The Scriptures teach both by precept and example that God’s ministers–those who serve in God’s sanctuary, must be “jealous with his jealousy” (Numbers 25:12), that is, our zeal for God’s holiness must supersede our natural love for our family and friends and neighbors. The truth of God, the right worship of God, is more precious to us, such that we will not compromise or buckle even in the face of natural affection, even under the influence of pity and empathy. The relevant application for us, as Fr. Robinson noted, is that the empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office, and thus women’s ordination is indeed a watershed issue.

A number of years ago, I kicked up a hornet’s nest by highlighting how empathy, as understood and practiced in the modern world, is dangerous, destructive, and sinful. Since then, every so often, another battle in the Empathy Wars breaks out (usually on social media), and we all learn something. In most of these dustups, there is an underlying dynamic that manifests again and again, and now seemed as good a time as any to identify it. Providentially, the recent controversy involving Fr. Calvin Robinson and the Mere Anglicanism conference provides the perfect opportunity to do so. The dynamic I have in mind is the intersection of feminism in the church, theological drift, and the sin of empathy.
My basic contention is that running beneath the ideological conflicts surrounding all things “woke” (race, sexuality, abuse, and LGBTQ+) is a common emotional dynamic involving untethered empathy–that is, a concern for the hurting and vulnerable that is unmoored from truth, goodness, and reality. In the modern context, empathy is frequently, as one author put it, “a disguise for anxiety” and “a power tool in the hands of the sensitive.” It is the means by which various aggrieved groups have been able to steer communities into catering to greater and greater folly and injustice. And a key ingredient in making this steering effective is feminism.
Controversy in Carolina
Which brings me to Fr. Robinson. Others have described the controversy in greater detail (see here, here, and here), but the simplified version is that Fr. Robinson was asked to speak on Critical Theory: Antithetical to the Gospel. Rather than simply focusing on Critical Race Theory or Queer Theory, Fr. Robinson went to the root of the matter and identified Marxism, Liberalism, and Feminism as the origin of the rest. In particular, he identified feminism as the gateway drug to Critical Theory in the church, calling women’s ordination a “Trojan Horse” and a “cancer.” In doing so, Fr. Robinson was simply following in the footsteps of another Anglican intellectual, C.S. Lewis, who in his famous essay, “Priestesses in the Church?”, notes that ordaining priestesses seems to entail a number of other modifications to Christian theology, including addressing “Our Mother in Heaven,” and the notion that Incarnation might just as well have taken a female form.1 As Lewis notes, “Goddesses have, of course, been worshiped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity.” You can read Fr. Robinson’s full remarks at his substack. He ably describes the ideological dimension of the slippery slope from feminism to other forms of Critical Theory (his account of Marx, Luther, and Liberalism is less compelling)
More than that, he briefly described the social dynamics in play and connected it particularly to empathy.
Generally speaking, men tend to be more theologically rigid, whereas women tend to be more theologically flexible. That is because men do not have the emotional intelligence of women. We are more black and white, meaning we tend to be logic-based when it comes to problem solving. Women tend to be more inclusive. They are more empathetic and tend to be more emotion-based when solving problems. You can see how that might be a problem when a group is claiming to be an oppressed minority, and the thing preventing them from attending Church is the cruel doctrines and the regressive scriptures we follow. Which empath wouldn’t want to compromise in order to make a so-called oppressed minority feel included?
To expand on Robinson’s point, he is correct that, in general, women are more empathetic than men. And, in itself, this is a God-given blessing. Empathy–that is, vicariously experiencing the emotions of another–can be a wonderful thing in its place. It fosters connection and bonding. It’s why women frequently act as the glue that holds communities together. Abigail Dodds describes some of the benefits of this God-given feature.
Research shows that women in particular are more empathetic than men when seeing other people in pain. I think this reflects a wonderful design feature that God has given women that benefits not only any children we might have, but our entire communities.
A woman who is sensitive to the feelings of others, especially their pain, will be a sort of first responder. She is able to move toward the hurting. She can sound the alarm that someone is in need. And very practically for mothers, she can sense her infant’s need for food and sleep and attention. She can detect a downcast glance from her teenage daughter or son. She can tell if her husband is carrying some frustration from his workday. Doesn’t this make sense with God’s design for a woman? The one he called helper (Genesis 2:18)? What a gift God has given to women.
Crucially, however, what is a blessing in one place is a curse in another. The same impulse that leads a woman to move toward the hurting with comfort and welcome becomes a major liability when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church. There are times–usually involving grave error or gross sin–when God forbids empathy and pity. When someone–even a close family member–entices Israel to commit idolatry and abandon the Lord, “You shall not yield to him, or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him” (Deuteronomy 13:6-10). So also in the case of first-degree murder, or of bearing false witness in court (Deuteronomy 7:16, 19:13, and 19:21). In such cases, God is adamant that “your eye shall not pity them.”
