A Word To The Reconquistadores (Or Why The CRC Is Not The PCUSA) (Part 2)

by on July 20, 2026 | 17 Comments

On September 10, 2020, the Calvin University newspaper, Chimes, reported that Neland Avenue Christian Reformed Church (CRC) had appointed a deacon who is in a same-sex marriage.1 It appeared that the CRC was about to take a dramatic step toward the so-called seven sisters of the mainline (i.e., the PCUSA, United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church USA, American Baptist Church, Disciples of Christ).2

Remarkably and unexpectedly, however, in the early 2020s a more determined resistance to the prevailing trends in the CRC began to emerge. The Abide Project was founded in 2021. The next year Josh Christoffels published an article reminding the CRC of its confessional heritage and how, despite the significant inroads of evangelicals and progressives, it had resisted overtures to “weaken our commitment to the confessions of our denomination.”3 That same year Synod

received a Human Sexuality Report that was a faithful articulation of the biblical teachings on sexuality. The Synod affirmed that the Heidelberg Catechism’s teaching on unchastity found in Q&A 108 includes homosexual sex, and that this interpretation of the confession has confessional status. Neland Avenue CRC, a church that had installed to office a deacon living in a same-sex marriage, was admonished to come into line with the denominational position.4

At Synod 2023, the denomination turned back the progressives who asked Synod to overturn the previous year’s decision.5 The body also rejected “an appeal by the council of Neland Avenue CRC . . . of a Synod 2022 order that called for Neland to rescind its decision to ordain a deacon who is in a same-sex marriage.”6 Synod 2024 “embraced the confessional posture of the CRC’s Covenant for Office-bearers where office-bearers promise to affirm and heartily believe that the confessions ‘fully agree with the Word of God’ (Advisory Committee, 1).”7 Synod approved the recommendation that “confessional-difficulty gravamina are not meant, nor should be used as an exception to the confessions (Advisory Committee, 2).”8 Further, Synod “approved a process of discipline for the churches that had public statements that conflicted with our own confessions.”9

The Empire, however, did not take the confessional renaissance lying down. In January 2024 a group named Better Together announced that they had received a grant of almost 1.25 million dollars from the Lilly Foundation toward creating a “‘centered-set network’ of churches rather than a ‘bounded-set’ one.”10

Apparently, however, the big-money move to marginalize the confessions failed. In February 2025 thirty-three ministers and twenty-six congregations left the CRC for the RCA because the CRC held the line on the confessional standards regarding sexuality.11 In April 2025 I wrote about James K. A. Smith’s lament that Synod was now actually requiring Calvin University and Calvin Seminary faculty to hold to the Three Forms of Unity.12 He wrote, “Synod’s decision in 2022 was no surprise. The writing was on the wall. The clergy of the denomination are increasingly trained at conservative and evangelical seminaries and bring those sensibilities to the CRC. The denomination’s ethos has changed considerably and drifted away from the ethos we aspire to at Calvin.”13 Smith’s discomfort is actually an indicator of reformation in the CRC. The oft-used but little understood phrase “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” was originally intended to refer to just what seems to be happening in the CRC: Consistories and churches returning to the Word of God as confessed by the churches.14

The Calvin board reported back to Synod 2025 that they desired to remain in partnership with the CRC and reaffirmed

the denomination’s confessional standards. At the same time, some trustees and faculty were allowed to serve despite their personal disagreement with confessional teachings. Trustees who are appointed by the Classis regions are required to be in full convictional alignment with the confessions while at-large or alumni trustees are allowed some “measured flexibility.” The faculty alignment framework would require an annual reaffirmation of confessional commitments, an initial three-year period of mentoring where new faculty are required to only affirm the creeds, and permitting of some indefinite exceptions after six years of service (when tenure is conferred).15 Synod also asked the Calvin Board “to further define ‘indefinite exceptions’ to confessional subscription” and to report back to Synod 2026.16

