As we in the PCA and the EPC seek to minister as ambassadors of God’s grace, we must be committed both to the task of loving the lost, and to our duty not to see any sin as beyond the saving grace of our Savior Jesus Christ. So, we pray that we all would remain committed to bringing the gospel to those in sexual sin, without compromising God’s Word and its faithful presentation in the Westminster Standards. Yet I also will pray for wisdom in your future decisions on these matters, because our evangelistic desire should not lead to any attenuation of the need for repentance.

Dear brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC),
Greetings, and Grace and Peace to those who love and serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Reviewing the events at your recent 44th General Assembly of the EPC, I know that you, like many other American Reformed Churches, are facing difficult issues of ministry in matters relating to sexuality, temptation, and same-sex attraction. As a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I was also interested and sympathetic to your recent challenges concerning a congregation (Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, MO) and her ministers who were formerly in our own denomination petitioning to join the EPC.
Now, hearing that you have formed a committee to study and report back on these issues in two years, I felt compelled to write an open letter of encouragement and appeal to those in the EPC. As I have talked to many fellow PCA elders in the past few weeks, all were thankful for particular local EPC congregations known to work and labor in the proclamation of the gospel of our Triune God. We appreciate those of you who have been encouraging and working with us in these labors across denominational lines for years.
I write to express that I—along with many others in the PCA—are committed to pray for your denomination, your churches, and the decisions that you will be making through the newly formed committee and in future General Assemblies. While conflict and controversy are never pleasant, we are reminded that when God works through wisdom and discipline, we can have comfort from Hebrews 12:11: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
I also write to commend to you the published work of the PCA and several of its presbyteries and ministers on many matters directly related to your own deliberations. Many of us are grieved that rather than work within the polity of the PCA in seeking clarification and repentance where necessary, Memorial Presbyterian Church (again, together with her ministers) departed from us and did not continue to seek that peace in our courts. Below are some examples of the work we produced on issues that had surfaced up to the point of their departure:

Our General Assembly worked through many issues regarding sexuality, desire, and same-sex sexual attraction, producing a thorough report. Click here or copy the following link to access the Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality (2021): https://pcaga.org/aicreport/.

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Item 1 passes the presbyteries and the 51st General Assembly, the most radical changes in churches may just be more clear labels of who is a “Youth Pastor” (and is ordained) and who is a “Youth Director/Coordinator” (and is unordained staff); or, who is in the ordained diaconate as distinguished from those who should properly be called deacons’ assistants or other titles under BCO 9-7.[4] While such changes seem small and – perhaps to some – pedantic, they ought to be considered as helpfully didactic in that they teach something.[5]

