City Churches: Conviction, Conversation, and Call to Action (2016)

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as represented by the General Assembly, opposes the economics and practices of exclusion that restrict people from zones of privileged access, whether by law or custom. How long will patterns of separation and segregation be allowed to replicate fear and prejudice? Recalling the Confession of 1967 as we come to Portland, Oregon, in 2016, forty years after that Confession was sent to the presbyteries, we lift up the phrase, "with an urgency born of this hope." May we share an urgency born of the hope that our cities may be places of healing more than violence, of love more than fear, of creativity more than desolation, and of community more than exploitation."