This principle is highly relevant for the leadership and governance of the church (whether we’re talking Anglican priests, Presbyterian elders, or Baptist pastors). Whatever other functions ministers may perform (administration, service, care for the sick), the sine qua non of the ministerial office is teaching and guarding the doctrine and worship of the church. In such moments, empathy and pity are a liability, not an asset.
To use a biblical example, when Moses comes down the mountain in Exodus 32 and witnesses the gross idolatry of the Israelites, he says, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And the sons of Levi gathered to him. He then tells them to pick up their swords and to go to and fro through the camp, killing their brothers, companions, and neighbors. Their eye was not to pity those who had committed such evil. God’s response to their obedience was to ordain them to the priesthood.
Similarly, in Numbers 25, when the Israelites are confronted with the very first Pride parade, when the Israelite man struts through the camp with his idolatrous Midianite bride, Moses and the elders of Israel weep at the tent of meeting. Phinehas, however, takes action, following the man and woman into their tent and driving his spear through both of them (presumably while in coitus). And God’s response is to say, “That man will make a great priest.”
In other words, the Scriptures teach both by precept and example that God’s ministers–those who serve in God’s sanctuary, must be “jealous with his jealousy” (Numbers 25:12), that is, our zeal for God’s holiness must supersede our natural love for our family and friends and neighbors. The truth of God, the right worship of God, is more precious to us, such that we will not compromise or buckle even in the face of natural affection, even under the influence of pity and empathy. The relevant application for us, as Fr. Robinson noted, is that the empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office, and thus women’s ordination is indeed a watershed issue.
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Our duty right now isn’t just to fight the pagans in courtrooms and voting booths and anyplace else where we can make a difference in civic life. We have a higher calling, that of obedience to God’s will. This obedience allows us to consecrate all that has been desecrated.

Addressing senior SS officers in Poznań on October 4, 1943, Heinrich Himmler was in a cheerful mood. The total extermination of the Jews, he told his minions, was going swimmingly; how unfortunate, though, that Nazism’s biggest triumph must be forever concealed. The mass murder, he said, was “an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history,” doomed to be denied and obscured because, well, most people just felt icky when confronted with the sight of naked, starved corpses piled high.
A committed pagan who had his SS erect several memorials to the Germanic tribes and warlords who had fought Christianity throughout the ages, Himmler held the idolator’s primitive belief that to become God, a man must show utter indifference to human life. Smash a child’s skull, and you’ve moved beyond good and evil, to a place of sovereignty reserved only for deities—and demons. But never let the world catch you red-handed, Himmler knew, lest humanity’s irritating insistence on human dignity drive folks to rise up and resist.
I’ve been thinking about Himmler’s dark path to transcendence a lot this past month, especially after viewing many of the atrocities committed on October 7, captured by the Hamas terrorists themselves on their GoPro body cameras. The marauders breached an internationally recognized border to rape women, behead babies, and bind parents to children before burning them alive. These acts would have thrilled Himmler and his men. But Hamas went a step further. They had no patience for the arch-Nazi’s bashfulness. They wanted the world to see their atrocities, in close-up and real time. Because the intolerable desecration of the human body was precisely the point.
At the end of October, Carl R. Trueman reminded the participants of a seminar that followed his Erasmus Lecture that the decades that separate Himmler from Hamas are marked by the effort to sever the ties between personhood and embodiment. A fetus is undeniably embodied but, according to abortion advocates, not yet a person. And transgender ideologues insist that a person may also decide that he was born into the wrong body, and choose to mutilate his body at will, a practice doctors and educators call “gender-affirming care.” These convictions are of a piece. The sexual revolution makes little sense unless you adhere to the potent pagan principle that flesh and self are separable.
Which, if you reject that whole bit about being created in the image of God, is easy enough to believe! After all, what is a human body, if it possesses not a divinely ordained soul but some kind of operating system, one that is entirely earthly? Believe that materialist account of what it means to be human, and the body becomes not a shrine but a battlefield, each mutilation a triumph and a testament to our godlike ability to shape our future as we, and only we, see fit.
The devils who slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 240 were merely taking this logic to its conclusion. They’re neither nihilists nor serious believers in Islam, a religion that, even in its more rigid forms, does not recognize such atrocities as acceptable. They are, simply and terrifyingly, pagans, fighting the very same war described so lucidly in Leviticus, the war against God and those who believe in his mercy.
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The PCA has a structure for bringing charges against members and officers, and it requires two witnesses of an alleged offense. These two witnesses may be either people or material (e.g., police report). But these scandal-mongering blogs bypass the judicial system of the Church entirely and instead slander the good name and reputation of the PCA as well as her officers and members by spewing these allegations publicly.

