With the adoption of the Confession of 1967, the United Presbyterian Church will become an entirely different body. Its foundations will have been changed. The message that it proclaims to the world will be a new one, and the program that it outlines for itself in the so-called action sections of the new confession will make of it primarily an instrument for social revolution.

The end of the road has been reached for what was once a great and glorious Reformed and Calvinistic church. No longer can it be called a confessional church in the true and historic sense of this word.

It is a church which has cut itself loose from its ancient moorings and will be drifting upon a broad sea without chart or compass, with an open acknowledgment that from time to time it will take soundings and chart a new course which will be the “Confession . of 1975” or the “Confession of 1990.” As this new organic system moves along it will be busy redefining, reinterpreting, restating what it learns out of the experience of its own travels. An entirely different kind of church has been here conceived and now organized. While men have been talking about revolution throughout the world-and in the United States they are concerned about revolution and the social system—a revolution has quietly been going on in which the church takes on a new form ahead of society itself.

The last turn in the road has been made, and what was called the modernist-fundamentalist controversy is forever ended within the circle of this church, for the liberals and the modernists now have established their own doctrine in the dominion which they rule, with any serious challenge no longer possible.

This is the first time that a major Protestant church in the Western world has been so bold as completely to reorganize and reshape itself and its doctrine. The extent of all this can only be seen as one carefully examines the new confession itself and the new ordination vows which will determine the relationship of the confession to the church and the church to the confession.

One does need to note the road along which the liberals have walked from the time they entered the church until they were able to write the new creed for the new church.

The fact that virtually all opposition to this new creed melted away in its final days, that even those who call themselves conservatives have announced that they “can live with it,” and some have even been so bold as to praise it, indicates the ease with which men were led to accept verbal phrases which were given them to hold them within the circumference of the church while not in any way interfering with the purpose of the new confession or the structure of the new church. Many indeed are being deceived and will be tempted to accept an easy road of surrender. But the most fundamental and basic realities of the Christian religion are at stake.

For 300 years the Westminster Confession of Faith was accepted, believed, and the church was bound to it by the most honored vows before God.

This shall be no more.

. The question that every Presbyterian and every Christian throughout the land must face is whether he can truly honor the name of the Lord and be a party to such a change, and remain in fellowship with such a church.

It is this question that this study and analysis is designed to help God’s people answer. This is a question that must be answered, and answered with the help of God, in the light that He has given us in His Holy Scriptures, and with the peace and assurance of the Holy Spirit who speaks to the redeemed through the only infallible rule of faith and practice-the Holy Scriptures.