Because functional liberalism detests claims to authority that do not leave the ultimacy of the individual intact, they turn gospel-centered theology into “gospel-only theology.” The technical term for this is antinomianism. They forget that sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and that Christ came to save us from lawlessness (Titus 2:14) and for the obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5; cf. Gal. 6:2). 

During the summer of 2023, a group of cardinals from every continent posed a series of dubia (a Latin word meaning “doubts” in the sense of questions born of concern or reservation) to the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. The dubia addressed a range of pressing contemporary matters, from the possibility of women’s ordination to the blessing of same-sex unions. As one commentator put it, the cardinals ultimately wanted to know, “Is the Roman Catholic Church going to go the same direction as liberal Protestantism—adapting Scripture to suit contemporary culture, ordaining women, and accepting the legitimacy of same-sex unions?” The pope’s evasive reply provoked a follow-up from the cardinals, who reformulated the dubia to be easily answerable with a clear “yes” or “no.” As of the time of writing this article, there has been no further response.
Earlier that year, the Church of England voted to permit the blessing of same-sex “marriages” and civil partnerships.1 The move prompted a strong response from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), who condemned the development as a schismatic choice “to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith.” Furthermore, the bishops of GSFA denounced the Archbishop of Canterbury, no longer recognizing him as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), while calling for his global “admonishment in love.”
Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, in September of 2023—a year that will live in infamy?—the de facto bishop of the evangelical megachurch, Andy Stanley, hosted Embracing the Journey’s Unconditional Conference. The event was advertised as being “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” The conference featured speakers who either are in same-sex relationships themselves or are supportive of others in the same. While Stanley did tip his hat to the biblical teaching on homosexuality—saying, “It was a sin then, and it is a sin now”—he simultaneously undermined that position by affirming Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, “two married gay men” whom Stanley called faithful followers of Christ. Apparently, Stanley thinks faithful followers of Christ can persist in flagrantly unrepentant abominations before the Lord (Lev. 18:22; 20:13), contrary to the solemn warnings of Scripture in many places (e.g., Rom. 1:26–27, 32; 1 Cor. 6:9–10).
What are we to make of this rapid, cross-denominational apostasy?2 The fact of this phenomenon is a clear example of culture reporter Megan Basham’s recent warning: “You may have wanted to avoid this subject, but you cannot avoid it any longer. [LGBT ideology] is coming to your church, no matter how solid you think it is.”3 Those who cannot see this are woefully ignorant of the times. Yet the cause of this phenomenon is anything but recent. Indeed, the “journey” that leads to this dead end (let the reader understand) is so well worn that one can see it from space.
We’ve Been Here Before: Christianity and Liberalism
J. Gresham Machen wrote his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism, 4 exactly a century before Catholics, Anglicans, and Evangellyfish failed to uphold biblical sexuality.5 The book’s title is none too subtle, though Machen’s point is sometimes missed in these days of decreasing reading comprehension levels. (To spell it out is no trouble for us and is a safeguard for you.) In his own words, “The chief modern rival of Christianity is ‘liberalism.’ An examination of the teachings of liberalism in comparison with those of Christianity will show that at every point the two movements are in direct opposition.”6
Machen is not saying that liberal Christianity is a terrible perversion of the faith; he is saying that liberalism is another faith entirely. To give an analogy, liberal “Christianity” is more like a virus than a sick or wounded form of the body of Christ. For a body remains a body, even when it suffers from illness or (self-inflicted) injury. But a virus is an alien entity that merely uses the body for its own self-perpetuation. If a Christian church is a body, therefore, liberalism is a virus.