According to Aaron Vriesman, the decisions made by Synod 2026 “reflect a denomination that is continuing its renewal. Delegates and discussions reflected a settled stance on marriage and sexuality. Debates centered around how to live into this stance.”17 There is concrete evidence of this renewal since the “Abide Project steering committee chair, Chad Steenwyk, was elected President of Synod. A long-time Abide steering committee member, Lora Copley was approved to be editor-in-chief of The Banner, the CRC’s official magazine.”18

Analysis

The Reconquista movement calls for “conservatives” to remain in the mainline churches (e.g., the PCUSA) in order to renew them and, one day, to restore them to their former cultural position. At first blush, the CRC might seem to be evidence supporting the Reconquista cause. After all, some conservatives did remain in the CRC, and they are having a good effect.

There are some significant differences, however, between the CRC and the PCUSA. In Recovering the Reformed Confession (2007), I distinguished between the mainline churches, which have been on a fixed trajectory away from historic Christian orthodoxy for a century, as has been already illustrated, and the borderline churches (e.g., the CRC) and the sideline churches (e.g., those in the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council [NAPARC]).19 In contrast, for several decades the CRC has been a borderline denomination, the future of which was not entirely certain. From 1995 until the early 2020s, it seemed as if the CRC might become a mainline denomination, but blessedly, it seems to have changed course.

Further, though there are conservatives in both the PCUSA and the CRC, there are precious few (if any) confessionalists in the PCUSA, but there are, alongside conservatives in the CRC, confessionalists in the CRC, and it is the confessionalists who have been leading the reformation of the CRC since 2021. For example, Vriesman writes of a “flood” of challenges by progressives in the CRC to its renewed confessional commitment, but those overtures were “denied with a firm stand on ‘confessional status.’”20

The so-called “conservatives” in the PCUSA have long conceded the question of women in office, and thus they have conceded the progressive/liberal approach to Scripture. This is even true of Richard Ackerman and the renewal organization he founded, Presbyterians for the Kingdom.21 One of those documents is the Confession of 1967, which contradicts the Westminster Standards and the other historic Reformed confessions on the doctrine of Scripture. It is not possible to enter the ministry of the PCUSA unless one affirms the Barthian doctrine of Scripture confessed in the Confession of 1967 and the ordination of females and LGBTQIA+ persons.22 When Presbyterians for the Kingdom confesses, “We believe that all pastors must be faithful in (monogamous) marriage or chaste in singleness,” does this include or exclude same-sex marriage? The Reconquistadores are silent on this central question.23 Thus, we should take with a grain of salt the claim that “there are over 1,000 PCUSA congregations that are more moderate or traditional.”24 Moderate or traditional compared to what? Karl Barth was as radical as Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525) on the doctrine of Scripture.25 There was nothing “moderate” or “traditional” about Barth’s theology (or his lifestyle).

This is not true of the CRC. As Jamie Smith observed, several of the confessionalists leading the renewal of the CRC did not study at Calvin Seminary. They studied at more confessional seminaries, and they brought with them their confessionalism—that is, their fidelity to the confessions and their commitment to use the confessional standards to determine the theology, piety, and practice of the CRC.

As evidenced by the articles by Josh Christoffels in this publication and by the work of the Abide Project and the work of Aaron Vriesman and others, the impetus behind the reformation underway in the CRC is the recovery of the Reformed confession.26

When I first learned about Amazon.com (in the mid-’90s) I was skeptical. I thought that few people would buy books without first looking at them. So I have been seriously wrong before. I was wrong about the CRC. I did not expect to see the reversal that we are seeing in 2026.

The Reconquista movement in the PCUSA is also wrong, however. They are wrong about what happened in the 1920s and why. They are wrong about what it will take to turn the PCUSA around. They are wrong about what constitutes schism (it is not the Orthodox Presbyterian Church that is schismatic but the PCUSA that has divided the church by abandoning the Word of God as confessed by the church), and they are wrong about the nature of the church and its role in the culture. The sphere of the visible church is spiritual; her vocation is to be faithful to the Word of God as she confesses it. Out of that fidelity we should expect there to be some benefit to the broader culture, but it is not the vocation of the visible church to save the broader culture, for if it is, then we must judge our Lord Jesus and the apostolic church to have been colossal failures since they did nothing to save the culture.

