Written by C.N. Willborn |
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
We live in a world of absolute doubt and uncertainty about a way forward, the reality of truth, and meaning of life. The church, however, responds with hope….Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, for He is God incarnate. Only God can be all of those things.

Years ago, I heard a leading academic figure argue his case for a tolerant environment on his historic campus. He then went on to say that his university would not tolerate intolerance. Do not miss the irony of that statement. Ironic as it is, we live in an age that boasts of “tolerance.” With that comes a vehement distaste for any claim of exclusivity. That is particularly true when Christians make exclusive claims about Christ and salvation.
The Bible is replete with exclusive claims. The antithesis of life and death are foundational to the Christian faith. The way of life and the way of death run through the Bible, illustrated in places such as Cain’s sacrifice of unbelief versus Abel’s sacrifice of faith and the juxtaposition of Esau and Jacob. Jesus Himself expressed the life/death model as the narrow and broad way—one way leads to life and one way to destruction (Matt. 7:13–14). The narrow way is personified in Jesus Christ when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). This exclusive claim can be found in extrabiblical literature from the Didache (second century AD), to historic creeds and confessions, to the present time.
But a question arises at this point: How is Jesus “the way, and the truth, and the life”? There are two answers to the question, but they are inseparable. There is the objective answer and the subjective answer. Objectively, He is exclusively the way, the truth, and the life because He is God incarnate. Subjectively, His salvation is appropriated to individuals through faith in who He is and what He has done.
Considered objectively, Jesus in His person and work is “the way” because He is God. To the Jewish leadership of His day, this was an inflammatory concept. “I am” was a stout claim to deity, and they knew it (John 10:10–33). He is the way because He is God but also because He is man. He took on flesh and became the way out of the mess in which Adam landed us (Rom. 5). The way of righteousness and holiness, which Adam did not follow, Jesus followed perfectly. He could take Adam’s place, for He was born of a woman (Gal. 4:4). His perfect sacrifice could bear the sins of many, for He was God (Isa. 53:12; 1 Peter 1:24). In Him, man could be reconciled to God (Rom. 5:11; 1 Cor. 5:18–21). Only the God-man could be the way.
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Written by Mrs. Sarah White |
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Olympia’s war-torn world seems far removed from us, but it is always worth remembering that long-ago sisters in the faith risked displacement and death for the teachings we take for granted. 

Olympia Morata was born in 1526 or 1527 to a university instructor in the Italian city of Ferrara. She was blessed with a father who took the time to personally educate his children and also employed language tutors for the young girl. With her natural intellectual abilities, Olympia thrived; she was fluent in Latin and Greek and had authored pieces on classical poetry and rhetoric by the time she was a teenager. She also worked as a companion to a young Italian duchess, spending happy years discussing books together.
Although Olympia’s father was associated with the short-lived Italian Reformation, Olympia did not always love God’s Word. Dismissal from her court position prompted her to rethink her priorities. She later reflected, “Even as I was exalted to the skies by everyone’s praise, I realized that I lacked all learning and that I was ignorant.” As a young adult, she began applying herself to the Scriptures and to Reformed theology. Her newfound rootedness in Christ sustained her through the devastating loss of her father. Not long after, she married a German reformer named Andrew Grunthler who was studying at the university. Life was becoming dangerous for Italian Protestants by this time, so together the couple traveled over the Alps and settled in Germany, where Olympia became familiar with more of Luther’s writings and circulated them to friends back in Italy. While her husband worked as a village doctor, Olympia spent her time educating her little brother, who had accompanied them, and even corresponded with theologians like Philip Melanchthon. She also composed poems in Greek, including some translations of the Psalms which drew praise from literary circles across Europe.
The family’s life was not free of sorrows, however. For one, it seems that Olympia and her husband were unable to have children. All we know of this was what she wrote, slightly cryptically, to a friend: “The children [poems] I bore on the very day and hour I received your letter, I am sending to you…I have borne no other children, and so far have no expectation of bearing any.”
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Written by Rev. Benjamin Glaser |
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
If your defense of engaging in public activities on the Sabbath is it helps me relax and unwind and yet in doing so it means thousands must lose their opportunity to do the same is that really loving your neighbor as yourself?

I’m sure you, like me, have sat through an innumerable number of exams at presbytery or in committee, whether they be for Licentiates, new ordinands, or transfers. More often than not when it comes time to state exceptions to the Westminster Confession there are two that seem to come in like rote repeat: WLC #109 on mental images (though this has now spread to allowing false images of Christ for children in popular books, I’ve written on that elsewhere) and WCF 21.8 regarding the so-called Recreation clause. In my little foray into Seventeen82 today I want to talk a little on that phrase, what it means historically, and why the reasoning behind the taking of the exception is based on either a simple mistake or a camel’s nose to allow all sorts of things that violate the Sabbath into the confessional tent. Hope that’s enough to get your eyes up.
For those who may be unawares here is the context of WCF 21.7-8:
vii. Is it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week: and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath.
viii. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.
First of all if you are going to take this as an exception you need to name more than just this portion of the Confession of Faith. WSC #60 and WLC #117 say the same thing and defend the doctrine of WCF 21.7-8, so don’t leave them out when naming your exceptions.
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Written by John Cook and R. J. Gore |
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Editor’s Note: The document below is co-authored by Drs. John Cook and R. J. Gore and was read before the meeting of Second Presbytery by Dr. Cook on August 13 at the Due West ARP Church, Due West, SC. The document was also placed in the minutes of Second Presbytery and specified for distribution. Dr. Cook (retired) was pastor of the Ballston Center ARP Church (NY); the Thomson ARP Church (GA), the Peachtree Corners ARP Church (GA); the White Oak ARP Church (GA); and he also served an executive position on the staff of World Witness (ARP). Dr. Gore is a tenured professor at Erskine Seminary where he has served as Professor of Theology for 30 years, and was Dean for 20 years.

As members of the Minister and His Work Committee that investigated the allegations against Mr. Chuck Wilson, and as members of Second Presbytery, which has been accused, convicted, and judged, without trial or without an opportunity to answer the allegations against us, or to repent of any wrongdoing, we want to present an account, for the record, of how the Second Presbytery MHWC handled this matter. Obviously, the scope of this investigation prevents a complete coverage of every issue, but we have tried to show the overall manner in which the MHWC conducted this matter.
As we read the report of the Special Committee (Synod Index #11), we found it contained numerous untruths, falsely assigning motives to the MHWC and Presbytery, and even slander against brothers in Christ. While the Scripture tells us to, “be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3), we found nothing in the report, or in the ultimate action of General Synod to dissolve Second Presbytery, that sought to be faithful to this Scripture. Contrary to Scripture, and our Book of Discipline, which states that the ultimate purpose of church discipline is the restoration of the person in sin, instead we read and witnessed a deliberate rush to judgement on the motivations of MHWC and Second Presbytery, with a goal to divide an entire 224 year-old presbytery over false and slanderous accusations.