While all of the proposed amendments to the Book of Church Order (BCO) received about three-fourths (or more) support at the 50th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCAGA50), Item 1 (i.e., Overture 26), is most likely to receive a measure of debate and discussion in the presbyteries. The context of the debate leading up to PCAGA50, in Overtures Committee and on the Assembly floor, however, can help us to understand the proposal and why it takes the current narrow form that it does.First, the language of the proposed amendment to BCO 7-3 regards titling of unordained people by the simple addition of a sentence (which is underlined):BCO 7-3. No one who holds office in the Church ought to usurp authority therein, or receive official titles of spiritual preeminence, except such as are employed in the Scripture. Furthermore, unordained people shall not be referred to as, or given the titles of, the ordained offices of pastor/elder, or deacon.
The Need for Item 1
The Reformed Tradition has long placed a high value on polity and ordination. Confessional Presbyterians also place a high value on words and what they convey about ordained officers in our churches. Those who support the proposed amendment share a duplex concern that the doctrine of ordination has been downplayed as of late, and that there is a consequent confusion and disorder around the offices of elder and deacon in the PCA. Some of this downplaying is evidently unintentional (e.g., in the use of the words “pastor” and “minister” to describe unordained ministry staff), but perhaps some is intentional (e.g., in the case of the diaconate).Members of our congregations visit or transfer to other PCA churches and find unordained people listed as “pastors” and “deacons.” Some of these well-meaning staffers and volunteers could not be properly ordained in our polity. In such cases, unordained persons are occasionally listed on church websites and weekly bulletins as “youth pastor” or “women’s pastor.” More frequently, we find egalitarian lists of “deacons” which include both men (either ordained or not) and women (not ordained) who function together as a board of deacons for their church. These confusing practices cause many onlookers and visitors to question the practical weight, then, of ordination when the difference between an “ordained deacon” and an “unordained deacon” may be reduced to a mere asterisk in the bulletin.
The Overtures Committee Debate
In Overtures Committee, the argument for the original overture 26 was presented as making explicit what was already implicit in our Standards, giving greater clarity to the proper titling of our ordained officers. Leading up to the 50th General Assembly, some leveled an objection to this overture that it is already implicit in our Standards that only those who are ordained should use these titles. They appropriately asked, “Wouldn’t this be mere redundancy in our BCO if we all already understand this principle?”During the debate in the Overtures Committee, however, one man spoke against the overture saying that churches should be able to use these titles how they wish, especially if an unordained woman was in charge of women’s ministry. In such a case, he argued, she should be able to be titled: “Women’s Pastor.” This argument against the overture seemed to have the opposite effect of that which the speaker intended, evidently convincing some commissioners that making that which is implicit in our Standards more explicit in order to counteract the apparent confusion over how some churches use ordained titles for unordained persons.
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While many Reformed writers, especially recently, make the scriptural case for wine, our question is specifically one of polity: how have Presbyterian Churches used grape juice without running afoul of the Westminster Standards and their respective Books of Church Order? Was the change in American Presbyterian polity merely a matter of disobedience?

In the first 1,800 years of the New Testament church, there was no shortage of debate over the elements of the Lord’s Supper. There have been debates over mixing water with the wine,[1] use of leaven in the bread,[2] and the denial of the cup to the laity.[3]
Yet, through all those debates, the contents of the cup primarily included fermented wine from grapes (even if Eastern and Western Christians were divided on whether that wine needed to be white or red). Wine was considered so essential to the work of Christian missionaries that some scholars attribute the global spread of wine over the past two millennia to the work of Christian missionaries who traveled to new lands with Bibles and grape vines. Missionaries frequently introduced the drinking of wine alongside Christianity in regions previously untouched by the gospel, inaugurating significant cultural change to local societies.[4]
The uninterrupted Christian tradition of wine in communion was challenged in 1869 when Thomas Bramwell Welch—a Methodist supporter of the Temperance movement—applied Louis Pasteur’s process of pasteurization to grape juice to halt fermentation, thereby founding Welch’s Grape Juice.[5]
Before Welch’s process, the only way to acquire unfermented grape juice was by drinking it immediately after squeezing the juice from the grape. This is due to the fact that the natural yeasts that grow on the grape immediately initiate the fermentation process of converting sugar to alcohol. Only this freshly squeezed juice could be considered “grape juice” while fermented juice is referred to as ‘wine’ in Scripture. The Hebrew word for wine comes from a root that means “effervesce” or to bubble, meaning that unfermented wine would be an oxymoron.[6]
Cup or Wine in the Standards?
This leads to a perplexing question in the history of Presbyterian polity. While the words “cup”[7] or “fruit of the vine”[8] are used Scripture, the Westminster Standards interpret that reference to be indicating “wine.”[9] This is not merely in one or two places but in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which includes both the Westminster Standards as adopted by the PCA and the Book of Church Order (BCO) the word “wine” is used in the following places:

The BCO describes the element representing Christ’s blood as wine: “58-5: The table, on which the elements are placed, being decently covered, and furnished with bread and wine, and the communicants orderly and gravely sitting around it (or in their seats before it), the elders in a convenient place together, the minister should then set the elements apart by prayer and thanksgiving. The bread and wine being thus set apart by prayer and thanksgiving…”
The Larger Catechism defines the Lord’s Supper as “bread and wine” in the answers to questions 168, 169,[10] and 170.
The Shorter Catechism defines the Lord’s Supper as “bread and wine” in the answer to question 96.

