18 comments

1. Without getting into the details of Redeemed Zoomer’s view of schism, I think those of us in American evangelical circles and confessionally Reformed circles need to be aware that his view, while it may seem very strange to us, is likely not an innovation to him. I was taught something similar at Calvin, both the college and the seminary, and it’s been the normal view of the mainline denominations since at least the early 1900s and probably can be traced back to the older establishment views of Europe, both Reformed and Lutheran.

   I disagree and disagree strongly.

   But Zoomer isn’t coming up with something new. He’s likely simply repeating something he’s been taught about the “sin of schism.”

   If we were in a European state church or post-establishment context, I would have some toleration for the argument that, for example, the Gereformeerde Bond should not leave the former Dutch state church. When conservatives are the only ones growing, and they are not only allowed to teach Reformed orthodoxy but have a realistic possibility of becoming a de facto majority of those who actually show up for worship within a generation or two as liberal churches continue to die as the children of liberals stop bothering to claim to be Christians at all, I can see the argument for a “reconquista.”

   The problem is that the PC(USA) has a long history of not only advocating heresy but also forbidding the ordination of people who oppose the denominational stance on a number of issues that are directly or indirectly tied to liberal theology.

   There is reason for hope that some of the mainline denominations can be saved. Few of those denominations are in the United States.

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   • As someone who was brought up in the PCUSA — the money and the institutions are controlled and run by people who are personally, professionally, and politically heavily invested in woke religion. If there started to be a serious conservative resurgence, the conservatives would be subjected to an Antifa-like rhetorical attack. I think the Reconquistas won’t succeed, and it’s not worth the effort anyway. Better to simply *be* a Christian, instead of trying to salvage a degenerate org.

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     • Mostly agreed, with two qualifications.

       First: I understand Zoomer’s point of “Why leave if they are not throwing us out; stay and fight.”

       I’m not unsympathetic to or unaware of Zoomer’s mainline context. I was baptized in the United Church of Christ and grew up a “big steeple” Congregational church in Grand Rapids, back when the mainline was still strong and most definitely was NOT irrelevant and to be ignored. My church had well over a thousand people in attendance, including a number of the most important business, community and political leaders in Grand Rapids, some of whom were the descendants of the furniture company owners who built Grand Rapids and brought in the Dutch as skilled carpenters who, until that point, were mostly known as muck farmers in the lakeshore swamplands that nobody else wanted. (Give the Dutch credit! They know how to take cheap land nobody else wants, drain it, and make a ton of money farming it — kind of what gave the Netherlands its name.)

       When I was converted, and then became Reformed, I assumed I would probably join the RCA or CRC. It quickly became obvious that joining either of those two denominations meant dealing with the same liberalism that won the battle for control of mainline Congregationalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the context of the 1980s in Grand Rapids, the PCA and OPC were virtually nonexistent and represented by a tiny OPC and a RPCES congregation that later merged into the PCA, and the only other alternatives to the Christian Reformed Church were, for a number of reasons, worse. I would not say that today, but that was the situation in the 1980s.

       Why leave one denomination that is severely sick with a liberal virus, but tolerates conservative local church autonomy, for a different denomination that is in the early stages of the same virus but has much stronger top-down controls to harass and drive out conservatives? That doesn’t make sense, and I think it’s where Zoomer is coming from. The argument of “Stay where you are and fight, don’t cut and run,” has credibility for conservatives currently in the PC(USA) or people in the PC(USA) who may be converted and ask “Should we leave?”

       Secondly, I agree with you that the denominational establishment of the PC(USA), and many of the other mainline denominations, has moved from the liberal emphasis on tolerance of the 1980s and has become aggressively “woke.” I saw that firsthand the hard way. Tactics advocated by, for example, Tim Keller with his “winsomeness” work with liberals but won’t work with leftists. There is a difference and the mainliners are far worse today than they were two generations ago.

       The question for Zoomer is what will happen when he graduates from seminary and goes before a presbytery for ordination. Will he find a PC(USA) presbytery willing to tolerate him? If he does, will he deal with an appeal to the General Assembly that turns him into the next Kenyon/Kaseman debacle in which the PC(USA) shows it won’t tolerate conservatives but will tolerate left-wing extremists?

       A case can be made that today’s PC(USA), which is facing a demographic cliff within the next two decades, may be willing to tolerate Zoomer.

