (and other modern confessions) is that, in order to draw enough Protestants to the table, framers of a new confession had to give the confessional identity of each tradition a lower status than it had historically held. It was unlikely that those at Barmen could have achieved unity on the same doctrines over which their Reformation predecessors had been divided. To give one example, confessional Lutherans and Reformed still disagreed on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If the Barmen Declaration wanted to rest on Reformation confessions, its framers certainly did not want to repeat the divisions of the Marburg Colloquy.54
A new confession thus required a new approach to confessional identity. As a result, Barmen allows us to see the most important changes in the development of modern confessions: (1) they avoided issues that might create strife or division, and (2) they nearly always couched their texts in the language of the moment. Indeed, rare was the confession in the modern church that covered traditional debates on the Trinity, Christ, salvation, or the sacraments. Like the Barmen Declaration, these new confessions affirm a wider Protestant identity beyond that of a single tradition. Thus, one could say that the Barmen Declaration and others like it are minimalist confessions, refraining from language that divided, focusing on the task at hand. Often, such confessions rest on little more than creedal orthodoxy and the Reformation teachings on justification. Many say little or nothing about the sacraments. Almost all attempt to include as many views as possible, rather than exclude them.
The (Revised) Confessions of the Nations
At times, changes in confessions were not made in opposition to other groups of Christians, but instead were attempts to express the Christian faith in a new part of the world. In Korea, for example, the Methodist church issued its Doctrinal Statement in 1930, which speaks highly of the importance of “Mr. Wesley” and his interpretation of the New Testament. The Korean Methodist church, however, does not hesitate to affirm “that we should state the chief doctrines” of the Methodist confession. It provides eight articles, each only a sentence long, that are the core doctrines to be embraced by pastors—for example, the Trinity, forgiveness of sins, the Bible, church, and resurrection.
Interestingly, only a few global confessions resisted Western influence by translating the basic language of a confession into the idiom of different languages. Missionaries in East Africa, for example, found it appropriate to take basic creedal statements—even the Apostles’ Creed itself—and tweak them for the Maasai (in modern Kenya and Tanzania). The text begins, “We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it.” Jesus is “a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good,” and he later died on the cross “but the hyenas did not touch him.”55 But such striking cultural accommodation was rare in global confessions. Instead, what occurred most often was that the lengthier confessions of Protestants (and in some cases Catholics) were pared down to be almost the same length as the Apostles’ Creed. For example, the Evangelical Church of Togo released Our Faith in 1971, a confession that consists of four truths: God has a plan for this world, sin impedes this plan, Jesus came to accomplish God’s plan of redemption, and the church community serves in the power of the Holy Spirit.56
In Ghana, there was a purposeful attempt to get beyond the Protestant division that had come to Ghana through the various missionaries who founded churches in the country. In 1965, Ghana commissioned a Union Committee, which issued The Faith of the Church as a path to achieve a unified Protestant church in that country. Those present at the discussions were Anglican, Methodist, Mennonite, and two denominations of Presbyterianism. The call for unity did not last, but the belief that the West imported such divisions was notably different from the way churches around the world saw Protestant traditions.
In South Africa, the same tensions played a role in the Reformed churches, although the impact of these confessions on the West has been mixed. The primary issue stemmed from the bleak history of apartheid, since the majority-white churches had either supported apartheid or turned a blind eye to the oppressive policies that grew out of it. These problems were felt most keenly in the Dutch Reformed churches, since the Dutch had played the largest role in shaping the policies of apartheid. By the twentieth century, each Reformed group had supported this legacy of racism and oppression. The problem in each denomination was that many opposed any admission of guilt and had a history of interpreting the Bible in a way that supported oppression. To combat these beliefs, nearly all of these denominations looked to create new confessions that could express the need for social change in their churches.
The tide began to turn in the 1960s, when the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa overturned its founding documents and, in 1962, began to receive members of all ethnic or social backgrounds. Changes in policy led to calls for new confessional statements to encourage further reconciliation with native South African Christians. As Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss point out, the churches were split over the New Testament command to obey political rulers (Rom. 13), which some understood as a call for the church to remain silent on social matters.57 But after so many centuries of racism, the church desired to speak.