We frequently hear about abuse in the PCA. In 2017 concern regarding abuse dominated the secular news media following disturbing revelations surrounding men named Weinstein and Epstein. Concern for this sparked a number of hashtags such as #MeToo and #BelieveAllWomen.
Now – years later – some within the Church have built a platform for themselves as “Abuse advocates” purporting to expose abuse within the Church and particularly the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
Even before the recent General Assembly had concluded, Emily Belz in Christianity Today decided there was an abuse crisis in the PCA. She bases her assertion on anonymous, self-appointed “abuse advocates” who say there is.
What is Abuse?
Abuse is hard to define. In Michigan, the worldlings assert abuse is using the wrong pronouns to hurt someone’s feelings. For those influenced by the world, calling a person to repent of his or her sins is abusive.
The PCA must guard against this view of abuse. Some may remember a former PCA pastor, who – facing potential ecclesiastical discipline fled with his congregation into independency – decried it was spiritually abusive to encourage people in the hope of sanctification and the mortification of sexual sins and vile passions.
In contrast to these worldly definitions, the PCA received a report from a committee that studied domestic abuse and sexual assault (DASA); the report defines abuse this way:
persistent maltreatment that causes lasting damage. In this sense, abuse is a misuse of power. Misuse of power can take several forms (physical, verbal, positional, etc.), but the essence of abuse is that it is a misuse of power which wounds another person physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. (pp. 2306-7; emphasis original)
That is a helpful definition; it recognizes abuse beyond physical forms, e.g., spiritual and emotional abuse. It also highlights that abuse constitutes a “misuse of power,” which is true, but at the same time Christians must guard against allowing a Marxist view of power-dynamics to inform what we consider to be abuse.
Nonetheless, a definition of abuse such as this helps us to distinguish abuse from other sinful patterns or behaviors. Certainly, abuse in its general sense is simply the “misuse of a thing;” all sin is therefore abuse. But if my five year old hits his sister with a Brio train track, is he abusing her?
In one sense yes, but – given that she (for now) outclasses him in terms of height, weight, and strength – in another sense no, since the power differential clearly favors the one on the receiving end and his mother will quickly correct that sinful behavior.
Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish abuse from other expressions of sin and depravity. Often it is quite subjective and comes down to Justice Stewart’s test: “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Alleged Abuse in the PCA
Apart from the aforementioned DASA committee report, abuse seems to be used with alarming frequency in the PCA courts lately. Even the British press covered a situation in which a prominent Nashville pastor was suspended by Presbytery due to abusive behavior. Elsewhere there are instances in which church planters have stepped down and/or are facing discipline because of abusive patterns.
In a more infamous situation, an urban church planter was recently exonerated of claims of abuse (i.e. bullying and sexual harassment) by the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC). The basis for exoneration was the evidence:
Where unambiguous digital or documentary evidence existed, however, it strongly supported the arguments of the Accused, providing objective proof against these specific allegations of sin. This fact affected the Panel’s assessment of the credibility to ascribe to testimony for which there was no tangible evidence or for which there were no third-party witnesses. After carefully examining all the evidence, The Panel unanimously agreed that the prosecution did not meet its burden of proof in this case. (p. 14)
While there is little doubt in this situation improprieties occurred, the SJC did not believe the evidence supported the serious allegations against the accused.
The Biblical Standard
The aforementioned case was a source of much consternation and seemed to be a key turning point for many to conclude there is an “abuse crisis” within the PCA. Twitter and other social media were filled with reactionary outcry in the wake of the decision.
This outcry broadened into rage against the Church judicial system as a whole aiming to depict the PCA as a nest of abusers. New hashtags, customized for the PCA, have been promoted and new websites have been launched: some claim to provide resources for victims; others – more disturbingly – publish sensational allegations aimed at discrediting well-respected saints and harming the reputation of the Church.
In one particularly egregious instance, an anonymous ex-wife of an unnamed PCA pastor makes outlandish claims about an abuse cover-up by one of the most well-respected women in the PCA. But tellingly, the blogpost is riddled with errors of fact, which undermine the veracity of its claims.
I will not link to examples of the sites alluded to above because I do not wish to further publicize outrageous and unsubstantiated claims that malign Christ’s bride. Part of the trouble with these blogs is they vent claims of decades’ old grievances against the PCA as well as members or elders in good standing without any actual evidence.
They make assertions, which are readily believed by scandal-hungry people and provide fodder on which gossipy “abuse fetishists” will graze for weeks to the detriment of their souls.
The PCA has a structure for bringing charges against members and officers, and it requires two witnesses of an alleged offense. These two witnesses may be either people or material (e.g., police report). But these scandal-mongering blogs bypass the judicial system of the Church entirely and instead slander the good name and reputation of the PCA as well as her officers and members by spewing these allegations publicly.
Perhaps there are some who believe the standard of evidence (two witnesses) required by the PCA is too high.
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