When asked, “Does the PCA ordain homosexuals?” we cannot say, “We can neither confirm nor deny that the PCA ordains homosexuals.” We must either say, “Yes, the PCA ordains homosexuals, but men must claim celibacy from homosexual conduct in order to ordained,” or we will say, “No, but there may be men who count that amongst the temptations they resist.” Put succinctly, we will either be a “Yes, but” or a “No, but” denomination.

Overture 15, answered by General Assembly in the affirmative as amended, places Item 1 before the Presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Item 1 proposes the addition of a new, fourth paragraph to the Book of Church Order (BCO):
7-4. Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
In what follows, I’ll argue that Item 1 should be answered in the affirmative, for four reasons. The addition of this paragraph is (1) appropriate and (2) needed; (3) the issue it seeks to address is unavoidable; and (4) voting in the negative perpetuates one problem and creates another.
Overture 15 Is Appropriate
First, it is appropriate to add this paragraph to BCO Chapter 7: Church Officers-General Classification. Each paragraph in Chapter 7 deals with the disqualification of someone who may be accepted as a legitimate candidate for ordination in another denomination, but not in ours. Over its history, the PCA has used Chapter 7 to clarify whether church offices are open to charismatics, women, and those preferring a different church government.
Let’s take each paragraph in turn. From 1789, American Presbyterians have rejected the continuation of miraculous gifts. But the 1973 proposed text lacked a statement about gifts related to new revelation, something the PCA wanted to address directly. The second General Assembly adopted a pastoral letter on the issue suggesting that “any view of the tongues as experienced in our time which conceives of it an experience by which revelation is received from God is contrary to the finalized character of revelation in Scripture.” Unsurprisingly, then, the final sentence of BCO 7-1 says, “Such officers and gifts related to new revelation have no successors since God completed His revelation at the conclusion of the Apostolic Age.” PCA History notes, “The current PCA text dates to 1974 and the wording of this paragraph is that which was proposed by the Ad-Interim Committee on Charismatic Gifts.”
It’s appropriate for the PCA to inform those who think they have a special gift of divine revelation that they cannot seek ordination in the PCA. That’s not to exclude them from a PCA church; it’s to be helpfully honest about what they can expect. Remember, Chapter 7 of the BCO is on church officers, not on church membership or attendance.
Similarly, it’s appropriate for the PCA to inform women who think they are called to ordination that they cannot seek ordination in the PCA. Hence this sentence at the end of BCO 7-2: “In accord with Scripture, these offices are open to men only.” The change occurred in 1980. Since that time, women have not been excluded from PCA churches. On the contrary, they have flourished. Remember, Chapter 7 of the BCO is on church officers, not on church membership or attendance.
Finally, BCO 7-3 notifies would-be archdeacons, archbishops, cardinals, and popes that office holders in the PCA cannot “usurp authority” in the church, by claiming more than one vote in a church court, and that they cannot “receive any official titles of spiritual preeminence, except such as are employed in the Scriptures.” That’s not to exclude them from a PCA church; it’s to be helpfully honest about what they can expect. Remember, Chapter 7 of the BCO is on church officers, not on church membership or attendance.
Given the multiyear conversation about homosexuality we have had in the PCA, it’s appropriate for the PCA to speak on this issue, and the seventh chapter of the BCO is the place to do it. To put it another way, even if you think this particular change should be rejected, its location in the BCO can’t be a reason to reject it. If it’s needed, it’s appropriate to place this sentence in BCO 7, as that chapter serves as the place to clarify, lovingly, those who cannot pursue ordination in the PCA. If it belongs anywhere, it belongs here.
Overture 15 Is Needed
But is it needed? That’s the pressing question. The answer is yes. This paragraph achieves the compromise we have been seeking.
Though I voted for it on the floor of General Assembly, I did not add my name to the minority report as a member of the Overtures Committee, in part because I wondered whether Overture 15 was tight enough. I worried that this overture could provide an admittedly hypothetical person with the following defense: “I should be ordained, in spite of being completely beholden to homosexuality, simply because I do not describe myself as a homosexual.”
I think my initial reservations show how the language of this paragraph is a helpful compromise. Its adoption can help heal the divisions we face in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Think about the two sides of this controversy. One side of the debate worries we are sliding into gospel-abandoning cultural accommodation. I share that concern. It’s always a threat. But the other side of the debate fears we are illegitimately and ungraciously tightening our ordination requirements in a misguided culture war. I share that concern, too. It’s always a threat.
