by Cláudio Carvalhaes
WHEN I TAUGHT AT LOUISVILLE SEMINARY, I had the chance to work with Christopher Elwood, a PC(USA) pastor and, I believe, one of the country’s most brilliant thinkers. He teaches a course called “To Be Reformed.” I asked him why he chose this title and he said this:
“Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda is a phrase Reformed churches have been using for several centuries. It means ‘The Reformed church, always to be reformed,’ or ‘always requiring reformation.’ The course title calls attention to an impulse within Reformed theological traditions that is rooted in a deep sense of the dynamic of God’s grace. The fallenness of the world, our lives, and human systems is all too apparent. But grace doesn’t leave that reality as it is. And it doesn’t leave us in a place of resting either with the present reality or with a vague impression of better things, far off in an imagined future. It calls into question everything that we think of as given, stable, fixed. It takes us into a mode of being that H. Richard Niebuhr called ‘permanent revolution.’ In that state, we are open in the present to God’s radical transforming — of ourselves, of our communities, our church, our present ideology, our theological systems, our worship practices. Nothing escapes this criticism, this dying and being born anew. It is that radically humble and hopeful sense of the need for and possibility of transformation that this title calls to mind.”
His answer gives us a great sense of our faith as Reformed people. It puts us Christians in constant motion with a demand to “always require reformation” by the grace of God in order to find God’s will for us and the world (see Romans 12:2).
Growing up in Brazil, I remember my Presbyterian church always wanted to make sure we would have a Reformed identity, something that would make us unique in our faith. It is the same here. Unfortunately, a lot of our identity has become reflections of our cultures rather than our Reformed faith.
There is a huge problem for us Reformed people, since we cannot simply maintain an identity – for our identity is always being redone, reframed, reshaped, reformed. Our identity is related to the gospel of Jesus Christ that keeps converting us, taking us away from fixed places of cultural and theological securities. We can’t escape the fact that we are a people without fixed identity, always not knowing who we are fully, always being mixed and matched with other people, always being on the mend.
For our days, perhaps the most pressing need to be reformed has to do with our commitment to the black people in this country. We have a serious problem when dealing with race. A recent Pew report on racial diversity showed Protestantism to be the most racially segregated religion in U.S. We must change that! We must engage the history of slavery and segregation and racism in this country. We must listen to our brothers and sisters and see how we can be reformed by the Spirit as we stand in full solidarity with our black sisters and brothers. We have to transform our theologies and start to read black writers. We have to preach about the constant slaughter of black people in this country. We have to read the gospel along with our brothers and sisters and continue to be reformed.
To be reformed is a maddening principle. At the heart of the Reformation there is a seed of difference, of diversity, of change, of a world to be lived in multiplicities. Yet, what we did was to reform ourselves once and now we keep on saying: Let us find an identity! And stick to it! Otherwise our ministry will be confused, our mission dispersed and our faith lost in uncertainties. Away from fear we love! And by loving we learn how to be reformed, as we pass this tradition on to other generations.
Can we actually be a reformed people? A reformed people that continues to be reformed?
CLÁUDIO CARVALHAES is associate professor of homiletics and worship at McCormick Theological Seminary.
