We Cannot Remain Silent
A Statement on the National Moment from Albany Presbytery, PCUSA
Adopted by Albany Presbytery on May 1, 2025
Synopsis:
God alone, as witnessed to in Scripture and embodied in Jesus Christ, is our ultimate allegiance and the object of our trust and obedience. We reject the elevation of loyalty to any personality, political party, or community above our duty to love God through love of others. In the name of Christ, we call on our fellow Christians to object to the anointing of political figures as messiahs and to resist the restriction of moral kinship to people who resemble or think like us. We urge our fellow Christians, as well as people of different or no religious commitment, to marshal the freedoms of democratic citizenship to redirect our politics to the common good. The principles of love and justice demand that we reshape public life in the US toward decency and mutual care.
Statement:
The Albany Presbytery (NY), concerned with a growing lack of compassion, an increase in divisiveness and polarization, and the erosion of a commitment to the common good in American public life, feel called and compelled to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in opposition to developments that fundamentally threaten our country’s collective civic life. As members of a confessional tradition, we Presbyterians know that “in every age the church has expressed its witness in words and deeds as the need of the time required” (The Confession of 1967.) Here we add our voices to the cloud of witnesses from other moments, and particularly the signers of the Barmen Declaration of 1934 who rejected the atrocities of the Nazis and errors of so-called “German Christians.” We may not keep silent since we believe that we have been given “a common message for the need and temptation of the Church in our day” (The Barmen Declaration).
1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3).
God alone, as witnessed to in Scripture and embodied in Jesus Christ, is our ultimate allegiance and the object of our trust and obedience. We reject the elevation of loyalty to any personality, political party, or community above our duty to love God through love of others. In the name of Christ, we call on our fellow Christians to object to the anointing of political figures as messiahs and to resist the restriction of moral kinship to people who resemble or think like us.
2. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1-3)
God’s prophets made clear that what matters most to God is that we live with one another in communities of fairness, compassion, humility, and mutual respect. In the spirit of the prophets, Jesus Christ insisted that to follow him requires that we adopt a life principle of love for others. We reject a culture of hyper-individualism, mutual suspicion, arrogance, divisiveness, and injustice. In the name of Christ, we call on our fellow citizens, especially those who share our Christian faith, to support practices and policies that improve justice and kindness, and to commit to habits of forbearance in the navigation of disagreements with others in public life.
3. “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry” (Exodus 22:21-23). As Jesus warned in the Parable of the Coming of the Son of Man,“I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me…. Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me’” (Matthew 25:41-45).
From the liberation of the ancient Hebrew people, through the judgment of the prophets, to Christ’s own friendship with outcasts, God expresses special concern for the vulnerable in society, especially the poor, the marginalized, and immigrants. We reject the inhumanity in current federal administration’s policies of internment and deportation directed toward immigrants in the US, as well as in the threats posed to our common well-being by arbitrary cuts to governmental services. In the name of Christ, we call on federal authorities to cease deportation sweeps, to establish a more compassionate response to the complexities around immigration, and to augment rather than reduce governmental investment in human services and civil protections.
We urge our fellow Christians, as well as people of different or no religious commitment, to marshal the freedoms of democratic citizenship to redirect our politics to the common good. The principles of love and justice demand that we reshape public life in the US toward decency and mutual care.
In this spirit, we urge the congregations of Albany Presbytery to engage in prayerful study of biblical and confessional tradition, with special attention to the Barmen Declaration of 1934 and the Confession of 1967, to discern what faithful action the Spirit is calling us to undertake as public citizens during this time of national crisis.