       I see a lot of “DTM of the 1980s” in Zoomer. He’s making the same types of decisions I was making four decades ago.

       Much will depend on whether he runs into a “woke wall” or if the denominational leaders decide to tolerate him. I think he might get tolerated, and I’m thinking of my own experience decades ago. It’s entirely possible that if I had run into different people in the 1980s, that I would today be a college or seminary professor arguing for historic Reformed Congregational theology and practice and aggressively promoting young people revitalizing dying rural Congregational churches on the outskirts of major urban areas.

       The problem for Zoomer is that he’s in a denomination that, unlike Congregationalists, actually CAN control who is in the pulpit, and to make matters worse, owns the buildings.

       Time will tell. I wish him well. But given my experience, I do not believe I have good reason for optimism about his efforts.

       I do think if he gets thrown out, a denomination like the ECO, or maybe the EPC if it wins its current fights, may end up getting a really aggressive church planter. That could end well. But Zoomer will need to rethink a number of his views to be acceptable in the ECO.

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2. This is in reply to the comment by Oseias above, as I can’t seem to comment in the thread.

   You wrote:

   “One of Richard’s favorite arguments, Dr Clark is the same one that Baillie would use: that the church in the Old Testament did not do voluntary schism despite the horrendous things that happened, child sacrifice and the corruption of the priesthood and that even the apostles only stopped going to the Synagogue after being persecuted.”

   Maybe I am missing something, but I don’t think the comparison is valid either in the case of the OT Church or the Apostles.

   In the case of OT worshipers, it seems anachronistic to speak of “schism” from the established Church in that context as if it were similar to what we’re discussing today. The realities of Temple and priestly sacrifices under the Mosaic Law being inextricably tied to OT worship seems to suggest that such a comparison isn’t entirely valid. If it were (and I confess I am unfamiliar with Baillie’s argument, so this is just reacting to what was quoted above) then it would seem to establish something more akin to the classic Roman Catholic or Orthodox position, where there is one institution which has access to the true means of grace, and all expressions of Christianity outside that institution are invalid and false. If RZ is really comparing leaving the PCUSA to an OT worshiper abandoning the Temple, priesthood, and sacrifices, then he may be implying much more than he intends.

   In the case of the Apostles, they may have gone into the synagogues after Christ’s resurrection, but it doesn’t seem like they were attempting to run a “reconquista-style” recovery operation. They were proclaiming the fullness of the gospel to a people still clinging to types and shadows. In a sense, they were calling people away from the established (and now obsolete) institutions and into something new, and more faithful to God’s purposes. If anything, this would seem to run counter to RZ’s main thesis.

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3. I would also point out that was has happened to most mainline churches has been part of a broader philosophical effort by leftists – strongly influenced by Marxism – to take over various institutions from the inside, playing a long game. We have seen this happen at prestigious universities, where conservatives found fewer and fewer job offers beginning in the 1970s; and at media outlets as well beginning in the 1980s.

   Getting back to the point of this article, I’m not sure how those holding to a more authentic Christianity in the Westminster tradition can work with people who intentionally excluded those voices originally – they’re not going to welcome them back.

   It is, again, part of an intentional move to quietly insert themselves into, assume leadership of, and then gut those institutions that have upheld Western values and civilization from within: Churches, universities, media outlets.

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   • Jim,

     I agree that, at a certain point, there probably was some Marxist thought and action that infiltrated the PCUSA but the shift occurred decades before Marxism was a major movement in the USA. The PCUSA embraced higher-critical views of Scripture and then embraced Barthianism or so-called Neo-Orthodoxy. That was happening in the late 19th century through the 1950s.

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     • I may be misremembering as I only see his content on occasion as others discuss it, but hasn’t Redeemed Zoomer claimed to be Barthian?

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       • I haven’t seen that. Barth is featured prominently on the PFT site. Anyone who says, it’s very odd that a radical, critical, Anabaptist gets to define Reformed theology for the PCUSA. According to Berkhouwer, Barth was a universalist (see The Triumph of Grace). I was pleasantly surprised to see that Bruce McCormack (unintentionally) vindicating Van Til’s thesis that Barth was a “new Modernist.” See Karl Barth’s Critically, Realistic Dialectical Theology.

         He was the theologian of the PCUSA. I sincerely doubt that anyone who rejected Barth could sustain a presbytery exam in the PCUSA.