Notes

  1. Juliana Knot, “Local CRC Appoints Deacon Who Is in a Same-Sex Marriage,” Chimes, September 10, 2020.
  2. The expression “seven sisters” is William Hutchinson’s. See R. Scott Clark, “Do Mainlines Renew?,” The Heidelblog, July 12, 2013.
  3. Josh Christoffels, “What It Means to Be Confessional,” The Abide Project, December 12, 2022.
  4. Josh Christoffels, “Is the CRC Recovering a Reformed Identity?” The Heidelblog, July 5, 2024.
  5. Christoffels, “Is the CRC Recovering?”
  6. Greg Chandler, “Synod 2023 Rejects Neland Avenue CRC’s Appeal,” The Banner, June 16, 2023.
  7. Christoffels, “Is the CRC Recovering?”
  8. Christoffels, “Is the CRC Recovering?” NB: Gravamina are ecclesiastical objections. For more on this, see Josh Christoffels, “Toward a Confessional CRC: Synod 2025,” The Heidelblog, June 25, 2025.
  9. Christoffels, “ Is the CRC Recovering?”
  10. Josh Christoffels, “A Centered-Set or a Confessional Church?” The Heidelblog, October 8, 2024.
  11. Yonat Shimron, “Christian Reformed Church Losing Ministers of LGBTQ Stance,” Ministry Watch, February 21, 2025.
  12. R. Scott Clark, ,” The Heidelblog, April 21, 2025.
  13. James K. A. Smith, “Christian Reformed? Or Reformed Christian? Should Calvin Remain a Denominational University?,” Chimes, April 7, 2025.
  14. R. Scott Clark, “Always Abusing *Semper Reformanda*,” Tabletalk Magazine, November 1, 2014.
  15. Christoffels, “Toward a Confessional CRC.”
  16. We are working on publishing a review of Synod 2026.
  17. Aaron Vriesman, “The Ongoing Reformation of the Christian Reformed Church,” Juicy Ecumenism, July 8, 2026.
  18. Vriesman, “Ongoing.”
  19. R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession: Our Theology, Piety, and Practice (P&R, 2007), 1–2.
  20. Vriesman, ” Ongoing Reformation.”
  21. “We affirm the validity of women’s ordination.” “We believe all pastors/elders in the denomination must hold to our Confessions of Faith.” “What We Believe”, Presbyterians for the Kingdom (PFT), accessed July 11, 2026.
  22. See Edmund P. Clowney, “The Broken Bands,” in Scripture and Confession: A Book About Confessions Old and New, ed. John H. Skilton (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973), 158–216. On the PFT page promoting their “Reformed Theology Masterclass,” alongside photos of Calvin and John Owen, a photo of Karl Barth is featured prominently.
  23. “What We Believe”, accessed July 11, 2026.
  24. “Find a PCUSA Congregation,” Presbyterians for the Kingdom, https://www.pftk.org, accessed July 11, 2026.
  25. See this lecture where I compare Müntzer and Barth. “Bible, Babel, Bubble, Sola Scriptura Contra Thomas Müntzer, The Heidelblog, November 18, 2023.
  26. E.g., the essays by Christoffels already cited and Josh Christoffels, “A Consistent Call to Confess: How the Church’s Teaching on Human Sexuality Is Already Confessional,” The Heidelblog, October 22, 2024.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He is professor emeritus of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California, where he taught for 29 years. He also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007 and the Heidelcast since 2009.

