Schism and the Redeemed Zoomer (Part 2): Examining Zoomer’s Claims

by on August 12, 2026 | Comment

There is no denying that the visible church in our day is a mess. Some people hold a view of what has been called “Christless Christianity,” a watered-down, self-help version of the faith that uses Christian language but replaces the atoning, redemptive work of Jesus Christ with a focus on moral behavior, personal happiness, and worldly success.1 There are others who have a kind of churchless Christianity, where they want the Head, Christ, but not his body.

There are also simply the frustrations of belonging to a local church. Anyone who has been in a local church long enough has faced all sorts of frustrations and sorrows, from people apostatizing to people leaving because their favorite holiday was not celebrated or they just did not like the music anymore. Our consumer culture has created consumer Christians who are often in shopping mode, seeking the best fit or deal for their faith.

Having been in ministry in one form or another for over thirty years and having pastored a local Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) for the last eighteen, you will get no argument from me when it comes to recognizing problems in the visible church. One of the strangely reassuring things about reading the apostle Paul’s epistles is how plainly they reveal that the church has always been troubled. The church has never been perfect, and it never will be this side of glory.

Must the Faithful Be Expelled?

All that said, does this mean that a believer must remain in an unfaithful church and in an unfaithful denomination? Richard Ackerman (aka Redeemed Zoomer) has not merely argued that Christians should be patient with ecclesiastical corruption or exhaust reasonable means of reform. He has stated more categorically that “separation is only justified if one is wrongfully excommunicated,”2 appealing to Luther, Athanasius, and the Old Testament prophets to argue that even severe institutional heresy does not authorize voluntary departure.

Redeemed Zoomer believes it is a simple and straightforward point, one that he can give in a clear logical argument. There are four premises, followed by his conclusion.

  1. Schism is sin
  2. Unjustified separation from an organizational church counts as schism
  3. No amount of heresy in the church justifies separation from the church if the faithful are not expelled. (This is the most controversial, but I’ve provided my sources again and again. This was made explicitly clear by the Presbyterian Westminster divines with the following Biblical examples: Old Testament pagan demon worship done by religious leaders, Apostles staying in Jewish church after its leaders rejected Christ and not leaving until kicked out.)
  4. PCA, OPC, etc. all separated from the Mainline due to errors in the church despite not being excommunicated
  5. Therefore, PCA, OPC, etc. are sinful churches.

He then asks, “Where is the flaw in the argument? Simply saying ‘your church is liberal’ or ‘the REAL schism is false teaching’ or ‘I have kids’ is not an argument.”3

I appreciate his straightforward claim and the testability of it. He is not, however, the primary audience of this series. I field questions from college students—and others—who want to know my take on his position regarding schism. We should treat his argument seriously and seek to show the flaw. So here we will examine his claims. The flaw lies chiefly in premises 3 and 4.

Defining Schism Does Not Settle the Question

Premise 2 is true, but it does almost no argumentative work. Everyone agrees that unjustified separation is schism. The entire dispute concerns what makes a separation unjustified. Zoomer cannot establish that all voluntary departure is sinful merely by defining sinful departure as schism. His third premise must prove that no degree of doctrinal corruption, unlawful coercion, or obstruction of faithful ministry can justify departure before formal excommunication. This is precisely the claim in dispute.

Churches Can Cease to Be Churches

Moving on, premise 3 is neither biblical nor Westminsterian. Westminster Confession 25.5 says that particular churches are more or less pure and that some may degenerate into “synagogues of Satan.” When the Assembly subsequently supplied Scripture proofs for this statement, it cited Revelation 18:2:

And he called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!

She has become a dwelling place for demons,

a haunt for every unclean spirit,

a haunt for every unclean bird,

a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.”

Whatever further questions may be asked about the identity of Babylon in Revelation, the divines used this description of a demonic habitation to support their assertion that a particular church may so degenerate that it ceases to be a church of Christ.