We can see this distinction clearly when Machen addresses “the division between the Church of Rome [in his day] and evangelical Protestantism.” Protestants and Catholics have substantial disagreements, viewing the other body of believers as significantly ill or impaired. Still, Machen writes, “Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.”7
Machen highlights many reasons why “liberalism is totally different from Christianity,”8 but the central reason is a matter of authority: “Christianity is founded upon the Bible. It bases upon the Bible both its thinking and its life. Liberalism on the other hand is founded upon the shifting emotions of sinful men.”9 By “shifting emotions,” Machen means the subjective assessments of men, which are tossed to and fro by the zeitgeist (Eph. 4:14). In this way, for liberals, “It is not Jesus who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus’ recorded teaching has been made. Certain isolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted, not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because they agree with modern ideas.”10
Machen concludes, “The real authority, for liberalism, can only be ‘the Christian consciousness’ or ‘Christian experience.’”11 This raises the question of how a Christian consensus could ever be established. Liberals are loath to appeal to church history, for that would bolster a decidedly non-modern verdict as well as trump their radical conception of the liberty of conscience. Thus, Machen writes, “The only authority, then, can be individual experience; truth can only be that which ‘helps’ the individual man. Such an authority is obviously no authority at all; for individual experience is endlessly diverse, and once truth is regarded only as that which works at any particular time, it ceases to be truth. The Christian man, on the other hand, finds in the Bible the very Word of God.”12
Christianity and Functional Liberalism
Whereas Machen wrote about Christianity and liberalism, we are writing something of an appendix on Christianity and functional liberalism.13 We call it “functional liberalism” (and not liberalism simpliciter) because, unlike the threat of Machen’s day, this strain of the virus does not share the same set of symptoms (even if it has a similar underlying cause). Machen’s liberals were modernists who openly denied the accuracy of the Scriptures, the reality of the supernatural, the necessity of the atonement, and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As E.J. Pace’s famous cartoon illustrated in 1922, liberal departure from the faith often happened in stages, with the truthfulness of the Bible being the first to go. A few such liberals are still around, but those who hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) are—thanks in large part to Machen and his heirs—not tempted to regard them as part of the body of Christ (1 John 2:19).
The problem we face today is of a slightly different sort. If liberalism entailed an overt denial of core Christian doctrines, the essence of functional liberalism is consent to doctrinal confessions on paper while subverting them in practice—whether by downplaying their significance, reinterpreting their meaning, or rejecting the logical implications. We are not the first to make this observation. Somewhere in the annals of D.A. Carson’s prodigious output,14 he gave a lecture in which he issued a strong warning along these lines: ‘The future of liberalism in the American church will not look like it did a century ago. Conservative seminaries and churches will not see brazen denials of the core doctrines that were the battleground of yesteryear. Instead, they will see people who claim to affirm the doctrines while undermining them through subtle but substantial reinterpretation.’15
At least the old liberals had the courage to say, “The Bible is false, the Trinity is bunk, Jesus isn’t divine, the cross wasn’t substitutionary, and the resurrection didn’t happen.” The new liberals—that is, the functional liberals—are worse in this critical respect: they claim to agree with the faith once for all delivered to the saints while simultaneously reinterpreting its doctrines into meaningless statements or else ignoring the same as they press ahead with whatever they want to do.
A Case in (North) Point
Take the statement of faith for Stanley’s Northpoint Community Church as an example of what we have been describing. All the usual suspects are there, including a clear statement that the Bible is “inspired” and “without error.” But, as Sam Allberry points out in his write-up on Stanley and the Unconditional Conference:
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Grief is Complex, Even in Believers
Martha was a good woman, and conscious of her loss as much as Mary was. She gets first word of Christ’s approach, and goes to meet Him, while Mary knew nothing of this, and stayed indoors.
Among those who are truly gracious, some are more tender and spiritual then others. Some are more affected with griefs, and more broken under them, than others. This may teach the godly, and especially weak and tender hearted ones, not to measure every one by themselves, for those who have real good, may have really different dispositions.
Whatever comfort or sympathy people meet with from friends in their trouble, yet comfort from Christ is also needed. Martha and Mary had comforters, yet Martha went and met Jesus, when she heard of His coming, to welcome Him as a needed guest.
However, when Martha meets Jesus, she challenges Him with her regrets that He had not come sooner and prevented her brother from dying. This weakness and infirmity broke out of her, and got a headstart of her better side. When we are in straits, we should treat with suspicion the emotions which burst out of us first of all (Psalm 116:11 & 31:22). So though we cannot justify the impassioned outbursts of the saints, yet we ought not to examine them too narrowly or censure them, because they are really only a violent temptation which tramples on grace only temporarily. After her first outburst, Martha settles a little, and corrects it with a profession of her faith that Christ, if He wished, could yet put everything right.
