Re; my previous post,  and the posts from yesterday on this issue:

comment by Chris Roberts Aug 11th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

Before invoking the Confessing Church, it might be a good idea to study the “Barmen Declaration,” which was the founding document of the Confessing Church. It was mostly written by Karl Barth. There are many (not enough, but many) people who are anxious about the poor in America. How is our Confessing Church different from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, or an enlightened essayist in The Nation? The Barmen Declaration has the clue.

My reply:

Dale Aug 12th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

Chris,

The distinction between the Confessing Church and the progressive wing of the Democratic party is that the Confessing Church is a “Life Together” as Bonhoeffer described it. Political movements are not ways of life in the sense that the church is. There is no shared life other than some abstract sense of “agreement”, which is modernism’s counterfeit community. The Confessing Church witnesses to an “alternate life” which is not subsumed under any of the world’s movements. It is an intimate, shared, life of accountability and formation. “Progressives” (under which banner many in the church may find themselves in terms of political ideology) are, in and of themselves, just that, an ideology and not a “life together”.

I know this is, as most arguments go, not nearly nuanced enough, but it IS a big difference as I see it. I know many churches that would be called “Progressive” that are sorely lacking in the “life together”. As the name of this blog witnesses: inward/outward (as in Journey Inward Journey Outward), the two of these poles bear witness to the inward and outward work.

Dale

Called to Be a ‘Confessing Church’ at inward/outward

How ‘d I do here?  Comments?