The first statement written as a confession came from the Broederkring, a group of lay and clergy leaders from several Reformed denominations called together to advance the cause of peace and unity within the South African church, as well as to oppose those who had dug in their heels against cultural change. The group issued a Theological Declaration in 1979. The text is more creedal than confessional. It has only four articles, using a trinitarian rubric to affirm social justice. Under the first article, which confesses belief in the “Father of Jesus Christ,” it adds that God “struggles for his own righteousness with regard to God and fellow man. In this respect God chooses constantly for his own righteousness and consequently stands on the side of those who are victims of injustice.” The confession then concludes,
In our South African situation this means that we as part of the church of Christ in this world should unflinchingly persevere for establishing God’s justice. The church may, in faithful allegiance to its Head, Jesus Christ, come into conflict with human authorities. If the church has to suffer in the process we know that this is part of the way of God’s people through history and that the word of Christ remains in force, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5)58
This final article is important since it gives a clear statement about the context (“our South African situation”) without assuming that such needs were shared by other nations. Still, the language was broad enough to ensure that the confession was not read as being relevant only to South Africa.
That same year another confession, the Declaration of Faith, was issued by the Life and Work Committee of the Presbyterian Church in South Africa, and this confession was adopted two years later by their General Assembly. It takes a similar approach, basing the need for justice on God’s triune personhood. The Father is both creator and the one “who wants all people to live together as brothers and sisters in one family.” The Son is the one who came not only to die and be raised for our sins but also “to break down every separating barrier of race, culture, or class, and to unite all people into one body.” And finally, the Spirit is the pledge of Christ’s return and serves “to warn that God judges both individual and the nation.”59
In a sense, these South African confessions are actually quasi-creedal, because they are organized with an article about each of the persons of the Trinity. But unlike ancient creeds, these articles on the persons are tied together with statements about the implications of the Christian faith, at least about the implications of the faith for achieving unity in the fractured South African situation.
Of these confessions, the one that generated both high praise and sharp criticism was the Belhar Confession, first drafted in 1982 by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (majority black), inspired largely by the leadership of Allan Boesak. It was then adopted formally in 1986 by the Dutch Reformed Church in Southern Africa (majority white). It has since been adopted by several Reformed and Presbyterian churches outside South Africa, such as the Reformed Church in America in 2010 and the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2014. It became one of the foundational documents for merging several denominations into the Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa in 1994. The Belhar Confession, therefore, has been widely adopted by churches in both South Africa and North America, and this widespread use raised its profile beyond that of earlier South African confessions and has since inspired study and debate.
Like the earlier South African confessions, Belhar was based on a quasi-creedal formula, although its structure is less obviously trinitarian. It opens by stating, “We believe in the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gathers, protects and cares for the church through Word and Spirit.”60 Belhar then offers little else in terms of explicit creedal or confessional language. Most notably, nothing is said about the work of Christ or redemption (though there is an oblique reference to “Word and Spirit” conquering the powers of sin and death and references to the work of reconciliation). There is not even a mention of older Protestant confessions that might undergird its new doctrines. Of course, the confession does not reject these doctrines or confessions, and even without direct references to them, Belhar conforms to the pattern of other modern confessions as expansions of older Protestant confessions. Thus, the second article describes the unity of the church as a group “called from the entire human family.” From this foundation, it issues twenty affirmations and six doctrines to be rejected, all centered on social justice and unity.
Not surprisingly, the Belhar Confession favors social justice without qualification. Unity in the church is “both a gift and an obligation,” and so it was “a binding force.” Belhar also stresses that unity must be visible, not simply couched in the language of the invisible church. It then stresses that this unity cannot be coerced in Christians:
This unity can be established only in freedom and not under constraint; that the variety of spiritual gifts, opportunities, backgrounds, convictions, as well as the various languages and cultures, are by virtue of the reconciliation in Christ, opportunities for mutual service and enrichment within the one visible people of God.61
Article 3 then carries the logic further, stating that reconciliation is necessary for all churches. Because sin and death are conquered, “therefore also irreconciliation and hatred, bitterness and enmity [are conquered].” It also states that evangelism and missions are thwarted in any nation where this is not an authentic part of Christian experience.
The fourth article of Belhar reaches back to the earlier Reformed confessions from South Africa, situating each of its proclamations in the being of God. The triune God “has revealed himself as the one who wishes to bring about justice,” and “in a special way [to be] the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged.”62 To make this point stronger, Belhar rehearses numerous biblical passages and phrases that reveal God’s heart for the poor, such as that undefiled religion is “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27). The article then concludes controversially:
The church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream . . . namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.63
Since later criticism of Belhar almost always focused on this passage, it is important to realize the debate was not over what it said, but what it did not say. After the first three articles, this fourth article expands the framers’ vision, requiring not only unity and reconciliation in the church but also that the church stand against injustice in all public arenas. In addition to public issues, the church must side with people “in any form of suffering and need.” Those who criticized this statement pointed out that no further guidelines are given to determine real need from the needs based on culture. (More on this in a moment.)