So, alongside her faith, Martha had her own dissatisfaction with how Christ had acted. Yet her faith prevails to the extent that she does not stay away from Him, but goes to Him. Unbelief is never deadly, as long as it does not keep you from coming to Christ. Whatever complaints you may have about Christ’s dealings, yet faith is still the conqueror, as long as you pour out all these complaints into Christ’s own bosom.
Jesus Brings Comfort Gently
“Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again” (verse 23). He replies to her meekly. Passing over her infirmity, He comforts her with the promise that her brother would rise again.
Great are the consolations which God has laid up for His afflicted people, and He will do great things for them. It is a satisfactory and proper consolation against the death of these we love, to believe in a resurrection, in which they shall rise again. This is what Christ uses to comfort her.
Christ puts this promise only in general terms, “Thy brother shall rise again,” not mentioning the time when it would be. Even though He was going to raise her brother presently, yet simply the promise of a general resurrection is itself full of comfort (1 Thess. 4:13–14, etc.). We have no reason to stumble when we have no warrant to expect the same particular favour as Martha received, because Christ propounds this comfort in these general terms.
In Martha’s own case, Christ put it this way, partly to exercise her faith, and to let her and us see, in practice, how far short our expectations may be of what Christ will actually do for His people. She looked for the resurrection at the last day, but He was going to raise her brother almost the next minute. Partly also, He let her consolation come in bit by bit into her narrow-mouthed vessel.
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To be in friendly cooperation, a church must have a faith and practice that is in step with the BF&M [The Baptist Faith & Message]. Contradicting what the BF&M says about female pastors is by definition not “closely identifying” with the BF&M. Indeed, it’s a direct contradiction of the BF&M.

I have seen a variety of responses to the news yesterday that the SBC has found Saddleback Church to be out of step with “the Convention’s adopted statement of faith” and now no longer recognizes them as a “cooperating” church (Art. 3, SBC Constitution). As many of you know, the presenting issue is Saddleback’s recognition of a variety of female pastors, including one of their new lead teaching pastors. Having female pastors contradicts our statement of faith, The Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M), which says, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
As you can imagine, many of the public responses have been negative. On social media, some of the commentary has been incendiary and dismissive and therefore not worthy of serious engagement. Other critics simply do not like what Southern Baptists believe. Still, there are two objections that I thought it might be worth the effort to answer.
The first objection appears in a social media thread that Rick Warren himself “liked” on Twitter. The author shares a series of quotations from around the time that the BF&M was adopted in 2000 and observes how many SBC leaders at the time said that the BF&M would never be used to “coerce” Baptist churches. He quotes from one 2000 Baptist Press article which has compelling comments from both Albert Mohler and Adrian Rogers:
“We don’t have the right, the authority or the power to limit anybody,” Rogers noted. “We would resist that. What we are stating is what we believe mainstream Baptists believe…It is not a creed. It is a statement of what most of us believe.”
Other media questions focused on the new BFM’s stance against women serving as senior pastors.
“We would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor or tell another person whether or not they may serve as pastor,” Mohler said. “We’re not trying to force our beliefs on someone else.”
The author highlights these remarks and others like them to show that the BF&M was never meant to be “binding on individual SBC congregations” (source). He concludes from this that the BF&M was never intended to be a “parameter for cooperation” (source). Both of these observations are wrong and represent a serious misunderstanding of our polity.
Right now in 2023, I heartily affirm what both Adrian Rogers and Albert Mohler said 23 years ago. The SBC does not have the right or authority to tell any church whom they may call as pastor. The SBC has zero authority to tell a church what they can or cannot do or what they must or must not believe. How a church governs itself or chooses its pastors is not what this dispute is about.
This discussion is about whether the SBC has a right to recognize which churches are in friendly cooperation with the convention. Our polity says that the SBC does have that right. Furthermore, the SBC Constitution defines some parameters for determining which churches are in friendly cooperation. The Constitution says it this way:
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