Written by J. Chase Davis |
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Hooker called on his countrymen to turn back to God by parting from their rebellious ways and pleading with God not to depart. It is not gold, wealth, and prosperity “that makes God to be their God.” But it is God’s ordinances that bring his presence. Hooker called people to right worship and to find their prosperity in God. For God to remove his presence from a nation, would be a sure sign of his judgment.

Jeremiah 14:9 “We are called by thy name, leave us not.”
Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), distant relative of the more well-known Richard Hooker (1554-1600), arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 from England aboard the Griffin with fellow passengers Samuel Stone and John Cotton. Born in 1586 and a graduate of Emmanuel College, Hooker was appointed to the church of St. Mary’s in Chelmsford, Essex in 1626 where he became renowned for his preaching and lectureship. However, under Archbishop Laud, in 1629, Hooker was cited and summoned to the Court of High Commission for his Puritan practices and teachings. He was to be arrested and tried for his Puritan ways. In danger of having his ears cropped or face branded, Hooker absconded and fled to Holland for several years before taking the great journey to New England. There he would become known as the “father of Connecticut” having migrated there to found the Connecticut Colony as well as being instrumental in the development of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. But, before all of this and prior to his departure from his native land, he preached a final sermon titled “The Danger of Desertion.”
At this juncture in our nation’s history, any God-fearing American Christian must ask: are we suffering the judgment of God? Moreover, to the degree that we are, what is to be done? Hooker’s sermon provides critical insights from Scripture into what it looks like for a nation to suffer under God’s judgment and what it should do given such a severe state of affairs.
Expounding on Jeremiah 14, Hooker recounts how the people of God sought the Lord in order that his presence would not leave them, “This is the great request of the saints, they desire not to be left of God, though God may justly leave them.” Hooker applies this to the nation of England. Hooker’s choice of Jeremiah 14:6 reflects an assumption common among the Puritans, one which causes evangelicals today great discomfort. It was the belief of the Protestants that God covenanted with nations.
Through the blood of Jesus Christ, God purchased the nations, and for Hooker, England was one such nation. God had delivered them from captivity and bondage. Furthermore, for Hooker, God may “justly leave off a people, and unchurch a nation.” One need look no further than England today to see just such a nation.
There were three primary manners in which God may depart from a people, according to Hooker:

He takes away his love from a people as well as his means. For Hooker, the means of God are varied, but in this case, he refers to God’s active care flowing from his presence. The means are the ways in which God has ordained right worship and provides security for a people.
God takes away their protection by taking down their walls of defense: magistrates and ministers. The magistrates and ministers of God serve as a wall of defense for a nation covenanted with God, and God will remove these two means of protection when God leaves a people.
The teaching and counseling become rotten with bribery and false teaching.

Hooker asks:
“May God cast off a people, and unchurch a nation? Then let it teach us to cast off all security for miseries are nigh by all probabilities. When we observe what God has done for us, all things are ripe for ruin, and yet we fear it not, we promise safety to ourselves, and consider not that England is like to be harrowed, we cannot entertain a thought that England shall be destroyed, when there are so many professors in it; we cannot be persuaded of it, according to the conviction of our judgments, either it must not be, or not yet, as if it were impossible for God to leave England, as if God were a cockering Father over lewd and stubborn children: God may leave a nation that is but in outward covenant with him, and why not England?”
Hooker preached about the formerly Christian regions of Palestine and Denmark and begged his hearers to see that England may find itself in such disrepute as these if they were not to plead with their God. He entreats his countrymen to not believe their Christian numbers to be so great as to prevent God’s departure. “Do not say there are many Christians in it, can God be beholding to you for your religion? No surely, for rather then he will maintain such as profess his Name and hate him, he will raise up of these stones children unto Abraham; He will rather go to the Turks, and say you are my people, and I will be your God.”
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Throughout this time many in the PCA have publicly promoted Revoice while at the same time claiming that Side B does not exist within the denomination. They have said that rather than change our Constitution to address a non-existent issue that we should make use of the AIC Report on Human Sexuality because it gives us the tools to rightly address the issues we are facing.

