Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA): A Process toward Reception in the United States

Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA): A Process toward Reception in the United States Theodore A. Gill, Jr. Theodore Gill is a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA) who serves the World Council of Churches as senior editor of WCC Communication and editor of The Ecumenical Review. The Presbyterian Church (USA) commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of one of its confessional standards, the Theological Declaration of Barmen, at the church s 1984 General Assembly in Phoenix, Arizona. Historical perspective was offered, along with an assertion of current relevance, in an address by Arnold B. Come president of San Francisco Theological Seminary. Speaking at the mid-point of Ronald Reagan s presidency, Come identified three threats posed by the Nazi government of Germany to Protestants who gathered in the Barmen synod a half-century before: a. The supreme authority in their lives was no longer the free Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ but was found in dictates of the state s leader; b. The Christian people of God had come to be identified with the national culture, with the ethnic majority and the historical destiny of that one nation... c. The Christian service of God was manipulated and made indiscernible from the unquestioning support of that state and its leader. 1 As a standard of faith, Come argued, the Barmen Declaration demanded that believers condemn the idolatry of one s state, economic system, secular leader or political ideology, and that they reject the confusion caused by national claims to ultimate authority over citizens. Arnold Come portrayed Barmen as a counterweight to all in the surrounding culture that would enshrine American ideals as absolute. 1 Come, A.B. (1984) The Meaning of the Theological Declaration of Barmen for American Christians. Minutes of the 196th General Assembly, Vol.1, pp.822 824. PCUSA, Louisville. DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-6623.2009.00009.x & 2009 World Council of Churches 81

The Ecumenical Review Volume 61 Number 1 March 2009 The Theological Declaration of Barmen in The Book of Confessions The PCUSA came into existence just one year before Arnold Come s tribute to Barmen, through the reunion of US Presbyterian denominations divided since the outbreak of the American civil war in 1861. Members of a predecessor church based in the southern states, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), had until 1983 held the 17th- century Westminster Confession of Faith and two related catechisms as their sole confessional standard. It was the former United Presbyterian Church in the USA (UPCUSA) that brought to the merger a book of confessions as the first volume of its constitution; this anthology was itself a successor to Westminster which had been the UPCUSA s doctrinal standard prior to 1967. In both northern and southern churches, Westminster had been observed as a doctrinal system of belief based in scripture to which candidates for ordination were asked to subscribe; however, a candidate was permitted to state scruples in regard to one or more particular points of doctrine in the Westminster documents, leaving to the ordaining body the responsibility to weigh the degree of each candidate s adherence in determining whether to proceed to ordination. 2 The Book of Confessions was adopted by United Presbyterians in 1967 as the result of a process inaugurated during the 1958 merger that created the UPCUSA. 3 In 1983 the reunited PCUSA adopted an enlarged book of confessions that by 1991 included two ancient creeds of the church catholic, 4 three documents of the 16th-century Reformation on the European continent, 5 the Westminster confession and catechisms from 17thcentury England 6 and three 20th-century statements of faith. 7 The first of the 20th-century documents is the Theological Declaration of Barmen; as with most of the texts in The Book of Confessions, it is an English translation from the original language. 8 In addition, this version represents only a portion of the materials 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A regional presbytery makes the decision in regard to candidates for the ministry of Word and sacrament. The session, or governing body of the local church, decides on the ordination of ruling elders and deacons who are elected by the congregation. Decisions of these bodies may be appealed through higher church courts in accordance with the second and final volume of the church s constitution, The Book of Order. The 1958 union of two predominantly northern denominations was a merger of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America with the United Presbyterian Church of North America. The Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed. The Scots Confession of 1560, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1562 63 and the Second Helvetic Confession of 1561. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the Shorter Catechism and the Larger Catechism (composed in the 1640s but incorporating revisions adopted by American Presbyterians in the 18th and 20th centuries). The Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934), the Confession of 1967 (written for the newly merged United Presbyterian Church in the USA) and A Brief Statement of Faith (completed in 1990 for the reunited PCUSA). Originally translated by Cochrane, A.C. (1962) for his book The Church s Confession Under Hitler. Westminster Press, Philadelphia. 82 & 2009 World Council of Churches

