What a church body publicly and officially claims to teach is called its confession of faith. A confession of faith is a doctrinal standard, and every church body has one. The issue in “Confessionalism” is whether a church body’s doctrinal standard is sufficiently clear and comprehensive, and even if so, whether adherence to that standard is enforced. A “Confessional” Church, like the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and First Lutheran in Benton, is one whose doctrinal standard is clear, sufficiently comprehensive, and enforced. I will now briefly review why this is important.
My working definition is “Confessional” is a bit broader than the term often has. Some church bodies, Lutherans, for example, and certain other Reformed church bodies, call their founding documents “Confessions”, and may refer to themselves as confessional churches. I am using the term to refer to a church body’s official, published teachings, and whether they are adequate and enforced or not. A church with adequate and enforced standards I am referring to as a confessional church, even if I disagree with its doctrinal standard, and even if it would not style itself as a confessional church.
Under this definition, I would consider the Roman Catholic Church to be confessional. It’s doctrine is extensively developed and published, and it attempts to enforce faithfulness to it, especially among its clergy. The Southern Baptist Church is a strange case. It has rather minimal written doctrinal standards and a rather loose congregational structure that, at least in theory, could hardly qualify as confessional. On the other hand, it seems to act more like a confessional church than its constitution would suggest.
Vague Standards
Precise doctrinal standards can be divisive, because they divide those who accept and those who reject them. The statement “In Baptism a person must be completely immersed” would be rejected by anyone who thinks sprinkling with water is sufficient, and if such individuals exist in the church body that adopts this statement, that division will be revealed. One way a church body might try to limit the appearance of division is by employing vague terms and definitions in its doctrinal statements. So for example, the vague statement that “Baptisms must be done with sufficient water,” could be agreed to by all parties, those who insist on immersion, and those who don’t. This allows Christians with divergent views to agree to a common statement anyway, and that is likely why it would be employed. The division is still there, however. It’s just that it is masked by the apparent agreement, and is disingenuous.
The Anglican Church (or, as it’s known in America, the Episcopal Church), because it is a state church, is famous for this sort of political compromising. State churches in general, which are trying to hold together all kinds of Christians living in a given country in one national church, often find this kind of thing useful.
The Missouri Synod itself was formed following a nineteenth-century attempt to force Lutherans and Reformed Christians in Prussia into a single state church. To accomplish this it attempted to employ vague terms regarding the Lord’s Supper, a doctrinal issue that famously divided Lutherans and the Reformed. Many dissenting Lutherans migrated to America and formed the Missouri Synod there.
Too Few Standards
Some church bodies believe that Christian unity is better served by insisting on only a very few doctrinal standards to which most Christians would readily agree. This is kind of a “Lowest Common Denominator” approach. A doctrinal standard that only specifies belief in the Trinity, for example, or that “Jesus is Lord and Savior”, would be agreeable to pretty much any Christian, but would allow adherents of any number of other quite unbiblical teachings to agree to it also. That kind of a doctrinal “screen” might be enough to keep doctrinal birds and squirrels out, but it will allow in many doctrinal flies and mosquitos! The result will either be doctrinal chaos, or a flat and generic teaching that can say little more than “Smile, God loves you!”
Some non-denominational Churches effectively adopt a “As long as you believe in Jesus, that’s all that matters” approach, and many Christians in our highly individualistic America resonate to that. They consider that to be a highly desirable feature; I consider that to be a highly unfortunate bug.
Liberal Lutheranism has sometimes employed an approach to doctrine called “Gospel Reductionism”. The idea here is that only the Gospel is really the Word of God, and it is only to this doctrine that the Church must remain faithful. Thus, teachings regarding creation, and God’s law, especially sexual morality, things clearly taught in the Scriptures, can be and often are set aside or even contradicted because they are not, technically, the “Gospel”.
Unenforced Standards
A particularly insidious problem in church bodies is not that their doctrinal standards are too vague or too few. The Evangelical Church in America has the same doctrinal standard as the Missouri Synod–the Book of Concord. The difference is that pastors and bishops in the ELCA are not required to adhere to those standards, while pastors in the Missouri Synod are.
Similarly, the United Methodist Church for years has had, for its official doctrinal standards, the Book of Discipline. But preachers and congregations were not held to these standards. The result has been that the United Methodist Church of today would hardly be recognizable by it’s members’ grandparents, yet its official teachings are unchanged.