At its heart, Pride Month is a month of deception. LGBT activists are deceiving people into believing pride is a virtue, that sexuality determines identity, and that LGBT activities are family friendly. There is nothing further from the truth. Only Jesus can give identity, direction, and purpose to a world of sexual confusion. 

We’re approaching the final week of ‘Pride Month’ — a growing shibboleth of our secular age. Corporate firms are one-upping each another to virtue signal how woke and inclusive they are. Retail stores are parading the rainbow flag to boost sales.
From a Biblical perspective, there are remarkable parallels between Pride Month and idol worship under King Nebuchadnezzar II. Just as the Babylonians were mandated to worship the golden image, LGBT activists demand that we pledge allegiance to the rainbow flag. While the stakes aren’t as high as they were under Nebuchadnezzar, there are real risks involved in refusing to bow the knee.
If my suspicion is correct, most Australians are not particularly concerned about Pride Month. In fact, many are beginning to feel uncomfortable with how politicised and intolerant the LGBT movement has become. In response, many people have flocked to culture warriors like Jordan Peterson for answers.
While figures like Peterson are insightful and worth listening to, their answers are ultimately psychological rather than spiritual. They don’t acknowledge that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only truth that sets people free. It is only the grace of God in the person and work of Jesus that gives answers and hope to a world lost in sexual confusion.
What follows are three of the lies paraded during Pride Month, along with the gospel answers Jesus provides.

Sexuality = Identity

Pride Month declares that you can find your identity by looking inward. It is proclaimed that you can discover your identity by exploring your sexuality. The modern self is defined by sexuality. This explains the insistence within the LGBT movement of identifying people as ‘gay,’ ‘trans,’ ‘lesbian,’ and so on.
The great tragedy in such thinking is its reductionism. It shrinks a person from being an intelligently designed, unique, and beautiful image-bearer of God to the mere product of sexual instincts (cf. Gen. 2:17). Is there anything more animalistic than reducing a person to the sum of their sexual desires?
Contrary to Pride Month, our identity is not self-generated; it is given to us by our Maker. The Bible makes clear that humans were created to magnify the glory, beauty, and majesty of our Creator. Indeed, there is no other creation in the universe that was made imago dei. Furthermore, the good news of the gospel liberates us to find our identity in Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, as the Westminster Confession of Faith 15.5 states, Biblical repentance is for specific sins. In an age when national repentance is used as a smokescreen for our own guilt, we must face the reality of our rebellion against the Creator. We must name our sins, yet not be named by them. This is especially relevant in a time when identifying some believers as ‘gay Christians’ has become commonplace.
There is nothing more enslaving to a child of God than to identify them by their sin. Any adjective placed before ‘Christian’ — whether it be ‘same-sex attracted,’ ‘anxious,’ or ‘adulterous’ — enslaves a believer and legitimises their sin. It denies their identity as a child of God, freed from the bondage of passions.
There is nothing more liberating than for a Christian to know their sin has been dealt with fully and completely. To be a Christian is to have one’s life hidden with Christ in God, and to be defined not by our sin, but by His perfection and glory (Col. 3:3).

Pride = Virtue

Arguably the chief lie of Pride Month is that pride is something to be celebrated. According to God, pride is a vice to be restrained. Pride is not something to be paraded; it’s the parent of all other sins. It’s the cesspool from which all other wickedness flows (Gen. 3:6). Pride not only destroys a person’s relationship with God; it ultimately consumes the person themselves (Prov. 16:18).
In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis wrote this of pride:
“It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the completely anti-God state of mind” (Book III, 8.)
Puritan Jonathan Edwards spoke of pride in these terms:
“Pride is a person having too high an opinion of himself. Pride is the first sin that ever entered into the universe, and the last sin that is rooted out.”
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Written by Allan C. Carlson |
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Today, legal marriage is weaker than any contract and—except by coincidence—has no relation whatsoever to procreation and the rearing of children. Accordingly, relatively early marriage—designed to accommodate natural and healthy human fertility patterns—is no longer relevant. Indeed, judged against the Augustinian framework, legal marriage in America today means nothing…which may be why “same-sex marriage” crept in so effectively.

