A Word To The Reconquistadores (Part 1)

by on July 13, 2026 | Comment

There is a cadre of enthusiastic Gen-Z Presbyterians led by Richard Ackerman, a student at Dubuque Theological Seminary, who has announced plans to “reconquer” the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA) as part of a broader plan to take control of the mainline churches (e.g., the PCUSA, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America et al.) on their way to recovering the prominent place (which he describes as “influence”) in American culture the mainline churches enjoyed until about 60 years ago.1

Three years ago, Ackerman (who goes by “Redeemed Zoomer” on various social media platforms) formed “Operation Reconquista,”2 but has since re-named it “Operation Reformation.” Following the argument of Bradley Longfield,3 Ackerman contends that Machen and the other confessionalists and conservatives should have remained in the mainline (liberal) churches in order to reform them and that their departure from the mainline contributed to the downfall of the mainline. Ackerman has even accused those who separate from the mainline of being schismatic, because they left the “established church.”

I reply to Ackerman in the same way I replied to Longfield in 1993: Machen left the PCUSA in the same way Villém Slavata, Košumberk and Jaroslav Bořita left the Prague Castle in 1618: they were thrown out the proverbial window.4 D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baker Books, 1994); D. G. Hart and J. Muether, Fighting the Good Fight. A Brief History of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1995); Edwin Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict (repr. Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1992); Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Eerdmans, 1954); Henry Coray, J. Gresham Machen: A Silhouette (Kregel, 1981) all paint a very different picture. For Machen and company what was then taking over the PCUSA and the other mainline churches (now a century ago) was another religion—theological liberalism.5

For Machen and the others, leaving the mainline churches was no mere tactic, it was a moral imperative. The PCUSA had demonstrated that it was no longer a true church. In Machen’s sham trial the theological liberals demonstrated that, in fact, they were not even true liberals, the definition of which is “tolerant.” They were willing to tolerate rank universalists such as Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) in the mission field but they were not willing to tolerate those who actually still believed the Bible to be God’s infallible Word and what the church confessed in the Westminster Standards.

Belgic Confession art. 29 gives three marks of the true church: 1) The pure preaching of the gospel; 2) the pure administration of the sacraments; 3) the use of church discipline. Let us begin with the third mark. Does the PCUSA manifest these marks? One of the defining characteristics of the mainline churches is that they do not practice discipline, except, perhaps, in the cases of those ministers who still believe the historic Christian faith. Those who deny the faith, who corrupt it openly, are given free rein. Are the sacraments purely administered? Is the table restricted to baptized, confessing members of believing churches?6 Finally, is the gospel of salvation in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone purely preached? Gospel means “good news,” and it presupposes bad news (e.g., that those who die outside of Christ are eternally condemned) but, in the PCUSA, how widely held is that view?7 According to Aaron Vriesman, in 1981, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly “approved Mansfield Kaseman’s ordination despite his unwillingness to affirm the deity of Christ, the Trinity, bodily resurrection, the sinlessness of Jesus, and Christ’s death as an atonement for sin.”8

Fast forward to this year’s General Assembly season where one of the topics of conversation is polyamory. One advocate for it argues that “neither Scripture nor Reformed theology requires monogamy and that God’s abundant love offers a foundation for affirming polyamorous relationships.”9 At this year’s GA the PCUSA voted 441–30 in favor of a “a measure expressing support for body-deforming sex-change surgeries for youth exhibiting gender dysphoria.”10 In 2025 the PCUSA added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to protected classes in the PCUSA guaranteeing “full participation and representation in the church’s worship, governance, and emerging life” of those who identify as LGBTQIA+.11 A 2021 publication of the PCUSA says,

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been on a long journey with the LGBTQIA+ community from, like most other churches in the Western world, rejecting homosexuality to being one of the most affirming denominations in the United States through a series of General Assembly policies that have, among other things, allowed the ordination of LGBTQIA ministers, elders, and deacons and approved clergy to perform same-sex weddings. While these affirmations are not yet accepted in all PC(USA) congregations and mid councils, they are the position of the national church.12

I am sure that even the most liberal members of the PCUSA a century ago could not have imagined where their theology, piety, and practice would lead the PCUSA today in 2026, but here we are.