The MHWC, and Second Presbytery, has been accused of, “covering the highest forms of child abuse,” and, “gaslighting witnesses,” and engaging in, “misguided shenanigans of men under the sway of a man who did not have the church of Christ in his heart,” and, “attacking the whistleblower,” and other charges verbally on the floor of Synod, and then in writing on a public internet news blog.
To set the stage, let us remember how this matter began in Second Presbytery. As most Presbyteries, the summer meeting of Second Presbytery was scheduled for the Tuesday morning before the opening of General Synod in June, 2022. The agenda for this meeting had been set by the Executive Committee, as per usual procedure. However, on the Friday night before Synod, literally at the 11th hour, an email was sent by Mr. Matt Miller, a minister member of the court, to 40 or so members of Second Presbytery, making allegations against Mr. Chuck Wilson, at that time also a minister member of the Presbytery. MHWC had no prior notice of this action, and therefore, no time for discussion before Presbytery would meet. Mr. Miller then presented these allegations publicly at the Presbytery meeting in open session. After lengthy discussion by the Presbytery, including how this public exposure of sin was contrary to Scripture and the BOD, the matter was referred to the MHWC, per the Presbytery Manual of Procedure. This was the setting for how the MHWC became involved. It was the directive of the court that MHWC was to investigate this matter and bring recommendations back to the Presbytery.
Soon after this meeting of Presbytery, Mr. Tony Locke, another minister member of the court, charged Mr. Miller with unbiblical actions in publicly exposing sin and making allegations while by-passing the steps of Matthew 18, and the procedures set forth in the BOD. The MHWC now had three separate but interrelated matters before us: 1) The original allegations against Mr. Wilson, 2) The unbiblical manner in which these allegations were reported to the court, and, 3) The allegations against Mr. Miller.
The MHWC decided to handle these matters one at a time. The committee believed the clearest matter to address was the public manner in which the allegations against Mr. Wilson were presented to the court without the preliminary steps of Matthew 18. (We learned later that our MHWC and the BOD had been undermined by other members of the Presbytery, who had told Mr. Miller to by-pass the preliminary steps of discipline because the MHWC was in the pocket of Mr. Wilson, that they would protect him, and they would not act in a just manner. Therefore, he should tell these things to the church.) Let it be clear, “whistleblower” is a secular term. MHWC did not, “attack the whistleblower,” neither did we in any way discount the severity of the allegations that were originally presented, only the unbiblical manner in which they were presented to the court. Many brothers left the Presbytery meeting at Synod commenting that no one would ever be safe from public attack if the manner in which these charges were brought would be allowed to stand.
Consequently, Mr. Miller was confronted by the MHWC and was called to repent for violating Scripture and the BOD in by-passing the preliminary steps of church discipline. Contrary to the Special Committee report, there was no “deal” made by the MHWC. Rather, Mr. Miller asked the MHWC what he could do to have this matter not go through a trial. The MHWC, in response to his request, gave him a list of sins and errors that we believed he had committed. If he were willing to confess and repent of these, the MHWC was willing to recommend that this matter be concluded with a censure, and to forego a trial, as is allowed by the Book of Discipline. All of this would have been subject to the decision of Presbytery, as the MHWC was not a commission. We believed this was a proper Scriptural thing to do, as any discipline ceases when an offender repents. Far from being an, “attack on the whistleblower,” this was a call for a brother to acknowledge his error of actions and repent.
Directly related to this matter is the third item with which we had to deal, the complaint against Mr. Miller by Mr. Tony Locke. Another charge against our committee is that we allowed Mr. Locke to, “withdraw his complaint,” but we didn’t allow Mr. Miller to withdraw his actions. In reality, Mr. Locke filed a number of allegations, some of which were later discovered to be incorrect. Mr. Locke acknowledged these errors and they were withdrawn by him from the MHWC investigation. These allegations were made only to the MHWC and the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery. In contrast, it was not possible for Mr. Miller to withdraw public allegations.
Now let us turn to the heart of the matter, which is the allegations against Mr. Wilson. Again, there are several facets to these allegations: the testimony of a local gym manager, the testimony of the two Wilson daughters, and the testimony of other family members who lived in the Wilson home. Again, while these are items that are interrelated, they are also separate. Each witness was interviewed on video tape. These tapes were all turned over to the Synod in their entirety.
Further, all the witnesses were treated with courtesy, and their testimony was believed as truthful by the MHWC. The witnesses were questioned by the committee only to clarify the particulars of their allegations and to get more specific details. In contrast, “Gaslighting” is a term used to describe, “an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. Gaslighting may end up with persons doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.” This charge has been made against MHWC with no supporting evidence. We reject this slanderous allegation.
The manager of a local gym in Clemson, testified to inappropriate talk and coarse jesting on the part of Mr. Wilson. Her testimony is a matter of record. Her testimony was also believed to be truthful by the committee. However, Scripture says there must be 2 or 3 witnesses against an elder. She was asked if anyone else at the gym could corroborate her testimony. She said there were several. Yet, no one ever came forward, even after repeated requests by MHWC. Therefore, while the committee believed her testimony, we did not have the Scriptural basis to act further on this matter based on only one witness. However, her testimony was taken into consideration as part of our discussion on the overall accusations against Mr. Wilson.
The core of the allegations against Mr. Wilson came from his two daughters. They appeared with advocates when they gave testimony. Again, the women were listened to respectfully and courteously by MHWC. Questions were asked to clarify some issues. Hopefully, the reader will appreciate the delicate and personal matters involved. It is safe to say the members of MHWC were appalled and grieved by the testimony that was given against their father, a teaching elder who has been a brother in the Lord, and with whom we served together in Second Presbytery. Following the testimony of the two daughters, the other family members who lived and grew up in the Wilson home requested to meet with the MHWC. Their testimony is also a matter of record. However, it should be noted that the testimony of these three did not agree with or support the testimony previously given.
Finally, MHWC met with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. This was planned to be a meeting with only Mr. Wilson, but they requested that Mrs. Wilson be included to hear the allegations and what the MHWC had to say. At this meeting, Mr. Wilson was presented with the charges and testimony against him. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilson categorically denied the allegations. This meeting is also a matter of record.
Therefore, because of the conflicting testimonies, and the denial of all the allegations by Mr. Wilson, MHWC believed that if this matter went to trial as things were at that time, it was doubtful in our minds that a conviction could have been reached by a court. Consequently, there were two problems the MHWC sought to address in moving forward. First, the conflicting testimony of the members of the family, along with the age of the allegations (stretching back decades) created procedural challenges. Second, the allegations had not been through the preliminary process of Matthew 18 as required by the Book of Discipline.
Therefore, MHWC proposed having the various family members meet with a professional counselor, Dr. Jim Newheiser, a highly respected professor at RTS Charlotte, author/counselor, and one who was neutral as he had no previous relationship with Mr. Wilson or any of the parties involved in this case. We believed he would be able to use his expertise to conduct the Matthew 18 meetings with the family to get deeper into the various testimonies, gain greater clarity, and recommend a course of action back to MHWC. However, this proposal was refused by some family members who took offense to our recommendation, wrongly assuming our committee did not believe their testimony, and/or the accusations against their father, Chuck Wilson, and that we were assigning some measure of guilt to them. This was not the case.