Theodore A. Gill Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) drafted in 1934. The chair of the UPCUSA s special committee that proposed the new standards, the late professor Edward Dowey of Princeton Seminary, explained: Only two parts of the official documents of the Barmen Synod are included in The Book of Confessions, namely, the Appeal, and the Theological Declaration. Materials on the legal status and practical ministry of the church, appointments to offices, etc., were omitted. In one sense these should have been retained to show that the theological articles did not float above events but were part and parcel of them. This, however, would be overly long and un-instructive in detail. Enough specifics are given in the Appeal and the Declaration to make the point. 9 The special committee, in composing the Confession of 1967 and compiling The Book of Confessions, provided a preface explaining why they proposed a collection of confessions rather than a single standard: The church confesses its faith when it bears a present witness to God s grace in Jesus Christ... Confessions and declarations are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him. No one type of confession is exclusively valid, no one statement is irreformable. Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition. This obedience is the ground of the church s duty and freedom to reform itself in life and doctrine as new occasions, in God s providence, may demand... 10 The special committee was keenly aware of the Barmen Declaration, even as it worked on other sections of The Book of Confessions. One of the 15 committee members was Karl Barth s son, Markus Barth, then serving as professor of New Testament at the United Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh, and other members including Edward Dowey had studied under Karl Barth. 11 The phrase in the quotation above, Obedience to Jesus Christ alone..., who is identified as the Word of God, echoes the recognition of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death in the Barmen Declaration s first thesis. Barmen s urgency regarding events in society is reflected in the committee s call for church reform to enable a present witness... as new occasions, in God s providence, may demand. 9 10 11 Dowey, E.A. (1968) A Commentary on the Confession of 1967 and an Introduction to The Book of Confessions. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, pp.253 254. The Confession of 1967. In: PCUSA (1999) The Book of Confessions, Preface, para. 9.01.03. Presbyterian Church (USA), Louisville. Edward A. Dowey, Jr. and Markus Barth served with Arnold B. Come, Calvin DeVries, Janet Harbison, George S. Hendry, Cornelius Loew, John W. Meister, Kenneth E. Reeves, James D. Smart, Theophilus M. Taylor, Leonard J. Trinterud, Charles C. West, Gayraud S. Wilmore and Samuel M. Thompson. General Assembly stated clerk and UPCUSA head of communion Eugene Carson Blake, frequently consulted by the special committee, became general secretary of the World Council of Churches late in 1966. & 2009 World Council of Churches 83

The Ecumenical Review Volume 61 Number 1 March 2009 Edward Dowey s commentary on The Book of Confessions shows that the compilers considered the shortcomings of historical statements as well as their theological strengths. One example is an admission of Barmen s failure to condemn the systematic assault on Jewish men, women and children by agents of the Reich:... The church was still being too churchly, too fascinated with and fearful of its own nature and purity. Having correctly disengaged itself from preaching a political kingdom, it should have gone on to the full significance of God s mighty claim upon our whole life and condemned the objective falsehood in state and society of the whole Aryan-anti-Semitic lie. Later this was realized. The Stuttgart Declaration after the war, made by leaders of the Confessing Church, acknowledged this guilt. Niemöller was the frankest of all. Karl Barth, who made the first draft of the Barmen articles, has called the Confessing Church programme too defensive, and a partial resistance on the narrow front of the church s own life... It is embarrassing to write and provoking to read such a criticism of the confessors and martyrs of Barmen by and for others who did not stand in that dangerous place. But it reminds us that the church is made up of men, sinners and righteous at the same time, not angels, supermen or inhabitants of Utopia. Others will evaluate the wisdom and the courage, or lack of them, of those called to confess their faith in the last third of the twentieth century. 12 There is an undeniable self-consciousness in that last phrase. The official name of the committee headed by Edward Dowey was Special Committee on a Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith, and its mandate from the UPCUSA General Assembly was, above all, to aid the church in confessing its faith in the last third of the 20th century. One of the issues abroad among United Presbyterians was what would make the new statement contemporary. While each of the pre-20th-century standards in The Book of Confessions, from Nicaea to Westminster, was a product of a particular historical context, none had been conceived as a contemporary statement. In placing Barmen immediately prior to their own brief Confession of 1967, the committee was in part demonstrating what a contextual statement of faith could be. The naming of their confession for the year when it was adopted further underlined its contemporaneity. Like Barmen, the Confession of 1967 (quickly to become known in church publications as C67 ) was not intended to provide an all-embracing theology or dogma but a response to pressing needs of the day. The preface to C67 stipulates: The purpose of the Confession of 1967 is to call the church to that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples today. This Confession is not a system of doctrine, nor does it include all the traditional topics of theology. For example, the Trinity and the Person of Christ are not redefined but are recognized and reaffirmed as forming the basis and determining the structure of the Christian faith. 12 Dowey (1968) pp.263 264. 84 & 2009 World Council of Churches

