Presbyterian 101
For more about the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) see Presbyterian 101.
Confessional life
"Many people are confused by talk of “confessing,” “confessions,” and “confessional” churches. Both inside and outside the church confession is ordinarily associated with admission of wrongdoing and guilt: criminals “confess” that they have committed a crime; famous people write “true confessions” about their scandalous lives; persons visit a “confessional” to tell of their sin. In Christian tradition, however, confession has an earlier, positive sense. To confess means openly to affirm, declare, acknowledge or take a stand for what one believes to be true. The truth that is confessed may include the admission of sin and guilt but is more than that. When Christians make a confession, they say, “This is what we most assuredly believe, regardless of what others may believe and regardless of the opposition, rejection, or persecution that may come to us for taking this stand.”
A distinction must be made between confession as an act of Christian faith and a confession as a document of Christian faith.
On the one hand, all Christians are by definition people who confess their faith—people who make their own the earliest Christian confession: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The Christian church, called and held together by Jesus Christ himself, lives only through the continual renewal of this fundamental confession of faith that all Christians and Christian bodies make together.
On the other hand, a confession of faith is an officially adopted statement that spells out a church’s understanding of the meaning and implications of the one basic confession of the lordship of Christ. Such statements have not always been called confessions. They have also been called creeds, symbols, formulas, definitions, declarations of faith, statements of belief, articles of faith, and other similar names. All these are different ways of talking about the same thing, though “creed” has ordinarily been used for short affirmations of faith, while other names have been used for longer ones."
From CONFESSIONAL NATURE OF THE CHURCH REPORT in the Preface to the Book of Confessions, Part I of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (BOC, pages xi and xii)
A distinction must be made between confession as an act of Christian faith and a confession as a document of Christian faith.
On the one hand, all Christians are by definition people who confess their faith—people who make their own the earliest Christian confession: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The Christian church, called and held together by Jesus Christ himself, lives only through the continual renewal of this fundamental confession of faith that all Christians and Christian bodies make together.
On the other hand, a confession of faith is an officially adopted statement that spells out a church’s understanding of the meaning and implications of the one basic confession of the lordship of Christ. Such statements have not always been called confessions. They have also been called creeds, symbols, formulas, definitions, declarations of faith, statements of belief, articles of faith, and other similar names. All these are different ways of talking about the same thing, though “creed” has ordinarily been used for short affirmations of faith, while other names have been used for longer ones."
From CONFESSIONAL NATURE OF THE CHURCH REPORT in the Preface to the Book of Confessions, Part I of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (BOC, pages xi and xii)