Overture 15 addresses both these concerns. This paragraph may not make anyone completely comfortable, but that’s a feature, not a bug. We are a deliberative assembly, after all.
First, saying that the PCA disqualifies some men because of what they say about themselves shows one side of the debate that the PCA is still a denomination willing to speak with the Bible against the culture. They can rest assured that Presbyteries in large metropolitan areas will not overlook an issue that has caused public scandal in their churches.
Similarly, focusing on what a man actually says avoids the concerns the other side has raised about witch hunts and psychobabble language. If a man has engaged in same-sex activity in the past or struggles against current same-sex attraction in the present, the addition of this fourth paragraph will serve as a protection for him if he seeks ordination. Saying that a man does not now describe himself as a homosexual mitigates against a Presbytery’s inappropriate allergic reaction to this particular sin. Those on this side of the debate can rest assured that, if this overture passes, then Presbyteries in Southern, seersucker parts of the country cannot illegitimately raise the requirement for holiness on this particular sin by itself.
Presbyteries should affirm Item 1, as Overture 15 helpfully addresses an issue we must address.
Overture 15 Addresses an Unavoidable Issue
Let’s be clear: This issue is unavoidable. If Item 1 fails, does anyone really think we won’t face other overtures again next year? There may be some who say they will always vote against any proposed change to the BCO that mentions homosexuality. I find this commitment demoralizing and unwise.
First, I find a commitment never to speak on this issue demoralizing because — forgive me — I want to stop talking about it. We have spent a not insignificant amount of time discussing this issue, and I don’t think I am the only one growing weary. We have been discussing it since 2018. Students can graduate from college or medical school in four years, and law school in three. Can’t we find something new to argue about?
Second, I find a commitment never to add language in the BCO on homosexuality unwise. Such an attitude preemptively denies what we hope to achieve in a deliberative body. If it’s not this particular overture, then what about something next year, or the year after that? It’s also unwise because if the principle is simply that we can’t speak against the ordination of any particular group, it cuts against the grain of the three paragraphs already in BCO 7. It also suggests that we may not need to add another paragraph at some time in the future about another issue, which is something we shouldn’t rule out in advance.
I am hopeful that the addition of this paragraph in the BCO will end our multiyear debate.
So, in summary, Item 1 is appropriate and needed, and it addresses an issue that is unavoidable.
Answering Overture 15 in the Negative Perpetuates One Problem and Creates Another
Now let’s turn from the benefits of answering this proposed amendment in the affirmative to the costs of answering it in the negative. Answering Item 1 in the negative will perpetuate one problem and create another.
First, answering this item in the negative will continue the confusion of what is expected of men who have same-sex attraction as part of their biographies. Continued uncertainty does a disservice to those coming forward for ordination. A man with a sensitive conscience may think himself ineligible for ordination when, in fact, he would sail through ordination in any Presbytery and could even serve as a model for holy living.
Imagine a man who is forthright about his struggles, in the appropriate context, but who affirms, along with the justly acclaimed Ad Interim Committee Report on Human Sexuality, that “we name our sins, but are not named by them.” This man would never describe himself as a homosexual; adding this paragraph in the BCO will help him. Voting against this proposed addition deprives him of guidance and leaves us all in a crisis of ambiguity.
Second, we should recognize that answering this item in the negative will generate a new problem. The General Assembly has placed the denomination in a precarious position — in a way I did not realize when we voted last summer. If we say we will not add a paragraph saying that “men who describe themselves as homosexual” are disqualified from holding office, then it suggests, though it does not logically entail, that the PCA is comfortable with men describing themselves as homosexuals. I say “suggests” and not “entails” because to reject the addition of something does not require anyone to accept the addition of its opposite.
Even still, voting in the negative will suggest to people that the PCA is comfortable with its officers calling themselves homosexuals. When asked, “Does the PCA ordain homosexuals?,” we cannot say, “We can neither confirm nor deny that the PCA ordains homosexuals.” We must either say, “Yes, the PCA ordains homosexuals, but men must claim celibacy from homosexual conduct in order to ordained,” or we will say, “No, but there may be men who count that amongst the temptations they resist.” Put succinctly, we will either be a “Yes, but” or a “No, but” denomination.