Theodore A. Gill Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) God s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any age. Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ. Accordingly, this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme. 13 On publication, the statement was widely perceived to be most contemporary in content when addressing the church s ministry of reconciliation under the subheading Reconciliation in Society. In the context of the United States of America in the mid- 1960s, amid confrontations over the US civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the global clash of capitalism with socialism and a much-heralded sexual revolution throughout the west, this new Presbyterian statement taught: In each time and place, there are particular problems and crises through which God calls the church to act... The following are particularly urgent in our time. a. God has created the people of the earth to be one universal family... Therefore, the church labours for the abolition of all racial discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate or patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess. b. God s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of peace, justice and freedom among nations... The church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace... Although nations may serve God s purposes in history, the church which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of life with the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its calling. c. The reconciliation of man through Jesus Christ makes it plain that enslaving poverty in a world of abundance is an intolerable violation of God s good creation... A church that is indifferent to poverty, or evades responsibility in economic affairs, or is open to one social class only or expects gratitude for its beneficence makes a mockery of reconciliation and offers no acceptable worship to God. d. The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic way God s ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created mankind... The church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by man when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the moral confusion of our time. 14 Here the Confession of 1967 encouraged Presbyterians to name the forces arrayed in the present against the gospel and the coming kingdom of God. In his exposition of these 13 14 PCUSA (1999) para. 9.05.06. PCUSA (1999) para.9.43.47. & 2009 World Council of Churches 85

The Ecumenical Review Volume 61 Number 1 March 2009 paragraphs on reconciliation in society, Edward Dowey cited the Theological Declaration of Barmen as an inspiration and model: The church s confession of faith is not a policy or position paper, nor a specific programme of action. At least this one is not. The Barmen Declaration was itself action against a law and it did divide the church, or, should we say, it called together the church from among those who were compromising with Hitler and inhumanity... In the Confession of 1967 the specific kind of action is left to appropriate, timely and orderly church decisions. This section of the Confession of 1967 is a finger pointing at some of the most destructive enmities of modern man. It exposes their relation to God s reconciliation so that the church on its missionary journey cannot avoid them. The personal reconciliation of men to God and one another is obstructed in four ways: racial discrimination, international conflict, enslaving poverty and sexual anarchy. Race, war, poverty and sex do not exhaust the list. But they commit the church to these problems and to these kinds of problems. At the end of each of the [four lettered] paragraphs is a self-condemnation of the church by the church. It resembles in some ways the anathema lists of heretics in older creeds and confessions, or the negative theses of the Barmen Declaration. 15 With the replacement of Westminster and the institution of a book of diverse confessions, candidates were no longer asked in the UPCUSA ordination vows to subscribe to a system of doctrine but to teach and serve in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of the Scriptures, and under the continuing instruction and guidance of the confessions of this Church. Edward Dowey commented: These are concentric circles of authority, moving from the middle outward: Christ, Bible, Confession. The structure is evangelical, Biblical, Reformed, in that order... Subordinate standards are, nonetheless, standards. They are not lightly drawn up, subscribed to, ignored or dismissed. 16 It was with this understanding of United Presbyterian doctrinal standards, including the Theological Declaration of Barmen, that The Book of Confessions was adopted by the UPCUSA General Assembly of 1967. Reception of the Barmen Declaration in the PCUSA Initial resistance to The Book of Confessions centred on the implications of the Religion in Society section of C67. Counter-proposals were put forward by organizations such as 15 16 Dowey (1968) p.128. Dowey (1968) pp.29 30. 86 & 2009 World Council of Churches

