The Barmen Declaration became one of the roots of the Confession of 1967 that was crafted by the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Both Barmen and the Confession of 1967 were published in the Book of Confessions approved as the confessional standards of the largest of the Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. In the midst of the movements of the 1960s for free speech, civil rights, protests against the Vietnam War, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Cold War, Barmen and the Confession of 1967 were published alongside the historic creeds of the early Church and Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Confession of 1967 took as its central theme the reconciling work of God in Christ as the heart of the Christian message and the form of the church's ministry to a world in revolution. This message spoke to a generation of Presbyterians and other Christians in North America who were deeply engaged in ministries of reconciliation between formerly segregated African Americans and Euro-Americans in the southern states, and between middle class whites in the suburbs and the urban poor in the inner cities who revolted. It fit well in the era of the ministry of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of non-violent civil disobedience on behalf of dismantling racial segregation and poverty.