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17 comments

  1. Hi Dr. Clark,
    Thank you for this excellent two-part series. I actually live in Grand Rapids, both working and studying at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Where I live would be situated in the Grand Rapids East classis, the center for much of the aberrant teachings in the CRC (and ironically, where the main headquarters used to be). While I have never been part of the CRC (I first came to GR as a Baptist before becoming convinced of Reformed covenant theology and joining a local OPC congregation as a man under care), it has certainly been interesting seeing all of these events unfolding from “ground zero,” so to speak, having several ministerial friends in the CRC, and I am now fully aware of just how influential the CRC was in the twentieth century. Us confessional folk here in GR are certainly paying attention to the direction of the CRC and especially with Calvin University and Seminary. What would be your thoughts at the actions taken by their most recent synod? Given its direction, do you think that the CRC might reform to the point of possibly rejoining NAPARC? If you will be in GR during October, I would very much like to meet you in-person!

    Reply ↓

    • Ban Li,

      I’ve only read one summary of what transpired at Synod. I don’t have enough information to make a fully informed judgment. What I saw, in the article I cited in my essay, was encouraging. We are working to get a review of Synod published on the HB.

      It’s possible that the CRC might one day return to NAPARC. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to when but today it seems much more likely than it seemed a decade ago.

      I’ll be posting more info on the HB re the conference but here are the details.

      It will be great to meet you.

      Reply ↓

  2. Dr. Clark, I don’t know if you have another installment planned, but it would be good to hear an historian address RZ’s claims regarding the Scottish divines. Particularly, his claim that their position was that no amount of wickedness or heresy justifies separation, unless the church itself expels faithful members.

    Personally, from the little I have seen, he is overstating their beliefs.

    Reply ↓

    • Sean,

      I do not have another installment planned. Ackerman will continue to make implausible, misleading, and amateur appeals to the past as suits his agenda.

      What matters to him is recovering the position in the culture of the mainline. Getting the past right or recognizing the differences between a church-state complex and life in a free (non-established) church does not matter to him.

      That is a crucial difference here. The Church of Scotland was the state church until 1921. To leave the national church was a repudiation not only of the church but of the state. Isn’t establishmentarianism fun?

      Ackerman, like many in the PCUSA, think of the PCUSA has a de facto state church. It might have been, to some degree, in some periods of American history. There was a time when respectable, socially, influential people, with important positions in government, who attended Ivy League schools, who came from “the best families,” were in the PCUSA or the ECUSA. The latter was always a step higher on the social ladder.

      The C of S is not now the established church in Scotland. It is the national church but there have been a number of separations from the C of S. The Marrow men separated from it in the 18th century (1733), for the sake of the good news, which had been thoroughly compromised in the national church. After that was the Free Church of Scotland (1843).

      Ackerman assumes that whichever institution is chronologically prior is the church in which one must remain. That was never the argument of the Protestant Reformers. William Perkins argued (1597) in Reformed Catholick that Rome was schismatic because she departed from the apostolic faith.

      That argument may be made against the C of S and the PCUSA. It is one thing for someone to enter the ministry of the C of S or the PCUSA on the conviction that he wants to seek reformation. It is another thing to argue that it is schismatic to leave a thoroughly corrupt, fatally compromised, denomination.

      The national church of Scotland was one thing in the early-mid 17th century. It was another by the early 18th century. The ministers had long stopped reading Luther and Calvin. Richard Baxter’s theology had become dominant. The marrow men were savagely attacked by nomists in the C of S. They were excluded from ministry, slandered, and abused in the courts of the church. The C of S was scandalized by basic Reformation theology by the early 18th century.

      The Marrow Men judged that the national church no longer had the marks or at least was so corrupt that they could do nothing else.

      Ackerman’s argument is self-serving. He wants us to make the same compromises that he and everyone else who has stayed in the PCUSA has had to make. In this regard, I think of Clarence McCartney, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Mason right up to the formation of the OPC. Then he was faced with the prospect of losing his prestigious position as pastor of a tall-steeple PCUSA congregation in Pittsburgh. Joining the OPC meant he would have to leave that congregation and go into the wilderness, as it were. He couldn’t do it. After the split, we don’t hear much from him. The man who had been a lion became a lamb with forced to choose between prestige and being marginalized.