It should also be noted, that throughout this entire time, members of MHWC were receiving calls that accused us of, “covering” Mr. Wilson, and, “letting him off,” and, “passing him information.” For the record, nothing could be further from the truth. One of our committee members worked for a large corporation and part of his job was handling sexual abuse complaints. He regularly advised us on staying compliant with the law. Further, MHWC took a vow of confidentiality, and on several occasions this vow was reaffirmed. Other lies were circulated about our work, including that the Wilsons were worshipping at the Chairman’s church, and that the Chairman was blocking any action against Mr. Wilson. All these accusations against the MHWC are false and slanderous.
Therefore, because of the high feelings toward Mr. Wilson in Second Presbytery, and because of the prejudice created in the Presbytery by the original public exposure of allegations, and because of the expressions of mistrust of the MHWC, and because of all the other issues in this matter that had caused upset in the Presbytery, we recommended that Presbytery refer this entire matter to General Synod to assume original jurisdiction. This was not an attempt to cover up or absolve Mr. Wilson, but rather to send this volatile matter to a more unbiased body.
In order to bring this statement to a conclusion, let it be noted that the MHWC or Second Presbytery did not, “cover child abuse of the highest forms,” nor did we, “gaslight witnesses,” nor did we engage in, “shenanigans,” nor did we, “attack the whistleblower,” nor were we, “under the sway of a man who did not have the church of Christ in his heart.” It was made clear by remarks made on the floor of Synod, that only a minimal number of members of the Special Committee even listened to, “some of the tapes,” and that the entire Special Committee had only met once or twice to draft its conclusions and report. It was also made known that the final report was drafted by an unknown author(s).
Yet, Second Presbytery was dissolved, or as has been written, “a 224-year-old presbytery will cease to exist,” on the basis of such paltry work. It was said and written that, “Second Presbytery is irrevocably broken and needs to be dissolved.” But how can any Christian say such a thing? Do we not believe in the work of the Holy Spirit? Do we not believe the power of the Word of God to effect change in believers? Can we in the ARP church wonder why our denomination is in its current condition if we truly believe and teach Christians can be, “irrevocably broken?”
Therefore, we want to go on record that in all our investigations and recommendations, we sought to abide by the Scripture and the Standards of the ARP Church, in spite of the conflicting opinions of parliamentarians and other members of sister courts of the church. Our hope throughout the investigation was that our preliminary investigations, charged to us by the Presbytery, would have been useful in a trial to be held by a court, that victims would have found justice, and the guilty would have been brought to repentance.
Finally, it is our hope that this document will be a clarification of how the MHWC conducted itself, to present the truth of our actions, and to explain why we came to the conclusions that we did. We welcome any discussion of these matters which may help effect reconciliation.
John D. CookR. J. Gore
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
I’ve known preachers to scratch their heads at more “theological” sections of scripture wondering how they’re going to “apply” the text. Show us Jesus, that is application. If people leave seeing and savouring Christ more than they came in, you have achieved very practical application for their lives. Don’t let the need for application rob you of the riches of the text.

If people agree with my concerns about what I’m calling the discipleship crisis, it’s fairly common that they finger our preaching as the culprit. I think there’s something to this, which is what this post is about, but I also think it’s an easy mark. Not only is there some great preaching out there, but I don’t think it directly correlates to more fulsome Christian formation.
I have a high view of preaching, it is encountering the living Christ in the pages of the texts as your Pastors expound the words to you. Preaching is not primarily about instruction in the faith, though that is one of its secondary purposes. I also think we’re naïve if we think half an hour of instruction every week will cut through a bombardment of messages. That’s not how formation works (more on that in the future).
But we can accuse our preaching as a culprit. I’ve sat through preaching that was ‘thin’ or essentially a TED talk, or more of a testimony. That’s not great, but my concern today is with the way we think about application: we both over and under apply the text, because we get application in the wrong position. If application is the cart we place it before the horse.
Overapplying
I don’t mean in the wrong position within a message, but in our thinking. Essentially, I mean this: preaching is not about application, it’s about seeing Jesus. Our preaching should show people Jesus in the text—and I won’t get into it here, but we should find Jesus where the text intends us to find him rather than pasting on a turn at the end—but I think we often are thinking about how to apply this to people in front of us.
“There wasn’t much practical application,” we might critique. That can be a problem as I’ll turn to in a moment, but my biggest concern is this: if you make Christ look glorious that is practical application.
We need preaching to open our eyes to the truths of the world, the most central of which is the beauty of King Jesus. Don’t just tell people he’s wonderful, show them he is. Wonder teaches us to see, and our ability to see the truth will grow and be shaped by seeing Jesus.
I’ve known preachers to scratch their heads at more ‘theological’ sections of scripture wondering how they’re going to ‘apply’ the text. Show us Jesus, that is application. If people leave seeing and savouring Christ more than they came in, you have achieved very practical application for their lives. Don’t let the need for application rob you of the riches of the text.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
The fact that we are fallen does not mean that we no longer have the ability to think. We are all prone to error, but we also can learn to reason in an orderly, logical, and cogent fashion. It is my desire to see Christians think with the utmost cogency and clarity. So, as a matter of discipline, it is much to our benefit to study and master the elementary principles of reasoning so that we can, by the help of God the Holy Spirit, overcome to a certain degree the ravages of sin upon our thinking.

Several years ago, I was asked to give a convocation address at a major theological seminary in America. In that address, I spoke about the critical role of logic in biblical interpretation, and I pleaded for seminaries to include courses on logic in their required curricula. In almost any seminary’s course of study, students are required to learn something of the original biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek. They are taught to look at the historical background of the text, and they learn basic principles of interpretation. These are all important and valuable skills for being good stewards of the Word of God. However, the main reason why errors in biblical interpretation occur is not because the reader lacks a knowledge of Hebrew or of the situation in which the biblical book was written. The number one cause for misunderstanding the Scriptures is making illegitimate inferences from the text. It is my firm belief that these faulty inferences would be less likely if biblical interpreters were more skilled in basic principles of logic.
Let me give an example of the kind of faulty inferences I have in mind. I doubt I have ever had a discussion on the question of God’s sovereign election without someone quoting John 3:16 and saying, “But doesn’t the Bible say that ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’“? I immediately agree that the Bible says that. If we were to translate that truth into logical propositions, we would say that all who believe will have eternal life, and no one who has eternal life will perish, because perishing and eternal life are polar opposites in terms of the consequences of belief. However, this text says absolutely nothing about human ability to believe in Jesus Christ. It tells us nothing about who will believe. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Here we have a universal negative that describes ability.
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As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did.

