The bottom line is that evaluating candidates and judging differences is not an empirical question, but a theological one. Each court has the right to declare the terms of admission into its membership (Preliminary Principle #2). Simply because a stated difference is commonly granted as an exception does not mean the same difference must be granted an exception in every presbytery. Conversely, simply because a stated difference is uncommon does not necessarily require that the exception may not be granted. It is also appropriate at this point to consider how helpful it may be – not only to the purity and unity of the church, but particularly for the candidate being examined – for presbytery not to grant an exception on a first examination, and instead to ask the man to consider further study. 

Good Faith Subscription (GFS), the practice of allowing a man to assent to most of the Westminster Standards in “good faith” while allowing him to state minor differences in parts, has been practiced in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) for almost 20 years.
The practice was officially amended into the PCA’s Book of Church Order when Overture 10 passed at the 31st General Assembly (see 2003 GA minutes, pp. 50-51, 54-56). This amendment required each candidate for the gospel ministry in the PCA to state in his own words any differences with the Westminster Standards (the Confession of Faith, together with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, as adopted by the PCA). Presbyteries are permitted to grant differences as “exceptions” to the Standards if the court determined that the difference “is neither hostile to the system nor strikes at the vitals of religion.”
Overture 10 from the 31st GA and overtures since adopted (see 2011 GA minutes, p. 25; 2012 GA minutes, pp. 63, 75, 105-107; 2013 GA minutes, p. 17) are unequivocally concerned with GA’s oversight of the peace, purity, and unity of the Church. However, to my knowledge, no one has systematically attempted to document how widespread the practice of “being granted exceptions” is or which Standards the practice touches, information that should be critical to GA’s oversight.
As a glorified bean counter, I turned to a basic skill on which I often rely to help make sense of a situation: counting. The purpose of this exercise is not for me to express an opinion on the merits and demerits of GFS, but rather to provide empirical insights to inform the conversation on so-called Good Faith and Full Subscription. Some may read these findings with great encouragement that GFS is working well and that clear distinctions are drawn between exceptions that do or do not strike at the vitals. Others may be concerned with the extent to which teaching elders in the PCA hold differences with the denomination’s constitutional standards. Hopefully, there will be helpful insights for those on both sides of the issue.
Methodology
In the absence of a census of stated differences, the only denomination-wide data on exceptions are in the reports to GA of the Committee on Review of Presbytery Records (RPR). According to the PCA’s Rules of Assembly Operations 16-3, whenever presbytery examines a candidate, presbytery must record any stated differences the candidate may have in his own words, as well as presbytery’s judgment of those differences. If a clerk fails to record any of these details, presbytery’s minutes may be flagged by RPR as an exception of substance. For example, RPR may note that the record of a teaching elder’s transfer exam was incomplete. During the subsequent year, presbytery may respond to RPR’s exception of substance by providing the missing elements of the transfer exam, including the teaching elder’s stated differences (if any) and the specific Standards with which he stated a difference. This process makes it possible to gain a generalizable sense of exceptions in the PCA, even if the RPR reports are a “fuzzy proxy” for stated differences across the PCA.
I want to make explicitly clear that I intend no judgment against presbytery clerks through this exercise. Indeed, exchanges between presbyteries and RPR have proven healthful for clarifying BCO language (see Overture 2 for the 51stGA) or for clarifying whether these differences can be taught (as in the cases of Calvary, Northwest Georgia, and Ohio Valley, see 2021 GA minutes, pp. 529-534, 592-594, 594-596). The kinds of mistakes that could lead to RPR flagging an item are the kinds of mistakes I likely make on a weekly basis, if not more frequently. Because they are such easy mistakes to make, it can be believed that this method approaches plausibly representative estimates for the denomination.
For this analysis to be generalizable, it must be believed that such a mistake is essentially random. Clerks are not picky about how they make mistakes. Rather, a mistake could be made just as easily for recording a Second Commandment exception as for a Fourth Commandment exception, or for a man stating no differences as for a man stating several. Random events in large enough samples should produce roughly representative data (e.g., 100 coin flips should yield roughly 50 heads and 50 tails).
The RPR reports from 2003 (the first year affected by the GFS overture) to 2023 provide a large enough sample that I believe we can accept them as reasonably representative. If anything, exceptions may be undercounted in my analysis. For example, Korean Language Presbyteries had twice as many flagged items as other presbyteries, but were three times as likely to have a man stating no differences. If KLPs are overrepresented in this sample, men who state no differences may be overrepresented as well.
Furthermore, it is likely that the Sabbath exception is undercounted. Pacific Northwest Presbytery, for example, mentioned that it was its practice not to record “the typical exception to the Standards’ definition of Sabbath sanctification” (see 2013 GA minutes, p. 465). If it is the case in some presbyteries not to record this exception, the relative prevalence of differences on the Fourth Commandment will be conservatively estimated by this method.
Findings
What did I find after reading these RPR reports? First, approximately 4 exceptions are granted (to other candidates) for each man who states no differences with the Standards. Second, the most common differences are related to the Westminster Standards’ teachings on the Fourth Commandment, the Second Commandment, and Creation. Third, exceptions to the Standards’ teaching regarding the Fourth Commandment touch the Standards in more places than do other exceptions.
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In a social context where Christian orthodoxy can seem bigoted, dehumanizing, and grotesque, and where people have no shortage of ways to make their criticisms heard, believers are tempted to mimic the response of animals faced with danger: fight or flight. The former feels like humility, but risks timidity and cowardice. The latter feels like courage, but risks slander and pride. However, the faithful option is humble courage. If we mistakenly think in terms of a spectrum with humility and timidity at one end and pride and boldness at the other, then we will end up justifying vices as virtues. The way of Jesus, by contrast, combines exemplary humility with astonishing courage, most powerfully as Christ goes to the cross.

