10 comments

1. To be fair, this is true of many independent churches. However. There have been many robust congregational churches throughout the years, with a plurality of elders, that hold fast to key confessions as their guiding line, not the individual man. Sometimes it’s been the Savoy, sometimes others. There’s been plenty of these churches that have thrived for decades around the world. Although a denomination connection can certainly help, that is not always necessarily the case. (The list of denominations that have left the faith, or denominations that actually have encouraged spiritual/moral abuse in our reformed world is staggering)

   I appreciate how the URC phrases it as well. Denominational connection is not of the essence of the church, but it’s wellbeing. And it will not of course perfectly work (the URC knows this well with how it was founded) but usually it benefits a local body

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   • Ben,

     Genuine question, what recourse does a family have in a “robust congregational church” when an issue arises? Perhaps there are mechanisms with which I’m unfamiliar. I was in the SBC (but not a member) and I’ve never lived in the congregational world.

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     • Ben hasn’t answered yet, but as the guy who’s been for decades the “resident advocate for the tiny minority of Reformed Congregationalists,” I’ll try to answer Dr. Clark’s question.

       I can give both a confessional and a historical answer.

       The confessional answer is the 1648 Cambridge Platform, which was the “church order” of New England Congregationalism. There are multiple procedures set forth for how to handle local church disputes. What SHOULD happen is that in a church where a controversy can’t be settled internally, or has a question that’s serious enough to seek outside help, that church calls for a council of neighboring churches to ask for help. These were historically known as “ecclesiastical councils of the vicinage,” and they still happen today, though the most common reason why they happen today is when a local church is preparing to license someone to preach or to ordain a candidate for the ministry. Full disclosure: My own licensure exam at a vicinage council in Michigan, a council which was attended by a number of conservative CRC pastors whose churches later joined the URC because the Congregationalists in Michigan knew my primary accountability would be in conservative Dutch Reformed circles due to my employment with Christian Renewal while serving a Congregational church as a tentmaker, was used as the model for the original Alliance of Reformed Churches procedure to license and ordain people. Some of the people on the committee said, “Hey, we were just recently at an examination that worked well with no classis or presbytery, let’s borrow what they did.”

       Now of course we all know that churches with internal problems sometimes either refuse to admit they have a problem or know they have a problem but won’t seek the help they need, and in other cases the church has become unified in serious error and refuses to listen to outside warnings.

       The Cambridge Platform also contains procedures for those two eventualities. The short version of a longer story is that the churches of a region may themselves call together a council to discuss what to do about the problematic church, and can either cut off fellowship with it, or assist the orthodox minority in the church in beginning a new church.

       This wasn’t mere theory. It’s how things actually happened during the controversies of the First Great Awakening, including the deposition of Jonathan Edwards by Northhampton Congregational Church, and the later Unitarian Schism in which large numbers of wealthy East Coast churches went liberal, while the more rural churches farther away from the coast mostly remained conservative.

       I want to make an important note here. People who don’t actually know the history of what happened in Northhampton sometimes say, “If Edwards had been a Presbyterian, the church couldn’t have gotten away with that.”

       Not so fast. The vote in the congregational meeting to remove Edwards was, if memory serves correctly, 200 to remove him and 20 to keep him.

       Show me a presbytery in the PCA that would force a church, one that just voted by a ten-to-one majority to remove its minister, to keep the minister they clearly don’t want, and voted by an overwhelming majority to remove. The Congregational council called to address the Edwards case voted by a majority of one vote — yes, ONE VOTE — to support Edwards’ removal. How many presbyteries or classes would have a margin like that, after a congregational vote like that?

       None of this is necessarily saying Presbyterian or Dutch Reformed or Congregational polity is right or wrong in how to handle internal church problems. It’s saying that procedures **DO** exist under Congregational polity to address the problems, and they are right in the Congregational confessions, with detailed Scripture proofs to back them up.

       As the Cambridge Platform itself says, “The term independent, we approve not.”

       Independency is dangerous and Congregationalists understand those dangers. There are reasons why the New England churches disliked and did not use the term which had become common in England for their brethren of like faith and polity, the “Independents.” Unfortunately, the New Englanders created a new term that brought its own problems, the idea that in a Congregational church, the congregation rules and there are no elders. That’s not true — the Cambridge Platform has an entire chapter on ruling elders and their qualifications and how they are to be selected — but it shows how a legitimate rejection of one word led to a different set of misconceptions created by a different word.