The doctrines rejected by Belhar, by contrast, focus on teachings that silence or delegitimize the work of reconciliation or social justice. It rejects anything “which absolutizes either natural diversity or the sinful separation of people in such a way that this absolutization hinders or breaks the visible and active unity of the church.” It excoriates those who hold that Christians of the same confession “are in effect alienated from one another” though policies of racism or apartheid, that “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.”64 In the end, all beliefs that reinforce or affirm injustice are contrary to the confession of Belhar.
When placed against the backdrop of other modern confessions, the Belhar Confession is unsurprising in the course it takes. It declines to affirm those doctrines already expressed in other confessions, giving only indirect mention of these beliefs, and expresses its articles as a coda to the wider Protestant symphony. The language of the Belhar Confession, however, also reveals why some have cast doubt on modern confessions. As we pointed out above, Belhar is a confession written in the language of a creed, but for all the positive statements against racism and injustice, and for its heroic stance against apartheid after centuries of oppression, the language is so broad that it could apply to any struggle for inclusion and unity. The Belhar Confession claims in the strongest of terms the need for unity, insisting that the very being of God demands unity and justice. But with no rationale for how to settle disputed issues, or any language that defines which issues are truly for the sake of justice and which issues compromise biblical ethics, the Belhar Confession opened the door to confusion. For example, Boesak, perhaps the main influence behind Belhar, later claimed that the confession expected the church to embrace those from the LGBT community. The Reformed churches in South Africa sided against Boesak on this, claiming the matter of injustice was focused only on apartheid, racism, and systemic oppression. As a result, Boesak broke with the church.65
The Belhar Confession is a good example of the challenges faced by modern confessions. Modern confessions that created a sustainable message or that had a wide impact usually present articles that are both cautious and focused, making clear the framers’ commitment to older Protestant confessions while also insisting on the need for a new confession. As we have seen in this book, Protestants from the beginning wrote confessions that were designed to address the needs of the moment. Modern confessions fit easily within this tradition. But local confessions, both in older or modern forms, always served the church best when they clarified the specific problems that were on the table. The Belhar Confession, for example, was not criticized for speaking against injustice but for making unclear what forms of injustice fell within the scope of biblical orthodoxy. Without at least some language to govern the discussion, it left itself open to widely divergent interpretations. In other words, for modern Protestant confessions to make a lasting impact, they need to be more overtly confessional rather than quasi-creedal.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have looked at a handful of the dozens of confessional texts from the modern church—indeed, for the sake of space, we could survey only a small portion of these writings. We have noted first that confessions in the West did not slow down after the Reformation. Just as churches fragmented into various denominations, it was only natural for these new churches to form their own identity using confessions. Even today, after the rise of the parachurch and nondenominational movements, we still see the same pattern—so much so that it would be difficult to find a Christian body that never drafts a confessional standard. If the Western churches have embraced individualism and autonomy—values created by the Enlightenment—then they have not ceased to be confessional, but instead have found themselves free to define themselves according to new confessions.
Perhaps the most dramatic change to modern confessions came under the influence of the global church, which embraced confessions but curbed its message to a simplicity that was almost creedal. Not all in either Protestant or Catholic churches, we argued, were in opposition to the West. However, as the global church has raised its voice, there has also been a clear call from the Global South against those churches that either endorsed oppression or turned a blind eye to the suffering of fellow Christians.
1. CCFCT 3:3.
2. A longer account of this trend is Mark A. Noll, Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
3. See, for example, Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
4. In their day, they were known as Dissenters. Identifying distinct groups is hard, so we can use these categories only in a qualified sense.
5. On this, see the relevant sections in John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, Cambridge Companions to Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
6. The context of this is described in Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York: Penguin, 2007).
7. James T. Dennison, ed., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–10), 3:756. (Dennis titles it “Second Confession of London-Amsterdam.”) Also in CCFCT 2:40.
8. Their opponents were known as General Baptists, who embraced Arminian teachings. On this, see Thomas S. Kidd, Baptists in America: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
9. Kidd, Baptists in America, 59.
10. Today, most Baptists who adhere to this confession affirm the latter version.
11. The First Great Awakening came in the 1730s and 1740s; the Second lasted from around 1790 to 1820. See Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
12. In Reformed churches, this was known as the Old School versus New School or New Light and Old Light debate. See Sean Michael Lucas, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015).
13. Creed and Constitution of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Nashville: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1892). Also in CCFCT 3:223.
