Confessing Movement

The Confessing Movement is a lay-led conservative Christian movement that opposes the influence of liberalism and progressivism within several mainline Protestant denominations and seeks to return them to its view of orthodox doctrine.

It overlaps with other conservative Christian movements including Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Holiness, and Fundamentalist Christianity. Its members have stated their commitment to work to change their home denominations from within rather than establishing ones, even if they are unable to regain full control. The Confessing movement places particular weight on the role of evangelism and traditional doctrine concerning the deity of Christ and holds conservative views on sexuality, especially homosexuality.

Confessing Movement in the churches

Christian denominations in the U.S.

U.S. Interchurch National Association of Evangelicals National Council of Churches Churches Uniting in Christ Anabaptist and Friends Church of the Brethren Mennonite Church USA Amish Baptist Alliance of Baptists American Baptist Association American Baptist Churches Baptist Bible Fellowship International Baptist General Conference Baptist Missionary Association of America Conservative Baptist Association of America General Association of Regular Baptist Churches National Association of Free Will Baptists National Primitive Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. North American Baptist Conference Southern Baptist Convention African-American Baptist National Baptist Convention of America National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Progressive National Baptist Convention Catholic and Anglican Anglican Church in North America Episcopal Church Roman Catholic Church Eastern Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Orthodox Church in America Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia Serbian Orthodox Church Non-Chalcedonian Armenian Apostolic Diocese of Am. Coptic Orthodox Church Syriac Orthodox Church Holiness & Pietist Christian and Missionary Alliance Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) Evangelical Covenant Church Evangelical Free Church of America Church of the Nazarene The Salvation Army Seventh-day Adventist Church Wesleyan Church Lutheran Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod North American Lutheran Church Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod Methodist African Methodist Episcopal Church African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Free Methodist Church United Methodist Church Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) Church of God in Christ Church of God of Prophecy Church on the Rock International Full Gospel Fellowship International Church of the Foursquare Gospel International Pentecostal Holiness Church Pentecostal Church of God Oneness Pentecostal Pentecostal Assemblies of the World United Pentecostal Church Intl. Presbyterian & Reformed Christian Reformed Church in North America Conservative Congregational Christian Conference Cumberland Presbyterian Church Evangelical Presbyterian Church Korean Presbyterian Church in America International Council of Community Churches National Asso. of Congregational Christian Churches National Association of Congregational Christian Churches Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Presbyterian Church in America Reformed Church in America United Church of Christ Reformed Church in America Stone-Campbell Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Christian churches and churches of Christ Churches of Christ International Churches of Christ Other LDS Church Community of Christ Grace Gospel Fellowship Independent Fundamental Churches of America Jehovah's Witnesses Messianic Jewish Alliance of America Plymouth Brethren Vineyard USA

A large group of laity and a somewhat smaller group of clergy within the mainline churches hold that their denominations have been "hijacked" by those who, in their view, have 'forsaken Christianity' for moral relativism to accommodate democratic pluralist society in America. They reject church leaders such as United Methodist Bishop Joseph Sprague of Chicago and Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong as apostate.

Although tension between theological modernizers and traditionalists in American Protestantism date has existed for generations, the formation of the Confessing Movement was triggered by changing positions on sexual orientation and especially the ordination of "practicing homosexuals" as clergy. Other issues influencing some groups were the ordination of women, and the decline in attendance of many of the mainline denominations through the 1950s to the 1980s in the US with leaders of the Confessing Movement arguing that the shrinking of mainline church membership resulted Christianity from conservative members leaving for growing evangelical churches rather than liberal members disengaging.

Dispute over grassroots origins

Its opponents characterize the Confessing Movement as part of an top-down attempt by outsiders such as Institute on Religion and Democracy to silence the social agenda of the mainline Protestant denominations, rather than a series of organically arising movements within various Protestant denominations. Its participants respond that the aim of the movement is simply to maintain the received Christian doctrine of the denomination as they understand it to have been traditionally taught and understood and deny that they receive IRD funding . They further claim that rank and file church members are more conservative than their denominations, which they say have been captured by secular funders, citing a 2007 IRD report^[1] that showed that in fiscal year 2005 the National Council of Churches mainline umbrella organization received slightly more money from non-church organizations than from member denominations.

United States of America

Presbyterian

One of the fastest growing Confessing Movements is within the Presbyterian Church (USA). In February, 2002 more than 800 laity, pastors, deacons, and elders gathered in Atlanta, Georgia for the first National Celebration of Confessing Churches. Participating churches affirm that Christ is the only way of salvation, that the Bible is infallible in its teachings, and that sexual relations are exclusively for marriage.