      If Ackerman wants us to return to the PCUSA, all he has to do is wait. NAPARC congregations are gradually recovering and re-conquering dead mainline churches. We are buying up empty mainline church buildings, and in some cases the mainline congregations are just being given to us. We are rehabbing them and re-inhabiting them.

      Reply ↓

  3. Unfortunately for the CRC I think time will show that human sexuality is really the low hanging fruit for a body believers pursuing some form of orthodox unity. The church remains a fairly unstable ecclesiastical body with a wide variance of local practices, chiefly visible when all views on women in office are permitted. The “local option” on that topic grew into “local option” on many topics until 5 mins ago.

    The last Synod elected to have a study committee on Christian Nationalism, wasting time and energy on a non-issue in the CRC which is mostly covered by previous statements on Kinism, racism, Art. 36 revisions etc. But external problems are more fun and issuing a meaningless statement on a currently improbably political theory rather than doing the hard churchmanship of renewing ecclesiology, worship, or discipline is one reason I suspect the CRC will continue to be a feeder denomination (for just about everyone else) as it has been for the last few decades.

    Reply ↓

    • To be fair… Every single reformed denomination has elected or had a form of committee on Christian nationalism in the last few years, that’s the ‘normal’

      Reply ↓

    • Stephen,

      I agree that the push for approval of LGBTQ officers does make obvious the consequences of the trajectory that was established in 1995 and, in that sense, might be called “low-hanging fruit,” insofar as anyone can see where things are now going and I would even agree that the confessionalists are probably still a fairly small minority in the CRC but there is good news. First, they are organized. Second, they are self-consciously confessionalist. That’s a positive development. Typically what happens in a mainline context is that a fundamentalist element develops but they tend to think and act like American (Baptistic) fundamentalists. These groups are relatively easy to find in the mainline churches but it is vanishingly rare to find confessionalists in mainline churches.

      The confessional resistance is in its early stages. The fact that a number of prominent progressive congregations and ministers have left the CRC is frankly stunning. Again, this doesn’t usually happen. Usually things go the other way. Synod is now pressing the schools to come to heel with enough force to cause Jamie Smith to complain. Again, that’s a good sign.

      The reformation of the CRC may fail but it hasn’t yet and I’m optimistic, so much so that, Lord permitting, I plan to be in the GR area in late October to speak at a CRC to encourage the confessional movement in the CRC.

      Reply ↓

  4. Dr. Clark,

    As a Church History teacher specialized in History of the Reformed Church, what are your takes on theological reasons for the liberal downfall of the Reformed Church? I read in the comment section on Part 1 of this series that you say that the downfall began with Higher Criticism and Barthianism, but was there any theological blindspots in the Reformed folk that let these have their way in and up the Reformed Church? Any specific broader culture/spirit-of-the-age compromise?

    I write from Brazil as someone interested in your insights.

    God bless.

    Reply ↓

    • Guilherme,

      Greetings!

      The biggest mistake people make in analyzing the movement from theological orthodoxy to theological liberalism is to ignore the intermediate steps. Churches, whether Reformed or not, do not typically fall in one fell swoop. They fall gradually, progressively over time. I tried to address this in Recovering the Reformed Confession. Higher Criticism etc is the end state not the beginning.

      Look at Geneva. What happened is not that it was orthodox and Reformed from c. 1534 to 1725 but that, beginning in the mid-17th century and intensifying by the end of the 17th century. Rather, what happened was that church gradually lost its confession, it gradually began to place culture change (and outcomes) and ecclesiastical peace-making above the truth. It began to become more broadly evangelical. Francis’ Turretin’s son, Jean Alphonse, wasn’t a liberal but he wasn’t a confessionalist. He was or became a broad evangelical and like the broad evangelicals at Princeton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he stabbed the confessionalists (e.g., his Dad and that cohort) in the back by repudiating (rather than revising) the Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675). He did so because it got in the way of his broad ecumenism. It wasn’t very long before Geneva was in need (in the early 19th century) of “Reveil” (renewal).

