This week, Pastor Margo will offer excerpts from the Confession of Belhar (September 1986) and articles about the “Purple Church” for our reflection, in the wake of tumultuous national events and in the “bleak midwinter” of COVID. Come along for the ride!
Confession of Belhar (September 1986): https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/belhar.pdf.
We believe:
• that Christ’s work of reconciliation is made manifest in the church as the community of believers who have been reconciled with God and with one another;
Reflection by Ina Jones Hughes on the Purple Church, from the Presbyterian Outlook
https://pres-outlook.org/2013/12/purple-church/.
In Christ there is no East or West — as the old hymn goes — but among his followers today there is definitely Left and Right. Liberal and Conservative. Traditional and Progressive. Red and Blue. Tensions within churches and across denominational lines continue to unravel the tie that binds. Current tendencies to draw lines in the sand, so painfully headlined in the political arena, bring American Christians once again to a Babel-like crisis: hot button issues are so emotionally charged that some fear the church as the body of Christ is dismembering itself in the heat of those battles.
Is it too late for Christians to turn ideological swords into ploughshares? Are “church people” so far gone in vilifying each other over social or theological disagreements that they can no longer unearth the holy ground that is the Church’s one foundation? Have they lost the blueprint and buried the tools for building bridges instead of fighting over “the loin issues” or what kind of music belongs in true worship or how the Bible should be read? Have conversations within the church and about the church become a hell-bent race to “win” and grown so cantankerous and distracting that we have spawned a new fast-growing denomination to check when asked for church affiliation: “none of the above”?
Pastor Margo’s mid-article aside:
This Presbyterian Outlook article is not from Jan. 2021 but from Dec. 2013! The issues of bitter polarization in the culture and in the church have been brewing for years and show no signs of settling down. This week Pastor Margo looks at the idea of the “Purple Church,” and how the ways that individual believers see themselves and their identities impact life at the congregational level. Is Grace Church a “purple church?” If not, do we want to be? Stay tuned tomorrow for the remainder of Ina Jones Hughes’ article.