More than 1,300 of the denomination's 11,000 congregations have adopted such declarations and become part of a loosely knit Confessing Church Movement.

The books Union in Christ: A Declaration for the Church (1999) and A Passion for the Gospel: Confessing Jesus Christ for the 21st Century (2000), both by Mark Achtemeier and Andrew Purves have served as rallying cries for Confessing Presbyterians.

Methodist

The Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church quotes Methodism's founder, John Wesley, who said:

I AM not afraid, that the people called Methodists, should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case, unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.^[2]

Leaders have included Thomas C. Oden, Steve Harper, Maxie Dunnam, Bill Hinson, John Ed Mathison, Karen Covey Moore, William J. Abraham, and James Heidinger. The movement has been very successful in maintaining doctrinal standards and traditional United Methodist positions on theology and practice at the General Conferences in Cleveland (2000), Pittsburgh (2004), and Ft. Worth (2008). At the 2008 conference for instance delegates voted to retain language in the Social Creed defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.^[3] They also maintained the traditional teaching, that although homosexuals "are individuals of sacred worth", homosexual practice is "incompatible with Christian teaching."^[4]

Episcopalian

The newly formed American Anglican Council, which includes members of both the mainline Episcopal Church and the Continuing Anglican Anglican Church in North America states:

Here are the facts about the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) as it currently exists. It is a Church that is no longer in relationship with the majority of Anglicans worldwide. It is a Church that no longer turns to Holy Scripture for its guidance. It is a Church that has chosen the ways of man over the ways of God. It is a church that has undermined the institution of marriage. It is a church with which many worldwide Christian denominations have broken relations. It is a church that has lost its heart and soul and its commitment to making disciples and proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

Church of the Brethren

Brethren Revival Fellowship was one of the earliest evangelical concern movements among the mainline Protestant denominations. It says:

Many within the Church of the Brethren have set aside a firm belief in the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible, and knowingly or unknowingly have embraced the historical critical views of biblical interpretation. There has been a drift from a balanced Biblical-Anabaptist-Pietist and Brethren oriented understanding of church and state, war and peace, church discipline, and New Testament ordinances (such as the three part love feast). The Church of the Brethren has moved from preaching the Gospel of reconciliation of individuals to God through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, to a human centered program of political involvement. We believe that cultural renovation begins one by one with personal conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. We are concerned about the diminishing membership and the need for revival and evangelism within the Church of the Brethren. It seems that many of our church officials are not ready to accept the fact that doctrinal beliefs and morality issues are affecting the giving and are contributing to the membership decline.

Lutheran

Conservative traditions have always been strong in the Lutheran synods of North America. Over the last two centuries, most of the many new synods were started by members who felt their synod was straying from Christian orthodoxy. There are several reform movements that have been founded in recent years to effect change within existing Lutheran denominations.

The largest of these organizations is the WordAlone Network, organized in 2000 in opposition to the Concordat/Called to Common Mission agreement with the Episcopal Church USA. Under that agreement, the ELCA agreed to undertake the Episcopal practice of being governed by bishops in the historic episcopate. Many Lutherans saw this as contrary to Lutheran theology and organized in opposition to it.

While the WordAlone Network has worked to reform church governance, sometimes with little visible reward for their effort, they succeeded at the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA in slowing the efforts of those who sought to revise the understanding of homosexuality within the ELCA. This was accomplished in cooperation with others who did not oppose the historic episcopate through the Solid Rock Lutherans organization. WordAlone has also been an incubator for launching related groups working to reform the church. They include a new publisher of a Lutheran hymnal (Reclaim Lutheran Worship), LC3, and Lutheran Core.

The most successful WordAlone outgrowth is Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, a post-denominational association of 724 congregations in ten countries, with 656 of them in the United States.

The Evangelical Lutheran Confessing Fellowship (ELCF) is one of the more recent of these "reform" movements, inspired by the other Protestant "confessing movements" described in this article.

The ELCF was organized in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in February, 2002 by about 60 pastors and laypersons who belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest and perhaps most liberal Lutheran body in North America. The goal of the movement is to remain faithful to the orthodox or traditional teachings of the church, especially with regard to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the unique Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of scripture, and human sexual intimacy. Its efforts have been to persuade the ELCA to reform itreturn to orthodox positions with regard to its theology and teachings, rather than separation from the ELCA. According to their initial press release, a primary goal is to head off apparent movement toward formal recognition and ordination of homosexual clergy. In 2005, the proposals to allow ordination of homosexual clergy and blessing of homosexual relationships were defeated at the ELCA's national convention.