What is a neo-Confederate, and why is their presence among us a problem? Such were my thoughts on reading Mrs. Nancy French’s statement to the Deseret Times that her family left their Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation because it was “brimming with neo-Confederates,” at least some of whom confronted her at communion. If she means by that (as I have read elsewhere), that people were harassing her for adopting an Ethiopian, then I say ‘shame on you’ to such people; and well might they ponder Numbers 12[1] and fear lest God’s wrath burn similarly against them.
But then if that is what is meant, where is the neo-Confederate angle? Why not simply say ‘racist?’ Hateful prejudice is by no means limited to neo-Confederates (whomever they are), and without an elaboration on who they are it is not clear why it should be regarded as an inherent trait of them at all, much less the essential one. (Then too, I should like to hear the perspective of the alleged ‘neo-Confederates,’ for fairness’ sake, and find myself very doubtful that a church would allow its members to cause a racist scene during communion without promptly imposing strict discipline.)
The Sunday after I read her remarks I worshipped at a PCA church with a Confederate flag above a gravestone in its churchyard, a church which is also working to establish closer relations with a nearby black church and which supports missions to the Cherokee. I have also worshipped at a church with parishioners who had the Confederate flag as their front license tag, and which has supported church plants among the local Latin population, as well as the first Indian-American plant in Fairfax Co., Virginia, and which has had interns from such places as Taiwan, China, and Brazil. At some points all of its interns have been foreigners or of non-European descent, and there are people there with adopted Ethiopian kids. I have had some interesting conversation about some of the writing of R. L. Dabney (a former Confederate officer) with one of the elders, and I know a man there who has portraits of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on his walls, and with whom the phrase “unreconstructed Southerner” is the highest praise; yet when I watched the film Hidden Figures with him, he was appalled at the mistreatment the main characters received on account of racial hatred.
I’ll hazard that such people would qualify as ‘neo-Confederate’ to people like Mrs. French, if only because they retain reverence for their forebears who lived and fought in the Confederacy, and yet I know of no evidence of prejudice on their parts, and such evidence as exists points the other way. Racism is not an inherent part of honoring the Confederacy, for one can honor those who were part of it without approving all that they did. One can reverence one’s ancestors out of instinctual loyalty, simply because they are one’s forebears; and one can at the same time be critical of their behavior and distinguish between those deeds which are good and worthy of emulation, and those which are sinful and ought to be shunned.
Such an attitude of primal acceptance of the person with a critical position toward his deeds is thoroughly Christian. It is a commonplace of our faith that we distinguish between people and their behavior, that we love the sinner and hate the sin. It is on that point in regard to this matter of ‘neo-Confederates’ that one perceives one of the matters in which many common evangelicals have a radically different perspective than the influential set among us.
On this matter the perspective of our famous people is largely that of the influential people in American society at large. That is, the late Confederacy is regarded as a thing so heinous that all positive regard for it ought to be purged from the present. There is a prominent campaign at present to whitewash history of the Confederacy and the Old South, and to engage in damnatio memoriae against those individuals who were in any way involved with them by driving the honor of them from both church and society. In civil society monuments are removed from courthouse grounds, the names of army bases changed, and companies and entertainers drop all reference to the South because of its (now long past) association with slavery. In the church similar things happen: First Presbyterian Columbia, South Carolina removes James Henley Thornwell’s name from its library, the Gospel Coalition publishes articles saying “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause,” and Mrs. French laments neo-Confederates among us, and in so doing tacitly assumes people will understand that tolerating such neo-Confederates is a moral fault so severe as to justify leaving one’s church on account of it.
The message is clear: slavery was a sin so enormous and corrosive as to taint all who came into contact with it so long as time endures, and to commend their condemnation by people today. It is a sort of social/historical version of the legal concept of attainder by ‘corruption of blood,’ that judgment in which the heirs of a criminal were forever denied their inheritance because of his crimes. Well might we call this contemporary phenomenon ‘social attainder of corruption of civil institution,’ wherein a society that allows a sinful thing thereby transfers all the guilt of it to all its citizens in perpetuity. There are some who have been caught in this movement of historical cleansing who do not go so far as that, but I have read people write as if there were no Christians in the South before the abolition of slavery, some small antislavery sects like Quakers and converted natives and slaves excepted. I have heard people argue that the theoretical approval of slavery ipso facto proves the individuals who did so are hypocrites,[2] and that anyone’s willing participation in a society that allowed it works a corruption by guilt of association that ought to make them persona non grata. Their sole standard for judging the sincerity of past believers is not any scriptural virtue like the presence of faith or good works, but where they stand viz. slavery or other questions of ‘racial justice.’
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did. I honor my Virginia ancestors of the 1860s because it is a natural, proper human impulse, and because I recognize that I would not exist without them. But in so doing I simultaneously regret their sins and think that losing the war was God’s just punishment on the South for its sins associated with slavery. This approach that recognizes that human sin means all people and societies have glaring faults and does not think in simple black-and-white terms of ‘reject or condemn’ on the basis of a single present litmus test is no doubt offensive to those that want to exult themselves cheaply by hating a class whom it is fashionable to hate. But it is the right approach, and the only one that allows us to actually to study and learn from history rather than merely engaging in a hamartiography that looks to the past only to find something to condemn in the present. And it is the only approach that prevents us being caught up in a spirit of social revolution that seeks to wholly divorce us from the past, the spirit of the French Revolution that says ‘the past was wholly bad, let’s start afresh with Year One.’[3]
There is another respect in which I find her disapproval of ‘neo-Confederates’ rather curious, and that is the cultural and historical disconnect that it betrays. The lady lives in Tennessee, which was a Confederate state, and which currently regards “Robert E. Lee Day,” “Confederate Decoration Day,”  and “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” as official state “days of special observance” that are to be observed “with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates” (Tennessee Code 15-2-101). The PCA itself is a direct descendant of the now-defunct Presbyterian Church in the United States, which first formed as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America in 1861.
For the lady to express bewilderment that people in a church descended from the Confederate presbyterian church in a former Confederate state would retain some reverence for the Confederacy is curious indeed. It is as if she took up residence in New England and joined a congregationalist church that dated to the 1600s, only to remark one day that she was amazed at how blue-blooded, Yankee, and puritanical the people were there.[4] One feels that the locals might justly ask, ‘Pray tell, madam, what kind of people did you think you would find here?’
But all of this does not have the emotional disappointment that is inflicted when we consider that Mrs. French has publicly argued for more civility in these polarized times in which we live. Her recent book (co-written with Curtis Chang), The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, is based on a curriculum produced by Chang, Russell Moore, and her husband David that “helps reframe our political identify away from the ‘what’ of political positions and towards the ‘how’ of being centered on Jesus.” I will not generally appraise that effort now, though Aaron Renn has some interesting thoughts on it here (spoiler: the project is bankrolled by leftist infidels).