Item 1 places before us a stark choice: Will we be a yes-but or a no-but denomination? “Yes, we ordain homosexuals, but . . .” or “No, we don’t ordain homosexuals, but . . .”? Will we be a denomination that ordains men who call themselves homosexuals, with caveats, or will we be a denomination that does not ordain such men, with caveats?
I voted in the affirmative on Item 1, because I think the PCA is a no-but and not a yes-but denomination. If we add this paragraph to the Book of Church Order, we will be able to say, when asked whether the PCA ordains homosexuals, that anyone calling himself a homosexual is disqualified for office, per BCO 7-4. If we do not add this paragraph, our people will continue to wonder what kind of denomination we are — and I will, too.
James Bruce is a professor of philosophy at John Brown University, the director of the Center for Faith and Flourishing, and an associate pastor of Covenant Church PCA in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
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Being different, being set apart and having a close family creates a sense of identity and purpose. Today so many young people are confused because they don’t know who they are, what they believe, or what their past is: they know nothing. They are adrift and depressed and confused to the point of trying to change their biology! But by doing things differently from the status quo, we as parents give our children a solid foundation that our kids can rely on. They don’t have to question who they are because we’ve told them and shown them and lived it for them their whole lives. And that will anchor them as they go into the world.

Nearly every day we are bombarded with stories of troubled teens and young adults, struggling with their identity to the point of desiring sex changes, of the rise in drug use, of young men shooting up schools, of the high rate of depression and anxiety amongst college students, and of growing loneliness among all populations. Like many parents, I want to spare my children those troubles, but unlike previous generations, our culture seems to breed troubled children faster than ever before. Even Christian parents struggle to raise their children in a culture that is designed to draw children away from their family and faith. I’d like to argue that parents need to make radical changes to their conceptions of what it means for their children to be successful and for what that means in raising them in day-to-day home life. What good, hard-working families have done in the past will not suffice in today’s environment.
I recently posted to my social media account about some adjustments we made to our home life, sparking fruitful questions and conversation among friends. Along with a photo of cookies waiting to be baked, I said:
We made some big changes to our life this fall which required some sacrifice. But the end result was more time for me to be home. Probably sounds crazy that a stay-at-home mom needs more home time, but homeschooling is a full-time job now and I needed time to be home and not schooling. My kids are getting older and we don’t have forever with them in the house; I want their memories to be of cookies and good food and a warm home, not of mom frantically driving them all around town to various activities. So here’s to cookies and good memories!
One friend asked what specifically we had done to “slow down for family time” and mentioned, “Our society places so much emphasis on [activities] and I’m wrestling with going against the grain.” She’s right. In order to succeed in life (or so we were told growing up), a kid needs to get good grades, go to college and get a good job. In order to get into a good college, kids are encouraged to be involved in school sports, student government, and a variety of other activities that not only showcase the student’s talent and abilities, but hopefully lead to ever-more-competitive scholarships. That often means extra-curricular activities multiple nights a week, sport commitments requiring entire weekends dedicated to tournaments, not to mention church events or other community activities to which a family might be committed. With multiple children in the family, even if mom stays at home, it’s difficult to have regular family meals, and those sports weekends would require splitting the family up at various fields, tournaments, and locations so that there is very little time spent together. Families have no time for family worship, and often skip corporate worship in lieu of competing sports commitments. The result: a group of people who share the same last name, but have their own distinct, personal goals often at odds with the well-being of the family unit. Well-meaning Christian parents seem surprised when after years of this, their kids go off to college and abandon the faith they grew up with and the political convictions their parents believe in.
So what can a family do? How do you raise Christian children, grounded in their faith and secure in their identity? Each family is different, but there are certain principles that can be followed by families wanting to fight against current cultural trends. First, back to the basics: every stable family starts with a dad and mom committed to each other and to the well-being of their children. Having a stable family requires personal sacrifice from both the husband and the wife, but that sacrifice will produce good fruit not only for the parents, but also for their children and subsequent generations. Second, there must be a family hierarchy. The husband is the head of the wife and of the family, and the children must submit to their parents (Ephesians 5:22-6:4). Third, but by no means least in importance, the Christian family must make their faith a priority. Go to worship every week. Be involved in your local congregation. Seek to serve those in your church. Practice hospitality. Diligently teach your children the faith.
