At the end of the first paragraph of Christianity and Liberalism, the quotable Machen spun out a sentence for the ages, a statement striking rightness:

In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.

Machen fought unbelief and an encroaching nonredemptive religion that often denied the supernatural, the deity of Christ, and the Scriptures. God be praised, these are not the casus belli for what we witness in the online digital ether or in the offline courts of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) today. The PCA is fighting about liturgy and polity and the intersection of the two. To oversimplify, the PCA is beefing about worship and women. To adapt a contemporary acronym, the PCA is duking it out over DEI—doxology, ecclesiology, and inclusion.

It may be helpful to view the Reformed church as a three-legged stool. The seat is the stool’s purpose: supporting the sitter. The purpose of the church on earth is to make disciples and provide a home for them as they glorify God and begin to enjoy him forever. In this home they are protected, and they work, learn, and grow, just as in an earthly family home. The fact of the church—its existence—is almost inseparable from its mission; the church is, and the church does.

The three legs support the being and mission of the church.

1. Worship and Sacraments. We place these first because in his work The Necessity of Reforming the Church, Calvin put them ahead of soteriology/doctrine as one of the two “things chiefly (by which) the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us and maintains its truth.”¹ Note well: Proper, biblical worship supports and maintains the truth that the church proclaims and applies. Calvin placed the sacraments after worship, but a developed understanding of the ordinary means of grace suggests that these two should go together.
2. Doctrine. Calvin’s twinned (though second) essential was knowledge of “the source from which salvation is to be obtained,” which is to say the soteriological truth conveyed primarily by preaching. There is great overlap between these legs; preaching/hearing is part of worship, and an ordinary means of grace ministry recognizes that preaching is best heard and most used by the Holy Spirit in public worship on the Lord’s Day.
3. Polity. The order and officers of the church are also essential to proper word-and- sacrament ministry via the means of grace. The ordained men given by the ascended Christ as gifts to the church are essential. Not just anyone can deliver the means of grace to God’s people or provide fully for the needs of the members of the church. Officers are the main conduit for Christ’s body and soul care, but everyone in the church is to benefit from that care and the discipline required in the house and family of God.

To adapt a secular concept, the medium shapes the message, but so do the messengers. And the true and first context for both is a well-ordered church.

Members of the PCA can be thankful that doctrine is not the primary area of conflict in their communion.² Some seem almost to believe that doctrine is enough, or at least that doctrine is far more important than worship and polity, but this was not even true at the time of the Reformation. While the Lutheran wing of the Reformation majored on justification (doctrine), the Continental and Scottish branches understood the relative importance of polity and worship. So should we.

Polity and the closely related leg of worship/sacraments are up-in-the-air issues in the PCA, and we all know that the legs of a stool work best when they are grounded—on a solid floor.

Stability in the largest conservative Reformed denomination in the English-speaking world is a shaky proposition and a bad bet as long as there is disagreement over whether the PCA’s order requires the ordained office of deacon, the standard use of officer titles, and who should lead worship. These issues are only about women as far as they are about office, since, in conformity with the Bible and per our book of order, the PCA requires officers to be male. Ordination and the role of ordained officers are the ungreased squeaky wheels giving offense.

Those who seek stability and unity would do well to set aside their preferences and rely on the plain reading of our standards without resorting to word games or excessive subtlety. Pushing the practice envelope and engaging in ecclesial disobedience in protest of our agreed polity cannot promote peace; these things can only provoke.

As 2025 has drawn to a close, it is increasingly clear that these issues will loom large in the PCA courts in 2026. How they are settled (if they are settled) will determine the PCA’s future. The forecast at the moment is stormy and unsettled. Attempts to clear the ecclesial air may produce only the fog of war. Let us pray that it will be otherwise.

Notes

1. Calvin put worship and soteriology first, then sacraments and government followed. I have combined worship and sacraments and emphasized that the three legs are more related and more nearly of equal importance than is often recognized.
2. This is not to say that there is no doctrinal disagreement, just that the disagreement is not on the order of that of the early twentieth century or the sixteenth century.

©Brad Isbell. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published on Presbycast Pravda and appears here by permission of the author.

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Post authored by:

• Brad Isbell

  

  Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, board member of More In The PCA, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, editorial member of Presbyterian Polity, and treasurer of the Heidelberg Reformation Association.

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