      The narrative for which I’m arguing in these essays is that what has been happening in the CRC is not that it became immediately liberal (there was a controversy over higher criticism in 1920s but that fellow was disciplined) but that it gradually became broadly evangelical. Had that trajectory continued, theological liberalism is the next stop but it’s not the first stop.

      Take a listen to these interviews and discussions over what happened in Geneva:

      1. Calvin Meets Voltaire with Jennifer Powell McNutt
      2. Eighteenth-Century Reformed Theology with Ryan Glomsrud (pt 1)
      3. Eighteenth-Century Reformed Theology with Ryan Glomsrud (pt 2)
      Reply ↓

  5. Dr. Clark is correct that agreement with women’s ordination is required in the PC(USA) to be ordained. That question of what degree of dissent from denominational standards can be tolerated was litigated decades ago in the Kenyon/Kaseman cases. It has been said for many years now that the only hard-and-firm ordination rule in the PC(USA) that can’t be waived by any presbytery is agreement with women’s ordination. Kaseman was allowed to be received from the UCC (the liberal Congregationalists) despite denying the most basic principles of biblical Christianity, but Kenyon’s opposition to women’s ordination, even though he was willing to work with women ministers and elders, was viewed as unacceptable. That was a key factor in the growth of the PCA in the north, and eventual merger with the RPCES, when PC(USA) conservatives, including Dr. John Gerstner, were told that while they would be “grandfathered” if already ordained, no new opponents of women’s ordination could be ordained.

    That’s the context that the PC(USA) Reconquista people must face.

    I do, however, want to push back a bit on this: “It is not possible to enter the ministry of the PCUSA unless one affirms the Barthian doctrine of Scripture confessed in the Confession of 1967 and the ordination of females and LGBTQIA+ persons.”

    Yes, there were people who left after the Confession of 1967 formally changed the doctrinal standards because they said they couldn’t subscribe to a Barthian view of the Bible. I respect that. Decades ago, it probably WAS true that a fully inerrantist view of Scripture would be a no-go in many and perhaps most PC(USA) presbyteries, certainly the bigger and more prominent ones. Given that subsequent decades have watered down even the minimal confessional subscription standards to being merely led and guided by the confessions, I’m not sure a person couldn’t be ordained today in some of the PC(USA) presbyteries who said, “Barth abused women in his personal life and his theology is suspect based on his personal conduct, and we should not affirm his beliefs today because of his bad behavior toward marginalized women.” Practically speaking, I don’t think most people in the modern PC(USA) know or care very much about Barth, certainly not as much as was the case decades ago.

    A more serious issue is the ordination of LGBTQIA+ persons.

    You have a good point, Dr. Clark, and there are people who have left the PC(USA) in recent years who agree with you on what the recent General Assembly decisions mean. I have friends in the ECO who say the PC(USA) has finally crossed the line and now requires agreement on just two items, women’s ordination and LGBTQIA+ ordination, for people to be ordained.

    The litigation isn’t done on that issue. Logically, I think you’re right that the PC(USA) decisions SHOULD lead in that direction if they are to be consistent with previous decisions on treating LGBTQIA people as a marginalized group deserving of protection, and citing the previous precedents on women’s ordination. That is, in fact, what I was saying way back in the 1990s, that there is no consistent stopping point, once people accept the arguments for women’s ordination I was seeing develop in the 1980s in the CRC that came out of the PC(USA) and other liberal denominations, and those arguments would inevitably take the CRC into far worse issues than women in office.

    KEY POINT: I am **NOT** saying all arguments for women’s ordination will lead there, but the ones I was seeing in the CRC of the 1980s and early 1990s, based on a low view of Scripture, will inevitably lead there. There are other arguments, ones commonly found in charismatic and broadly evangelical circles, which proceed from a non-Reformed view of office and ordination, which while I believe they are wrong for other reasons, won’t lead to homosexual ordination. The ones I was seeing in the CRC of three and four decades ago, however, have their own inherent logic and will inevitably lead their advocates into places they did not intend to go, or at least CLAIMED they did not intend to go.

