http://thebanner.org/departments/article/?id=4184

We have a lot of challenges in this discussion. It occurs to me that this is the third Banner editor that I can think of (after Andy Kuyvenhoven and John Suk) to advocate for taking a serious look at our confessional infrastructure.

1. People look to the confessions for different things:
1a. the ecumenical perspective: we can’t change confessions because they tie us to other denominations and churches in other lands. If we change them we lose something.
1b. the piety perspective: confessions as a guide to life and belief
1c. the unity perspective: the confessions define the basis of our denominational covenant
1d. the historical perspective: the confessions connect us with our ecclesiastical ancestors

Very quickly we get into the question of what is “the majority”. Each of us has our perspective on this. In practice it get imperfectly polled by voting at Synod. What we can say is that we don’t have consensus but we do have a sort of plurality of communities with enough either built into the system or enough fear of change that the current system endures. Will this change politically? Time will tell. If it does it will be votes at Synod that mark that change.