Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Monday, February 5, 2024
It appears that there no longer remains any behaviour which mainline Protestants are willing to call sexually perverse. It seems that the category of sin in sexual relations has disappeared altogether. The great old American Protestant establishment, the once wise mother church of most American Protestants, is pursuing a course of self-destruction. In Savannah respected churches with evangelical traditions are allowing practicing homosexuals to participate in leadership and even to teach in Sunday School and lead Bible studies.

The following article first appeared here on October 26, 2006. In the light of recent developments across many denominations, most notably the Church of England, it remains a most necessary and timely piece.
The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. Proverbs 14:1
The mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian) are discussing homosexuality with a view to transforming their bodies into more ‘tolerant’, more ‘diverse’, and more ‘inclusive’ organizations. This, any way, is how the advocates of the gay agenda present their programme for change in the churches.
What is the central issue? Simply this: shall homosexuality be normalized? Shall sexual relations between members of the same sex be viewed by the churches as legitimate, acceptable, even as desirable, in the same sense as are sexual relations between married people of the opposite sex? The full implementing of this principle of normalization would mean that homosexual acts would no longer be considered sinful, and practicing homosexuals would be granted full ecclesiastical equality, including the right to serve as ministers and church leaders. Further, children in the church’s educational program would not and could not be taught to prefer one “orientation” or “lifestyle” over another. Little Johnny and Suzie would be taught simply that Heather Has Two Mommies, as a proposed New York City elementary schoolbook famously and nonjudgmentally explained. Enlightened churches would define Christian virtue as loving and accepting those who are different. Conversely sin would be defined as the opposite: judging, condemning, or rejecting alternate lifestyles.
It is silly to argue that Scripture can be reconciled with these views. It can’t. The laws of God (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and the laws of nature (Romans 1:24ff), the Old Testament moral code and the New Testament law of love (1 Corinthians 6:9) unambiguously condemn homosexual acts as unnatural, corrupt, and perverse.
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Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Monday, July 10, 2023
Musicians, vocalists, and choirs have a secondary role, a subordinate role, not even a necessary role (we can sing acapella), what ideally should be a hidden role. They are there to support, encourage, and beautify the singing of the congregation. Recognizing that congregational singing is the divinely authorized element also should determine song selection.

Does the PCA in general understand the role of music in the worship of the Reformed Church? The answer must be no if our annual experience at the General Assembly gives any indication. What the Reformation revived was the congregational singing of the patristic church. The medieval church had musical instruments and choirs. They provided the music. Congregations sat mute as the “professionals’ performed. The Reformers rightly restored the singing of the congregation whether hymns (Lutherans) or psalms (Reformed) as one of five essential elements in the ordinary worship of the church. It was elevated to this place of prominence along with the reading and preaching of Scripture, prayer, and the administration of the sacraments. Congregational singing even takes on confessional status in the Westminster standards (WCF XXI.5; Directory for the Public Worship of God, “Of Singing of Psalms).
Yet year in and year out we assemble, 3000 strong, only to have the musicians, vocalists, and choirs overwhelm the gathered congregation.
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Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Friday, August 12, 2022
So it is with our sexual nature. God made us for heterosexual, monogamous marriage. That is the physiological and biological reality. That alone is the context in which sexual expression may safely take place. The lifelong union of one man to one woman alone is suited to our design. The sexual act is a procreative act. It has other dimensions, but that is its fundamental meaning, its basic biological meaning. When we make other meanings primary, or when we move sexual expression outside of marriage, we pervert it. When we “exchange the natural for the unnatural,” to use the Apostle Paul’s language, we do harm to ourselves, as when we pretend to have gills or wings (Rom 1:26,27).

