What we lose when confessions are treated as optional

To the editors,

In his February 2026 opinion piece, “Why the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions is too long — and how to fix it,” Charles Wiley names a real pastoral difficulty: many ruling elders reach ordination with limited engagement with the Book of Confessions. That gap matters, since PC(USA) ordination vows ask officers whether they “sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church.”

My concern is that this proposal treats a formation deficit as if it were a constitutional problem.

Wiley proposes a structural remedy to increase accessibility and practical use: a supplemental “Book of Confessional Witness” to reduce the number of confessions used in officer preparation. In his plan, the auxiliary book would carry no constitutional authority.

My concern is that this proposal treats a formation deficit as if it were a constitutional problem. A confessional church addresses formation deficits by forming officers and congregations more fully. It does not resolve formation problems by lowering the church’s authoritative witness.

The Book of Confessions is not primarily a curriculum. It is the church’s public, constitutional testimony. Constitutional documents function as shared norms and references. They set a shared standard that can be consulted, taught from, argued with, and appealed to when disagreements arise. The relevant question is not whether officers have read every page. The relevant question is whether the church has habits and structures that bring these texts into real use when decisions are made.

In a commentary on the Barmen Declaration, Karl Barth described confession as “the act in which the church … between Holy Scripture and a situation … determines itself anew as what the church is.” Confessions speak the gospel when the church’s habits fall short. When the church’s confessions are treated as materials to be trimmed to fit training schedules, that order is reversed. Officer formation becomes the measure of the standard, rather than the standard forming and judging the church’s practice.

The relevant question is whether the church has habits and structures that bring these texts into real use when decisions are made.

Wiley’s emphasis on “accessibility” and “usability” therefore needs definition. Accessible for what purpose, and usable for which ecclesial practices? The confessions exist to form the church’s speech and judgment across time. That kind of formation rarely follows the logic of convenience. It comes through repeated encounter and the slow work of learning how to consult texts that do not yield everything at first glance.

There is also a procedural consequence to Wiley’s suggested supplement. If some confessions are moved into a non-constitutional “Book of Confessional Witness,” their authority changes in practice, even if the church continues to speak of them with respect. The constitutional authority of the Book of Confessions would be compromised.

Creating a non-constitutional supplement also requires a classification system that the PC(USA) has tended to resist. Who will decide which confessions stay in the constitutional collection and which are reassigned? Wiley’s rationale leans on practical criteria such as length and current patterns of use in officer preparation. Those criteria are understandable, yet they do not function as theological criteria. They also risk turning neglect into justification. If a confession has played a “minor role” in formation, the church should first ask why it has been neglected and what has been lost in that neglect. Demotion institutionalizes neglect.

Accessible for what purpose, and usable for which ecclesial practices?

Wiley is right that Presbyterian debates often resist reducing the faith to a list of “essential tenets” detached from the confessional corpus. His proposal risks recreating a similar hierarchy by another route. Once the church accepts that some confessions are constitutionally optional in practice, the next dispute arrives quickly. Which other texts are “less central”? Who decides, and by what criteria? The church’s energy shifts from interpretation and teaching toward boundary drawing and status contests.

The good news is that the ordination vow sets a realistic expectation. It does not ask officers to master every confession or to carry encyclopedic recall. It asks officers to “receive and adopt” the essential tenets “as expressed” in the confessions. That language assumes that officers will learn how to consult the confessions as authoritative guides when questions arise.

The PC(USA) does not need a shorter constitution. It needs a more imaginative confessional culture rooted in freedom of conscience.

If ruling elders feel unprepared to take the vow with integrity, the response should be a serious reform of formation rather than a reduction in constitutional witness. Several steps are available without weakening the constitutional witness.

1. Presbyteries and sessions can require a substantial confessional component in officer preparation that includes practice, not only coverage. Candidates should learn how to navigate the Book of Confessions, identify themes, and use confessional language in deliberation about concrete questions in worship and governance.
2. The denomination can strengthen supporting tools that increase real use. An annotated guide, a thematic index, and reading pathways keyed to common pastoral and polity questions would lower barriers without creating a second tier of authority.
3. Sessions can also normalize ongoing confessional formation after ordination. A brief, recurring practice of confessional reading and discussion within session meetings can shape the way governance actually happens. That is where the vow must be lived.
4. Finally, preaching and teaching can recover a confessional cadence. When congregations hear confessions used as living witnesses in worship and instruction, formation is no longer treated as an officer-only task.

The PC(USA) does not need a shorter constitution. It needs a more imaginative confessional culture rooted in freedom of conscience. The Book of Confessions is demanding because it reflects the church’s witness amid real doctrinal and pastoral challenges. The solution is not to demote parts of that witness into an appendix with diminished standing. The more responsible path is to reform the church’s common life so that the confessions become familiar in practice.