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         • Correction, he claimed in a YouTube video a couple years back titled: “3 Types of Reformed Theology (Aquinas, Van Til, and Barth),” that his theological perspective was “somewhere in between Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth.”

4. This may sound ridiculous to much of your audience, but Richard’s arguments, though lacking credentials, are extremely convincing to my generation who sadly consumes the quick, popular explanations friendly to our attention span than the well thought out cridentialed arguments given by professional scholars.

   I was heavily involved in the “Reconquista” and did most of their online promotions at one point, after Richard became hostile towards the PCA (my own denomination) I left saying that I could not reconcile what they were doing with the vows I took as a member in the church. I then started a group of young members within the PCA online to combat Redeemed Zoomers false narrative and promote orthodox teaching, practice, and piety.

   I have a small show called “Fidelis Usque Ad Mortem” on YouTube. If you are interested, I would love to do a short collaborative video on this topic, to humbly listen; and perhaps even get more young people that are susceptible to Richard’s type to hear your thoughts on the subject. I can speak for my generation that we are desiring to be be faithful, but we are young and stupid most the time—making mistakes easily avoided by listening to those who came before us.

   I am a huge fan of your show and recommend it to everyone interested in the Reformed faith!

   God bless your work,
   Josh Wood

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   • Hi Josh,

     Appreciate the encouragement. I’ll check out the pod/show. I’ve seen the title but didn’t have context.

     We’ll talk. Right now I’m trying to figure out what to cut from my schedule so I can write.

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     • I look forward to part two of this article! I can represent the rest of the younger PCHA generation in saying we are so excited to see this finally being addressed by professionals.

       Josh

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5. Hi Dr Clark,
   Thank you for addressing this.

   How should one respond if somebody like Ackerman makes the point that St. Athanasius never stopped fighting for the church and never started his own denomination even though the church was overwhelmingly Arian at that stage?

   Ackerman also quotes from Westminster divines like Robert Baillie and Sameul Rutherford to make the argument that the only valid reason to start a new denomination is because you have been excommunicated.

   I know the Scriptures say that we should not be unequally yoked with unbelievers and also that we should not even eat with those with false doctrine but does that mean we should leave our denominations and start new ones?

   The current denomination I find myself in, seperated from the mainline state church because they made singing hymns mandatory and thus bound the members’ consciences to sing them. Is the binding of the conscience to sin also not a reason to seperate?

   On that note, are modern mainline denominations binding congregations’ consciences to ordain women and homosexuals? If they are not, what would the reason be to start a new denomination?
   In the mainline denomination I grew up in, conservative congregations decided to “doleer”(mourn). They withold money from synod and do not take part in synod and sometimes even classis meetings. Yet they still remain in the denomination. Should they seperate and start a new denomination even though nobody forces them to be feminists or embrace the sexual revolution?

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   • Malan,

     I wouldn’t learn my church history from Mr Ackerman, who has yet to graduate seminary. He has frequently been wrong in his historical assertions. E.g., he describes the PCUSA as the “established” church. It is no such thing. It was the first American Presbyterian church but it wasn’t the “established” church. The Church of Scotland might be considered such because it was the state church but we don’t have an “established” church in this country. All our churches are free churches in that sense.

     Who left the PCUSA without fighting? I really wish that people would read the history of what happened to Machen. He was defrocked because he believed and upheld the Westminster Standards. They disciplined Machen but they didn’t discipline Pearl S. Buck or the other theological liberals. What does that tell you?

     Baillie and Rutherford lived during Christendom, under an established church. They were contesting control of the state church. To establish a new denomination was a political act and not just an ecclesiastical act.

     The question for separatists is whether the “mother kirk” is really a kirk. Separation should not be undertaken lightly but sometimes it is necessary. The CRC herself was a separating body. They separated from the RCA in the 1850s for three reasons:

     1) The RCA permitted members to be members of the Masonic Lodge
     2) The RCA sent children to public (not Christian schools)
     3) The RCA sang hymns and not psalms

     The subterranean (most fundamental) reason the CRC separated from the RCA was that the latter had become broadly evangelical. They had become Americans, “Methodistas” as the Dutch said at the time. They were infected with revivalist piety. They weren’t shaped by the Word as confessed by the churches. Should the CRC not have separated from the RCA?

