Oboedire | July 8, 2026
Using the word confessional as an element of big-picture spirituality, I do not mean reciting a creed or aligning with a particular statement of faith. I am using the word as it was used in Germany nearly a century ago—that is, a resistance to growing evil. The resistance was mounted by individual Christians and by a Confessing Church.
Book Cover Image Courtesy of Thrift Books
We are once again in need of a confessional spirituality—a resistance to evil declared individually and collectively. As I noted in the “Collision Course” post on March 29, the spiritual life is always at odds with the “principalities and powers” whose fallen-world imperialism hijacks true faith, doing great harm “in Jesus’ name” and with a false allegation that it does so with God’s favor.
We say, “No!” to this, becoming confessional in ways our predecessors in the faith have done from the outset of Christianity (Hebrews 11).
Hanna Reichel has offered us good guidance for doing this in our day in her book, For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional. She offers an endurance spirituality rooted in the liturgical pattern of gathering, listening/responding, communion, and sending. She roots our work in our worship, which is the union we must have if our resistance is to be sustained.
Interestingly, she says it all begins with discernment, having the eyes to see and ears to hear (Mark 8:18) what is happening, and to so in the larger context of what God is doing in and through us to overcome evil with good. We always act in response to a vision, a big-picture sense of things.
I have tried to offer that in this series. It ends next week. But before it does, I wanted to remind us that it all comes together in the word confessional—our disposition to resist evil in whatever forms it presents itself, doing so nonviolently through words and deeds that call out sin, call for repentance, and call forth hope (Walter Brueggemann). We have been called, as Hanna Reichel makes clear, “for such a time as this.”
Steve Harper 2024
Courtesy Photo
The Rev. Dr. Steve Harper is a retired seminary professor who taught for 32 years in the disciplines of Spiritual Formation and Wesley Studies. Author and co-author of more than fifty books.. He is also a retired elder in The Florida Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.