John P. Burgess

Freedom for the Gospel, Freedom from Worldly Ideologies: The Barmen Declaration TodayWinter 2025

Burgess opens with a year he spent at an East Berlin seminary in the 1980s, when Marxism-Leninism claimed total interpretive authority. Forty years later, he hears…

For the Next GenerationFall 2024

At the close of his seventh decade, Burgess takes stock alongside the Bonhoeffer of the prison letters, asking the same question Bonhoeffer asked: who am I?…

The Confession that the PCUSA NeedsSummer 2023

Burgess responds to the 225th General Assembly's call for a new PCUSA confession of faith with a different proposal: confess our present inability to make a…

Jesus Christ is the Life – Part 2Spring 2020

Part two of Burgess's keynote on John 14:6 picks up the human longing for life that is more than survival. He locates the answer not in…

Jesus Christ is the Life – Part 1Winter 2020

Burgess opens with a memory of his grandfather, a lifelong Presbyterian missionary in Guatemala, scooping him up off a Denver bus when he was four. The…

Preparing for Baptisms And Supporting the BaptizedFall 2018

Burgess works through baptism in the form of a parish dialogue: Martha worries the congregation doesn't follow up, Jerry's too busy, Lisa's not sure baptism matters,…

Recovering a Theology of God’s (Gracious) LawIssue 4, 2002

Are law and grace rival visions of the church, or two sides of one coin? John Burgess draws on Calvin, the Reformed confessions and the Ten…