It has been almost 5 years since the Revoice Side B Conference was born in the PCA. That first Revoice Conference (July 2018) featured speakers promoting the beauty of “queer treasure” and attendees cuddling, petting, and at least one walking around with a portion of his genitals hanging out of his shorts.  The PCA has been debating and seeking to deal with Side B (Gay) Christianity within the denomination ever since. Thankfully the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) of the PCA has denounced many of the teachings of Revoice. Still the debate persists.
Throughout this time many in the PCA have publicly promoted Revoice while at the same time claiming that Side B does not exist within the denomination. They have said that rather than change our Constitution to address a non-existent issue that we should make use of the AIC Report on Human Sexuality because it gives us the tools to rightly address the issues we are facing.
I agree that the AIC Report is a fine work on Biblical Sexuality with some great tools.  I taught a 12 week class with it that I commend to you.  However, the AIC Report has no Constitutional Authority and men have (not surprisingly) disagreed with what it allows and forbids.  Additionally, since it does not use the term Side B, how do we know what the AIC Report on Human Sexuality thinks about Side B Gay Christianity?
Dr. Tim Keller, one of the main authors of the AIC report explains that “the PCA’s Ad-Interim Committee on Human Sexuality considered this Side B view and clearly rejected it.”
The problem is in how one defines Side B.  One PCA Pastor on Twitter, based on a decades old conception of Side B, boldly states that “they agree same-sex sexual unions are out of bounds.  Under these terms, the PCA is & always has been Side B.”
Is that all that Side B is? Let’s attempt to define Side B and in so doing show that the least common denominator for Side B is more than abstaining from same-sex sexual unions.  Secondly, we’ll show evidence for how this definition is occurring in the PCA and has been allowed to occur. 
DEFINING SIDE B
I have defined Side-B in this way:
“Side B Gay Christianity… says that while

“being gay” or having a “gay orientation” is a valid category of personhood and identity,
Scripture clearly forbids the acting out of those desires.
They advocate for a “gay but celibate” way of life.”

*I was attacked for this definition and article until
Tim Keller offered his own definition:

“People attracted to the same sex, though remaining celibate
in obedience to the Bible,
still can call themselves ‘gay Christians’ and see their attraction as a part of their identity which should be acknowledged like one’s race or nationality….”

*This is the view that Keller says is rejected in the PCA AIC Report on Human Sexuality.
Dr. Greg Johnson, PCA Pastor and Side-B proponent in the PCA defines Side B this way:
“What makes someone Side B is simply

The rejection of homoerotic desire and practice
as sin, coupled with
The acknowledgement that a homosexual orientation is deeply rooted and unlikely to go away in this lifetime.”

Religion News, reporting on these issues, defines Side B this way:
(Side B is) “openly LGBTQ Christians who,

while embracing their sexual orientation,
also believe God designs sex and marriage
to occur exclusively between a man and a woman.”

Q Christian Fellowship, which took over the Organization that created the term Side B, defines it this way:
“Any theology which

affirm LGBTQ+ identities,
yet maintains that Christians should refrain from same-gender sex
for a variety of personal and/or theological reasons.”

You’ll notice how all of these definitions include MORE than simply “being attracted to the same-sex but being celibate because the Bible forbids it.” There is an identity component included in Side-B that in some sense is more than descriptive of the person’s experience.
This was an education for some in the PCA who thought Side B just meant that “same-sex sexual unions are out of bounds.”  As a matter of fact, it seems that PCA pastors are the only people who still affirm that limiting definition of Side B.  Perhaps they aren’t up on the debate or the community even as some of them exist within the community.
What About Rosaria and Becket?
Rosaria Butterfield and Becket Cook, Reformed Christians who have and do struggle with SSA, have written and spoken extensively on their journey and the dangers of the Side B position.
They both claim that this Side B ontological and anthropological error is what is going on in the PCA, Revoice, and Greg Johnson’s teaching.