I do however find it a bit much to swallow when someone argues for civility in some forums and then exposes fellow professing believers to public opprobrium in others—all the more where that argument for civility occurs as part of an alliance with people who wish to fundamentally alter (and thereby destroy) our faith, the unbelieving financiers Renn mentions. By opprobrium I do not mean criticism, but that dismissal with a word that appears in the Deseret Times. She takes it for granted that everyone knows that being ‘neo-Confederate’ is wrong and that such people can be summarily dismissed to a newspaper belonging to the Mormon communion, which communion is, on the view of orthodoxy, heretical. (Which fact Mrs. French acknowledges.)[5]
Being unfamiliar with the particulars, I do not discount that Mrs. French may have been mistreated at her PCA church;[6] if so, shame on those who did so, and they ought to repent. But I do think that casually dismissing such people before heretics[7] is the wrong response, especially where it occurs in an interview in which she is otherwise praised for being gracious to opponents and when she otherwise argues for respect in spite of disagreement. And in all this we see that division of perspective that appears between the influential set and the commoners, and which is so much troubling evangelical churches just now. I happen to agree with Mrs. French on certain points – I long ago sickened at ‘do you support Trump?’ being the litmus test of acceptability by both sides – and I am far from thinking that contemporary affairs can be fully understood in an ‘elites vs. the people’ framework or that either faction is wholly right or wrong. But they are definitely distinct groups with distinct and sometimes clashing perspectives, as is shown here, groups that ae sometimes unable or unwilling to understand each other. And while I understand why the elites disapprove certain trends in contemporary Christendom, I wish they would not respond by moving left into the territory of the inexplicable, the hobnobbing with enemies of righteousness and truth[8] and soliciting money from infidels; especially when this is done while claiming to be the true, unmoving guardians of conservative politics and Christian faith.[9]
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 
[1] This chapter recounts how Moses’s brother and sister Aaron and Miriam “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (v. 1), and were subsequently rebuked by God (v. 8), with Miriam also being stricken by leprosy in punishment (vv. 10-15). Cush is the historic term for Ethiopia in scripture, hence they were angry he had married an Ethiopian. I.e., God who punished them for their ethnic prejudice in their day is apt to do likewise with those who hold a similar attitude in our day regarding adoptees of Ethiopians.
[2] Hardly anything new. The songwriter “Stephen Foster enlivened abolitionist meetings by denouncing churches that did not censure slavery unequivocally as ‘combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers,’” saying “the Methodist Church was ‘more corrupt than any house of ill fame in New York.’” The Mind of the Master Class by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, p. 485
[3] Hence Herman Bavinck speaks of the sin of inconstancy being “manifested in the antihistorical sense—in the perpetual reconstruction of history that tears people from their own history, from tradition, from the inheritance of previous generations. The result is a loss of piety and a severing of the bonds of the past (revolution) in exchange for subjective, self-pleasing egocentricity and individualism” (Reformed Ethics, Vol. I, p. 126). The revolutionary ‘cleanse the past’ spirit is especially a mark of collectivist political parties like socialists and Communists, and so it seems as if this contradicts Bavinck’s talk of it ending in individualism. The answer (if I can anticipate Bavinck’s thought) is that the political/cultural effort to dispense with the past by collectivist parties ends in the individuals affected being deprived of a larger heritage and therefore, nature abhorring a vacuum, turning their interests inward to self-seeking (the section on inconstancy occurs in a larger section on “sins that take pleasure in form” beginning on p. 124). The observations of Dutch historian Groen van Prinsterer (an influence on Bavinck) on the nature of revolutionary ideas in his Unbelief and Revolution are immensely helpful on this point, and anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary trends is recommended to peruse them, as has been argued by others.
[4] Given the current state of New England society, I fear that in such a case this puritanical streak would be rather social than theological in nature, the zeal for certain leftist causes rather than that of Christ.
[5] In her book Ghosted, p. 123
[6] She mentions people writing her church saying she and Mr. French were closet Mormons for supporting Mitt Romney and asking the church to disciple them, though I cannot tell if this was while she was in the PCA. Ibid.
[7] It is noteworthy that one of the supporters of the After Party project is the Trinity Forum, in which David French and Russell Moore serve as fellows, and which has elsewhere presented Mormons as Christians, notably in its report “Christianity, Pluralism, and Public Life in the United States: Insights from Christian Leaders” (p. 52), something it extends to members of the Roman communion and the (alas) unfaithful Episcopal Church as well.
[8] Russell Moore and David French both appear in atheist Rob Reiner’s documentary God and Country.
[9] E.g. at about 2:40 here, where Joe Scarborough claims it was not for the most part Mrs. French who moved, but her critics, a point on which see largely agrees.
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did.

What is a neo-Confederate, and why is their presence among us a problem? Such were my thoughts on reading Mrs. Nancy French’s statement to the Deseret Times that her family left their Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation because it was “brimming with neo-Confederates,” at least some of whom confronted her at communion. If she means by that (as I have read elsewhere), that people were harassing her for adopting an Ethiopian, then I say ‘shame on you’ to such people; and well might they ponder Numbers 12[1] and fear lest God’s wrath burn similarly against them.
But then if that is what is meant, where is the neo-Confederate angle? Why not simply say ‘racist?’ Hateful prejudice is by no means limited to neo-Confederates (whomever they are), and without an elaboration on who they are it is not clear why it should be regarded as an inherent trait of them at all, much less the essential one. (Then too, I should like to hear the perspective of the alleged ‘neo-Confederates,’ for fairness’ sake, and find myself very doubtful that a church would allow its members to cause a racist scene during communion without promptly imposing strict discipline.)
The Sunday after I read her remarks I worshipped at a PCA church with a Confederate flag above a gravestone in its churchyard, a church which is also working to establish closer relations with a nearby black church and which supports missions to the Cherokee. I have also worshipped at a church with parishioners who had the Confederate flag as their front license tag, and which has supported church plants among the local Latin population, as well as the first Indian-American plant in Fairfax Co., Virginia, and which has had interns from such places as Taiwan, China, and Brazil. At some points all of its interns have been foreigners or of non-European descent, and there are people there with adopted Ethiopian kids. I have had some interesting conversation about some of the writing of R. L. Dabney (a former Confederate officer) with one of the elders, and I know a man there who has portraits of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on his walls, and with whom the phrase “unreconstructed Southerner” is the highest praise; yet when I watched the film Hidden Figures with him, he was appalled at the mistreatment the main characters received on account of racial hatred.
I’ll hazard that such people would qualify as ‘neo-Confederate’ to people like Mrs. French, if only because they retain reverence for their forebears who lived and fought in the Confederacy, and yet I know of no evidence of prejudice on their parts, and such evidence as exists points the other way. Racism is not an inherent part of honoring the Confederacy, for one can honor those who were part of it without approving all that they did. One can reverence one’s ancestors out of instinctual loyalty, simply because they are one’s forebears; and one can at the same time be critical of their behavior and distinguish between those deeds which are good and worthy of emulation, and those which are sinful and ought to be shunned.
Such an attitude of primal acceptance of the person with a critical position toward his deeds is thoroughly Christian. It is a commonplace of our faith that we distinguish between people and their behavior, that we love the sinner and hate the sin. It is on that point in regard to this matter of ‘neo-Confederates’ that one perceives one of the matters in which many common evangelicals have a radically different perspective than the influential set among us.