In 2005 the Lutheran Coalition for Reform (Lutheran CORE) was formed to organize groups and individuals within the ELCA to uphold the traditional church teachings on the scriptures, marriage, and sexuality. The decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly to allow pastors to be in same-sex relationships and still preach the ministry caused Lutheran CORE to begin working towards focusing on helping alternative confessing fellowships for Lutherans no matter what church affiliations. Lutheran CORE still maintains membership within the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada though they also have affiliations with LC-MC, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod among others; Lutheran CORE was also instrumental in the formation of the North American Lutheran Church in 2010 which was formed out of Lutheran CORE congregations that no longer wished to be part of the ELCA or ELCiC.

United Church of Christ

In the United Church of Christ the first confessing movement founded was the Biblical Witness Fellowship, formed in 1977 after a General Synod sexuality study that, to the founders, seemed to take a decidedly permissive attitude toward non-marital sex and homosexuality. The BWF advocates a dual goal of local church renewal and national level reformation. Under the leadership of executive director David Runnion-Bareford, a Candia, New Hampshire, pastor, this movement has presented reformation initiatives before each of the last five Synods of the UCC, including a successful reaffirmation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the denomination's historic symbol, the "Cross Triumphant," in 2005. "Focus Renewal Ministries" was founded as a charismatic expression within the United Church of Christ, although its membership is small. More recently, some UCC conservatives began a "Faithful and Welcoming" movement, led by the Rev. Bob Thompson, pastor of Hickory, North Carolina's Corinth Reformed UCC. Like the founding of the BWF, that initiative followed the controversial General Synod of 2005 (in which the denomination in effect endorsed the efforts of same-sex couples to marry) and seeks to keep churches from leaving the denomination. Generally speaking, the F&W movement is perceived as less strident than the BWF, which has close relationships with established para-denominational evangelical organizations such as Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

However, the UCC's renewal advocates have been far less successful than their counterparts in other mainline bodies: according to Faithful and Welcoming, over 250 congregations have withdrawn from the denomination since 2005, and despite the work mentioned above, the national leadership, and probably a majority of the remaining congregations, are resolute in their support of liberal theological and social stands. It is thus likely that laypeople and clergy espousing the aims of BWF, FRM, and F&W will remain small minorities in the denomination for the foreseeable future. Given this scenario, many more of the remaining advocates may well defect to more conservative groups also, leaving the UCC as perhaps the U.S.' most politically and theologically liberal Christian group.

Australia

Uniting Church in Australia

The Assembly of Confessing Congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia formed in 2006, It is the result of the coming together of two groups: the Reforming Alliance (est. 2003 in response decision by the UCA's 2003 Assembly not ban outright on the ordination of practicing homosexuals,^[5]) and the Evangelical Members within the Uniting Church in Australia (EMU) (est. in the early 1990s as a conservative response to what was seen as the church's growing liberalism).

See also

• Homosexuality and Christianity
• National Pro-Life Religious Council

References

1. IRD renew.
2. Wesley, John (1827) [1787]. "Thoughts upon Methodism". The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. X. New York: J. & J. Harper. p. 148.
3. General Conference closes with message of hope after addressing budget, social issues
4. United Methodists uphold homosexuality stance
5. http://nat.uca.org.au/ASC/commqa.htm

External links

Groups calling themselves Confessing Movements (or analogs)

• The Confessing Movement within The United Methodist Church
• Unofficial Confessing Movement Page (United Methodist)
• The Confessing Church Movement Within The Presbyterian Church (USA)
• A confessing movement within the United Church of Christ
• Faithful and Welcoming Churches of the United Church of Christ
• American Anglican Council
• Word Alone Network - Building an evangelical, confessional Lutheran future in America
• Good News Movement - United Methodist
• Association for Church Renewal - Multi-denominational - a fellowship of renewing and confessing movement leaders within mainline Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada
• Anglicans United, Working for Orthodox Anglicanism (formerly Episcopalians United)
• Community of Concern within the United Church of Canada
• The Presbyterian Layman (Presbyterian Church USA)
• Brethren Revival Fellowship within the Church of the Brethren
• The Institute on Religion and Democracy
• Disciple Heritage Fellowship (Disciples of Christ) (See also the English Wikipedia article "Restoration Movement," specifically the section "Churches of Christ / Disciples of Christ split.")