    But the PC(USA) hasn’t QUITE gotten there yet on mandating agreement with LGBTQIA ordination on a parallel with mandating agreement with women’s ordination. Will they? That’s quite possible. It would be consistent if they do.

    The PC(USA) is a political animal not bound to theology or confessions, and has not been for at least a century, dating back to the 1920s. I think Zoomer’s hope is that politics, and an influx of young conservatives, will pull the PC(USA) back from that brink.

    That, I think, is where the CRC parallel applies.

    I wish Zoomer well. He’s fighting a battle very much like what I was fighting four decades ago and I see a lot of myself in him.

    I think he will fail, as I did, when he runs up against the opposition of the hard Left who are no longer liberal but have adopted a doctrinaire Leftist agenda.

    Time will tell.

    Reply ↓

    • Darrell,

      The documents I read and cited made it clear that no dissent from the new orthodoxy in the PCUSA will be tolerated. I don’t assume that it must be litigated in order to be the standard because it won’t be litigated. The PCUSA is beyond litigating these things. When was the last ecclesiastical litigation over these sorts of issues? Fifty years ago!

      As I showed, Ackerman has already conceded the doctrine of Scripture and the ordination of females. You didn’t do that did you?

      As to the requirement to be Barthian on Scripture, that’s the Confession of 1967, adherence to which is required and has been since 1967.

      Reply ↓

      • Dr. Clark, we do concur on where the PC(USA) should logically go based on its presuppositions and confessional commitments.

        There are men who have recently left the PC(USA) who have come to the same conclusions as you with regard to no tolerance for dissent on homosexual ordination. You may be right and they may be right. It’s where the logic would lead.

        I’m not sure that will happen.

        I think there was far more support in the PC(USA) five decades ago for mandating agreement with women’s ordination than there is today for mandating agreement with homosexual ordination. The logic is there; the political will may not be.

        I also want to push back on whether the PC(USA) litigates things. When conservatives dissent and defy the rulings of the General Assembly, they can be punished and property taken away, or forced to pay millions of dollars for permission to leave. There are nasty cases of that in Missouri now that will probably end with the churches involved going into the ECO no matter what, with or without their building, but are likely to end with the PC(USA) “shaking down” those who want to leave by demanding a huge financial settlement. Tony Soprano, or the Corleones before him, would be proud of the “offer you can’t refuse.”

        The parallel in the CRC would be that the liberals defied the synod and became what Dr. Godfrey called a “lawless church” in which people flat-out ignored what synod said and ordained women in defiance of synod. The problem, of course, is that defiance can go both ways, which ended up with Classis Toronto deciding to ignore First Toronto CRC’s decision to ordain women elders and let a woman preach, and also Second Toronto CRC’s decision to let a Mid-America graduate fill their pulpit. Calvin Seminary could do nothing but complain since the classis had already decided the church order was no longer something that needed to be obeyed.

        The CRC liberals seem to have thought they could run that same set of plays with ecclesiastical disobedience on homosexuality, not realizing that the playing field had fundamentally changed in a number of ways between the 1990s and the 2020s.

        It’s at least possible that the PC(USA) liberal leadership will find that “running the same set of plays” won’t work as well for them on homosexuality as it did on other issues. They’ve already lost a REALLY large number of wealthy churches that said, “This is too far, we’re out.”

        Zoomer is betting that the PC(USA) will decide to tolerate him and those like him, and that given a couple of decades, the liberal churches will die and people like him will take over.

        I said something similar in the 1980s. I was wrong. Zoomer may be wrong.

        “All they that hate me love death” is a biblical principle and liberals are good at killing their own churches with their false teachings.

        Also, I know you’re asking this rhetorically, but just to avoid anyone reading this comment and thinking otherwise — “Ackerman has already conceded the doctrine of Scripture and the ordination of females. You didn’t do that did you?”