On this matter the perspective of our famous people is largely that of the influential people in American society at large. That is, the late Confederacy is regarded as a thing so heinous that all positive regard for it ought to be purged from the present. There is a prominent campaign at present to whitewash history of the Confederacy and the Old South, and to engage in damnatio memoriae against those individuals who were in any way involved with them by driving the honor of them from both church and society. In civil society monuments are removed from courthouse grounds, the names of army bases changed, and companies and entertainers drop all reference to the South because of its (now long past) association with slavery. In the church similar things happen: First Presbyterian Columbia, South Carolina removes James Henley Thornwell’s name from its library, the Gospel Coalition publishes articles saying “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause,” and Mrs. French laments neo-Confederates among us, and in so doing tacitly assumes people will understand that tolerating such neo-Confederates is a moral fault so severe as to justify leaving one’s church on account of it.
The message is clear: slavery was a sin so enormous and corrosive as to taint all who came into contact with it so long as time endures, and to commend their condemnation by people today. It is a sort of social/historical version of the legal concept of attainder by ‘corruption of blood,’ that judgment in which the heirs of a criminal were forever denied their inheritance because of his crimes. Well might we call this contemporary phenomenon ‘social attainder of corruption of civil institution,’ wherein a society that allows a sinful thing thereby transfers all the guilt of it to all its citizens in perpetuity. There are some who have been caught in this movement of historical cleansing who do not go so far as that, but I have read people write as if there were no Christians in the South before the abolition of slavery, some small antislavery sects like Quakers and converted natives and slaves excepted. I have heard people argue that the theoretical approval of slavery ipso facto proves the individuals who did so are hypocrites,[2] and that anyone’s willing participation in a society that allowed it works a corruption by guilt of association that ought to make them persona non grata. Their sole standard for judging the sincerity of past believers is not any scriptural virtue like the presence of faith or good works, but where they stand viz. slavery or other questions of ‘racial justice.’
As suggested by my examples above, there are many of us in the pews in the PCA who think differently than Mrs. French and who take exception to this movement of historical condemnation. We recognize that one can condemn slavery in general, and its attendant abominations like separating families in particular, without thereby wholly condemning those that lived in the Southern society that approved it, and without disapproving all else that they did. I honor my Virginia ancestors of the 1860s because it is a natural, proper human impulse, and because I recognize that I would not exist without them. But in so doing I simultaneously regret their sins and think that losing the war was God’s just punishment on the South for its sins associated with slavery. This approach that recognizes that human sin means all people and societies have glaring faults and does not think in simple black-and-white terms of ‘reject or condemn’ on the basis of a single present litmus test is no doubt offensive to those that want to exult themselves cheaply by hating a class whom it is fashionable to hate. But it is the right approach, and the only one that allows us to actually to study and learn from history rather than merely engaging in a hamartiography that looks to the past only to find something to condemn in the present. And it is the only approach that prevents us being caught up in a spirit of social revolution that seeks to wholly divorce us from the past, the spirit of the French Revolution that says ‘the past was wholly bad, let’s start afresh with Year One.’[3]
There is another respect in which I find her disapproval of ‘neo-Confederates’ rather curious, and that is the cultural and historical disconnect that it betrays. The lady lives in Tennessee, which was a Confederate state, and which currently regards “Robert E. Lee Day,” “Confederate Decoration Day,”  and “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” as official state “days of special observance” that are to be observed “with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates” (Tennessee Code 15-2-101). The PCA itself is a direct descendant of the now-defunct Presbyterian Church in the United States, which first formed as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America in 1861.
For the lady to express bewilderment that people in a church descended from the Confederate presbyterian church in a former Confederate state would retain some reverence for the Confederacy is curious indeed. It is as if she took up residence in New England and joined a congregationalist church that dated to the 1600s, only to remark one day that she was amazed at how blue-blooded, Yankee, and puritanical the people were there.[4] One feels that the locals might justly ask, ‘Pray tell, madam, what kind of people did you think you would find here?’
But all of this does not have the emotional disappointment that is inflicted when we consider that Mrs. French has publicly argued for more civility in these polarized times in which we live. Her recent book (co-written with Curtis Chang), The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, is based on a curriculum produced by Chang, Russell Moore, and her husband David that “helps reframe our political identify away from the ‘what’ of political positions and towards the ‘how’ of being centered on Jesus.” I will not generally appraise that effort now, though Aaron Renn has some interesting thoughts on it here (spoiler: the project is bankrolled by leftist infidels).
I do however find it a bit much to swallow when someone argues for civility in some forums and then exposes fellow professing believers to public opprobrium in others—all the more where that argument for civility occurs as part of an alliance with people who wish to fundamentally alter (and thereby destroy) our faith, the unbelieving financiers Renn mentions. By opprobrium I do not mean criticism, but that dismissal with a word that appears in the Deseret Times. She takes it for granted that everyone knows that being ‘neo-Confederate’ is wrong and that such people can be summarily dismissed to a newspaper belonging to the Mormon communion, which communion is, on the view of orthodoxy, heretical. (Which fact Mrs. French acknowledges.)[5]
Being unfamiliar with the particulars, I do not discount that Mrs. French may have been mistreated at her PCA church;[6] if so, shame on those who did so, and they ought to repent. But I do think that casually dismissing such people before heretics[7] is the wrong response, especially where it occurs in an interview in which she is otherwise praised for being gracious to opponents and when she otherwise argues for respect in spite of disagreement. And in all this we see that division of perspective that appears between the influential set and the commoners, and which is so much troubling evangelical churches just now. I happen to agree with Mrs. French on certain points – I long ago sickened at ‘do you support Trump?’ being the litmus test of acceptability by both sides – and I am far from thinking that contemporary affairs can be fully understood in an ‘elites vs. the people’ framework or that either faction is wholly right or wrong. But they are definitely distinct groups with distinct and sometimes clashing perspectives, as is shown here, groups that ae sometimes unable or unwilling to understand each other. And while I understand why the elites disapprove certain trends in contemporary Christendom, I wish they would not respond by moving left into the territory of the inexplicable, the hobnobbing with enemies of righteousness and truth[8] and soliciting money from infidels; especially when this is done while claiming to be the true, unmoving guardians of conservative politics and Christian faith.[9]
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks/Simpsonville (Greenville Co.), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1] This chapter recounts how Moses’s brother and sister Aaron and Miriam “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (v. 1), and were subsequently rebuked by God (v. 8), with Miriam also being stricken by leprosy in punishment (vv. 10-15). Cush is the historic term for Ethiopia in scripture, hence they were angry he had married an Ethiopian. I.e., God who punished them for their ethnic prejudice in their day is apt to do likewise with those who hold a similar attitude in our day regarding adoptees of Ethiopians.
