All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. 15 You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “ Abba, Father. ” 16 The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. 17 But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.
This volume considers three issues in the Presbyterian Church that have proved to be perplexing to the witness of faith: outreach, ecumenism, and pluralism. The first four essays illustrate that troubling questions about the church's witness arose in this century and divided Presbyterian opinion in the midst of American social problems. Thus, verbal and physical outreach became competing priorities. The final five essays examine racial/ethnic Presbyterian experiences. Examples of the interlocking and sometimes interfering interplay of outreach, ecumenism, and pluralism in the quest for distinctive Presbyterian discipleship are discussed.
Through its examination of American Presbyterianism, the "Presbyterian Presence" series illuminates patterns of change in mainstream Protestantism and American religious and cultural life in the twentieth century.