The West is not as post-Christian as many imagine. No doubt there are places on earth, including Middle America, where it might feel like the wider culture is currently rejecting Christianity at an unprecedented rate. But the milieu that characterizes post-Christendom is still (despite itself) irreducibly Christian.
Imagine a cryogenically frozen Viking waking up in twenty-first-century Scandinavia, or a Mayan exploring contemporary Mexico, or Asterix and Obelix encountering German social democracy, or French laïcité. As “secular” as those places might feel to many of us, their values would seem deeply Christian to anyone who had not experienced them before.
Nevertheless, living in the world of late modernity obviously presents plenty of challenges for orthodox believers.
Is Christianity Losing?
Whatever we call the religious outlook of our societies — secularism, post-secularism, post-Christianity, or something else entirely — people are still skeptical toward Christianity and in some cases downright hostile.
The pagan gods of Mammon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Gaia, and Dionysus still trouble modernity in varying levels of disguise. Renouncing them to follow Christ is still costly. It is still harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:23–24). The church still bears many flaws, and the cultural influence of Christianity has often served to magnify those flaws to those outside her doors.
An internal, psychological challenge compounds those external, cultural ones: some Christians feel like they are losing. In some countries, this is a question of sheer numbers. For a variety of reasons, including prosperity, fertility, and the privatization of postwar life, the percentage of people in church on Sundays has steadily fallen in many Western nations since the Second World War (while rising substantially in parts of the Majority World over the same period). Even in America (often seen as an outlier), over two-thirds of churches are in numerical decline. At the same time, there is a widely held perception that Christian convictions have become increasingly marginal in public life, which in many cases is clearly true.
Five Responses of Faith
That decline in numbers and of perceived relevance has met with varied responses from the Western church. Some of those responses (repentance, prayer, a renewed commitment to discipleship) are certainly positive. Others (fear, hostility, and the pursuit of influence or power by compromising morally or theologically) are plainly negative.
Some observers remain optimistic and argue that things are not as bad as they seem; others think they are a good deal worse. Some argue the church needs a radical change in strategy; others claim the challenge is not really a methodological one at all, and the church should essentially hunker down, get used to life on the margins, prepare to suffer for what she believes, pray, and trust that the God who brings life to the dead will do something new.
So, how do we live by faith in a culture losing its faith? In my book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West, I consider how the church responded to a similar crisis nearly 250 years ago — in particular the celebration of grace, the pursuit of freedom, and an articulation of Christian truth — and I suggest the last two centuries have only served to elevate the importance of these three responses. In this piece, I’ll mention five additional responses which, though perhaps obvious, are nevertheless vital for believers in an age like ours.
1. We Suffer Well
It’s hard to overstate the role that suffering has played in the expansion of Christianity.
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The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness so that Christ could drive the wild out of the wilderness. He is redeeming all the broken things. That means us.

I will tell of the decree:The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. 8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” –Psalm 2:7-9
At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit descends upon Him and the Father proclaims, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” It’s obvious that in this declaration there is a call back to Psalm 2.
So what happens immediately following this inauguration? Psalm 2 would seem to indicate that the Son of God will take up sword and begin his quest of kicking tail. But it’s not. The shift in Mark is jarring, sadly broken up by our section divisions.
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.–Mark 1:12
The word for “drove him out” is ekballo. It’s a word that is most typically used by Mark of Jesus driving out a demon. When you’re a bouncer and you need to remove some cat who doesn’t belong, you’d use ekballo to say you bounced him out on his head. Matthew and Luke use a different word (anago). It’s less jarring. It has the Spirit leading—or guiding by the hand—into the wilderness. Mark uses a word that would bring to mind a whip instead of wooing word.
At this point commentaries and sermons tend to get caught up on the dynamic between the Spirit and the Son. Did the Son not want to go and so had to be driven? Of course not, but that’s getting sidetracked from what Mark is actually telling us.
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