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This year’s Overture 29 seeks to prompt questions in the examination, instruction, and discipline of officers and candidates for office. As theological debate about how best to apply the doctrine of sanctification to modern sexuality has arisen in the Church, one approach emphasizes the issue of language and self-identification. This is the attraction of this year’s Overture 15, which would likely just prompt one sort of question: Do you describe yourself as a homosexual? But this year’s Overture 29 commends a deeper exploration of the root issues, prompting further questions either in an examining committee or on the floor of a Presbytery. The virtue of this year’s Overture 29 is that the corresponding line of inquiry will address deeper issues than any one label, issues which are obvious to careful readers of the AIC Human Sexuality report, advocates for Side B Gay Christianity, or the latter’s most thorough critics who see the deeper root issues. 

The 49th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) passed Overture 29 with over 90% of the Assembly voting for it: 1922 to 200. This Amendment now heads to the Presbyteries for consideration, and reads, as amended:
16-4. Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christlike in their character. While office bearers will see spiritual perfection only in glory, they will continue in this life to confess and to mortify remaining sins in light of God’s work of progressive sanctification. Therefore, to be qualified for office, they must affirm the sinfulness of fallen desires, the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, and be committed to the pursuit of Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions.
Overture 29 was in many ways a refinement and replacement for last year’s Overture 23 that narrowly failed to pass the Presbyteries (as Item 2) which read:
16-4. Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christlike in their character. Those who profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, “gay Christian,” “same sex attracted Christian,” “homosexual Christian,” or like terms) that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires (such as, but not limited to, same sex attraction), or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions are not qualified for ordained office.
While the first section is identical, we can explore how the text has been updated and – given the General Assembly’s greater acceptance of this year’s Overture 29 – improved in the middle and last sections of the proposed amendment.
Middle Section Changes
First, the middle section of last year’s Overture 23 read: “Those who profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, “gay Christian,” “same sex attracted Christian,” “homosexual Christian,” or like terms) that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires (such as, but not limited to, same sex attraction)…”
This verbiage can be confusing to read, perhaps due at least in part to the parenthetical statements. The concern of this section is to describe the relationship of an officer to his indwelling sin. Last year’s Overture 23 prohibited finding identity in our sins (i.e., sinful desires, thoughts, words, behaviors, etc.). Carl Trueman has recently (and notably) connected the concepts of “expressive individualism” with modern concepts of identity.[1] Last year’s Overture 23 intended to clarify that our sense of meaning, purpose, worth, and personhood before God cannot be defined by our sinfulness or sinful desires, but rather with our position as new creations in Christ.
Over the course of the last year, the parentheticals, which contained particular sin identities to illustrate the broad categories, became a source of resistance and confusion for some presbyters. For instance, the example of a “Same-Sex Attracted Christian” has not been a source of cultural identity in the way “Gay Christian” has been connected with Gay Identity.
In its place, this year’s Overture 29 as amended, simplifies this confusing text and the debated particulars by simply stating the principle, “While office bearers will see spiritual perfection only in glory, they will continue in this life to confess and to mortify remaining sins in light of God’s work of progressive sanctification.” The relationship between an officer and his sin is stated, not with reference to “identity,” but with the confessional and biblical language of “confess” and “mortify.” The virtue of this year’s Overture 29 as an improvement over the language of last year’s Overture 23 is that the updated language is consistent with the Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality (2020)[2] and the Westminster Standards in how they deal with these concepts. For instance, you can look at the similarities with Statement 3 on Original Sin in the AIC Report (p. 7), as well as the relevant chapters in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) on Sin (6) and Sanctification (13). The language of “mortified” (WCF 6.5, 13.1) is found there as well as the teaching that there is “still some remnant of corruption in every part” (13.2), and yet “the regenerate part doth overcome” (13.3) .
The Confession is clear that sin – in its corrupting influence – persists in saints as they make their pilgrimage through life on this earth, even as the Spirit transforms them. As Thomas Watson put it: “Sanctification and glory differ only in degree: sanctification is glory in the seed, and glory is sanctification in the flower.”[3] That is, Glorification is planted and starts to grow in Sanctification and our time on earth, but glorification is not perfected on earth.
Here, it is worth noting that the language of both last year’s Overture 23 and this year’s Overture 29 express this balance with either the vocabulary of “identity” (23) or the Confession’s language of “confess” and “mortify.” On the other hand, another overture passed by the Assembly this year, Overture 15, proposes to add to the Book of Church Order (BCO) the following statement on the office holder and their sin:
7-4. Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America (emphasis added).
The language of this year’s Overture 15 originally contained the same verb as last year’s Overture 23 (“identify”), but was changed to “describes themselves” in the minority report passed at the General Assembly. Comparing the three Overtures, this year’s Overture 29 employs the biblical and confessional categories of “confess” and “mortify” rather than a debated concept of “identify” from last year’s Overture 23, or the broad “describe themselves” of this year’s Overture 15, which is unclear as to whether or not concepts of identity or confession are implicated in the act of self-description. One must at least concede the virtue of this year’s Overture 29 using the less ambiguous concepts of confession and mortification, as they are clearly defined by their use in our Standards.
Final Section Changes
The other section of this year’s Overture 29 that has major revisions from last year’s Overture 23 is the final section which reads as follows:
Therefore, to be qualified for office, they must affirm the sinfulness of fallen desires, the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, and be committed to the pursuit of Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions.
This year’s Overture 29 carries over the concern to address the issue behind words of identity or self-description, namely the matter of sanctification. The language itself is cleaned up from last year’s Overture 23, replacing the prohibition of a “denial” in last year’s Overture 23 with seeking positive “affirmation” of three propositions in this year’s Overture 29.
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Whatever the motivations and intent behind secretive caucus groups, the reactions within the PCA follow a similar pattern: widening tribal differences, amplifying arguments between perceived camps, and breaking affinities into parties. 

