Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) blogs

Faith

Subscribe to this blog feed icon

About this blog

Thinking the Faith, Praying the Faith, Living the Faith is written by the PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship.

Thinking, praying, and living the faith is at the core of ministry in the Office of Theology and Worship. In the following videos, learn more about what thinking, praying, and living the faith means to the leadership of the Office of Theology and Worship. Discover why it matters and what difference it makes in our lives, work, and worship.  

Charles Wiley  
Barry Ensign-George
David Gambrell
Christine Hong 
Karen Russell

Recent posts

Categories

Archives

See all PC(USA) Blogs →

PC(USA) Home →

March 17, 2011

This Unwanted Part of Who We Are?

Barry Ensign-George

We (the PCUSA) are a denomination in the church. 

We like the latter part of that – “in the church.”  We talk about it a lot – sometimes well, sometimes not.  But we do talk about being the church. 

We don’t like the former part of that so much – “we are a denomination.”  We don’t talk about it much, and we don’t talk about it well.  It is part of who we are, but we don’t seem to want it. 

This isn’t just academic.  If we can’t talk well about being a denomination, we can’t talk fully about what it is to be us.  We end up frustrated, using imprecise words to lash one another.  We say “church” when we really mean “this denomination.”  Or not – often it’s hard to tell exactly what we mean when we say “church” – PC(USA), church universal, congregation, a building?

Denominations do have a place in the church. 

There is no generic church.  Every church body, from congregation to global denomination, is creaturely.  That is to say, it is partial, finite, limited.  Just as there is no generic human being, neither is there a generic church.  There is no one way to live the Christian life faithfully.  That’s the heart of what a denomination is: an institution structured to support a way of living the Christian faith. 

The PC(USA) is structured around only one of the ways of living the Christian faith we share with other denominations (or are we structured around a few of the ways? several of the ways?).  But the PC(USA) does not contain all of the faithful ways of living the Christian faith.  All Christians are one in Christ, but the Christians who are one are not all in the PC(USA).  It is possible to follow Jesus Christ faithfully in and through a denomination that is not part of us. 

That other denomination could be an existing denomination, or it could be a new denomination.  People come into our denomination from other denominations and we welcome them.  There was once a time when we were a new denomination, and we chose against the denominations that already existed, insisting it was right and good for us to exist as a separate denomination alongside them (and we still insist on that point).

Our PC(USA) Presbyterian way affirms (to take a few examples) ordination to leadership of both teaching and ruling elders, affirms decision-making in councils, affirms a small group of creedal statements as true and formative, affirms the calling of women to ordained office, practices two sacraments, baptizes infants, and other distinctive beliefs and practices that distinguish us as one way to live the Christian life faithfully. 

If you are led to live the Christian faith in a different way – say, baptizing only adults – then you will need to find or form another denomination in which to do it.  At our best we affirm that there are other faithful ways, and we affirm others in following those ways (our “Historic Principles of Order” are an example of our good thinking on these matters).

The PC(USA) Presbyterian way of living the Christian faith has been, at its best, good and faithful.  Worthy of its separate existence.  It would not have been possible to live this faithful way had we remained in the Roman Catholic Church, or the Anglican Church, or had we been forced into some other denomination.  As we continue to negotiate and renegotiate what it is that makes us one denomination (for further reflection see The Unity of this Denomination, Why Be a PCUSA Presbyterian?, and Cynthia Bolbach’s Let a thousand flowers bloom), there is every reason to be what we are – a denomination in the church, one among many, following Jesus Christ in this particular way.