It is surely unhealthy to become depressed over statistics. As the modern proverb has it, there are lies, damn lies, and then come statistics. Still, I went into a funk six months ago after reading the results of a survey on parenting by the reliable Pew Research Center. The researchers asked two thousand active parents if it was important to them whether their children did certain things once they became adults. A stunning 88 percent said it was extremely or very important that they “be financially independent” and “have jobs or careers they enjoy.” In contrast, only 21 percent said it was extremely/very important that their grown children marry, and a mere 20 percent that they have children of their own.
One response is that perhaps the parents being queried will come to appreciate the merits of grandchildren a little later on (for as another modern proverb puts it, the only reason to endure parenthood is to gain grandkids). Or, on a perhaps more troubling note, we see here clear evidence of the triumph of capitalism over familism, of mammon over posterity. However, I prefer to see such numbers as signs of the repudiation of good St. Augustine.
These thoughts came back to me over the past weekend as I attended an extended-family wedding. The bride was lovely and glowing, the groom overflowed with joy, and the wedding was properly conducted, even in a “mainline” church dedicated, according to its pew cards, first and foremost to Diversity. Still, the event was, in a way, post-Augustinian. To begin with, and as is now normal, the couple had already been living together for several years. The post-Augustinian status could also be seen in the ages of the bride and groom: she was 35; he near 40. Today, that is only somewhat above the average for all first marriages. While I was told that they hope to have children, they probably know that for first-timers the biological deck is now stacked against them. In contrast, a half-century ago, when my wife and I were married, in the very last year of the Augustinian dispensation in America, I was 23 and she was 22; even then, we were on the old side for newlyweds. Children, moreover, were a reasonable expectation.
The Augustinian Tradition
Why drag Augustine into this? As in just about everything else of importance, Christian marriage owes its operational definition to his “mental universe” (a phrase borrowed from the legal scholar Charles J. Reid, Jr.). Writing at the end of the fourth century A.D., Augustine faced two challenges: the Manichaeans, a heretical sect which so focused on the spirit that they fully rejected reproductive intercourse; and the pagan Romans, among whom concubinage, adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, and easy divorce were common. Citing the innate “sociability” of humankind and “a natural companionship between the sexes,” the church father defined the “goods” of marriage as procreation, fidelity, and sacramental permanence. Rejecting both extreme asceticism and hedonism, Augustine affirmed that “the marriage of man and woman is something good.”
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The new presbytery held its first meeting June 26, 1973 with Rev. Ross Bair moderator and Rev. Donald Esty stated clerk. The churches included: Covenant in Ft. Lauderdale, Coral Springs (Now First Church) in Coral Springs, Spanish River in Boca Raton, Seacrest Boulevard in Delray Beach, Lake Osborne in Lake Worth, Faith Church in Wauchula, and in the Miami area were Granada, Kendall, Trinity, LeJeune, Pinelands, and Shenandoah. The total communicant membership of the presbytery was nearly 6,000 with Granada the largest congregation having 1,413.

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has its origin predominately in the southern states. You cannot get any farther south than Key West, Florida, but anyone that has driven down the peninsula knows life in the lower state is different from that in the panhandle and the central region. South Florida is a haven for retirees from colder climates as well as a multi-ethnic mix of peoples from Central and South America and the Caribbean islands. Not only does one hear English, but also Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole (language of Haitian immigrants). What is likely not known is the importance of the churches of South Florida Presbytery to the PCA and particularly the influence of one church in Miami.
In September 2019 the building on Southwest 8th Street in Miami, Florida, formerly used by Shenandoah Presbyterian Church, had been sold and was razed to make room for new high rise buildings. The congregation had been organized in 1927 but was dissolved by South Florida Presbytery of the PCA in 1998. Dissolution resulted from difficulty adapting to ministry in the dramatically changed parish because over the years Spanish speakers moved into what became the Calle Ocho community. Shenandoah was organized under the ministry of Rev. Daniel Iverson as Miami was rebuilding following a devastating hurricane in 1926 that killed 372, injured over 6,000, and made portions of the rapidly growing city rubble. Times of death and destruction can be used by the Holy Spirit to show individuals the frailty of life, lead them to question its meaning, and direct them to comprehend the effects of sin and the fall not only in the creation with its whirlwinds but also within themselves.
It was a prime time for Pastor Iverson to begin a congregation in a rented facility that grew to fill in later years the impressive property that was razed (an earlier church burned down). He retired from Shenandoah in 1951 but it appears he continued ministry as a presbytery evangelist.
Shenandoah started mission churches during Iverson’s ministry. He conducted a home Bible Study that seeded First Church, Miami Springs, with him participating in founding LeJeune Presbyterian Church and another church in Alta Vista. He was the organizing pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church beginning services in a restaurant called the Jamaica Inn with organization taking place June 19, 1955. Daniel Iverson died at the age of 86 on January 3, 1977 in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