Theodore A. Gill Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbyterians United for a Biblical Confession (later Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns) and the well-funded Presbyterian Lay Committee, founded in 1964 and publisher of the freely circulated newspaper The Presbyterian Layman. 17 Following a review of the original committee s draft by a second General Assembly committee of 15 members, compromise language was agreed in certain passages of C67, yet the social message stood unaltered. 18 The Lay Committee continued to mount opposition to C67 and other church pronouncements on social, economic and political matters, and The Presbyterian Layman regularly criticized the social teaching of the new confession. 19 An attempt within the PCUS to adopt a book of confessions in the 1970s lacked the percentage of votes necessary to amend the church constitution. One of the impediments to the proposal was a post-civil war theological conviction among some southern Presbyterians that the church must be spiritual rather than political in nature, the harbinger of Christ s promise of a kingdom that is not of this world. 20 The proposed book of confessions would have included the Barmen Declaration as well as a new declaration of faith written for the PCUS. 21 During the 1970s and 1980s, US politics experienced a shift in sensibilities among religious activists. Where progressives or liberals, in American parlance, had been the primary church activists of the 1960s, militating for desegregation, peace, justice and women s rights, there was now a stirring among Catholics and Protestant conservative evangelicals determined to exercise their strength of numbers in opposition to legalized abortion, displays of sexuality in the media or rising demands by lesbians and gays for equal treatment under the law. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church faded in conservative circles as traditional moral values became the rallying cry for a new advocacy lobby. Evangelicals formed such associations and networks as the Moral Majority 17 18 19 20 21 Moorhead, J. H. (1990) Redefining Confessionalism: American Presbyterians in the Twentieth Century. In: Milton J Coalter, J. M. Mulder, and L. B. Weeks, (eds.) The Confessional Mosaic: Presbyterians and Twentieth-Century Theology, pp.77 79. Westminster John Knox, Louisville. The authority and purpose of scripture were an area of particular concern to conservatives given the special committee s (and Barmen s) view of Christ as the one Word of God. In a revised section of C67 on the Bible (paragraph 9.27), United Presbyterians accepted this distinction: The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. Note the care with which Word is capitalized in one case but not in the other, a distinction that would be impossible with the German noun Wort. Hoge, D. R. (1976) Division in the Protestant House: The Basic Reasons Behind Intra-Church Conflict. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, pp.36 38. Cf. Thompson, E. T. (1961) The Spirituality of the Church: A Distinctive Doctrine of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia. Moorhead (1990) pp.70 75. & 2009 World Council of Churches 87