At minimum, this disproves Zoomer’s categorical claim. If an ecclesiastical body may so degenerate that it ceases to be a church of Christ, believers cannot be required to wait for that body formally to expel them. Departure from an institution that is no longer a church is not separation from Christ’s church. An institution cannot retain an absolute claim on the Christian conscience merely by keeping orthodox believers on its membership rolls.

The confessional point is that no denomination or historic institution is indefectible. An ecclesiastical body may retain its name, property, hierarchy, and institutional continuity after it has ceased to be a church of Christ.

The other passage they cited was Romans 11:18–22:

Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.

Paul’s warning demonstrates that historical covenant privilege does not make any visible ecclesiastical body indefectible. Natural branches were broken off because of unbelief, and the Gentile church is warned that it too will be cut off if it does not continue in God’s kindness. To use the imagery of Revelation, Christ can remove a church’s lampstand (Rev 2:5). Institutional antiquity is therefore no guarantee of continued faithfulness.

Leaving a Denomination Is Not Leaving the Church

Zoomer’s argument also equivocates between separation from a denomination and separation from the visible church. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA) was an ecclesiastical organization within the visible church; it was not coterminous with the church catholic.

Rutherford expressly distinguished departure from the visible church and moving from one part of it to another. He also wrote, “We are to separate in the true visible Church from all communion wherein need-force we cannot choose but sin.”4 Rutherford opposed unnecessary separation from true churches, but he did not require participation in sinful communion until the faithful were formally expelled.

A believer who leaves a corrupt congregation for a faithful one has not necessarily abandoned the church. Likewise, ministers and congregations that leave a denomination in order to preserve the gospel, the sacraments, discipline, and presbyterian government have not thereby separated from Christ’s visible body.

The OPC Was Not Free to Minister

Premise 4 also seriously misrepresents the formation of the OPC. Machen and other orthodox ministers did not depart while enjoying unrestricted liberty to carry out their ministry. The PCUSA had ordered members of the Independent Board to resign, declared refusal subject to discipline, tried its leading ministers, and suspended them from office.5

It is true that suspension from the ministry was not technically the same censure as excommunication from church membership. But that distinction reveals the weakness of Zoomer’s standard rather than the sinfulness of the OPC. The denomination had stripped ministers of office for refusing an unlawful command, yet they supposedly remained obligated to submit until it completed the additional formality of removing them from membership. Nor were other ministers and congregations required to await identical prosecutions one by one. The denomination had already established that submission to the mandate was a condition of continued ministerial standing.

Excommunication Is Not an Exit Permit

The real question is not whether the institution used the word excommunication. The real question is whether the institution has made faithful Christian communion and ministry impossible except on sinful terms. Formal expulsion is one kind of exclusion. It is not the only kind.

Excommunication is a censure, not an authorization to obey Christ. A faithful Christian should not have to be declared an impenitent offender before he may worship or serve faithfully elsewhere. Must a minister remain under a denomination that has stripped him of office simply because it has not also barred him from the Lord’s Table?

Church authority is real, but it is ministerial rather than absolute: Believers must submit to lawful authority, yet no church court can make an unlawful command lawful by threatening discipline. The decisive distinction is therefore not between voluntarily leaving and being involuntarily expelled but between lawful submission and being required to sin. Exclusion may be constructive before it is formal. A church may retain a believer’s name on its rolls while making faithful worship, confession, discipline, or ministry impossible except on sinful terms—requiring obedience to unlawful mandates, support for corrupt worship, silence toward protected error, or surrender of the duties of office.

Zoomer’s standard effectively gives the institution accused of faithlessness the exclusive right to determine when separation from it becomes lawful. It may remove ministers, reject orthodox candidates, protect false teachers, compel financial support, obstruct discipline, and reduce the faithful to a powerless minority; yet as long as it avoids formal excommunication, church members must remain. That is not a biblical doctrine of church unity. It is an indefectibility claim for denominational machinery.