How can a secular society make moral distinctions? How can it separate right from wrong? This is more of a problem than most people realize, especially in the realm of sexual ethics. A generation of “everything is normal” sex education, mixed with “everything is desirable” Hollywood sit-com and cinema seductions has morally disarmed our civilization. Politicians frame the issue as, “the freedom to love whom you choose,” which it is not. Of course we can love whomever we choose. We may love our parents, our children, and our neighbor’s children. However, we may not have erotic relations with them. The language of freedom and equality, as in “marriage equality” has added to the confusion. Can we say that any form of sexual expression, any form at all is wrong? Or must we say, as it seems we must, that various lifestyle choices are merely a matter of personal preference lying outside the categories of moral judgment? After all, who can be against freedom and equality?
Human nature
The traditional Christian view is that humanity has a God-given nature. There are those things that are consistent with human nature (e.g. breathing air with lungs; walking with feet) and others that are inconsistent (e.g. breathing underwater; winged flight). Humanity has a given design, purpose, and nature. We ignore that nature at our peril, as when we try to breathe under water or flap our arms as we leap from tall buildings.
So it is with our sexual nature. God made us for heterosexual, monogamous marriage. That is the physiological and biological reality. That alone is the context in which sexual expression may safely take place. The lifelong union of one man to one woman alone is suited to our design. The sexual act is a procreative act. It has other dimensions, but that is its fundamental meaning, its basic biological meaning. When we make other meanings primary, or when we move sexual expression outside of marriage, we pervert it. When we “exchange the natural for the unnatural,” to use the Apostle Paul’s language, we do harm to ourselves, as when we pretend to have gills or wings (Rom 1:26,27).
Christian-influenced civilizations understood this for over a millennia. The west was never in doubt – until recent times. “Everything is normal” sex education, has given us “anything goes” sexual ethics, with dire results.
Are homosexual acts natural or normal? Of course not. They are physiologically unnatural. They are “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26). As such, they are “shameless acts” driven by “dishonorable passions,” and a “debased mind” (Rom 1:28). Again, western civilization understood this for the better part of 1500 years, and its legal systems were designed to discourage this form of human degradation.
The campaign to normalize homosexuality has been successful. With the acceptance of the “gay” way, a wall came crashing down that may never again be rebuilt. What wall? The wall separating the moral from the immoral. We warned years ago that if and when homosexuality was normalized our ability to make sexual moral distinctions would vanish. Many scoffed at the suggestion.
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Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Thursday, July 7, 2022
We all know that process can be manipulated. The Pharisees were masters of external conformity combined with internal corruption. Somehow the work of the SJC must take into account the destruction that can be wrought in the life of a church by a determined minority circularizing the congregation with defamatory information while misusing and manipulating the judicial process.

In reviewing the Standing Judicial Commission’s (SJC) handling of case 2021-13, Dudt v. Northwest Georgia Presbytery, I was dismayed with the way the SJC handled the case. In its decision, the SJC reversed the unanimous decision of Northwest Georgia Presbytery which had rejected all forty allegations of error in the complaint, and behind that a majority decision of the Session of Midway Presbyterian Church. To its credit, the SJC did deny twenty-six of the forty alleged errors, but failed to deny all forty. I have carefully read the SJC decision and my dismay has deepened. My disappointment falls into four categories.
First, I wonder if the SJC is capable of recognizing the larger context within which this complaint was made. The SJC decision seems to have been made in a contextual vacuum. Was the SJC aware of how long the contentious minority that had filed the complaint had been battling with the will of the majority? Was the SJC aware of the damage that has been done to the ministry of the church as the majority must contend with the public attacks of the minority? What may seem like a premature decision by the majority seems to have been preceded by destructive behavior by the minority with whom the said elder is associated, patiently tolerated by the majority for months. Not every detail may be found in the ROC requiring that the SJC pay more attention by further investigation to the larger context.
Second, the SJC made important appeals to the lack of evidence in the Record of the Case (ROC) (e.g., p. 2169, line 6, line 8, line 30). Arguments from silence are indulged in specifications 4, 5, 6, 14, and 24. As with the previous point, additional investigation should follow when the majority affirms that which the SJC thinks it ought to see in the ROC. The benefit of the doubt, or shall we say, the presumption of innocence, should be given to the majority in the local lower courts.
Third, technical errors of process (specifications 23, 25, 30, 31, 33, 34) should not be given undue weight, particularly in light of the larger context. The “weightier matters” of church unity and peace trump minor details of process.
Fourth, the SJC failed to deal adequately with the problem of officers and members circularizing the congregation. The concurring decision recognizes this problem and explicitly raises it twice:
It would be unfortunate for anyone to conclude, that because this Appeal was sustained, it is appropriate for a Session member to email his congregation expressing disagreement with a Session decision. Such conduct would rarely be wise or appropriate (p. 2182, lines 16-18). There are few things that disturb the peace and unity of a church more than individual elders bringing to public attention their disagreements with Session decisions (p. 2182, lines 46-47).
This is the heart of the issue. The church has a process by which minority opinions can be voiced. An elder has the right to submit a minority report from the session to the congregation. He does not have the right to send private communication without the knowledge of the session, especially one which contradicts, and in the contradiction denigrates the session. I fear that the SJC has unleased the furies of division and conflict throughout the PCA by its failure to deal with the bigger picture of the factionalism and schism that appeared to be on the Midway session.
Moreover, the SJC decision has seriously injured the ministry of a veteran, faithful and devout minister. He has sustained constant, false, and destructive attacks, from an organized and determined minority. At the foundation of their bitter opposition was an orderly process whereby the session voted to nominate assistant minsters to serve as associate ministers, and the congregation voted to concur with the recommendation to call the assistant ministers as associates. The minority did not like the decisions or the processes, though both were in order. They simply refused to submit to the majority. Among this hostile minority are those who have published online “The Midway Guardian,” continually attacking the minister, session, and members of Midway.
We all know that process can be manipulated. The Pharisees were masters of external conformity combined with internal corruption. Somehow the work of the SJC must take into account the destruction that can be wrought in the life of a church by a determined minority circularizing the congregation with defamatory information while misusing and manipulating the judicial process.
Terry Johnson is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Ga.
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Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Monday, July 4, 2022

