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Did You Know? What Presbyterians Believe
Throughout the history of the Christian movement churches have written confessions of faith because they feel that they must do so, not just because they think it would be a good idea. Confessions of faith may result from a sense of urgent need to correct some distortion of the truth and claim of the gospel that threatens the integrity of the church’s faith and life from within the church. They may result from some political or cultural movement outside the church that openly attacks or subtly seeks to compromise its commitment to the gospel. Sometimes the urgency to confess comes from the church’s conviction that it has a great new insight into the promises and demands of the gospel that is desperately needed by both church and world.
Frequently, all three occasions—internal danger, external threat, and great opportunity—are behind the great confessions of the church at the same time. In any case, the church writes confessions of faith when it faces a situation of life or a situation of death so urgent that it cannot remain silent but must speak, even at the cost of its own security, popularity, and success. Or to put it negatively, when all the church has to say is the restatement of what everyone already knows and believes, or when it has no word to speak other than safe generalities that ignore or cover over the concrete, specific issues of a crisis situation—then it is not the time for confession even though what is confessed might be true in itself.
https://pcusa.org/sites/default/files/boc2016.pdf page vii
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