[2] Hardly anything new. The songwriter “Stephen Foster enlivened abolitionist meetings by denouncing churches that did not censure slavery unequivocally as ‘combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers,’” saying “the Methodist Church was ‘more corrupt than any house of ill fame in New York.’” The Mind of the Master Class by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, p. 485
[3] Hence Herman Bavinck speaks of the sin of inconstancy being “manifested in the antihistorical sense—in the perpetual reconstruction of history that tears people from their own history, from tradition, from the inheritance of previous generations. The result is a loss of piety and a severing of the bonds of the past (revolution) in exchange for subjective, self-pleasing egocentricity and individualism” (Reformed Ethics, Vol. I, p. 126). The revolutionary ‘cleanse the past’ spirit is especially a mark of collectivist political parties like socialists and Communists, and so it seems as if this contradicts Bavinck’s talk of it ending in individualism. The answer (if I can anticipate Bavinck’s thought) is that the political/cultural effort to dispense with the past by collectivist parties ends in the individuals affected being deprived of a larger heritage and therefore, nature abhorring a vacuum, turning their interests inward to self-seeking (the section on inconstancy occurs in a larger section on “sins that take pleasure in form” beginning on p. 124). The observations of Dutch historian Groen van Prinsterer (an influence on Bavinck) on the nature of revolutionary ideas in his Unbelief and Revolution are immensely helpful on this point, and anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary trends is recommended to peruse them, as has been argued by others.
[4] Given the current state of New England society, I fear that in such a case this puritanical streak would be rather social than theological in nature, the zeal for certain leftist causes rather than that of Christ.
[5] In her book Ghosted, p. 123
[6] She mentions people writing her church saying she and Mr. French were closet Mormons for supporting Mitt Romney and asking the church to disciple them, though I cannot tell if this was while she was in the PCA. Ibid.
[7] It is noteworthy that one of the supporters of the After Party project is the Trinity Forum, in which David French and Russell Moore serve as fellows, and which has elsewhere presented Mormons as Christians, notably in its report “Christianity, Pluralism, and Public Life in the United States: Insights from Christian Leaders” (p. 52), something it extends to members of the Roman communion and the (alas) unfaithful Episcopal Church as well.
[8] Russell Moore and David French both appear in atheist Rob Reiner’s documentary God and Country.
[9] E.g. at about 2:40 here, where Joe Scarborough claims it was not for the most part Mrs. French who moved, but her critics, a point on which see largely agrees.
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Written by David C. Innes |
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Fathers have their job in the home. But they must also do their part as free citizens of a free republic, and keep your government limited to its proper sphere, limited to the good for which God gave it. What is that good? It is protecting the conditions for moral thriving, family thriving, wealth creation, as well as the happy life of Christ’s church and its advance. That is to say, it is protecting the moral environment (for each and for families), the opportunity economy, a church-positive society. Faithful government will protect the life of liberty, the life of a free people.

Note: This article was delivered as a speech at the 2023 ACCS Regional Conference at Bloomfield Christian School, Bloomfield, MI, October 7th, 2023
There is a crisis of fatherhood in this country. The U.S. has more children being raised by just one parent—23 percent—than any other country. The U.S. also has far-and-away the highest incarceration rate – 614 per 100,000. The United Kingdom has 147 and Canada only 109. Child Trends 2016 found that, for the country, between 1990 and 2016 out-of-wedlock births went from 28 to 40 percent of all births. There are communities where kids do not know what a father is. For them, “fathers” are the stuff of literature, and they do not read literature. However, in 2022, Pew Research reported 47 percent of U.S. adults say single women raising children on their own is generally bad for society, up seven points from 2018. Forty-three percent say it makes no difference. But ten percent of adults say it is good for society! 
These trends are not just bad for “society” – violent crime, economic drag, etc.; they are bad for the kingdom of God and for the democratic self-government of this free people. God made us for love and for community. How do we know this? We are made in the image of God. Not just any God, not some unitary monad, but the one Trinitarian God, Yahweh – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God – who is One God, not three – exists in three persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another. The Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Son loves the Father and the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Because of this, the Bible tells us not only that God loves, but that he “is love.” For this reason, we who are made in the image of this God are made for love. We are made for community with each other.
Some try to encourage young people by telling them, “You’re an individual,” as though this was the most important moral truth about them. Not so! Maybe the most important moral truth about you is not what is unique to you, but what you share in common with others! Of course, you’re a separate person. But it is noteworthy that each one of us came into this world through another person, out of another person, physically attached to that person, into and wholly dependent on a family of people. Properly speaking, we are creatures of love and community, born into love and community, for a life of love and community. That love and community is seen most perfectly in the church, the kingdom of God, the city not made with hands, whose ruler and builder is Christ.
But in this world, that spiritual community requires civil government. The Apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to pray for his government “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (I Tim. 2:3). This governing can be done well or done badly. The best form of it—the form best designed to support people in a good life: their material, moral, and spiritual flourishing—is a democratic republic, a modern constitutional system of popular self-government. 
Fathers are key to this.
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Loomis became an advocate for the Chinese with his language skill providing the means to alleviate prejudice. His primary ministry was as the pastor of the First Chinese Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, which had been organized during the ministry of William Speer. The church had been without a minister for about two years when Loomis began shepherding the Chinese flock and some rebuilding of the congregation was required. Loomis’s life in California had been a busy ministry with only two or three visits back East and one extended trip in Europe for rest and renewal. He was honored by his alma mater, Hamilton College, in 1873, with the Doctor of Divinity.

Augustus W. Loomis included in his minstry writing books about and for the Chinese immigrants and American Indians. He also emphasized catechesis in his ministry as exemplified by The Profits of Godliness, 1859, which is a brief popular study of questions 36-38 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Loomis explains each of the three answers through exposition of their component concepts. Concerning the doctrine of justification by faith he said,
Joy flows from justification; for he that is pardoned will rejoice. There is ground for his rejoicing. He looks to Jesus as his Saviour, his Surety, who, by his blood, his obedience, his intercession, reconciled him to God. He believes on him, trusts in him, and believing, he rejoices with joy unspeakable, and full of glory (p. 35).
Loomis opens the concepts of increase of grace; perseverance to the end; immediately passing into glory; perfection in holiness; awaiting the resurrection; resurrection in glory; open acknowledgement on the day of judgment; enjoying perfect blessedness; and then concludes the little book with the observation “Surely godliness is profitable; it is a pearl of great price” (p. 120). When the book was published Loomis had just returned home from China for health reasons after a six-year ministry. He would spend the rest of his life working with Chinese immigrants living in California.
Augustus Ward Loomis was born September 4, 1816, in Andover, Connecticut, to Seba Loomis and his wife Jerusha (Brewster) Loomis. His mother was a descendant of Mayflower passengers William and Mary Brewster of Plymouth Colony. Seba had been commissioned an ensign in the Connecticut militia in 1808. When the boy was about eighteen months old the family moved to Cazenovia, New York where his father purchased a farm about a half mile south of the village. At the age of eleven Augustus began preparation for college in the Oneida Conference Seminary in Cazenovia which was associated with the Wesleyan Methodists. As a young man he was not interested in becoming a minister, so he begged his parents to leave school and go into business more than a hundred miles to the east in Albany. Despite Augustus’s interest in the business world, his parents prayed for his spiritual well being. The prayers were answered when he professed faith in Christ at the age of sixteen and united with the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany. The pastor at the time was William B. Sprague. Thus, having his plans changed, Augustus returned to Cazenovia to complete preparatory studies for entry into the sophomore class of Hamilton College graduating in 1841, and he moved to New Jersey to begin theological studies in Princeton Seminary that fall.
