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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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  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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