     My denomination/federation separated from the CRC because they (those who formed the URCs) were no longer being heard at Synod, were shut out of the machinery in the CRC, which had determined to take a course contrary to God’s Word and had declared itself to be irreformable on the issue. The question was whether the CRC was still being guided by God’s Word. The separating brothers eventually, after much prayer, deliberation (years of it) determined that, in their view, the CRC was no longer willing to submit to the clear, agreed teaching of God’s Word. There were, after all, progressive leaders in the CRC publicly denouncing the Apostle Paul as “hopelessly patriarchal” while faithful ministers were being silenced and even punished by classes.

     I don’t know whether any of the separatists were excommunicated (they may have been) but they did suffer considerable harm both in the CRC and after separating (e.g., one very loyal servant of the CRC lost his decades-old pension). People lost congregations, buildings, and long-time friends. It was very painful. I didn’t go through that but I’ve always served separating churches, i.e., the RCUS and then URCNA.

     As to your question, yes, it is impossible to be in the PCUSA and to oppose the ordination of females and now the ordination of LGBTQIA+ people. These are official positions of the PCUSA. Further, candidates for ministry must affirm the Confession of 1967 on Scripture, that it is a witness to God’s Word but not God’s Word. I believe that is the case in most of the other mainline groups. Certainly it’s true for the ECUSA, which is arguably the most corrupt of all of them but the PCUSA is right there. There are some “conservative” groups and congregations yet in the UCC but they are a tiny minority and most of them seem to be migrating to other denominations. I don’t know enough about the ABC or the DoC to comment. The UMC is a disaster area. They’ve permitted “conservative” (relatively) congregations to depart and they just ejected one of their seminaries for being too “conservative” (relatively). The ELCA is quite corrupt.

     Here’s an anecdote that illustrates the state of the PCUSA. Some years ago I gave a paper at 1st Pres San Diego. You can see it here. In it I argued that Barth’s doctrine of Scripture is Thomas Müntzer’s doctrine. It’s not the doctrine of the WCF or the Reformed churches. The pastor was very kind to invite this confessionalist to participate. Afterward one of the audience members approached me to tell me that he was a PCUSA minister and then whispered in my ear that he still believed the WCF. Why did he whisper? Because to say it out loud would probably get him into trouble. The WCF has no actual authority in the PCUSA and hasn’t had for a very long time. It was formally trumped in 1967. Today I suspect that the Confession of ’67 is regarded as hopelessly conservative and retrograde.

     Redeemed Zoomer, on his websites, concedes the Confession of ’67 and the ordination of females. By my lights he’s already a Modernist (to use Van Til’s term for Barth) and he’s given up the real fight before he’s ever begun.

     The Doleantie/mourning groups have essentially opted out while formally remaining. That’s one way to do it but why is that more faithful to God’s Word as we confess it than recognizing the writing on the wall and leaving to form more faithful congregations and federations/denominations?

     In the case of the URCNA/CRC split, the separatists have been encouraging of those who remained. I probably wasn’t as encouraging as I might have been early on. I’ve become more encouraging as the years have gone on. Jamie Smith says that the confessional/conservative renaissance has been led by men who were educated at non-CRC institutions. I think that’s right. The URCs allowed congregations to re-learn what is to be Reformed. When I went on consistory in 1998, most of the men seemed more broadly evangelical than Reformed. They had lost touch with the Belgic, the Heidelberg, and the Canons. We all had to re-learn them together and today, by God’s grace, the congregation is more strongly rooted in the Word as we confess it than we were 30 years ago. Almost imperceptibly the churches that stayed in became more broadly evangelical. They stopped singing the Psalms. They begin to sound more like Baptists on the sacraments and the means of grace. Those congregations that are not intentionally, consciously confessional become broadly evangelical (like the RCA) and after that they become liberal. That’s the history of American Christianity. That’s what happened in the PCUSA, which, frankly, wasn’t never particularly strong. The debates in the early 18th century about how to subscribe the Westminster Standards reveal that already the Enlightenment had affected a substantial portion of Presbyterianism in the New World. In Recovering the Reformed Confession I criticized Charles Hodge for conceding that Amyraldians (who deny particular atonement) would necessarily be admitted to the ministry of a “national Presbyterian church.”