        No. I affirm inerrancy and infallibility. I have supported women in the diaconate since the 1980s, and since the 1990s, I have believed the Korean kwonsanim and jondosanim are a good way to have women in legitimate positions of older women (kwonsa) teaching younger women, and women (JDSN) teaching children and other women. I’m fine with the ARP, KPC, and KAPC position on those matters within the NAPARC family of churches. (The RPCNA position is more complicated and I do think they need to modify their position.)

        I do not, however, believe Scripture says women should be in the eldership because they would, by necessity, teach and rule over men.

        I view women’s ordination as a symptom of other issues, not the root of the problem. In the CRC, the root of the problem was a defective view of Scripture that gave rise to all sorts of other issues and women’s ordination was just one of those issues. Broad evangelicals and charismatics have a wrong view of office as service rather than authority, or as direct divine anointing comparable to the Old Testament prophetesses. That’s also a problem, but it is a different problem, and as I said for many years in the 1980s and 1990s, people in the CRC who thought the CRC was going to allow for something like female ministers in the Assemblies of God needed to ask some REALLY hard questions to the actual women going to Calvin and what they believed about biblical authority.

        That is why I was saying way back in the 1990s that the arguments used to defend women’s ordination in the CRC, unlike those used in the broader evangelical and charismatic worlds, would inevitably lead to the homosexual ordination issue.

        As you know, Dr. Clark, I spent ten years of my life fighting on the women in office issue. The core problem for the CRC was the nature and extent of biblical authority, and how to apply it to women’s ordination. I’ve got a track record on that which you know about, but a fair number of your younger readers don’t know my history on the issue, so I need to be clear what I do not believe.

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  6. What is interesting in these various but aligned efforts to undermine Christian teaching on sexuality is the underlying argument that our “understanding” of human sexuality has “evolved” from when Christ was incarnate among us. (I refuse to use the term “Jesus’ time,” as God created and is above time.) In fact, homosexuality was widely practiced and accepted in the Greco-Roman world that ruled Israel in those days. And most other cultures in that region allowed for polygamy. But God’s Covenant was with Israel – whose focus on heterosexual monogamy was unique in that time and place, and in fact Christ not only reinforced that teaching, but strengthened it – teaching us that Moses only allowed for divorce because of the sinfulness of the people, but that it was not the Father’s will.

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    • Jim,

      I agree with your major point but two notes about using the name Jesus:

      1) the gospel writers use it frequently. It is reverent and biblical to use. It’s wonderful name. It means “God will save his people” (Matt 1:21).

      2) Jesus is God the Son incarnate and, as such, he has two distinct but inseparable natures. The orthodox formula is one person, two natures.

      Jesus human nature had a beginning in the womb of the blessed virgin. His deity, as you say, has no beginning nor can it have.

      We may properly speak of “Jesus’ time” to refer to the period of his earthly ministry. His human nature was in time and space. It was and is finite. He’s true human and he’s true God, that is the way the ecumenical creeds speak. One of the major points of the book of Hebrews is the importance of Jesus’ true humanity and that he shares our humanity in every respect, sin excepted.

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      • Good points. It wasn’t Jesus’ name that was the issue – it was the use of the phrase “Jesus’ time” by those who would undermine our faith by implying his message was only OF that time (and, of course, many of those making these arguments reject not only Jesus’ dual nature, but the very concept of divinity itself). But your argument, on reflection, is the correct one as it embraces His dual nature while in no way diminishing either. Thank you for reminding me of that!

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  7. Thanks, Dr Clark. As someone who pastored in the PCUSA (and the UPCUSA before the reunion with the PCUS). I can attest to the weakness of the renewal groups.

    One such leader told a group of us seminarians that their efforts were likely to accomplish an important consensus on Scripture. This consensus lopping off radical interpretations of biblical authority. At the same this consensus would lop off biblical inerrancy (presumably because that represented the radical extreme on the right).

    I could provide many such examples, but I’m writing this with the little keyboard on my phone:)

    Cheers, all!

    Reply ↓

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