The June 24 Dobbs decision is not a pro-life decision. It is a pro-constitution (in which there is no right to abortion) and anti-court decisions made by judicial fiat (like Roe v. Wade). It restores the question of abortion to the people and their elected representatives. It is the first check in what has been a tidal wave of victories for liberal, secular, progressive ideology stretching back over decades.

The June 24 reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision signals the first successful counterattack in the decades long war against reality. We might also designate it a war against women as women. At the heart of the progressive/liberal ideology is the intention to eliminate all distinctions between men and women in favor of typical male interests and inclinations. Men stereotypically prioritize career over family and sexual adventurism over sexual fidelity. Women, they say, must be able to do the same. Natural, biological, physiological, and emotional priorities of real women must be jettisoned for the superior (?) values of men. The transgender movement is the logical and absurd culmination of that trajectory: men (those with male bodies) can actually be women, and women (those with female bodies) can actually be men. The reality of biological sex (gender), that is unalterable in the real world, nevertheless, cannot be allowed to limit the “expressive self,” one’s own definition of what and who one is.
The roots of this conflict with reality can be found in the modern feminist movement. Women can never be equal with men, it is argued, if pregnancy is allowed to disrupt one’s aspirations. Men are able to participate in sexual promiscuity without consequences. Their futures, their plans are not at-risk when they recklessly consummate their lusts/desires. However, women may be hindered from getting their high school diploma, or their college degree, or promotion on the job because of an unwanted pregnancy. They are not free to fulfill their sexual lives like men are. Because in a post-Freudian world sexual fulfillment is the chief end of man, this biological reality, it is argued, is intolerable.
The only solution to this inequity is to grant women the right to terminate their pregnancies. Only then will they be able to pursue both sexual fulfillment as well as social and vocational success on equal terms with men. Thus, two monumental movements joined hands in common cause: the sexual revolution and the feminist movement. From these then flow their offspring: the full LBGTQ+ agenda.
What reality is being overlooked? Start with the obvious: the child targeted for abortion. Once conception takes place, there now exists in the real world a distinctive human being. It has a unique genetic code that differs from that of the mother and father. All that separates it from an adult human is time and nutrition. We all once were fetal humans.
Remarkably this reality is almost always ignored by the pro-abortion movement. Their entire argument is for the rights of the woman, her control over her own body, and so on. The rights of the unborn are dropped en toto. The human life developing in the womb simply doesn’t exist except as a thing to eliminate.
Is there more? Yes. The real-world differences between men and women are ignored. Men do not and cannot get pregnant. A human life cannot grow within a man. This most glorious of human phenomena is limited to women. He cannot provide the nurturing environment in which that development takes place. He does not and cannot develop emotion bonds with that developing life. He does not and cannot develop the maternal instinct to protect and provide for the child that is growing within her. No amount of philosophical sophistry can remove this most basic difference between men and women.
What this means is that women can never engage in sexual relations as recklessly as do men. This is true if for no other reason than the woman gets the abortion, not the man. She suffers the painful emotional, physical, and spiritual consequences of that abortion, he does not. Abortion may reduce some consequences of pregnancy (e.g., interference with one’s plans) but creates others at the same time. She suffers the sadness, the sorrow, the regret, and the feelings of guilt for killing the baby that would have been.
The June 24 Dobbs decision is not a pro-life decision. It is a pro-constitution (in which there is no right to abortion) and anti-court decisions made by judicial fiat (like Roe v. Wade). It restores the question of abortion to the people and their elected representatives. It is the first check in what has been a tidal wave of victories for liberal, secular, progressive ideology stretching back over decades. It will force the nation to discuss the differences between men and women, the biological and other consequences of sexual relations (even that there are consequences), what abortion actually is, and what is the best environment in which conceptions should take place (i.e., marriage), and children should be reared (with a mother and father).
We will join that discussion, and hope to see good come from it. When humanity wars against reality, reality always wins. Maybe this judicial counter-attack will make that fact more apparent.
Terry Johnson is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Ga.
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