       I’m spending most of my time here on confessional issues because the confessions control, or are supposed to control, how a church operates.

       But Dr. Clark will ask a legitimate question of how a confession written for a few dozen isolated churches in rural New England, less than three decades after the Plymouth Colony was founded, is applied today.

       There are differences between Congregational denominations, but the historical answer is that by the late 1600s, and definitely by the mid-1700s, associations of ministers had developed in New England in which the ministers met regularly, often monthly, and also associations of churches which met yearly or sometimes twice yearly. It became standard practice at the associations of ministers for the more experienced ministers of the association to preach a sermon, or sometimes several sermons, for the example and edification of younger ministers, and also for younger ministers to submit their sermons for comment and critique. Pulpit exchanges were also common after those meetings of the associations. In an era when communication was very difficult and travel was not just difficult but dangerous, the associations of ministers became ways in which ministers could seek informal help or advice BEFORE something blew up that would require a formal vicinage council. Likewise, it started to become common for licensure and ordination exams to be done, not at specially called vicinage councils, but at the annual or semi-annual meeting of the association of churches.

       If this looks a lot like how a URC classis operates, you’re right. The parallel was deliberate. Many of the Puritan ministers in New England had previously served in the Netherlands, and there had once been an entire classis of expatriate English-speaking churches in the Netherlands whose pastors were mostly English Puritans who had gotten run out of England due to their Reformed convictions.

       What happened during the Unitarian Schism was that these associations of ministers and churches turned into the method by which the Congregational principle of cutting off fellowship with erring churches was implemented. Everybody knew the East Coast churches were going to reject trinitarian theology and their associations couldn’t be trusted, so quite early on, Park Street Church was organized to provide at least one church in Boston that would remain orthodox despite the widespread apostasy into Unitarianism.

       In rural western Massachusetts, many of the associations were entirely orthodox with no Unitarian pastors or Unitarian-inclined churches at all. Several of those associations already had created what became known as the “Massachusetts General Association” before the Unitarian Schism and required, as a condition of membership, that all ministers and churches affirm the Westminster Shorter Catechism. This might seem a bit unusual, but it shouldn’t. Both Congregationalists and Presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly agreed on the language of the Shorter Catechism and used it for instruction of the children. Their differences were over church polity language in the Westminster Confession of Faith, not the Shorter Catechism. What those associations were doing was adopting as their doctrinal test a catechism on which, in the context of New England of the late 1700s and early 1800s, all Reformed people agreed, or at least were supposed to agree, and presented it to the Unitarians and asked as a trick question, “You believe this too, right?” — knowing full well that the Unitarians did not, and by rejecting it, would infuriate many laypeople who didn’t understand the detailed theological issues at stake but had no problem with the Shorter Catechism.

       The details here get complicated, but the short version is that more and more of the local associations in Massachusetts started joining the General Association which required agreement with the Shorter Catechism as a condition of membership. It was a way to “out” problematic pastors who had kept under the radar by requiring them to publicly declare their agreement with the Shorter Catechism, or explain why not, and not uncommonly, the result was that a pastor who tried to avoid taking a side found out that he had a lot more liberal friends on the East Coast who agreed with him than he had agreement in his own church.

       Things worked out a bit differently in Connecticut where the large majority of the Congregational churches were orthodox and Unitarianism was a small minority group. Connecticut also had local associations, and they were pretty effective in identifying and expelling problematic pastors and churches. The statewide Congregational body, which pre-existed the Unitarian Schism, didn’t divide over Unitarianism and supported the local associations which were dealing with the problems on their own, usually successfully.

       After the Unitarian Schism, it became common in Congregational churches for each association to have a candidates and credentials committee to which the task of examining people was assigned. Already-ordained ministers who wanted to take a call to a church in the association would be examined by the candidates and credentials committee, which would give a recommendation to the association of ministers and to the local church, rather than calling a vicinage council to approve the transfer, which had been the original practice. By the mid-1800s, the associations of ministers and associations of churches had usually merged into a single body, though my own personal experience while pastoring a Congregational church was that, if the churches of an association were close enough, the ministers followed the older practice of a monthly meeting for prayer and mutual concern on an informal basis, while the association met formally only once a year to conduct business. I think in the associations farther west that are much more spread-out, the meetings of ministers for prayer either don’t happen or happen less often, while in New England and the New York City metro area, the ministerial meetings are more common and do more things.