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Not only is it bad exegesis and bad logic to make unrepentant homosexual practice less severe than feelings of pride or possession of wealth, akin to an act of disobeying one’s parents, but it is also bad pastoral theology. In the story of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped his feet with her hair, and kissed them with her lips, Jesus explained to the Pharisaic host that the one who was forgiven more, loves more (Luke 7:36-50). One doesn’t have to lower the severity of sin in order to reach out to an offender. In fact, the greater the need, the greater should be the loving outreach.

Megan Basham, in her new book Shepherds for Sale, was right to be critical of the views on sexuality and homosexuality presented by Rev. J. D. Greear, who is Neil Shenvi’s pastor (note: Neil has attempted to take Meg to task over her statements about Greear) at The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina and president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2018 to 2021.
The 2019 Sermon Controversy
Greear tried to diminish the significance of the issue of sexual ethics in general and homosexual practice in particular in a 2019 sermon. Then when a furor arose, he issued a correction that left many erroneous views intact and largely blamed others for misrepresenting him.
His slippery attempts at rescuing himself from critique in the SBC in this matter (another was his initial endorsement of Preston Sprinkle’s erroneous “transgender pronoun hospitality”) have a Clintonesque quality in which every sentence must be carefully parsed.
The “Whisper” Statement
Greear declared in a widely publicized sermon in Jan. 2019 that the Bible only “whispers about sexual sin,” with homosexual practice especially in view, while it shouts about “materialism and religious pride.”
Much controversy erupted over this wrongheaded claim, leading Greear two-and-a-half years later (June 26, 2021) to issue “A Statement about My Sermon on Romans 1” which some took as an apology for his previous remark. A careful read of the statement, however, shows that Greear ended up more blaming those whom he alleged “misrepresented” him, perhaps intentionally, than apologizing and correcting his errors.
What Greear had said in the 2019 sermon (among other missteps) was this:
“In terms of frequency of [Paul’s] mention and the passion with which he mentions it, it would appear that quite a few other sins are more egregious in God’s eyes than homosexuality. Jen Wilkin, who is one of our favorite Bible teachers here and who is actually leading our Women’s Conference, said, ‘We ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about and shout about what the Bible shouts about.’ And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shout about materialism and religious pride. In fact, Jesus not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same-sex attracted to go to heaven. He did say that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it was for a religiously proud or materially successful person to enter into the kingdom of God.”
2021 Clarification
Greear’s “clarification” in 2021 was not entirely successful. He stated:
“I applied that quote to the difference in the emphasis Jesus places on the dangers of pride and greed versus sexual sin and said that given the sheer number of times Jesus talks about pride and greed, it is as if he saved most of his volume to warn about pride and greed. Thus, I said, we should look more fearfully at our own prideful, greedy hearts than we do haughtily at the sexual dysfunctions of others. The key word in the point was ‘compared.’ ‘Compared to what he said about pride and greed… it is as if he shouts about… and whispers about.’
“It was a rather clumsy way of making the point. However, I was in no way trying to imply that sexual ethics are muted in Scripture, that we should not speak clearly about them, or that we should [not?] be embarrassed by them. The preceding point of that message, in fact, which was not included in the clips that got passed around, makes that abundantly clear. In that point, I state plainly Scripture could not be clearer about these matters and that rebellion in sexual sin, as 1 Cor 6:9–11 states in no uncertain terms, is a matter of eternal destiny.”
Persisting Misconceptions
As we shall see, Greear was still wrong about important things: (1) Determining the severity of a given sin by counting up the number of explicit mentions in the Bible; and (2) contending that the universal struggle with pride and materialism is worse than engaging in homosexual practice.
Moreover, (3) his claim in 2021 that he presented “rebellion in sexual sin” in that 2019 sermon as “a matter of eternal destiny” is at conflict with that sermon where he denied that homosexual practice could send someone to hell and depicted homosexual practice as no worse than any other sin, including an outburst of temper, a feeling of envy or greed, a boast, or a rebellious attitude toward one’s parents.
He apologized “for any confusion that my clumsy wording may have caused” but devoted the rest of his comments to blaming others for misrepresenting him and did not rule out that the misrepresentation may have been intentional. In the end, his statement was more about those misrepresenting him than about what he stated, which was not merely “clumsy” but also incorrect on its face.
Response To Criticism
At one point, he blamed “Tom Ascol and a few of the same pastors seemingly looking to trap me in my words” for not reaching “out to me for clarification.” It was Tom’s Founders Ministries that produced the video in which I had a short appearance addressing the “whisper” statement.
Let it be said that I sent Rev. Greear an email on June 11, 2019, regarding my assessment of the entire sermon in question, stating: “I have written an open letter to you that appears on my Facebook and may soon be appearing elsewhere. For the moment you can view it at [then supplied the Facebook link].” I left not only my email address but also my cell phone. If he had had any issue with what I wrote, he could easily have contacted me. He never did.
Here were my observations in a 2021 post (modified slightly to adjust tenses for a 2024 reissuing) on Greear’s 2021 statement and on his 2019 sermon.
1. Jesus’ Silence On Same-Sex Attraction
Let’s begin by looking at Greear’s claim in his 2019 sermon that “Jesus not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same-sex attracted to go to heaven.” We wouldn’t expect Jesus to address “the same-sex attracted” specifically since homosexual practice was not an issue among the Jews of Jesus’ day. Nor would we expect him to condemn people for experiencing (but not acquiescing to) an involuntary impulse.
What Jesus did do is warn that sexual sin could get you thrown into hell. Matthew placed the Jesus saying about tearing out one’s eye or cutting off one’s hand if it threatens one’s downfall between Jesus’ prohibition of adultery of the heart and remarriage after (at least invalid) divorce, offenses that he obviously didn’t regard as severe as the violation of the male-female prerequisite that he treated as the foundation of sexual ethics (5:27-32; cp. 19:4-6). Granted, he didn’t use the precise expression “eye of a needle” here but that is a pedantic, not substantive, point.
2. Misguided Hermeneutics
In his 2021 statement, Greear still operated with the erroneous hermeneutical premise that the severity of sins is determined by the number of mentions that they get by Jesus or by the Bible generally. He reiterates:
“I applied that quote to the difference in the emphasis Jesus places on the dangers of pride and greed versus sexual sin and said that given the sheer number of times Jesus talks about pride and greed, it is as if he saved most of his volume to warn about pride and greed.”
In his sermon, he also made the same point about the apostle Paul.
Counting often gets the interpreter to the wrong conclusion. Some sexual sins are so egregious and corrupting to the young, and thus so infrequently committed in Israel by Jews, that the very mention of them in Scripture is kept to a minimum.
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