Polity is essentially an organized way to put biblical convictions and principles into practice. It is how we as a branch of the Body of Christ may best be faithful to our Lord and His Word in particular parts of the church. We seek to be organized in this way because of our convictions that Presbyterian polity is the prescribed polity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

I no longer believe myself to be a young minister, but my time as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is still in its early days. Four years ago, I entered the PCA after serving as a Baptist pastor for nine years. I came into my new church with a love for Presbyterian doctrine, worship, the denominational emphasis on the means of grace, the connection to other local churches that make up one national Church, and various other biblical distinctives. My affection has only increased in my time in the PCA, but one thing I have come to appreciate even more is Presbyterian polity, and particularly the spiritual nature of our polity.
When I first began studying for licensure and ordination, the exams on the Book of Church Order (BCO) were most daunting. While I was comfortable explaining the biblical foundation of Presbyterian polity, I was a bit taken aback when having to study the intricacies of the BCO. At first, I assumed I would need a lawyer to help me discern some of the language and cadence; but as time has elapsed, I have grown to understand more, and I am growing more adept at navigating through the BCO.
But much more than learning simply how to navigate the BCO, I am growing more appreciative of the BCO’s clear intention to promote godliness. In its preface, the PCA BCO says in Preliminary Principle 4, “Godliness is founded on truth. A test of truth is its power to promote holiness according to our Savior’s rule, ‘By their fruit ye shall know them’ (Matthew 7:20).” The BCO continues, “On the contrary, there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise it would be of no consequence either to discover truth or embrace it.” From the outset, the polity of the BCO is framed such that the PCA would be a church ordered in a biblically faithful and wise manner, so that God may be glorified, and for His people’s blessing. In short, I am growing to appreciate Presbyterian polity more because polity is not inherently legal, but is inherently spiritual.
Polity is essentially an organized way to put biblical convictions and principles into practice. It is how we as a branch of the Body of Christ may best be faithful to our Lord and His Word in particular parts of the church. We seek to be organized in this way because of our convictions that Presbyterian polity is the prescribed polity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. I do not intend to defend this conviction, but rather to show that polity is inherently spiritual because it is attempting to be as faithful to the Scriptures as a connectional Church can be. It is seeking to be faithful to God’s Word for the good of the Church, which glorifies God, and this is why polity is neither legal nor bureaucratic, but spiritual in nature. Polity can be made too legal or bureaucratic and lose its spiritual potency, but when polity is based upon God’s Word and seeking His glory and our good (as we are called to do in Scripture), then polity will remain spiritual.
Consider some situations that a church of any kind will inevitably face in its existence: How must a church be organized? Who may pastor a church in its first days? What type of training must he have? What are the expectations of his character? Who can call this man to be the pastor? Who will approve and oversee his work? Who can give him wisdom and council? Read More
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Not only was Jeff ostracized, he was effectively erased. None of the faculty talked about him, if they could possibly avoid it. Meanwhile, our department chair opened most faculty meetings by solemnly intoning that our department was a community, a family, and that “we’re here for each other.” In private conversations, I was able to elicit from some of my colleagues an embarrassed acknowledgment that the woke faction had treated Jeff abominably, and that we strongly resembled a dysfunctional family in denial.