       That role for the Congregational associations is more or less standard practice today in most modern Congregational denominations. Vicinage councils exist, but are used mostly for ordinations. The usual approach is that problems in a church or with a minister get addressed by the candidates and credentials committee (sometimes a different name is used for a group that does the same thing), and the recommendation of that committee is normally followed by the association.

       One important difference from both Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed practice is that there are cases in which a Congregational minister might be viewed as acceptable in one Congregational association but not in the national Congregational body, or sometimes the other way around. I personally know of a case of a minister, now deceased, who the credentials committee of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference refused to accept, but his local association not only kept him in membership but made him an officer of the association. That’s rare but not unheard of. A more common situation would be a local church that calls a minister who, for whatever reason, the local association doesn’t like and refuses to accept him into membership in the association. That typically ends one of two ways: the local church figures out the association was right and either tells the minister to leave or the minister leaves on his own, or the church decides it likes the minister and the association is wrong, so the church leaves.

       I trust it’s obvious that I’m being careful to avoid specifics, except in historical cases dating back centuries, or modern cases in which the people involved are dead. I’ve seen a lot of problems in the church world since my conversion over forty years ago, and I think I can say with confidence that no form of church government will prevent problems.

       What well-functioning forms of government have in common is that the churches and pastors know each other and don’t act like lone rangers, and that there are experienced and godly men, people who are widely respected in the churches of their region, who are looked to for help and advice by the churches.

       Those things are not universal. It’s REALLY hard for an isolated church hundreds of miles away from any other church of its denomination to develop the informal ties needed to address a problem early before it blows up. Also, if all the experienced ministers of a region retire within a few years, a well-functioning association or presbytery or classis can become problematic very quickly when some major mess shows up in a local church and it gets handled by younger men with much zeal but not much wisdom or experience.

       As I said earlier, independency or de-facto independency is downright dangerous. That’s not just my opinion, it is the OFFICIAL CONFESSIONAL POSITION of historic New England Congregationalism!

       Under the First Amendment, an American church that wants to be independent can do so. If that’s what you want as a church, have at it. Nobody can stop you.

       But don’t act as if you’re independent while claiming to be Presbyterian or Reformed. And don’t claim to be Congregational, either. The Congregational confession specifically rejects independency, and for good reason.

       Hope that helps, Dr. Clark.

       Reply ↓

       • Hi Darrell,

         Thank you. This is helpful. I appreciate it. I should have looked at the Cambridge Platform. I am aware of the CCCCs. Are there any other orthodox Congregationalists today? Does any group today hold the Savoy? I appreciate too the distinction between Independent and Congregationalism. T. David Gordon made that distinction once here, and I didn’t pay sufficient attention.

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         • Apologies for the delayed response, Dr. Clark. I didn’t mean to ignore you. For some reason, the Heidelblog is no longer sending notices of responses/new comments on discussions on which I have commented, and I just saw this now.

           Confessional subscription for Congregationalists has been primarily a local matter, so yes, there are churches that subscribe to the Savoy. The church of which I was a member for many years, and which held my preaching license, used the Savoy Declaration and Heidelberg Catechism as its doctrinal standards and the Cambridge Platform as its church order. I have not been a member there for almost two decades but I’m not aware of any change in their position.

           Finding a fellowship of churches that do that, officially and formally, as a fellowship, is more problematic. There is a history here — when the 4Cs were organized after World War II, it was a very small group, about twice the size of the RCUS in its early years, and the two main “poles” were the New Englanders loosely connected to Westminster Seminary and/or Gordon Conwell who were more Reformed, and the Midwesterners who were influenced more by Wheaton and Moody Bible Institute. (Remember that College Church of Wheaton used to be Congregational and Dwight Moody was a Congregationalist.) This is not new, and conservative Congregationalists have had that dual polarity in opposition to the incursions of liberalism dating back to the 1800s. A deliberate decision was made when the 4Cs was founded NOT to impose a doctrinal test beyond that of the National Association of Evangelicals, and while that may have made sense in the 1940s, I think time has shown it was a mistake.

           A lot of Reformed people in the 4Cs have been unhappy over the years with the lack of a formal confessional body of Congregationalists, and a number of steps have been taken to address that. The usual approach has been to work within the 4Cs and sponsor specifically Reformed conferences.