The Ecumenical Review Volume 61 Number 1 March 2009 and the Christian Coalition, neo-conservatives moved towards the creation of an Institute on Religion and Democracy, televangelists drew large audiences and by the time of Ronald Reagan s inauguration in 1981 religious conservatives had been recognized as a key constituency within the electoral base of the Republican Party. Progressive and conservative forces were engaged in the US culture wars. 22 Conservative activists in the evangelical wing of the reunited PCUSA sought confessional justification for their increasing political involvement, both inside and outside the church. During the 1990s, attention turned once again to the Barmen Declaration and its counter-cultural appeal in the face of disturbing developments in church and society. Inspired by the courageous stand taken at Barmen in May 1934, a network of Presbyterian conservatives adopted the title The Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA). According to their web site, The... Confessing Church Movement has committed to the following three affirmations... Solus Christus, that Jesus Christ alone is Lord and Saviour of humankind and none come to the Living God except through him... Sola Scriptura, that Holy Scripture alone is the rule, guide and standard for theology and polity... Sola Gratia, that we live by grace alone and are called to live a holy life in our conduct because our God is holy. Such holiness embraces sexual relations, which are proper only within the context of marriage between a man and a woman. 23 The Presbyterian Coalition is a group with a membership overlapping that of the Confessing Church Movement. At a national gathering in October 1998, the Coalition adopted a declaration for the church under the title Union in Christ. In the midst of cultural warfare and at a moment when the debate within the PCUSA specifically concerned the place of homosexuals in the church, Union in Christ devoted most of its content to a series of positive and negative theses reminiscent of the Theological Declaration of Barmen. The following are four of eleven paired theses in the Coalition s doctrinal statement: In the proclamation of the Word, the Spirit calls us to repentance, builds up and renews our life in Christ, strengthens our faith, empowers our service, gladdens our hearts and transforms our lives more fully into the image of Christ. We turn away from forms of church life that ignore the need for repentance, that discount the transforming power of the Gospel, or that fail to pray, hope and strive for a life that is pleasing to God. 22 23 Gill, T. A. (2008) Historical Context for Mission, 1944 2007. In: S. W. Sunquist & C. N. Becker (eds.) A History of Presbyterian Missions, 1944 2007, pp.32 34. Geneva Press, Louisville. The Confessing Church Movement. Frequently asked questions about the movement. [WWW document] URL http://confessingchurcharchive. homestead.com/ccmfaqs83001.html [accessed on 30 June 2008] 88 & 2009 World Council of Churches

Theodore A. Gill Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) In Baptism and conversion the Spirit engrafts us into Christ, establishing the Church s unity and binding us to one another in him. We turn away from forms of church life that seek unity in theological pluralism, relativism or syncretism... By our union with Christ our lives participate in the holiness of the One who fulfilled the Law of God on our behalf. We turn away from forms of Church life that ignore Christ s call to a life of holiness, or that seek to pit Law and Gospel against one another as if both were not expressions of the one Word of God. By our union with Christ we participate in his obedience. In these times of moral and sexual confusion we affirm the consistent teaching of Scripture that calls us to chastity outside of marriage and faithfulness within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. We turn away from forms of church life that fail to pray for and strive after a rightly ordered sexuality as a gracious gift of the loving God, offered to us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We also turn away from forms of church life that fail to forgive and restore those who repent of sexual and other sins. 24 While hailed by many conservative evangelicals, the response to Union in Christ was not entirely favourable. William Stacey Johnson, a theology professor at Princeton, discussed this Confessing Church Movement and the Presbyterian Coalition in the independent weekly Presbyterian Outlook. He compared the contemporary witness of these organizations to those of the Barmen synod, the German confessing church and the authors of the Belhar Confession in apartheid-era South Africa. Dr Johnson protested: The 1934 Barmen Declaration in Germany was about not allowing divine grace to be circumscribed by the Aryan paragraphs which the so-called German Christians (and not the state) were pressing the church to accept; and the 1982 Belhar Confession in South Africa was about not allowing any division of grace according to the colour of one s skin. Accordingly, we cannot allow this great term, confessing church, or the tradition it represents, to be co-opted by a single party or interest group within the church seeking to vent its anger against another. However well-intentioned may be the newly born confessing church movement in the PCUSA, its claim to wear the mantle of Barmen will not stand up to scrutiny. 25 24 25 Van Marter, J. Presbyterian Coalition Issues Doctrinal Statement. PCUSA News, 14 October 1998. The full text of Union in Christ: A Declaration for the Church appears at the end of this news release, which is archived by Worldwide Faith News. [WWW document] URL http://www.wfn.org/1998/10/msg00120.html [accessed on 12 December 2008] Johnson, W. S. Table Talk. Presbyterian Outlook, 21 May 1991. Richmond, Virginia. The article is archived at [WWW document] URL http://www.covenantnetwork.org/sermon&papers/johnson1.html [accessed on 12 December 2008] & 2009 World Council of Churches 89