The CRC: From The Borderline Back To The Sideline?

In 1995 it seemed as though the Christian Reformed Church in North America was certain to follow the path of the PCUSA. The conservative and confessional wings of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) were largely excluded from positions of denominational leadership. The denominational magazine did not publish them. Cornelis Venema observes that in 1952 there was a “purging” of the faculty of Calvin Theological Seminary. One prominent historian attributes it to “personalities,” but Venema says it was “occasioned by bitter conflict among the faculty members regarding the importance of a distinctively confessional approach to advanced theological study” which kicked off a series of controversies over the nature of Scripture and other issues continuing into the 1960s and 70s.13 The conservatives and confessionalists were mostly to be found in Classis Minnkota, which was formed in 1951, which around 2015 had become what was called in the CRC an “affinity classis.”

In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s prominent theologians in the church openly flouted the confessional standards.14 The denominational educational institutions seemed unsympathetic and sometimes hostile to the concerns of the confessionalists and conservatives. As the trajectory toward broad evangelicalism continued, the confessionalists and conservatives lost ground at the regional (classical) and synodical levels of church government. Despite considerable opposition, evangelicals and progressives in the CRC pushed through the ordination of females to the offices of deacon, elder, and then minister.15 In the years after 1995, a number of congregations left the CRC and joined with those who had already left to form the United Reformed Churches in North America.

Readers of this space may remember some of the more recent issues that emerged in the CRC. In 2009 Rich DeVos told the Grand Rapids Press that there was no reason for the CRC and Reformed Church in America to remain separate.16 Beginning in 2002, the CRC and RCA were in serious discussions toward merging. I wrote, “The CRC came into existence to preserve the Reformed faith (theology, piety, and practice) as confessed in the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. Is that what the CRC is about now? No, not really.”17

In that same year Donald Luidens, Professor of Sociology at Hope College (RCA) published an article lamenting the coming death of the RCA. In that article he warned that the CRC’s “own gentle, mournful knell” was “beginning to pulsate.”18

In 2013 I examined an article by Edwin Walhout, published in The Banner, the CRC’s denominational magazine.19 In it Walhout, a retired CRC minister, said

that the theory of evolution, which, he argues began as an hypothesis in 1859, became a theory thereafter, is now an established and immutable fact that will necessarily “shake our systematic theology to its foundations when we better understand its implications.” As a consequence, he argues, we will likely find that “some of the doctrines that form the essential structure of our creeds and confessions miss the mark.” These putatively errant formulations will be, he says, replaced by “[n]ew insights and new doctrinal formulations.”20

The prospects for the confessionalists and conservative holdouts in the CRC were not promising, so, in 2016, I published a challenge to confessionalists and conservatives to consider carefully where they were going to draw their line in the sand.21

To those ruling elders, ministers, and concerned laity in the CRC, you established your boundary when you stood before God and the church and promised to uphold, teach, and defend the Word of God as confessed by the churches. If church discipline is your line (not a bad one, since it is one of the three marks of the true church in Belgic art. 29) then why does it begin only at the ordination of homosexuals or homosexual marriage? Why does it not begin with the ordination of females to ministerial office? Why did it not begin when Harry Boer publicly attacked the Canons of Dort? Consider where things have gone since “Synod 1995 recognized that there are two different perspectives and convictions on this issue, both of which honor the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God.” Is that still true or are those who oppose the ordination of females second-class ecclesiastical citizens? Was the advocacy of women’s ordination really grounded in the conviction that God’s Word is infallible or on the ground that Paul was “hopelessly patriarchal”? You and I know the answers to those questions.22