           I’d like to give you a better answer on a fellowship/federation of confessionally Reformed Congregational churches. Way back in the early 1990s, I was the “scribe” (the historic Congregational term for what Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed call a “stated clerk”) for an association of Congregational churches that was being organized with that intent. Most but not all were 4C members; those that were not were generally REALLY conservative churches that had either left the 4Cs along with John Piper back in the mid-1980s when the 4Cs decided to tolerate churches with women ministers, or had been organized independently of the 4Cs by Reformed Congregational pastors who had been ordained in churches that either had left the 4Cs or had decided, after leaving the UCC, not to join any denomination. You’ve been in the RCUS and you understand the issues of a confessional and conservative church that has been badly burned by the UCC and is really careful about jumping into a new denomination after prior bad experiences. I also need to note that with regard to women ministers, under Congregational polity, that’s a whole different issue from the CRC debates, and it should be noted that even the Southern Baptist Convention had a few churches with women ministers until very recently despite strong denominational stances against it. Expelling a church without something officially addressing a problem that nobody anticipated when the 4cs (or for that matter, the SBC) were organized is a complicated problem under congregational polity because it requires creating a new test of fellowship, and convincing a supermajority of people that a church is not only doing something bad, but doing something worth being expelled over. That’s hard to do, even for Presbyterians, as history shows us. One of the things which the General Association of Reformed Congregational Churches had in its founding documents was that all ministers and churches would be required to oppose the ordination of women, to prevent that problem before it started.

           For a variety of reasons, most of which are of no relevance today since the ministers involved are mostly now retired or dead, the “General Association of Reformed Congregational Churches” became the “Reformed Congregational Fellowship.” There was a concern, and while I didn’t agree I strongly sympathize with it, that having a fellowship of churches putting on annual conferences on Puritan and Reformed theology, and New England ecclesiastical history, would be more effective than creating a perception that the 4Cs was a bad group from which people should secede. “Secede now” was never my view, but it was the view of some, and what “won out” was the “positive approach” of holding conferences rather than doing things that could be perceived as building a competing denominational structure.

           The result, unfortunately in my opinion, is that a number of the churches that wanted more of a structured approach, over the decades, ended up calling OPC or PCA or (in at least two cases) URC ministers who, over an extended period of time, typically ended up convincing their churches to join the PCA or OPC. At least one such church called a Particular Baptist pastor and is now in the unusual situation of being a Baptist church that allows members and officers who were baptized as infants.

           In my opinion, that was an unnecessary loss for no reason. But by that time, I was long out of leadership and I’m not going to criticize godly men I respect for making tough decisions, even if they are not the decisions I would have made.

           I continue to be contacted periodically by churches, generally not from a historic Congregational background but usually either a Baptist/broadly evangelical church that has come to believe in infant baptism, or a former Presbyterian church that left what most people on the Heidelblog would agree was a bad presbytery and has decided polity was the problem, so joining a more conservative Presbyterian body won’t help.

           I used to refer such people to the Reformed Congregational Fellowship and say, “This isn’t as structured as you want, but it’s the best out here.” COVID19 caused great damage to many ecclesiastical organizations, and while the RCF website and conference archives are still up, the conferences stopped after the 2019 conference and never restarted.

           I’m not happy about that. Sooner or later someone will end up creating something like what we tried to do in the 1990s.

           This sort of thing is NOT easy. There are reasons why several efforts to create Particular Baptist associations have run into rocks, while the Founders Conference works. Getting people to attend a conference and support a concept is a lot easier than getting them to commit to the REALLY tough work of what is, whether called by that name or not, founding a new denomination or federation.

           My guess is that I’ll probably see another effort made within my lifetime to start an explicitly Reformed Congregational group of confessional churches. There’s an obvious need to bring local churches into cooperation that are of like faith and practice. Whether I’ll be involved in that again is a lot less clear — whoever is in leadership should live in an area with a lot of likeminded churches, and that most emphatically is NOT the rural Ozarks.

           Hope this helps answer your question.

2. I agree for the need of checks on the overly authoritarian binding of the conscience. However, our church recently separated from the ECO Presbyterian denomination because they ordained women as pastors and would not permit any candidate for pastoral ministry to be a pastor in a local ECO church if they wouldn’t affirm women as pastors. A highly unbiblical qualification for an overseer. We have now become an independent church with a reformed statement of faith with a board of elders. A pastor for our church will be required to affirm the statement of faith and lead in cooperation and submission to the board of elders. The ECO Presbytery was anot happy with us but fortunately had no property rights to our building and eventually dismissed us after we would not renew our pastor’s contract who refused to separate himself from the ECO denomination. I fully understand the dangers of an unbiblical application of church control and discipline. Hopefully we will be aware of the dangers you have spoke of in your article. Thank you.