The process for founding the PCA’s Gold Coast Presbytery (now South Florida Presbytery) began Sunday, June 3, 1973. In an interview reported the next day in The Miami News article, “Presbyterian Churches Here Vote to Quit,” Pastor Robert Ostenson of Granada Church in Coral Gables said that the first five churches had decided to leave and form a new denomination with his own congregation garnering a unanimous vote of 737 communicant members in attendance. Religion editor Bob Wilcox went on to comment that of particular concern for the departing churches was the “liberal-conservative rift” with the liberals wanting to “temper” the teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith regarding “the absolute sovereignty of God” and its affirmation of “the infallible word of God.” Up for consideration at the impending General Assembly of the PCUS (the denomination from which the churches were separating) were revisions that would weaken the system of doctrine in the Confession. Note here that events leading to the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936 had included concerns about revising the Confession by the PCUSA.
As other churches in South Florida voted to leave, the tally was ten by June 5. In December when the National Presbyterian Church (renamed PCA the next year) met for its First General Assembly two other churches had been added with twelve making up what became South Florida Presbytery. The new presbytery held its first meeting June 26, 1973 with Rev. Ross Bair moderator and Rev. Donald Esty stated clerk. The churches included: Covenant in Ft. Lauderdale, Coral Springs (Now First Church) in Coral Springs, Spanish River in Boca Raton, Seacrest Boulevard in Delray Beach, Lake Osborne in Lake Worth, Faith Church in Wauchula, and in the Miami area were Granada, Kendall, Trinity, LeJeune, Pinelands, and Shenandoah. The total communicant membership of the presbytery was nearly 6,000 with Granada the largest congregation having 1,413. Other churches were interested in leaving the PCUS but in some cases could not do so because they had loans from the denomination that would come due if they left.
The Miami Herald, June 23, 1973, provided information about the churches separation from the PCUS in a three part article. The first summarized events thus far and presented the theological and economic aspects of the division. The second section provided four reasons for remaining with the PCUS as expressed by Rev. John Huffman, and the third section stated four reasons for leaving. Representing the argument for leaving was Ruling Elder Kenneth Keyes of Shenandoah Church.
The first reason to leave included theological topics such as ministers being ordained that denied the virgin birth. This theological reason may be familiar for some readers since J. Gresham Machen wrote a book on the virgin birth as he faced similar circumstances with the PCUSA in the 1920s. Another issue addressed by Keyes was ministers holding to universal salvation and denying the necessity of redemption through Christ. He also criticized “Ethical humanism and biblical higher criticism which minimize the authority of the Word of God.”
The second reason was an economic one. Keyes was concerned that if churches wanting to leave the denomination waited too long they might not be able to keep their property because of a proposed merger between the PCUS and the UPCUSA (PCUSA). If this union was accomplished Keyes and others believed church properties would be held by the denomination and not the congregation because it was the policy of the UPCUSA.
Keyes does not mention the spirituality of the church as he expressed the third reason, but it is the appropriate category. He was concerned about “pronouncements and social action [that] presents serious questions of constitutionality.” That is, the work of the church is concerned with spiritual issues, and he was troubled that increasing involvement of the denomination in political and social issues would detract from gospel ministry.
The fourth reason for separation was his belief that educational materials published by the denomination presented nonbiblical concepts on sex, marital fidelity, abortion, divorce, remarriage, and drugs. He believed that “at the grass-roots level” the PCUS was committed to “historic Christianity,” but contended that those in control of the denomination were out of touch with the majority of church members. How often do church members and citizens of nations express concern that their leaders are out of touch with the people? For Elder Keyes, the only alternative was a new church.
In this semi-centennial year of the PCA it is good to remember those who worked to establish a confessional denomination dedicated to the infallible Word and the Great Commission. Of the original churches in South Florida Presbytery, Covenant withdrew from the PCA; Trinity and Shenandoah were dissolved; and LeJeune merged with Granada. The other churches continue in South Florida Presbytery except for Spanish River which is in Palm Beach County within the bounds of Gulfstream Presbytery, organized 2005. Even though Shenandoah Church is gone, the legacy of its leaders like Teaching Elder Daniel Iverson and Ruling Elder Kenneth Keyes continues in the PCA.
Dr. Barry Waugh attends Fellowship PCA in Greer, SC. This article is used with permission.
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