14. CCFCT 3:230.
15. CCFCT 3:251.
16. Also known as the Methodist Episcopal Church—the Episcopal name noting the connection to Anglicanism.
17. Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes, 3 vols., 6th ed. revised by David Schaff (1877; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 3:812. Also in CCFCT 3:207.
18. “Episcopal” is preferred over “Anglican” in North America and Australia, though the two are synonyms.
19. On the anticonfessional tone, see Robert J. Wright, ed., Quadrilateral at One Hundred: Essays on the Centenary of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, 1886/88–1986/88 (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1988), viii–ix.
20. Or the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
21. Today they have roughly two million members, making them the eighth-largest denomination in North America.
22. CCFCT 3:312–13. The original version is Definite Platform, Doctrinal and Disciplinarian, for Evangelical Lutheran District Synods: Construed in Accordance with the Principles of the General Synod, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Miller & Burlock, 1856).
23. CCFCT 3:314.
24. Like many historic names—for example, “Puritan” and “Methodist”—the name “Quaker” was first used to mock the group that bore it, in this case because of the group’s experiential form of worship.
25. CCFCT 3:137.
26. CCFCT 3:141.
27. CCFCT 3:148.
28. On Azusa Street, see Cecil M. Robeck, The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2017).
29. CCFCT 3:427.
30. They later affirm that the terms “Trinity” and “persons,” while not in the Bible, “yet are words in harmony with Scripture.” CCFCT 3:429.
31. CCFCT 3:428–29.
32. CCFCT 3:431.
33. This is known as the Immaculate Conception today. Non-Catholics sometimes confuse this doctrine with the virginal conception of Jesus.
34. Under article 1 (see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:213–16). Also in CCFCT 3:325.
35. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:216. Also in CCFCT 3:326–27.
36. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:216. Also in CCFCT 3:343.
37. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:219. Also in CCFCT 3:356.
38. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, Trent to Vatican II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 854 (emphasis added). Also in CCFCT 3:578. This is sometimes referred to as the Subsistit In controversy based on the Latin words behind “subsists in.”
39. See Charles W. Colson and Richard John Neuhaus, eds., Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (Dallas: Word, 1995).
40. The text can be found in CCFCT 3:878–88.
41. On these shifts, see Todd M. Johnson and Cindy M. Wu, Our Global Families: Christians Embracing Common Identity in a Changing World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015).
42. Arthur Cornelius Terry-Thompson, The History of the African Orthodox Church (New York: Beacon, 1956), 44. Also in CCFCT 3:436.
43. This was modeled after the American Methodist Social Creed of 1908.
44. Texts can be found in CCFCT 3:743, 761 (respectively).
45. Hans-Georg Link, ed., Confessing Our Faith around the World, vol. 3, The Caribbean and Central America, Faith and Order Paper 123 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1984), 45. Also in CCFCT 3:796.
46. The text is found in CCFCT 3:526–31.
47. Lukas Vischer, ed., Reformed Witness Today: A Collection of Confessions and Statements of Faith Issued by Reformed Churches (Bern: Evangelische Arbeitsstelle Oekumene Schweiz, 1982), 27. Also in CCFCT 3:794.
48. Vischer, Reformed Witness Today, 49. Also in CCFCT 3:800.
49. Vischer, Reformed Witness Today, 49–50. Also in CCFCT 3:805–6.
50. For a study of its origins, see Rolf Ahlers, The Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934: The Archaeology of a Confessional Text, Toronto Studies in Theology 24 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1986).
51. Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 334. Also in CCFCT 3:506–7.
52. Cochrane, Reformed Confessions, 335. Also in CCFCT 3:506–7.
53. Cochrane, Reformed Confessions, 336. Also in CCFCT 3:508.
54. See our discussion in chap. 14.
55. Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), 200. Also in CCFCT 3:569.
56. Hans-Georg Link, ed., Confessing Our Faith around the World, vol. 2, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, Faith and Order Paper 120 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1983), 5. Also in CCFCT 3:737.
57. CCFCT 3:793.
58. “Broederkring: Theological Declaration (1979).” http://kerkargief.co.za/doks/bely/DF_Broederkring.pdf.
59. Vischer, Reformed Witness Today, 27. Also in CCFCT 3:794.
60. “Confession of Belhar.” https://www.rca.org/resources/confession-belhar.
61. “Confession of Belhar.”
62. “Confession of Belhar.”
63. “Confession of Belhar.”
64. “Confession of Belhar.”
65. Boesak’s career was not without controversy, which included conviction for fraud. Boesak later received a pardon.