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Originally Posted by TimV  queenknitter Quote: |
I had heard the PCA did this a few years back. Anybody know?
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We therefore confess our involvement in these sins. As a people, both we and our fathers, have failed to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the laws God has commanded. We therefore publicly repent of our pride, our complacency, and our complicity. Furthermore, we seek the forgiveness of our brothers and sisters for the reticence of our hearts that have constrained us from acting swiftly in this matter.
We will strive, in a manner consistent with the Gospel imperatives, for the encouragement of racial reconciliation, the establishment of urban and minority congregations, and the enhancement of existing ministries of mercy in our cities, among the poor, and across all social, racial, and economic boundaries, to the glory of God. Amen.
Note:
The Presbyterian Church in America participated in addressing the question of racial reconciliation as early as 1977, through her delegation to the NAPARC conference on race relations, and the resulting statement adopted.
That statement achieved a "consensus on a number of crucial issues" and it began by confessing serious inadequacies with respect to NAPARC member churches concerning race relations in the church:
We are convinced that we, as Reformed Christians, have failed to speak and act boldly in the area of race relations. Our denominational profiles reveal patterns of ethnic and racial homogeneity. We believe that this situation fails to give adequate expression to the saving purposes of our sovereign God, whose covenant extends to all peoples and races. We are convinced that our record in this crucial area is one of racial brokenness and disobedience. In such a situation the credibility of our Reformed witness, piety and doctrinal confession is at stake. We have not lived out the implications of that biblical and confessional heritage which we hold in common with each other, with its emphasis on the sovereignty and freedom of grace, on the absence of human merit in gaining salvation, and on the responsibility to subject all of life to the Lordship of Christ.
| There's more here: PCA Position Papers: Racial Reconciliation - M30GA (2002) 30-53, III, 14-16, pp. 262-270.
The PCA historical site has many good position papers. I've benefited from scrolling down through subjects that interest me and reading the various position papers. |
I was thinking about this today. I can't tell you the number of very striking Providences lately where I'm musing about something and then I'm in the middle of a conversation about it.
I was talking to a Brother the other day who brought up slavery in the South and how he believed it would have died out just like in England even without a bloody war.
I thought, today, that this may have been the case but it is undeniable that many Christians still believed that Black men and women could not participate in the same Presbytery as White and, whatever else you might say, there was something seriously wrong.
I thought to myself: That's the problem with studies of history because our allegiances tend to want us to re-pristinate certain individuals and paint them only in a perfect light and not recognize that each of us is fallen and we struggle with sin. Hence, American falsely make people like Lincoln to be saintly in every regard or others try to make Southern theologians the same. Why can't we simply recognize our need to be ever reforming as Christians.
I can love the writings of Dabney. I recognize his shortcomings in one area but then recognize that he had far fewer shortcomings than I do in so many other areas. I can read what he wrote with great profit even as I wish he had been willing to be more like Girardeau with respect to seeing his fellow Black Christians as joint heirs.
I really don't wish to start an inevitable debate here as some will see this merely as picking on Southern luminaries. Neither the South nor the North had a great love for the Black man during that time. We need not give sainthood to either side on this issue or attempt to overlook it. Rather, let us rejoice that the Church has grown so that such racial divisions are no longer given Biblical credence and turn our attention to our neglect of other Biblical truths that we've allowed to atrophy. In so many other ways, Dabney was our spiritual better and we could learn a thing or two from him if we don't presume that because he was wrong in one area that he was wrong in all.