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An intelligent designer might seem more necessary than ever now that we understand so much cellular biology, and the impossibly long odds facing any attempt to design proteins by chance, or assemble the regulatory mechanisms that control the life cycle of a cell. Meyer doesn’t reject Darwinian evolution. He only rejects it as a sufficient theory of life as we know it. He’s made a painstaking investigation of Darwin’s theory and has rejected it for many good reasons that he has carefully explained. He didn’t rush to embrace intelligent design. Just the opposite. But the explosion of detailed, precise information that was necessary to build the brand-new Cambrian organisms, and the fact that the information was encoded, represented symbolically, in DNA nucleotides, suggests to Meyer that an intelligent designer must have been responsible.

Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory. Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview. Accepting the theory as settled truth—no more subject to debate than the earth being round or the sky blue or force being mass times acceleration—certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life. But what if Darwin was wrong?
Like so many others, I grew up with Darwin’s theory, and had always believed it was true. I had heard doubts over the years from well-informed, sometimes brilliant people, but I had my hands full cultivating my garden, and it was easier to let biology take care of itself. But in recent years, reading and discussion have shut that road down for good.
This is sad. It is no victory of any sort for religion. It is a defeat for human ingenuity. It means one less beautiful idea in our world, and one more hugely difficult and important problem back on mankind’s to-do list. But we each need to make our peace with the facts, and not try to make life on earth simpler than it really is.
Charles Darwin explained monumental change by making one basic assumption—all life-forms descend from a common ancestor—and adding two simple processes anyone can understand: random, heritable variation and natural selection. Out of these simple ingredients, conceived to be operating blindly over hundreds of millions of years, he conjured up change that seems like the deliberate unfolding of a grand plan, designed and carried out with superhuman genius. Could nature really have pulled out of its hat the invention of life, of increasingly sophisticated life-forms and, ultimately, the unique-in-the-cosmos (so far as we know) human mind—given no strategy but trial and error? The mindless accumulation of small changes? It is an astounding idea. Yet Darwin’s brilliant and lovely theory explains how it could have happened.
Its beauty is important. Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth. Beauty is our guide to the intellectual universe—walking beside us through the uncharted wilderness, pointing us in the right direction, keeping us on track—most of the time.
Demolishing a Worldview
There’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape. Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture—not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain.
Stephen Meyer’s thoughtful and meticulous Darwin’s Doubt (2013) convinced me that Darwin has failed. He cannot answer the big question. Two other books are also essential: The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2009), by David Berlinski, and Debating Darwin’s Doubt (2015), an anthology edited by David Klinghoffer, which collects some of the arguments Meyer’s book stirred up. These three form a fateful battle group that most people would rather ignore. Bringing to bear the work of many dozen scientists over many decades, Meyer, who after a stint as a geophysicist in Dallas earned a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge and now directs the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, disassembles the theory of evolution piece by piece. Darwin’s Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation. Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact.
Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.). Although I can’t accept intelligent design as Meyer presents it, he does show that it is a plain case of the emperor’s new clothes: it says aloud what anyone who ponders biology must think, at some point, while sifting possible answers to hard questions. Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way. It does underline an obvious but important truth: Darwin’s mission was exactly to explain the flagrant appearance of design in nature.
The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument—fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not—to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.
As for Biblical religion, it forces its way into the discussion although Meyer didn’t invite it, and neither did Darwin. Some have always been bothered by the harm Darwin is said to have done religion. His theory has been thought by some naïfs (fundamentalists as well as intellectuals) to have shown or alleged that the Bible is wrong, and Judeo-Christian religion bunk. But this view assumes a childishly primitive reading of Scripture. Anyone can see that there are two different creation stories in Genesis, one based on seven days, the other on the Garden of Eden. When the Bible gives us two different versions of one story, it stands to reason that the facts on which they disagree are without basic religious significance. The facts on which they agree are the ones that matter: God created the universe, and put man there for a reason. Darwin has nothing to say on these or any other key religious issues.
Fundamentalists and intellectuals might go on arguing these things forever. But normal people will want to come to grips with Meyer and the downfall of a beautiful idea. I will mention several of his arguments, one of them in (just a bit of) detail. This is one of the most important intellectual issues of modern times, and every thinking person has the right and duty to judge for himself.
Looking for Evidence
Darwin himself had reservations about his theory, shared by some of the most important biologists of his time. And the problems that worried him have only grown more substantial over the decades. In the famous “Cambrian explosion” of around half a billion years ago, a striking variety of new organisms—including the first-ever animals—pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years. This great outburst followed many hundreds of millions of years of slow growth and scanty fossils, mainly of single-celled organisms, dating back to the origins of life roughly three and half billion years ago.
