The PCA is not rotten, not given over to unbelief. But the denomination, now almost 50 years old, has serious problems. And many within the PCA don’t want to wait until it’s too late, and so they consider their options. 

It is no secret that the Presbyterian Church in America is in turmoil. No one denies the existence of conflict and consternation. Though some consider the strife to be unjustified, even they do not believe the strife will soon cease or be easily resolved.
Let’s cut to the chase and say the quiet part out loud: There may come a time when the Presbyterian Church in America needs to split. But until that time comes it should not splinter.
Let’s consider the conflict, which is not altogether new and which has no single source. Presbyters with a historical bent may point to the diversity present in the PCA’s founding generation in 1973 and the decade that followed—a mixed multitude of seriously confessional Presbyterians, broad evangelicals, half-recovered quasi-Baptists, ill-taught presbyterian traditionalists, cultural conservatives troubled by the tumultuous 1960s, and Lost Cause Southerners. With such diversity of conviction, understanding, and affinity, is the current conflict any surprise? Having run this taxonomy by a diverse group of PCA folk, I am prepared to assert that the categories are largely correct; only the percentage distribution is in question.
Of course, the distinctions were (and are) not neat and tidy… there was a mixture within the mixture. And it’s impossible to understand and quantify individual Presbyterians who may not even have understood themselves. Nevertheless, many who love the PCA have spent a lot of time trying to describe the PCA in the interest of understanding, improving and preserving the denomination.
Retired pastor Tim Keller of Big Apple fame took a well-researched and thoughtful stab at explanatory categorization in 2010. Keller admitted at the outset that “This ‘big tent’ approach… sets the PCA up for conflict.” He largely employed and approved of church historian George Marsden’s “doctrinalist, pietistic and culturalist” breakdown. [1] Keller’s prescription for unity was maintaining a symbiotic balance between the three camps or “impulses”:
“The main way we could actually forge greater unity between ourselves is by letting some of the other branches’ emphases and strengths color, flavor, and affect our own approaches to doing ministry.”
Keller penned his diagnostic in 2010, the year the contentious and quietly revolutionary Strategic Plan was approved by the PCA General Assembly. The plan had been years in the making and before some of its more controversial corners of verbiage were rounded off it called for theological “safe places” where edgy things could be discussed without fear and for “more seats at the table” for women, minorities, and internationals. This plan seemed to predict the PCA racial reconciliation and women-in-ministry reports and movements that came in the second decade of the 21st century. What the plan did not predict was a little parachurch conference and concept that rocked the PCA like nothing that had come before: Revoice and “Side B gay Christianity.” If balance between doctrinalists, pietists and culturalists was ever possible, the 2018 Revoice Conference (and its PCA connections) wrecked whatever near-equilibrium or peace that had been achieved.
It has been difficult for many ordinary PCA members and officers to understand why the Revoice/Side B movement has become a must-have or a must-tolerate issue for some in the PCA—mostly pastors of the “missional” or city church kind. According to the Keller-Marsden model, it could be that those who want to reach the culture of cities (often dominated by homosexual-friendly artists, politicians, and elites) see Revoice/Side B as not only helpful but essential. The doctrinalists find much in, well, the doctrine of the Bible and the Westminster Standards to make them wary of if not hostile to the innovations. The pietists love conversion stories and may even appreciate “new measures,” but many are still ambivalent about the propriety of same-sex-attracted officers in the PCA. Maybe it all seems a bit sudden, out of the blue. Or left field.
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We Shall All Be Changed is an honest book. Pipkin’s personal stories will resonate with anyone who has lost a family member. But it’s also a gospel-infused, hopeful book written with beauty and truth. Having read it, I fear death less but hate it more as an enemy. And I believe down to my bones that what Jesus accomplished at the cross and the empty tomb means everything for our present comfort and our future hope.

My grandmother died last year on her 96th birthday. When I got the call that the end was near, I quickly drove to my parents’ home in Tennessee. In those final hours before she died, we held her hands and sang hymns. We recited Scriptures she loved and talked about heaven. Late in the evening, my grandmother died with family, friends, and a hospice nurse holding vigil by her side. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,” I whispered, the room now quiet in the absence of her labored breathing.
A wave of conflicting thoughts swirled in my mind. Death is natural. Death is a part of life. But death is also unnatural. It’s an enemy. This isn’t right. My grandmother was a faithful believer. Though I knew she was with the Lord, I wasn’t sure how to feel about her death. There’s an ache of grief, even if it’s grief with hope. But how do we grieve? What do we do with death—the thing that everyone faces but none of us wants to endure? If death is a natural part of life, why are we so afraid of it?
In We Shall All Be Changed: How Facing Death with Loved Ones Transforms Us, journalist Whitney Pipkin answers common questions about grieving the death of a loved one and facing our mortality. Death is a doorway that leads us to eternity, but it’s also an enemy that will chase humanity until Christ returns to put it in its grave.

