A pastoral concern — and a procedural proposal
To the editors,
Charles Wiley’s February reflection, “Why the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions is too long — and how to fix it,” is pastoral before it is procedural — a fact I admire. He argues that most PC(USA) ruling elders and ministers cannot reasonably teach or engage every confession in the Book of Confessions with equal depth. In an age shaped by information overload and institutional fatigue, he suggests the size of the collection has become a barrier rather than a gift.
His solution? A shorter, supplemental “Book of Confessional Witness” with no constitutional authority.
Reducing the church’s authoritative confessional witness in pursuit of accessibility risks producing theological amnesia…
I believe this proposal misses the mark. The issue is not length but formation. Reducing the church’s authoritative confessional witness in pursuit of accessibility risks producing theological amnesia and unmooring the foundations upon which the rest of our constitution depends — for the Book of Confessions is the first part of our constitution.
The constitution as teacher
Through my work as a stated clerk, participation in constitutional interpretation and years of ecumenical dialogue, I have come to see our constitution less as a regulatory document and more as a teacher. It forms habits before it governs behavior. It shapes how Presbyterians discern authority, hold disagreement and exercise communal responsibility under the lordship of Christ.
Related reading: “What we lose when confessions are treated as optional” by Keanu Heydari
That insight changes how we approach the Book of Confessions.
Presbyterians affirm Scripture as the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ. Yet Scripture is never interpreted in isolation. As the Second Helvetic Confession reminds us in chapter two, the Word is rightly heard within the discernment of the church gathered across time and place.
Our confessions embody that disciplined communal memory.
Our confessions embody [a] disciplined communal memory.
A grammar formed in crisis
Each confession emerged from crisis. The Scots Confession spoke into national upheaval. The Westminster Standards wrestled with ecclesial authority and covenantal order. The Confession of 1967 addressed reconciliation amid social fracture. The Confession of Belhar confronted apartheid and injustice. Together, they do more than teach doctrine; they demonstrate how Christians have heard the gospel under pressure and learned to read Scripture together across centuries.
Removing portions of that witness — even through a supplemental text with no constitutional authority — would not simply simplify teaching. It would reshape the church’s theological grammar and unsettle assumptions embedded throughout the constitution.
What appears to be simplification risks becoming disconnection, leaving practice untethered from theological memory.
The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity do not arise in isolation. They are a synthesis drawn from the confessional tradition. The language of ordered ministry, shared discernment, connectional accountability and Christ’s headship rests upon centuries of reflection preserved in those confessions. Reduce that witness, and the grounding beneath those constitutional claims begins to erode. What appears to be simplification risks becoming disconnection, leaving practice untethered from theological memory.
Practice depends on shared memory
Presbyterians most often encounter the constitution not as text but as practice, in councils where Scripture, confession and communal discernment converge. Sessions and presbyteries do not deliberate in abstraction. They depend upon a shared theological grammar shaped by the confessions and presumed throughout the Book of Order. Narrow that grammar, and the church risks mistaking immediacy for faithfulness.
Related reading: “Why the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions is too long — and how to fix it” by Charles Aden Wiley, III
Consider an ordinary presbytery debate about ministry standards, justice witness or reconciliation. Appeals are rarely made to Scripture in abstraction. Commissioners instinctively draw upon confessional language about conscience, reconciliation or obedience to Christ. Those texts function as guardrails, slowing reactionary impulses and reminding councils that faithful innovation remains accountable to the communion of saints.
If those voices are diminished, interpretation risks being shaped by contemporary preference rather than disciplined inheritance.
The danger is not merely pedagogical. It is ecclesiological.
Formation, not excision
Confessional reduction risks unmooring us from the wider church catholic and from the struggles that forged Presbyterian identity. Constitutionally, it risks weakening the coherence of the Book of Order, whose teaching authority depends upon the confessional witness it presumes but does not restate. In attempting to make the confessions easier to teach, we may make Presbyterianism easier to forget.
If ministers and elders are not engaging the essential tenets of the Reformed tradition, the solution lies less in pruning the confessions than in teaching the constitution more faithfully.
Theology in Presbyterian life is learned through participation. Sessions deliberate together. Presbyteries examine candidates. Councils hold one another accountable. These practices teach theology because they remain anchored in confessional reasoning.
If ministers and elders are not engaging the essential tenets of the Reformed tradition, the solution lies less in pruning the confessions than in teaching the constitution more faithfully.
Formation does not require mastery of every confession in detail. It requires recognizing the Book of Confessions as a living reservoir from which the church continually draws wisdom.
Wiley rightly calls us toward clarity and pedagogical honesty. But the choice before us is not between usefulness and abundance. It is between retrieval and excision. A reduced corpus would narrow the range of authorized witnesses shaping Presbyterian discernment and loosen the theological anchors supporting constitutional life.
A rule of life
What might it look like to treat the constitution as a genuine rule of life?
Sessions would examine officers not only for procedural competence but for theological imagination shaped by the confessions. Presbyteries would approach disagreement with patience, remembering that faithful Christians have wrestled with Scripture differently across centuries. Preaching and preparation for ordered ministries would intentionally draw from multiple confessional voices, allowing congregations to hear themselves as participants in a larger story than the present moment.
In an age marked by fragmentation and theological short memory, the greater danger is not that our confessional book is too long. It is that we may forget why we needed it at all.
Such a church would not experience the Book of Confessions as an unwieldy burden. It would receive it as a chorus of witnesses reminding us who we are, whose we are and how we have learned, together, to read Scripture under Christ’s authority.
In an age marked by fragmentation and theological short memory, the greater danger is not that our confessional book is too long. It is that we may forget why we needed it at all.