Darwin’s theory predicts that new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life. Those brave new Cambrian creatures must therefore have had Precambrian predecessors, similar but not quite as fancy and sophisticated. They could not have all blown out suddenly, like a bunch of geysers. Each must have had a closely related predecessor, which must have had its own predecessors: Darwinian evolution is gradual, step-by-step. All those predecessors must have come together, further back, into a series of branches leading down to the (long ago) trunk.
But those predecessors of the Cambrian creatures are missing. Darwin himself was disturbed by their absence from the fossil record. He believed they would turn up eventually. Some of his contemporaries (such as the eminent Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz) held that the fossil record was clear enough already, and showed that Darwin’s theory was wrong. Perhaps only a few sites had been searched for fossils, but they had been searched straight down. The Cambrian explosion had been unearthed, and beneath those Cambrian creatures their Precambrian predecessors should have been waiting—and weren’t. In fact, the fossil record as a whole lacked the upward-branching structure Darwin predicted.
The trunk was supposed to branch into many different species, each species giving rise to many genera, and towards the top of the tree you would find so much diversity that you could distinguish separate phyla—the large divisions (sponges, mosses, mollusks, chordates, and so on) that comprise the kingdoms of animals, plants, and several others—take your pick. But, as Berlinski points out, the fossil record shows the opposite: “representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.” In general, “most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged.” The incremental development of new species is largely not there. Those missing pre-Cambrian organisms have still not turned up. (Although fossils are subject to interpretation, and some biologists place pre-Cambrian life-forms closer than others to the new-fangled Cambrian creatures.)
Some researchers have guessed that those missing Precambrian precursors were too small or too soft-bodied to have made good fossils. Meyer notes that fossil traces of ancient bacteria and single-celled algae have been discovered: smallness per se doesn’t mean that an organism can’t leave fossil traces—although the existence of fossils depends on the surroundings in which the organism lived, and the history of the relevant rock during the ages since it died. The story is similar for soft-bodied organisms. Hard-bodied forms are more likely to be fossilized than soft-bodied ones, but many fossils of soft-bodied organisms and body parts do exist. Precambrian fossil deposits have been discovered in which tiny, soft-bodied embryo sponges are preserved—but no predecessors to the celebrity organisms of the Cambrian explosion.
This sort of negative evidence can’t ever be conclusive. But the ever-expanding fossil archives don’t look good for Darwin, who made clear and concrete predictions that have (so far) been falsified—according to many reputable paleontologists, anyway. When does the clock run out on those predictions? Never. But any thoughtful person must ask himself whether scientists today are looking for evidence that bears on Darwin, or looking to explain away evidence that contradicts him. There are some of each. Scientists are only human, and their thinking (like everyone else’s) is colored by emotion.
The Advent of Molecular Biology
Darwin’s main problem, however, is molecular biology. There was no such thing in his own time. We now see from inside what he could only see from outside, as if he had developed a theory of mobile phone evolution without knowing that there were computers and software inside or what the digital revolution was all about. Under the circumstances, he did brilliantly.
Biology in his time was for naturalists, not laboratory scientists. Doctor Dolittle was a naturalist. (He is the hero of the wonderful children’s books by Hugh Lofting, now unfortunately nearing extinction.) The doctor loved animals and understood them, and had a sharp eye for all of nature not too different from Wordsworth’s or Goethe’s. But the character of the field has changed, and it’s not surprising that old theories don’t necessarily still work.
Darwin’s theory is simple to grasp; its simplicity is the heart of its brilliance and power. We all know that variation occurs naturally among individuals of the same type—white or black sheep, dove-gray versus off-white or pale beige pigeons, boring and sullen undergraduates versus charming, lissome ones. We all know that many variations have no effect on a creature’s prospects, but some do. A sheep born with extra-warm wool will presumably do better at surviving a rough Scottish winter than his normal-wooled friends. Such a sheep would be more likely than normal sheep to live long enough to mate, and pass on its superior trait to the next generation. Over millions of years, small good-for-survival variations accumulate, and eventually (says Darwin) you have a brand new species. The same mechanism naturally favors genes that are right for the local environment—warm wool in Scotland, light and comfortable wool for the tropics, other varieties for mountains and deserts. Thus one species (your standard sheep) might eventually become four specialized ones. And thus new species should develop from old in the upward-branching tree pattern Darwin described.
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