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   • Frederick,

     Most of the congregations that founded the URCNA were independent until they could form the URCNA. In our church order documents, one of which is titled Foundational Principles of Reformed Church Government.

     Foundational Principles of Reformed Church Government

     1. The church is the possession of Christ, who is the Mediator of the New Covenant.
        Acts 20:28; Ephesians 5:25-27
     2. As Mediator of the New Covenant, Christ is the Head of the church.
        Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:23-24; Colossians 1:18
     3. Because the church is Christ’s possession and He is its Head, the principles governing the church are
        not a matter of human preference, but of divine revelation.
        Matthew 28:18-20; Colossians 1:18
     4. The universal church possesses a spiritual unity in Christ and in the Holy Scriptures.
        Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 2:20; I Timothy 3:15; II John 9
     5. The Lord gave no permanent universal, national or regional offices to His church. The office of elder
        (presbyter/episkopos) is clearly local in authority and function; thus, Reformed church government is
        presbyterial, since the church is governed by elders, not by broader assemblies.
        Acts 14:23; 20:17, 28; Titus 1:5
     6. In its subjection to its heavenly Head, the local church is governed by Christ from heaven, by means of
        His Word and Spirit, with the keys of the kingdom which He has given it for that purpose; and it is not
        subject to rule by sister churches who, with it, are subject to the one Christ.
        Matthew 16:19; Acts 20:28-32; Titus 1:5
     7. Federative relationships do not belong to the essence or being of the church; rather, they serve the well-
        being of the church. However, even though churches stand distinctly next to one another, they do not
        thereby stand disconnectedly alongside one another. Entrance into and departure from a federative
        relationship is strictly a voluntary matter.
        Acts 15:1-35; Romans. 15:25-27; Colossians 4:16; Titus 1:5; Revelation 1:11, 20
     8. The exercise of a federative relationship is possible only on the basis of unity in faith and in confession.
        I Corinthians 10:14-22; Gal. 1:6-9; Ephesians 4:16-17
     9. Member churches meet together in consultation to guard against human imperfections and to benefit
        from the wisdom of a multitude of counselors in the broader assemblies. The decisions of such
        assemblies derive their authority from their conformity to the Word of God.
        Proverbs 11:14; Acts 15:1-35; I Corinthians 13:9-10; II Timothy 3:16-17
     10. In order to manifest our spiritual unity, local churches should seek the broadest possible contacts with
         other like-minded churches for their mutual edification and as an effective witness to the world.
         John 17:21-23; Ephesians 4:1-6
     11. The church is mandated to exercise its ministry of reconciliation by proclaiming the gospel to
         the ends of the earth.
         Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8; II Corinthians 5:18-21
     12. Christ cares for His church through the office-bearers whom He chooses.
         Acts 6:2-3; I Timothy 3:1,8; 5:17
     13. The Scriptures encourage a thorough theological training for the ministers of the Word.
         I Timothy 4:16; II Timothy 2:14-16; 3:14; 4:1-5
     14. Being the chosen and redeemed people of God, the church, under the supervision of the elders, is called
         to worship Him according to the Scriptural principles governing worship.
         Leviticus 10:1-3; Deuteronomy 12:29-32; Psalm 95:1,2,6; Psalm 100:4; John 4:24; I Peter 2:9
     15. Since the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, it is called through the teaching ministry to build
         up the people of God in faith.
         Deuteronomy 11:19; Ephesians 4:11-16; I Timothy 4:6; II Timothy 2:2; 3:16-17
     16. Christian discipline, arising from God’s love for His people, is exercised in the church to correct and
         strengthen the people of God, maintain the unity and the purity of the church of Christ, and thereby
         bring honor and glory to God’s name.
         I Timothy 5:20; Titus 1:13; Hebrews 12:7-11
     17. The exercise of Christian discipline is first of all a personal duty of every child of God, but when
         discipline by the church becomes necessary, it must be exercised by the elders of the church, the bearers
         of the keys of the kingdom.
         Matthew 18:15-20; Acts 20:28; I Corinthians 5:13; I Peter 5:1-3

     Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2023, 2024 United Reformed Churches in
     North America

     I hope that you’re able to find a place to settle. If you’re curious about the URCNA, you might contact Dr Brian Lee at Christ Reformed Church in Washington, DC.

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     • Thank you so much for your wise words. Blessings

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     • Dr. Clark, I thought you would like to know I have shared the Foundation of Reformed Church Government with the elders of our church. I think it is a document that will help guide us as we transition out of the ECO denomination and become a church established in the gospel and the sound doctrines of our faith. Thank you for your thoughtfulness in replying to my comment. Blessings in Christ our Lord.

