In September of 2025 our session adopted a declaration in opposition to the growth of authoritarianism in the United States. The MPC congregation approved the adoption the first week of October 2025. The full declaration follows. Rev. Ben’s statement in our church newsletter just before our congregation approved it is available at this link. Please feel free to use our declaration as a template for your church community to write their own declaration in response to the current authoritarian climate encouraged by our federal government.
Raising Our Voices in Prophetic Witness:
A Montclair Presbyterian Church Declaration
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
We, the people of Montclair Presbyterian Church, will not remain silent. We are called by our humanity, our faith, and by the God in whom we place our faith to raise our voices in prophetic witness, proclaiming the Kingdom of God whose values stand in direct contrast to those of the Trump administration. We must denounce as immoral the growing authoritarian forces within our government that are now ignoring the rule of law and imposing regressive and racist policies on American society. Among them:
- militarized takeovers of American cities,
- attempts to end constitutional guarantees to birthright and naturalized citizenship,
- rollbacks of civil rights protections for women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ people,
- terrorizing immigrant communities through kidnapping, imprisonment without due process, family separation, and deportation to facilities known to engage in deprivation and torture,
- imperiling efforts to halt climate change, which threatens the health of all Creation and humanity, and is already ravaging the most vulnerable among us,
- slashing science funding and halting progress on scientific research essential to solving pressing societal problems,
- criminalizing protest (particularly protests against genocide in Gaza) and escalating attacks on the press and academic freedom,
- gutting of essential government services, including those that feed the poor and provide healthcare for the uninsured,
- executive overreach that undermines checks and balances and dismantles democratic institutions.
We are followers of Jesus who take to heart the values presented in the beatitudes: Blessed are the poor, the poor in spirit, the bereft, the meek, those who hunger for food or for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. We cannot, therefore, be reserved in our witness to God’s Kingdom, living as we do in a world that values wealth, profits from war, and persecutes prophetic dissent. Our calling is not to be silent but to be like a city built upon a hill, to be the salt of the earth, to be the light of the world.1
As Presbyterians, our tradition teaches us that among “the great ends of the Church” are:
- the shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship of the children of God,
- the promotion of social righteousness, and
- the exhibition of the Kingdom of heaven in the World.2
We cannot, therefore, in good faith, abide a government that mistreats migrants or anyone else in need of shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship, or a president (or any other politician) who lies habitually or who attacks journalists, scholars, scientists, attorneys, and activists seeking to tell the truth.
We take inspiration from the times when Christians have been a voice for the oppressed: Christian abolitionists of the 19th century; Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance to Nazism; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for civil rights; Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s leadership against apartheid in South Africa, and others.
But at critical moments, Christians have sometimes failed as individuals and communally as churches and denominations, offering silence when prophetic witness was needed. These failures occurred during the era of slavery, the genocide of Indigenous Americans, the exploitation of workers during the Industrial Revolution, the forced removal of Chinese Americans during the 19th century, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, to name a few.
We must not withhold prophetic witness in times that call for a proclamation of the Kingdom of God. We choose to help bring about God’s joyful Kingdom of peace, justice, hope, and love. Therefore, we commit ourselves to the following:
- To speak up as individuals and as a congregation, for we aspire to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8-9).
- To support our pastors and preachers as they proclaim our values from the pulpit, and when they fail, to encourage them to speak up.
- To be unwavering in our support for immigrants, for we aspire to love the stranger (Leviticus 19:33-34).
- To help dismantle structural racism, for we aspire to obey the laws of God rather than men (Acts 5:29).
- To help weave our LGBTQ+ spiritual kin into the fabric of society, for we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).
- To remember and learn not to repeat the ways in which our country has failed in righteousness and acted with cruelty.
- To stand in solidarity with our spiritual kin of every faith and no faith, especially those under threat, for we understand that everyone who does God’s will is acceptable to God (Acts 10:34-35).
- To help preserve the Earth, with particular emphasis on the urgent need to address climate change, for we aspire to be responsible stewards and care for creation (Genesis 2:15).
Montclair Presbyterian Church will not remain silent. We will support those policies that are compassionate and ethical in their treatment of God’s children and that care for God’s creation responsibly. At this perilous moment, we must not repeat the Church’s past cowardice, but rather must stand against tyranny and oppression and, with courage, make manifest the Kingdom of God.
September 2025
1 See Matthew 5:1-14 and Luke 6:20-26
2 The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Part II: Book of Order (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (USA)), 2023, F-1.0304
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