Would we be so arrogant to think we know better than this sister and brother in Christ as to what Side B is and how that relates to the PCA?
When in an online dialogue with Greg Johnson about Side B, I asked him if Side B is simply that “same-sex sexual activity is immoral” why does Rosaria Butterfield reject it.  He responded:
“Rosaria rejects sexual orientation as a category. That’s what makes her different from Side B.”- Greg Johnson, November 30, 2021
By this statement alone we must reject the assertion by the uninformed that “Side B is just same-sex attracted but a commitment to the Biblical Sexual ethic.”  By Johnson’s own admission, a rejection of orientation as a category puts one outside of the Side B camp.  One thing to note is that Johnson doesn’t say what type of category it is.  Is it a category of experience? Personhood?  Being? Identity? He doesn’t say.
Thankfully, Rosaria tells us.  She explains the Side B that she Rejects:
“Sees sexual orientation as an accurate category of personhood (i.e., there is such a thing as a gay person – that gayness describes who someone actually is)…To the Side B Christian homosexuality is a sexuality – one of many.”
So, there you have it. Greg admits the difference is that Rosaria rejects sexual orientation as a category and Rosaria tells us that she rejects orientation as a category of personhood.
The issue here is one’s view of anthropology and is therefore theological in nature and not simply one’s use of language.
SIDE B IN THE PCA
Even though some claim “The PCA has always been Side B,” there are some who say that Side B isn’t happening in the PCA.  If that’s the case, why would Becket Cook and Rosaria Butterfield say it is?  According to  Keller, “there is not One PCA court– not one session, presbytery, or agency– that has ever endorsed Side B Christianity.” Those are carefully chosen words, but what type of “endorsement” is Keller asking for? Is he implying that Side B can’t be allowed to exist in the PCA unless an official body makes a public declaration they are on board with Side B? Let’s see if there is any evidence of the Side B that should be rejected in the PCA.
Members of Memorial Presbyterian Church Tell Us
Why would Dr. Nate Collins, a Member at Memorial PCA (the Church that Greg Johnson Pastors) and cofounder of Revoice, identify as “A Gay Man” while he is married to a woman and why would his Wife (Sara Collins) claim that what Keller says is rejected by the AIC Report regarding Side B is precisely what is going on at their Church?
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The peasants “were swollen with starvation, while the cadres were swollen with overeating.” The destruction of the family in China didn’t mean “more care, more love.” Mao knew. Communist Party Vice-Chair, Liu Shaoqi told Mao, “History will record the role you and I played in the starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be memorialized!”