Every Christian ought to heed Paul’s warnings to “have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths” (1 Timothy 4:7) and not to be found in “quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20). Thus, we must be especially cautious when approaching a subject such as “Secret political caucuses” in the history of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
My aim in this post is to present a brief history of secret political caucuses in the PCA with only what can be sourced and deduced from information that is openly accessible. Because secret organizations are secret, this topic is difficult to study, and subject to vain speculation.
In the History of the PCA, we can be certain of the existence of three major organizations that have influenced the creation and the history of the PCA up to the present day. Here are the relevant criteria for evaluating whether or not an organization is a secret political caucus:

confidentiality in communication between participants,
confidentiality either over the group’s existence, its nature, its membership, and/or over the matters and strategy discussed to achieve its polity-related goals,
an ideological ethos or goal,
an agenda to accomplish its goals by staffing denominational agencies and committees, and
a strategy to accomplish those goals by coordination of votes in the courts and committees of the Church.

We begin our study with an organization that has influenced how people in the PCA have viewed such groups Though antedating the PCA itself, this organization was undeniably a catalyst for the creation of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
The Fellowship of St. James
The Fellowship of St. James was a secret organization that functioned in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS – the old Southern Presbyterian church that was the origin of the PCA) during the middle of the 20th Century. Most secondary sources relay the following basic details: The Fellowship was the brainchild of Ernest Trice Thompson, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. This organization was committed to broadening the theological tent of the PCUS, to working more ecumenically in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, and to eventually merge with the more liberal Northern Presbyterian Church.[1]
In 1963, the Fellowship was revealed and a group named the “Concerned Presbyterians” organized against it, publishing their first “Bulletin,” raising the alarm:
“Very few laymen are aware of the fact that over the last 15 years there has been a secret organization in our Church working quietly behind the scenes to gain control of the political machinery of our denomination. This group, composed mostly of ministers, called themselves the Fellowship of St. James. This relatively small but determined group influences and seeks to control the various agencies of the courts of our Church. In recent years they have succeeded in electing enough men of their choosing to enable them to control many of the important committees of the various Church courts and to have effective majorities on the governing bodies of many of the boards, agencies, and other institutions of the church.”[2]
In his history of the PCA, Sean Lucas reproduces the counter conclusion of Dr. Peter Hobbie, a professor at Presbyterian College and defender of Dr. Thompson, that the Fellowship was a dinner party and “they were largely focused on the work of the Presbyterian of the South, which later became the PO [ed: Presbyterian Outlook]. That they discussed denomination politics there is little doubt. But their work was no secret – it was evident in the editorial policy of the PO.”[3] PCA Historian Frank J. Smith received a correspondence from Ernest Trice Thompson himself insisting “We were all active churchmen, but we didn’t draw up goals or plans for the church courts.”[4]