The Ecumenical Review Volume 61 Number 1 March 2009 Richard Burnett mounted a defence against this and similar critiques in the October 2001 edition of The Presbyterian Layman. Acknowledging that the suffering and sacrifice of the Hitler era were not to be compared with the US scene, clearly stating that those who oppose us are not Nazis, he continued: Nevertheless, there is an analogy between our situation and the church s situation in Germany. It is not a political, sociological or anthropological analogy, but a theological one. In the PCUSA today there is a deep confusion as to what counts as revelation, as to what the true source and norm of the Church s proclamation is, just as there was in Germany in the 1930s. Then many were appealing to blood, race and soil as sources and norms of theology. Today many are appealing to sex, gender and orientation. The difference is virtually nil... The question is actually very simple: How does one get from Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, to same-sex unions or homosexual ordination?... I hardly think asking such questions does a dishonour to the memory of Karl Barth and the signatories of Barmen. On the contrary, I m convinced that these are precisely the sort of questions they would raise. The question before the PCUSA today has to do with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, with whether we re going to live, as article three of Barmen states, solely from His comfort and from His direction or instead abandon the form of [the Church s] message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions. 26 The dramatic use to which Barmen has been put by adherents of the Presbyterian Coalition and the self-described Confessing Church Movement are by no means the only ways in which US Presbyterians of the early 21st century are employing this confessional standard. To cite only a few examples: A guide for congregational discussion of torture as state policy, prepared by Presbyterians and Reformed partners in 2005, calls American churches to address the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects to countries practising interrogation techniques illegal in the United States; the curriculum admonishes church members to understand our present situation relative to the historical context of the Theological Declaration of Barmen. 27 As a process begins in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to consider adding the Belhar Confession to The Book of Confessions, a study distributed by the church s office of 26 27 Burnett, R. (2001) The Barmen Declaration: It Is All About Revelation. The article originally appeared in The Presbyterian Layman. Vol.34 no.6, which is now archived on [WWW document] URL http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/archive/index.php/t- 19853.html [accessed on 18 December 2008] Wickersham, C. (ed.) (2005) We Confess God Alone. Out of Horror, Hope: A Biblically Based Study of Torture s Ravages and Potential Responses in the Reformed Tradition. No2Torture Group web site: [WWW document] URL http://www.no2torture.org/edu/ no2t_wk4.pdf [accessed on 12 December 2008] 90 & 2009 World Council of Churches

Theodore A. Gill Barmen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) theology and worship recognizes Belhar s coherence with what [the PCUSA] already confesses, calling Barmen the model for Belhar in its use of an accompanying letter or explanation and the affirmation-rejection pattern of confession. 28 Across the church, candidates for ministry familiarize themselves with Barmen and the other confessions, and ordained officers review them, mindful of their answer to the third ordination vow: Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God? 29 It is one thing to adopt a confession or a book of confessions. The question, as with any church or ecumenical statement, is whether a pronouncement, policy or other document will be received and incorporated into the lives of Christians. Today the Theological Declaration of Barmen is an intrinsic part of the thinking of Presbyterians in the USA Its reception is complete. Admittedly, opinions vary on the application of its teaching, and the debate over its implications is fierce at times. But the declaration itself is taken with utmost seriousness on every side and recognized by all as a true standard, albeit a subordinate standard, bearing authentic testimony to the church s faith in a moment of crisis. Beyond that, Barmen is embraced as considerably more than historical in nature; as a living confession, it is no mere doctrinal relic of the 1930s. The Presbyterian Church (USA) accepts the Barmen Declaration as a call to faith and action transcending the turbulent events experienced over three-quarters of a century and demanding our present witness in 2009. 28 29 McGarrahan, E. T. (2007) A Study of The Belhar Confession and its Accompanying Letter. PCUSA, Louisville, p.29. Confessional Nature of the Church Report. (1999) The Book of Confessions. PCUSA, Louisville, p.xxv. & 2009 World Council of Churches 91