Defenestration of a Colleague
I’ve been a professor in the Anthropology Department at UCLA since 1996; I received tenure in 2000. My research has spanned topics ranging from nonhuman primate behavior to human personality variation. For decades, anthropology has been notorious for conflict between the scientific and political activist factions in the field, leading many departments to split in two. But UCLA’s department remained unusually peaceful, cohesive, and intellectually inclusive until the late 2000s.
Gradually, one hire at a time, practitioners of “critical” (i.e. leftist, postmodernist) anthropology, some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews, came to comprise the department’s most influential clique. These militant faculty members recruited even more militant graduate students to work with them.
I can’t recount here even a representative sample of this faction’s penchant for mendacity and intimidation, because most of it occurred during confidential discussions, usually about hiring and promotion decisions. But I can describe their public torment and humiliation of one of my colleagues, P. Jeffrey Brantingham.
Jeff had developed simulation models of the geographic and temporal patterning of urban crime, and had created predictive software that he marketed to law enforcement agencies. In Spring 2018, the department’s Anthropology Graduate Students Association passed a resolution accusing Jeff’s research of, among other counter-revolutionary sins, “entrench[ing] and naturaliz[ing] the criminalization of Blackness in the United States” and calling for “referring” his research to UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Research, presumably for some sort of investigation. This document contained no trace of scholarly argument, but instead resembled a religious proclamation of anathema.
As you won’t be surprised to hear, Jeff is not a racist, but a standard-issue liberal Democrat. The “referral” to the Vice-Chancellor never materialized, but the resolution and its aftermath achieved its real goal, which was to turn Jeff, who had been one of the most selfless citizens of the department, into a pariah. He taught—and still teaches—a course called “The Ecology of Crime,” which consistently drew more than 150 students and earned rave reviews. This course had a catalogue number that grouped it with sociocultural anthropology, and it fulfilled a sociocultural anthropology requirement for anthro majors.
In an act of petty spite, ritual moral purification, or both (take your pick), the woke faculty clique, which comprised a majority of the sociocultural anthro faculty, banned him from using—polluting?—any of their course numbers. (Jeff continued to offer the course, just under a different kind of number.)
Even though Jeff stopped attending faculty meetings, and in every other way accepted his punishment of permanent ostracism, his tormentors weren’t finished with him. In early March 2020, the following flyer appeared in the hallways of the anthropology department.
“Predpol” is the name of Jeff’s predictive software. The sponsoring “Institute for Inequality and Democracy” is a far-left UCLA unit whose associate director is Hannah Appel, who also holds a faculty position in anthropology. That is, a professor tried to organize a mob to demand the professional destruction of a colleague.
Within a few days after the appearance of these flyers, the pandemic lockdown confined us to our homes and the anti-police movement soon had bigger fish to fry after the murder of George Floyd. Nevertheless, Jeff remained a popular and powerful hate-figure for the department’s woke faction. On September 23, 2020, during a webinar, “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn?” sponsored in part by the UCLA anthropology department—yes, you read that right—many of the chat comments from graduate students reviled him and called for further action against him.
The entire episode recalls a prescient observation in a 1995 article by the great psychological anthropologist Roy D’Andrade: “Isn’t it odd that the true enemy of society turns out to be that guy in the office down the hall?”
The Other Signs and Portents
Not only was Jeff ostracized, he was effectively erased. None of the faculty talked about him, if they could possibly avoid it. Meanwhile, our department chair opened most faculty meetings by solemnly intoning that our department was a community, a family, and that “we’re here for each other.” In private conversations, I was able to elicit from some of my colleagues an embarrassed acknowledgment that the woke faction had treated Jeff abominably, and that we strongly resembled a dysfunctional family in denial. This pervasive institutional doublethink was partly a result of Jeff’s own apparent decision to refrain from open confrontation: I offered to help him, by defending him publicly if he wished, after both the 2018 resolution and the 2020 flyers. He thanked me, but politely asked me to stay out of it.
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Most of the feasts and festivals of the Old Testament were built on the presupposition that each age group needed to be reminded about what God had done for His people. Whether it be the Passover or the building of the Booths on Sukkot each of them help describe in an outward way something real that Jehovah had done for their forefathers, and through them for those living in that day. It only takes one generation to forget what a previous generation knew. 

Over the past several months I’ve been somewhat slowly going through the Book of Deuteronomy in my private devotions. In many ways it is my favorite book in the whole Bible. From beginning to end it is a testimony to the love of God for His covenant people as well as a display of His wisdom. What is basically happening in that portion of Holy Scripture is you have Moses preaching to the Israelites on the plains of Moab to prepare them to go into the promised land. They need to know why they are at the shores of the Jordan and how they are to order their society after the conquest. This generation didn’t grow up in Egypt. They’ve been born since the Red Sea and have experienced so much about the ways of the LORD, but they need to understand more deeply about why God has done things in the manner that He has and also what He expects of them in the future.
Remedial training is helpful for all kinds of folks, but most especially for those who have not been through it before.
Most of the feasts and festivals of the Old Testament were built on the presupposition that each age group needed to be reminded about what God had done for His people. Whether it be the Passover or the building of the Booths on Sukkot each of them help describe in an outward way something real that Jehovah had done for their forefathers, and through them for those living in that day. It only takes one generation to forget what a previous generation knew. The old saying about wealth, that one generation makes it, the next enjoys it, and the last loses it is true of the teachings of the Bible. It was vital that the truth of the LORD be promoted and taught in full measure so that not any of it is lost. However, what happens after Joshua leads the destruction of Canaan is that all those who made the covenant at Shechem soon did that forgetting. They sadly overlooked what Moses had said, what God had promised, and most certainly the warnings God gave if they didn’t keep their pledge to Him.
There is a reason why the Book of Judges is as chaotic as it is.
Those who grow up in the Church can sometimes be like the Israelites of this age. They didn’t necessarily see all the work that went in to founding a local congregation and they weren’t a part of the battles of previous generations. Some call this a “silver spoon” mentality. You are born on Third Base and think you hit a triple.
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