So was the Fellowship of St. James not a secret political caucus? Certainly, since we know about it today, the Fellowship of St. James did not remain secret about its existence. However, it undoubtedly began in secret, its membership was not public, the methods of the group were not publicized, and history only knows about it because it was revealed in 1963 and publicly recorded in the Bulletins of the Concerned Presbyterians. That a group called “The Fellowship of Concern” would form later with many of the same actors, to do what the Fellowship of St. James was said to do in private is also curious. And while they worked in and were largely in agreement with the “Presbyterian of the South,” which became the “Presbyterian Outlook,” the Fellowship was suggested as the means to accomplish goals in a confidential and organized way apart from the activities of the Presbyterian Outlook. Ultimately, Frank Smith notes: “Half a century from now when closed archives are opened the exact nature of the group will be more obvious.”[5]
We see with the Fellowship of St. James another feature of such organizations in Presbyterian History, and that is the cross-pollination between the group and public faces. This cross-pollination becomes especially evident once the existence of the secret group has been made public. After the Fellowship of St. James was made public, soon a public face named the “Fellowship of Concern” enabled a measure of legitimacy for members who desired a public voice in addition to the private planning and coordination in the courts of the church.
The Concerned Presbyterians were in turn denounced as alarmist, and were condemned by PCUS presbyteries in Tennessee and Texas. [citation needed] The Concerned Presbyterians were easier targets for formal critique, largely due to being public with their concerns. Meanwhile, while the Fellowship of St. James remained shrouded in much secrecy. This fact frustrated many conservatives who believed at certain points they were the majority, yet they did not control policy or the polity of the PCUS, and their protests against such machinations of a secret group were met with condemnations of their concerns rather than investigations into the secret group.
The Concerned Presbyterian response to an organized secret society was to organize and leave the PCUS on the belief that the administrative machinery of the denomination was hopelessly lost to a small but well-organized caucus. Eventually, Concerned Presbyterians would make up one of the four major groups founding the PCA
The Vision Caucus—“Partisanship in the PCA”
The first two decades of the PCA’s existence were not without strong disagreement between elders in the Church. There is little evidence of formal organized factions in the first fifteen years of the Church’s history. Soon, however, two competing visions for the PCA emerged. Some elders developed concerns that the denomination was not consistently living up to its confessional positions. Others believed the PCA’s original goal was to be a big tent of conservative and orthodox evangelical Christians who allow for a diversity of ministry approaches (and a certain latitude of theological conviction).
In 1987, Founding Fathers Paul Settle and Jim Baird invited fifty people in the PCA to spend time together to discuss and understand “genuine differences.”[6] The event was not to be repeated, and instead many “big steeple people” formed a new Caucus that Frank Smith called “The Vision 2000 Caucus,”[7] Paul Settle termed the “Vision Caucus,”[8] and others have referred to it as the “Original Vision Caucus.” Participation was by “invitation only.”[9]
Paul Settle was obviously distressed that the efforts at open discussion were rejected for secret politicking, as he remarked in his History of the PCA: “Partisanship reared its ugly head.” The level of direction and organization was not known until 1991, when the Presbyterian Advocate printed a copy of the Caucus’s slate of candidates for agencies and committees in the PCA.[10] It became evident now that the Vision Caucus, in the words of Settle, “composed and circulated a list that identified some men on the Nominating Committee’s slate as undesirable. Then they arranged to have their own picks placed in opposition to those they deemed unfit.”[11]
While many knew that the Vision Caucus existed, the methods, membership, and efforts were secret, giving it enough in common with the Fellowship of St. James to prompt conservative elders to form a public group in response. This group was conspicuously named “Concerned Presbyterians.” The name was obviously chosen to assert the parallel these men saw between the Fellowship of St. James and the Vision Caucus.
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