Sophie Lewis wants to Abolish the Family. In her sympathetic review of Lewis’s book, Erin Maglaque traces through the “utopian” views of the anti-family movement. She tells of the 19th Century Fournier communes that “freed” women of the “drudgery” of cooking for their families. Lewis wants to expand on the idea of kitchenless households to include collective childcare. Maglaque writes,
The family, Lewis and other abolitionists and feminists argue, privatises care. The legal and economic structure of the nuclear household warps love and intimacy into abuse, ownership, scarcity. Children are private property, legally owned and fully economically dependent on their parents. The hard work of care – looking after children, cooking and cleaning – is hidden away and devalued, performed for free by women or for scandalously low pay by domestic workers.
“If we abolish the family,” Magaque writes, “we abolish the most fundamental unit of privatization and scarcity in our society. More care, more love, for all.”
Family abolitionists see themselves as liberators, but their dreams are dystopian. Only through force can the family be abolished as a crucial foundation of society.  There is no love in force; the utopian hope of “more love” really means more hate for all.
“More love for all” was not how it worked out when Mao sought to abolish the family during his Great Leap Forward. Like the Chinese communists, Lewis sees no need for every family to cook, wash clothes, and raise children. For the Chinese, instead of paradise, the outcome was the worst man-made famine in history.
In his meticulously researched book Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962, Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng reports, in harrowing detail, the totalitarian-induced famine that killed 36 million Chinese. The toll of Mao’s famine exceeds, by many times, the toll of Stalin’s death by starvation of Ukrainians.
Mao and other Chinese communists, according to Jisheng, saw  “the family as the social foundation of the private ownership system and a major impediment to communism.” In a 1958 speech Mao said: “In socialism, private property still exists, factions still exist, families still exist. Families are the product of the last stage of primitive communism, and every last trace of them will be eliminated in the future.” Mao continued, “in the future, the family will no longer be beneficial to the development of productivity … Many of our comrades don’t dare to consider problems of this nature because their thinking is too narrow.”
Jisheng took a deep dive into the Chinese Communist Party archives. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai believed “thorough liberation required liberating women from their household duties.” Enlai “promoted communal kitchens and communal nurseries as the sprouts of communism.” Vice-chair of the Communist Party Liu Shaoqi observed: that “by eliminating families it would be possible to eliminate private property.”
The intent was to make the Chinese population more controllable and China more productive. A 1959 party report laid out the results:
People eat together in the canteens and go out to work together … Before the canteens, commune members could only work for seven to eight hours a day; now they work an average of ten hours a day … At breakfast, as soon as the bowls are pushed away, the section heads lead people out to work … Before and after meals, commune members read newspapers and listen to radio broadcasts together, improving their education in communism.
Food is usually cooked by families because it is efficient that they do so. During the Great Leap Forward, communal kitchens were rapidly established, some feeding up to 800 people. Jisheng reports, “The communal kitchens were a major reason so many starved to death. Home stoves were dismantled, and cooking implements, tables and chairs, foodstuffs, and firewood were handed over to the communal kitchen, as were livestock, poultry, and any edible plants harvested by commune members. In some places, no chimneys were allowed to be lit outside the communal kitchen.” In short, households lost even the ability to boil water.
The consequences were catastrophic. Jisheng writes, “Eliminating the family as a basic living unit reduced its capacity to combat famine.”
Introducing communal kitchens meant people had to go to a kitchen to be fed. Jisheng observes, “In the mountain regions, people had to tramp over hill and dale for a bowl of gruel.” The details reflect the mad arrogance of the planners:
In the spring of 1960 the newly appointed first secretary of Yunnan Province went to the countryside for an inspection. In the hill country he saw an old woman, covered from head to toe in mud, lugging a basket up a slope during a rainstorm on her way to the kitchen. Some villagers told him that this elderly woman had to cover only two hills and seven-plus kilometers, which was not so bad; some had to travel fifteen kilometers on their donkeys to reach the communal kitchen, spending a good part of a day fetching two meals.
The abolition of the family meant families couldn’t divide labor as they cared for the young, elderly, and infirm. Individuals can see through the eyes of love, but all that mattered to the communists was productivity. A party official proclaimed: “Even the old and feeble cannot be allowed to eat for free, but must contribute their effort. If they can’t carry a double load, they can share a load with someone else, and if they can’t use their shoulders, they can use their hands; even crawling to the field with a bowl of dirt in one hand contributes more than lying in bed.”
The communists seized homes. Jisheng reports, “Kindergartens, nurseries, and facilities for the elderly were established with resources seized from families without compensation, and homes were vacated to house the facilities.”
Of course, none of this was voluntary. Jisheng explains that “Cadres and militia ransacked homes and sometimes beat and detained occupants. When villagers handed over their assets, it was in an atmosphere of extreme political pressure. The campaign against private property rendered many families destitute and homeless.”
Jisheng describes, how initially, with “free” food, commune members gorged themselves:
The communal kitchens were most damaging in their waste. During the first two or three months that the canteens operated in the autumn of 1958, members feasted. Believing that food supply problems had been completely resolved, Mao and other central leaders worried about “what to do with the extra food,” which in turn led villagers to believe that the state had access to vast stores of food to supplement local supplies when they ran out. The slogan was, “With meals supplied communally, there is never any fear of eating too much.”
Of course, as food ran out, not all were equal. Jisheng reports on how the cadres [officials charged with managing communist party affairs] “helped themselves to white rice, steamed rolls, stuffed buns, steamed buns, and meat and vegetable dishes, while ordinary commune members ate watery gruel.” The gruel “was often execrable. Boiling cauldrons of congee might contain rat droppings and sheep dung.”
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