MILWAUKEE — While the Bible is primary for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the denomination’s Book of Confessions plays an important, if subordinate, role in guiding the church’s ministry and beliefs, as demonstrated by the vow that all ordained officers take to be guided by it.
Accordingly, the Book of Confessions, which is the first part of the church’s constitution, is deliberately difficult to amend or expand.
With that as background, the denomination’s 227th General Assembly voted 382-39 to, essentially, restart the process for considering if a new confession is needed and what it should say.
Adding a new confession has been discussed in one form or another since at least 2018, when the 223rd General Assembly was presented with a proposal to consider adding Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to the Book of Confessions. No deadline was set.
Two years later, the 224th General Assembly, without referencing the previous assembly, created a “special committee … to write a new confession to be considered” for the Book of Confessions.
Then in 2022, yet another special committee was approved, with special instructions to “consider voices who are not yet represented.”
A report from the special committee created by the 2022 General Assembly came before commissioners at GA227 in the form of RUS-10, which requested the stated clerk send the proposed new confession to presbyteries for affirmative and negative votes while also calling upon all congregations, councils, seminaries and denominational conferences to engage the text in “serious and prayerful study.”
But the Committee on Reformed Identity in the United States members and advisory delegates questioned whether the Book of Order’s mandate for adding new confessions, outlined in G-6.03, had been properly followed by the recommendation of RUS-10.
Article G-6.03 of the PC(USA)’s constitution stipulates that adding a confession requires a proposal for a new confession to be approved for study, considered by a geographically diverse special committee, reported back to a subsequent General Assembly, and only then, if approved, sent to the presbyteries for a vote. The proposal must ultimately receive approval from two-thirds of the presbyteries and a subsequent General Assembly in order to amend the Book of Confessions.
Based on G-6.03, the Advisory Committee on the Constitution (ACC) offered three paths forward for RUS regarding RUS-10:
- disapprove the recommendation, which would basically end consideration of the proposed confession;
- refer the proposed confession to a new special committee for further study and consideration, or
- start the process outlined in the Book of Order by referring the proposed confession to a “committee of 15” as required by G-6.03b.
RUS chose option three, approving a recommendation, 40-17, that the General Assembly appoint a committee of no fewer than 15 ruling elders and ministers of the Word and Sacrament from across the country to consider the proposed confession and report its findings to the next assembly.
But some RUS members believed that a larger study of the proposed confession was required before even starting the process outlined in G-6.03b. They presented a minority report to the full assembly suggesting the denomination pursue option b of the ACC’s three recommendations: calling for the creation of a new special committee that would ensure the proposed confession first undergo study throughout the church.
The minority report argued that the assembly was being asked to send the confession to presbyteries before it had received adequate discussion. Its authors wrote that RUS members “were prevented… from discussing the merits of the new confession” and that “no reading, studying, or debate of the confession was permitted.”
They concluded that the proposal was “premature and ill-advised” until the church had engaged in a sustained conversation about the confession’s merits and possible revisions.
The assembly ultimately adopted the recommendation of the minority report over the recommendation of the RUS Committee and voted 382-39 to refer the proposed new confession to a new special committee, which will be commissioned to “[i]nvite the whole church – every congregation and session, every presbytery, everyone – to study and consider the confession, and report its considerations.” This new special committee will share its findings to the 228th General Assembly in 2028.
GA228 will then decide if the proposed and revised new confession will be sent to a committee of 15 (as stipulated by the Book of Order). If approved, that committee of 15 would report to GA229 (2030) with their findings. If GA229 decides the confession should be added to the Book of Confessions, then it will be circulated for a vote by presbyteries. If two-thirds approve, GA230 in 2032 will get the last say.
