Faith
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
- Our Challenging Way: Faithfulness, Sex, Ordination, and Marriage
- Unity, Confessions, and the Book of Order
- Come and See
- Please and Thank You
- Back to Basics on Ash Wednesday
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- Theology (32)
- Worship (26)
- Faith (23)
- Spirituality (13)
- Leadership (11)
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The Unity of this Denomination
What is it that makes us a distinct denomination? What commitments, beliefs, and practices do we share that are wide and solid enough to provide ground on which we can all stand?
For anyone who's been following news of the PCUSA it will be clear that these are pressing questions today. Now. But I believe that we always face these questions, that those who went before us faced these questions again and again, that those who come after us will face these questions again and again.
There are times when we broadly share answers to these questions, times when consensus is broad and solid. Never complete, but broad and solid. And then there are times when we don't have broadly shared answers to these questions, when consensus is thin and unstable. Times when consensus is thin and unstable require us to build new consensus, unless we surrender the search for consensus altogether. Much about our common life suggests consensus is thin and unstable today.
Our PCUSA Constitution is built on the notion that we have broad consensus about the content of faith, and the structures of our life together flow from our shared beliefs. That's why the Book of Confessions is part of our Constitution, the first and primary part, and can only be revised by a super-majority. But already the adoption of an anthology of confessional documents as our confession of faith was a step away from the assumption that shared beliefs would provide the consensus that would ground the unity of this denomination.
For a time polity provided a sort of consensus about that which provides the key part of our unity. Whatever our differing theological outlook and training, the rules would be shared by all and thus provide a single structure in which we would dwell. Except that didn't work out very well in the end. The endlessly expanding Book of Order is the result of that route to denominational unity, and the long work on the nFOG is testimony that many among us believe that route is a dead-end.
The closeness of our votes on contested issue bears eloquent witness to the narrowness of consensus in our life as a denomination. Whether we end up approving nFOG, or disapproving and staying with what we've got, either way we face the challenge of building broad consensus.
The basis of unity for our denomination must be Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the basis of unity for all Christians. Jesus Christ unites us with Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God, the Reformed Church in America, the Friends Meeting, members of non-denominational congregations, and all others - even (dare we acknowledge it?) those Presbyterian groups alongside us, like, say, the Presbyterian Church in America. But Roman Catholics, members of the Assemblies, and the RCA, Friends, members of non-denominational congregations, and the PCA are not part of the PCUSA. We live our unity with them in a different way than we live our unity within the PCUSA. There is something more to us than our unity in Christ. It is that something more which provides the consensus that gathers us together in this particular, distinctly PCUSA way of following Jesus Christ.
So, what do you believe is that "something more" for us? Where do we have consensus that is broad and solid enough for all of us to stand on it together? What shared commitments, beliefs, and practices will have a strong enough gravitational pull to keep us one denomination? Building new consensus - that's good, challenging, rewarding work!
February 1, 2011
Welcoming Children in Worship
I'm preparing to lead a workshop on "Welcoming Children in Worship" — that is, providing for "children’s full participation with the whole congregation in worship, in Word and Sacrament, on the Lord’s Day," as the Presbyterian Directory for Worship instructs...- Posted at 10:00 p.m.
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January 31, 2011
Lessons from Captivity (Is the PCUSA in Exile?, Part II)
As several pointed out in response to my previous post, and I readily acknowledged, the comparisons between the current late-Christendom situation of the North American Church and post-monarchical Judaism ought not to be made in too simplistic a fashion. That...- Posted at 12:43 p.m.
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January 24, 2011
The Assurance of Things Hoped For
Kentucky seems to make the national news in odd ways. While I wish the state could stay under the radar in all things not basketball-related, we still seem to show up on the CNN national feed or the New York...- Posted at 8:49 p.m.
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January 21, 2011
Is the PCUSA a Church in Exile?
Is the PCUSA a Church in Exile? Every month the Associates for Theology and Worship meet for an hour of theological reflection. We take turns presenting our ideas, in the form of essays, to each other for comment, interaction and...- Posted at 3:16 a.m.
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