Special Report Confessing Church Movement Volume 34, Number 3 – April 2001

Evangelicals rally behind Confessing Church Movement By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 3 Posted April 20, 2001 Evangelicals in the Presbyterian Church (USA) are uniting with a national Confessing Church Movement that makes a clear distinction between cultural accommodation and historic Presbyterian theology. Sessions representing congregations ranging in size from the 5,300-member First Presbyterian Church Orlando, Fla., to the 25-member Brandt Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Mo., have adopted resolutions reaffirming faith in Christ alone, the authority of Scripture and God’s standards of holiness. Core tenets of confessions Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the way of salvation. Holy Scripture is the triune God’s revealed Word, the Church’s only infallible rule of faith and practice. 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 those three tenets are reflected in all of the resolutions, several sessions also voted to include financial implications for the denomination. The session of the 270-member Summit Presbyterian Church in Butler, Pa., voted to withhold its per-capita apportionment that supports the work of the General Assembly. Instead, the session is giving the money to a ministry for HIV-positive babies. The session of the 1,680-member First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, La., included in its resolution a plan to monitor actions at the 2001 General Assembly for the session’s consideration before it adopts the 2002 budget. The denomination’s proposed per-capita for the 2002 budget year is $5.22 per member, nearly $9,000 for a congregation the size of First Presbyterian in Baton Rouge. Some of the sessions approved a commitment to help bring other congregations into the Confessing Church Movement. For example, the sessions of First Presbyterian in Baton Rouge and the 750-member First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg, Miss., sent letters to all other sessions in their presbyteries. Many resolutions were solemn, expressing a deep sadness over the conditions that led to the Confessing Church Movement. “With a broken heart, our pastors, elders and members sense the decline in commitment to historic Christian faith and morals, and we plead with those who are leading our denomination and presbytery astray to pause and reconsider,” said the session of the 1,200-member Advent Presbyterian Church in Cordova, Tenn. During their spring meeting in Charleston, S.C., the directors of the Presbyterian Lay Committee voted unanimously to endorse the Confessing Church Movement and to provide resources to encourage sessions and presbyteries to join it. Those resources include a comprehensive Confessing Church Web site: www.layman.org.

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