The Christian Century

For some 400 years, the small Reformed Church in America has relied on only three confessional statements of belief, all of them forged in the crucible of the Reformation. Now they have added a fourth, and its unlikely origins—apartheid-era South Africa—speak volumes about the changing nature of global Christianity and its impact on one of America’s oldest denominations.

Just as major mainstream print publications are struggling to forge a new path in the digital age, so will the flagship magazine of the 166,000-member Reformed Church in America.

The two sisters grew up worshiping in the same church. Today, they feel like they still are—despite being in different denominations.

After a former seminary president was defrocked for presiding at his daughter’s gay wedding, the top official of the Reformed Church in America urged the denomination not to be paralyzed by disagreements over homosexuality.

In and around Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Reformed Church in America offers churchgoers a surprisingly variegated vision for such a venerable denomination.

A popular reading of scripture embraced by evangelical giants Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and played out in the top-selling Left Behind books, was declared a “distortion of the biblical message” by leaders of the Reformed Church in America.