Notes

  1. There is a considerable body of literature on the decline of the PCUSA and the other mainline bodies. See Resources on Mainline (Liberal) Christianity in North America. The mainline churches are still have considerable financial resources, thanks to the investments made in them by the faithful long ago but they are each losing thousands of members annually. See, R. Scott Clark, “What The Dying of the PCUSA Means,” The Heidelblog, May 17, 2023. See also Bob Godfrey on “The Myth of Influence” and listen to this interview on the same topic.
  2. Operationreconquista.com (accessed July 10, 2026). There is a page concerning “Operation Reconquista” on Ackerman’s site.
  3. R. Scott Clark, “*The Presbyterian Controversy*: A Review,” The Reformed Herald (1993), revised and republished on The Heidelblog.
  4. “Second Defenestration of Prague,” s.v., “Defenestrations of Prague,” New World Encyclopedia.
  5. See J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (MacMillan, 1923). For more on Machen see Resources on Machen, Christianity, and Liberalism.
  6. See “Invitation to Christ: A Guide to Sacramental Practices,” (Presbyterian Church U.S.A., 2006), 63–64, notes 5–6, which reflect on a long-running debate within the PCUSA about open communion or “open table.” See also David L. Stubbs, “The Open Table: What Gospel Do We Practice?” Theology and Worship, Occasional Paper No. 22 Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (Presbyterian Church U.S.A., 2011).
  7. The Confession of 1967 (9.11), which, in the PCUSA is superior to the Westminster Standards, does seem to affirm the necessity of faith and the possibility of eternal judgment: “The same Jesus Christ is the judge of all people. His judgment discloses the ultimate seriousness of life and gives promise of God’s final victory over the power of sin and death. To receive life from the risen Lord is to have life eternal; to refuse life from him is to choose the death which is separation from God. All who put their trust in Christ face divine judgment without fear for the judge is their redeemer.”
  8. Aaron Vriesman, “It Doesn’t Work: Presbyterian Church USA,” The Abide Project, September 25, 2023.
  9. David G. Congdon, “God’s Love Is Not Scarce: A Presbyterian Case for Polyamory,” The Presbyterian Outlook, June 23, 2026. Congdon responds in this article to an overture drafted by Ackerman and brought to the GA by a presbytery.
  10. Michael Gryboski, “PCUSA Declares Support for Body-Deforming Trans Surgeries for Kids,” The Christian Post, July 6, 2026.
  11. Mike Ferguson, “PCUSA Adds Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity To Constitutionally Protected Classes,” The Christian Century, March 12, 2025.
  12. Rich Copley, “Do The Queer Community and the Church Need Each Other?” The Presbyterian Church U.S.A, October 18, 2021.
  13. Cornelis P. Venema, “Integration, Disintegration, and Reintegration: A Preliminary History of the United Reformed Churches in North America,” in R. Scott Clark and Joel E. Kim, eds. Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey (Westminster Seminary California, 2010), 229. Evidence of the move toward broad American evangelicalism can be seen in what Harry Boosnstra characterized as “long and painful struggle” to incorporate hymns into the Psalter, thus creating the Psalter Hymnal in 1934. See R. Scott Clark, “What Happened? An Objective Account,” The Heidelblog, May 28, 2015. See also Foppe Ten Hoor’s 1901 discussion of the problem of “Americanization” of the CRC. In 2013 the CRC and RCA published a joint hymnal titled Lift Up Your Hearts in which the Psalms were subsumed into the hymns. See R. Scott Clark, “What Is Your Line in the Sand?” The Heidelblog, December 7, 2016.
  14. E.g., Harry R. Boer, The Doctrine of Reprobation in the Christian Reformed Church (Eerdmans, 1983).
  15. “Women in Ecclesiastical Office,” Christian Reformed Church, accessed July 11, 2026.
  16. R. Scott Clark,” CRC and RCA: No Reason to Remain Separate?” The Heidelblog, May 27, 2009.
  17. Clark, “CRC and RCA.”
  18. Donald A. Luidens, “The Mournful Sounds of Implosion,” Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought, November, 2009.
  19. R. Scott Clark, “Of False Dichotomies, Science, and Progress,” The Heidelblog, May 8, 2013.
  20. Clark, “False Dichotomies.” See also, R. Scott Clark, “Keep Calm and Cover Up? The Walhout Saga Continues,” The Heidelblog, October 3, 2013.
  21. Clark, “Line.”
  22. Clark, “Line.”

©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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