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     • I know what you mean regarding the trend towards methodism. I recently moved to a new place and visited most of the churches in the denomination in which I grew up. Not one of the services sang the psalms, one of the churches allowed children communion and the supposedly most conservative one’s announcements were longer than the sermon and pamflets were handed out afterwards describing justification as a process.

       My wife and I, in the end, found our home at a congregation in another denomination.

       Since encountering Ackerman’s stuff it has made me think a bit about the church. Maybe some of us have been a bit perfectionistic about the church. There are so many denominations in the Netherlands now and some trace their founding to some weird scholastic formulation that a lay person would not be able to explain.

       I am not so familiar with the history of the churches in the States but in South Africa we have three mainline Dutch Reformed churches (the sisters) of which one is still conservative. We have a dutch immigrant denomination who does not want to be part of the conservative mainline denomination because they allow singing out of a newer psalter than the original one published in the 1930’s.
       Yet the pastors speak at the same conferences and they take part together in social events.

       In Cape Town, we have a congregation who seperated from a denomination because Synod did not discipline a certain group quickly enough. They started their own denomination from scratch. Within a year their previous denomination has now disciplined the perpetrators but the damage has been done, I don’t think they are coming back.

       So I guess there must be a line somewhere. What stops anybody from starting their own denomination in their motorhome because THEY believe that THIS TIME they wil get it right?

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       • I agree with your last question. Where is the line to be drawn on schism? If it isn’t excommunication, then isn’t it up to each individuals interpretation of what is “too far”?

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         • Ryan,

           It’s a difficult answer for anyone but it’s not a purely individual decision. When the URCs in NA were formed there were years of discussions ahead of time. There was an Alliance of Reformed Churches (not the current group associated with the RCA) and there were other groups. There was much deliberation and much prayer. There were consistory meetings and council meetings and congregational meetings. The decision to leave was made carefully. It was a very difficult decision for many because the CRC was their church, it was the church within which people were baptized, catechized, and in which they came to faith. It was the church in which they expected to live and die and be buried. It was the church in which they expected to catechize and raise their children.

           A separation is one thing, a schism is another.

           A schism is an unjustified split, typically over personalities or some subjective matter but when the authority of the Word of God is openly denied and when recourse is denied, then, painfully, there is sometimes no other option.

           At that point, the question is whether the separatists have left the church or has the church left them?

           Calvin was not, to the best of my knowledge excommunicated but he could no longer live in the Roman Communion and it was clear that Rome would not have him and those like him. He called Nicodemites those stayed in the Roman church because they wanted to come to Jesus at night, when it didn’t cost anything. They wanted to prestige and safety of tall steeples and social respectability. Isn’t a big reason why people stay in the PCUSA? Aren’t they Nicodemites? A friend once compared his ministry in the PCUSA (he had been ordained in the OPC but left for the PCUSA) to serving in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. I’ve often wondered, however, whether he was prepared to be thrown down a well or suffer as the prophets in the North did? I doubt it. There’s a lot more money and economic security in a downtown, tall-steeple PCUSA than there is in a small, sideline OPC/PCA/URC congregation.

         • One of Richard’s favorite arguments, Dr Clark is the same one that Baillie would use: that the church in the Old Testament did not do voluntary schism despite the horrendous things that happened, child sacrifice and the corruption of the priesthood and that even the apostles only stopped going to the Synagogue after being persecuted. In a conversation with Dr Gavin Ortlund he said in every single one of the instances of corruption in the church like the pornochracy, Arianism, etc, no one voluntarily committed schism. The Protestants left only after being excommunicated. His argument is that once a church has been established here, that is the church and we must go to that one, to separate or to make voluntary schism is sin. He also said that one does not have to accept women’s ordination to be a pastor in the PCUSA, it depends on each presbytery. One thing that I have noticed about his arguments is that he has a very low view of the means of grace, because he states that if you go to a super liberal main line in your city it’s no big deal, because children are shaped by the father more to anything, although there is some truth to this, family devotion are not the means of grace, I don’t know how he holds to this view and accepts the WCF. I’ve been waiting for you to talk about this, his historical and biblical arguments have gotten me confused and would really appreciate a response. I saw that you said we shouldn’t take historical advice from him since he hasn’t even graduated seminary, that’s true, but people are listening to him and in the absence of a response people will just take for granted that he’s right, and also I would just like to know if these things are true in general for my own edification.

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