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   • I’m going to say this carefully because I don’t want to get friends who are in the ECO in trouble, but the issue Frederick Owen raises is not yet fully settled in the ECO.

     For those who don’t know the history, the ECO is probably going to end up being the last organized conservative secession out of the PC(USA). The denomination is composed of churches that finally decided “enough is enough” and walked out over the issue of homosexual ordination. A key issue is that there are places in the PC(USA) where the local presbytery was fairly conservative, and had a lot of churches which, if they had been somewhere else, would have left years ago for the PCA or EPC, but stayed in the PC(USA) at the request of other likeminded churches, and when the secession finally happened, they decided to go with the rest of their fellow churches in the presbytery into the ECO rather than the PCA or EPC, where they might have felt more comfortable.

     Legal issues are important here. For a church to walk out of the PC(USA) without losing its property, the presbytery has to agree. That meant there was a STRONG incentive for conservatives to stay until they could leave as a group, with enough votes to force the presbytery to deal with large numbers of churches leaving and not pick off churches one by one and take their building. In some areas, when the homosexual ordination vote finally went through at the PC(USA) general assembly, the majority of some presbyteries, and sometimes the overwhelming majority, voted to leave so there was no question about losing the church property. In other cases, negotiated settlements happened. That wouldn’t have happened if churches had dribbled out, one by one, with this church going to the PCA and that church going to the EPC and some other church going independent.

     I asked the question directly to an ECO elder of why her (yes, her) church didn’t go into the PCA. I expected an answer of, “Well, I’m a female elder, that kind of made the decision for us.” The answer I got instead was, “The PCA has the Missouri Presbytery. We’re leaving the PC(USA) over homosexuality. Why would we go into the PCA when it is fighting over the same issue that caused us to leave the PC(USA)?”

     (Now to be fair to the PCA, that was before the Memorial Presbyterian Church of St. Louis decided to leave so they could keep their openly gay minister. But when that church seceded from the PC(USA) to join the ECO, it wasn’t at all to outsiders how things would go in the PCA.)

     Listen to that again. A female ECO elder was saying the PCA wasn’t an option for her church because the PCA might not conservative enough. Some additional questions revealed that she understood that Memorial Presbyterian might go into the EPC if it left the PCA, and she said her church had enough of that fight and didn’t want to refight it again in the EPC or PCA, so the ECO was the logical choice.

     I could tell a lot of other stories, but this indicates that the “boots on the ground” reality in some regions doesn’t reflect where the denominations stand on a national level.

     There’s no question that there are ECO presbyteries that wouldn’t permit any candidate for their pulpit who wouldn’t affirm women as pastors. I fully understand why a female ECO minister would say, “If this man believes I am sinning to be a pastor, why should I vote to ordain him, and why would he want to be in the presbytery with me?” Those are legitimate questions.

     But let’s change that slightly to a candidate who says, “I don’t agree with the ordination of women, but I’m not going to object to other churches with women ministers, and I’m not going to push the issue in my church, but my church was never comfortable with women elders in the PC(USA) and the two women who are elders want to become deacons instead, and I agree with them on becoming deacons rather than elders.”

     There are ECO presbyteries that would either ignore or be okay with that, especially with a small church and a pastor who wasn’t viewed as causing trouble, but rather reflecting the consensus position of his church.

     None of this is new. It has to do with a five-decades-old precedent in one of the predecessor bodies to what is now the PC(USA).

     This was the core of the issue with the Kenyon Case in 1975 that prevented any new ministers in what was then the UPCUSA (the “Northern” church) from being ordained who objected to women’s ordination, but “grandfathered” the older ministers, including John Gerstner, who objected. There are people in the ECO who think that case was a mistake and ministers should be allowed who object to women’s ordination as long as they are willing to tolerate women elders and ministers in other churches, which from what I understand, Kenyon was willing to do and his presbytery was okay with letting him do, but the General Assembly said “no.”

     Essentially, that would be the EPC approach, and de facto, it is the way the CRC is now operating.

     The ECO is, by design, a “big tent” denomination with far more diversity than exists (or at least is supposed to exist) in any of the NAPARC denominations. My personal guess is that eventually the ECO will officially tolerate what already exists, namely a small number of opponents of women’s ordination who regard it as a secondary issue.

     But that is far from settled, and a lot is going to depend on how the people who disagree with women’s ordination conduct themselves.

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