Theology of Death

It’s tempting to cloak our feelings about death with cheery Bible verses and “buck-up” clichés. However, if death is truly the enemy Jesus came to destroy, then it’s right to grieve its reach in this life. It’s right to lament because death is lamentable, even if it’s anticipated. Pipkin writes, “There is no tidy theology that will keep those tears from falling. But our suffering in death need not be deepened by surprise” (33).
We all must face our mortality. Walking with our loved ones through death is a rehearsal for our own step into eternity. Unless Christ returns in our lifetime, we will die. Developing a theology of death teaches us to sit with grief and understand the hope of Christ’s return.
Death is a result of sin.
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Specific strengths I appreciate about the book: Clary explains how men and women flourish when they live according to God’s good design. This is insightful: “Men are prone to certain vices that are curbed by social relations with women. … Women have the power to help men become the best version of themselves. … Women have a different power than men. A woman’s presence can catalyze male virtue and direct his masculine strength toward her desires. Put simply, masculine virtue can flourish under feminine influence because masculine strength was given for the protection and provision of a woman. Men tend to be at their best when their masculine energy, strength, and independence is channeled for the benefit of the women (and children) who are depending on them” (pp. 227–28).

The author of a new book on human sexuality knows what time it is in our culture. Michael Clary, lead pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the author of God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality (Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion, 2023).
Clary’s Thesis
Clary’s thesis is that God’s design for sex is true, good, and beautiful. Embracing God’s design should delight you, not frighten you.
What is actually frightening is how the world has twisted God’s design by means of Gnosticism (which undergirds the modern idea that a person’s sex and gender may be different), feminism and androgyny (which pressure women to try to act like men), contraception (which encourages casual sex by separating marriage, sex, and childbearing), so-called gay marriage (which reduces marriage to a legal sex contract), and transgenderism (which is the offspring of feminism that is now devouring its mother). “The sexual revolution is like a runaway train that has no breaks” (p. 17). Next up: pedophilia, polygamy, polyamory, and bestiality.
Clary’s Argument
Clary develops his thesis in eleven chapters:
1. The human household is a copy of the cosmic household of God the Father. God reveals himself in Scripture as masculine: “The Bible never describes God’s being with feminine language. God may do things that seem more feminine, but God’s being is never described that way” (p. 34, italics original). “Headship is masculine,” and it’s good for both men and women (p. 38).
2. God beautifully designed men to have male bodies with masculine souls and a masculine nature, and he beautifully designed women to have female bodies with feminine souls and a feminine nature. A woman is a potential mother—physically and expressed in other ways.
3. Stereotypes recognize patterns, and it is wise to recognize that men and women are different. Men are better equipped to lead and provide and protect, and women are better equipped to help and nurture and refine. That doesn’t mean that men don’t help or nurture or refine or that women don’t lead or provide or protect. It simply recognizes that men are better at structuring society and that women are better at domesticating and beautifying. It’s in their DNA. For example, a woman’s “entire body is designed for and oriented towards reproduction. Her brain, hormones, joints, bones, cardiovascular system, immune system, breasts, and reproductive organs are all designed for the bearing and nurturing of children” (pp. 74–75).
4. Modern industrial households are very different from older agrarian ones. In Bible times, a household consisted of several generations living together who worked together within a community. A husband and wife worked as a team with the man tending toward outward “forming” tasks (like subduing the earth) and the woman tending toward inward “filling” tasks (like child-bearing and managing a household, which was no small job). Men can relate to others in the household in four ways—as sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers. And women can relate as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.
5. The way men and women sin and express virtue are not identical. Men sin and express virtue as men, and women sin and express virtue as women. The world (and even some Christians) encourages men to behave in more characteristically feminine ways and encourages women to behave in more characteristically masculine ways. “For example, strong-willed, independent, truth-oriented, and direct-speaking men are often considered arrogant, whereas passive, compliant, and egalitarian men are considered more Christlike” (p. 107). Masculine virtue includes courage, and feminine virtue includes giving life. Masculine vice includes exaggerating masculinity (e.g., using strength to oppress others) and diminishing masculinity (e.g., failing to use strength properly and instead being passive and effeminate). Feminine vice includes exaggerating femininity (e.g., using sexual desirability to manipulate men, immodesty, playing the victim) and diminishing femininity (e.g., grasping for power, lesbianism).
6. Pursuing a common mission is what holds a household together and makes it productive. People in the industrial world typically think of work as something you do away from home, which is a place to retreat and relax. Before the industrial revolution, the household and work were inseparable. We shouldn’t idealize the past as if the Amish way is the godly way, but “it is arrogant to regard the modern world as more advanced, liberated, and enlightened than previous generations” (p. 148).
7. Fathers are critically important to the health of a home. According to modern sociological studies, “The single biggest indicator of adult success is growing up with an intact family” (p. 166). A boy becomes a father by maturing in strength, leadership, courage, and wisdom and by marrying a virtuous woman who will help him accomplish his mission.
8. Our culture conditions us to devalue motherhood and to more highly value a woman who pursues a successful career outside the home. Feminists “asserted that the key to overturning the oppressive family structure was to dismantle marriage, separate sex from procreation, and promote sex as recreation” (p. 194). But nature is a stubborn thing. God designed women to instinctively want to be a mother—physically and metaphorically. That’s why struggles with infertility can be so crushing for a woman. Homemaking is a list of chores that you can outsource, but mothering requires a mother’s nurturing presence. A woman may work outside the home, but home should be her primary domain.
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