The inversion becomes more serious when we remember what the old PCUSA had already permitted within its ministry. The denomination ceased treating the historic formulations of biblical inerrancy, Christ’s virgin birth, his substitutionary atonement, his bodily resurrection, and his miracles as universal tests of ordination.6 These are not peripheral matters. Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, Christian preaching and faith are empty, and believers remain in their sins (1 Cor 15:14–17). John identifies denial of the Father and the Son as antichrist (1 John 2:22), while Paul pronounces an anathema on those who preach another gospel (Gal 1:8–9). Yet Zoomer’s argument places churches that faithfully confess and preach these truths under condemnation because they separated from an institution that protected its denial or radical reinterpretation. The denomination that compromised the gospel retains presumptive legitimacy; the churches that preserved it are branded sinful.

The same inversion continues in matters of ministry, marriage, sexuality, and the human body. Churches such as the OPC, PCA, and United Reformed Churches (URC) maintain the historic Christian position on these questions, while mainline denominations ordain women, solemnize same-sex marriages, celebrate a range of gender identities, and advocate gender-transition medical interventions.7 From the standpoint of historic catholic and Reformed Christianity, these are not secondary policy differences but serious departures from Scripture and the received doctrine and practice of the church. Yet in Zoomer’s framework, the gravest ecclesiastical fault belongs not to the institution that officially protects such departures but to the churches that separated in order to preserve biblical faith and practice. Institutional continuity has therefore become more decisive than fidelity to Christ.

The flaw is not that schism is harmless. The flaw is the assumption that a denomination’s refusal to pronounce excommunication proves that faithful communion remains possible. A church may already have excluded the faithful in substance by making sin the price of membership and obedience to men the price of ministry. Formal excommunication is one form of exclusion, but it is not the only one.

This answers the procedural claim that the faithful must wait to be expelled. It does not yet answer the substantive question: What kind and degree of doctrinal corruption can justify separation? Not every error destroys a church, and serious heresy must be distinguished according to whether it is isolated, tolerated, protected, or officially imposed. But neither can heresy be treated as irrelevant merely because the orthodox have not yet been excommunicated. This is the question of the next article: Does heresy justify separation?

Notes

  1. Michael S. Horton, “Christless Christianity,” Modern Reformation, May 2, 2007.
  2. Richard Ackerman (@redeemed_zoomer), “Schism is sin. The church must be as organizationally united as possible. Separation is only justified if one is wrongfully excommunicated like Luther was,” X, September 19, 2024.
  3. Richard Ackerman (@redeemed_zoomer), “It’s frustrating how unable some people are to comprehend basic arguments,” X, July 20, 2026.
  4. Samuel Rutherford, A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul’s Presbytery in Scotland (London, 1642), chap. 10, conclusion 1. A modernized transcription is available: “Rutherfurd Against Separatism: Part Three,” Naphtali Press.
  5. Edwin H. Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict ( Eerdmans, 1940), chaps. 8 and 12. Rian recounts the enforcement of the 1934 General Assembly mandate, the charges brought against Independent Board members, Machen’s suspension, the suspension of other ministers, and the disciplinary decisions immediately preceding the formation of the new church.
  6. Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., “An Affirmation Designed to Safeguard the Unity and Liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,” January 1924, secs. I, II, and IV; and Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., “Report of the Special Commission of 1925,” in Minutes of the 139th General Assembly (Office of the General Assembly, 1927), 77–86. The Auburn Affirmation denied that the General Assembly could make the five formulations universal tests for ordination and described the 1923 statements concerning biblical inspiration, the incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and Christ’s supernatural works as particular “theories.” The 1927 Assembly adopted the Special Commission’s report concerning the authority to determine “essential and necessary” articles.
  7. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “Women’s Ministry,” noting that women serve throughout the denomination as pastors, ruling elders, deacons, and denominational leaders; and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Book of Order, 2025–2027, W-4.0601, 113, defining marriage as a commitment “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”

©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.

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    Post authored by:

  • Everett Henes
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    Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.

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