Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Even in the last three weeks, I have taught classes on campus criticizing the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision and Bruce Jenner’s gender transition—career-damaging lectures at almost any other institution of higher education in the United States. And I have for many years been one of the most vocal opponents of the way in which identity politics, particularly that of the LGBTQ+ movement, has damaged our culture and public life. I have received nothing but support from the college administration as I have continued to speak up on such matters.

“Do I teach at a woke school?” was not a question I seriously considered until one evening last week when I received an email from a friend assuring me of his prayers for me in my workplace. The reason was an article he had just read on a website, The American Reformer, entitled “Wide Awoke at Grove City College?”  The background to the article was a petition launched some weeks ago by parents of Grove City College (GCC) students and alumni concerning what they perceived as a woke drift on campus. The GCC president had responded to the petition in a way that I myself had thought was solid but American Reformer dismissed as “limp” and, by implication, disingenuous. I do not know if the author of the article has ever set foot on the campus which he writes about, but I confess that had he not told me he was writing about GCC, I might have struggled to recognize the ethos of my institution in the way he described it.
Now, wokeness is surely a serious problem in American higher education. Parents and alumni of all schools are right to be concerned about how various institutions are responding. I am not persuaded that petitions are ever the best way to address such problems but I can certainly sympathize with those anxious about their children or about their beloved alma maters. I myself am passionately committed to saving education from wokeness. I am a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University and the National Association of Scholars, both of which have a keen interest in maintaining the importance of academic freedom and excellence on campuses. I am a contributing editor at the decidedly anti-woke First Things and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, one of the best-known conservative think-tanks in Washington, D.C. I am acutely aware of the struggle many friends face at this difficult time and I understand why parents and alumni are disturbed when they hear stories (or, in this case, mostly misguided rumors) about their institution. They are right to ask questions and raise concerns. They need to know if the colleges that take their money are providing the education they claim to be doing.
At the heart of academic institutional excellence is, of course, academic freedom. That can be tricky at a school that holds a stated religious position, such as a Christian college like Grove City College, but it can be done. The way a Christian school can hold to its beliefs yet give students a good education is to hold faculty to a standard of belief but then ensure that they engage other viewpoints in the classroom, host speakers from a variety of political and philosophical traditions, and encourage students to wrestle honestly with the great ideas and the hard questions of the past and the present. For example, as I recently told the Religious News Service, I declare my classes to be free-speech zones (something none of the more progressive figures interviewed said about their classes). I do not require students to agree with me in order to get a good grade. But if they dissent from my view they need to do so respectfully and give me an argument as to why I am wrong. For me, education is not about cloning myself intellectually in the classroom (as it is becoming at so many woke schools); it is about giving the students the skills to think for themselves.
At the center of the storm surrounding GCC was an invitation to Jemar Tisby to speak in chapel. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and in retrospect inviting Tisby to give a chapel address may have been a mistake. A chapel address carries a certain institutional imprimatur that a simple guest lecture does not, though inviting guest lecturers to campus to engage our students on critical topics such as race, in this current culture, is an important role of any college or university. But that is not a criticism of my colleagues who invited Tisby to speak in chapel. One of the hallmarks of wokeness is cultural amnesia—the swift forgetting of what was true the day before yesterday in order to demonize those who still hold, say, to the importance of biological sex for gender. Conservatives need to be careful not to play their own version of the woke-amnesia game when it suits them. Tisby is a good example. He was first given a platform by Reformed Theological Seminary where he had been a student on its Jackson, Mississippi campus. That is a flagship conservative reformed institution. Indeed, as recently as 2015, he was appointed director of the African-American Leadership Initiative at RTS. He was described at the time by the RTS Chancellor, Ligon Duncan, as follows: “a man I trust … a dear friend … an educator and a churchman…. His commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture, the Reformed faith and the gospel ground all his efforts towards our honoring the image of God in all people.” Ligon Duncan is no woke progressive, as anyone who knows him will attest.
Duncan’s eulogy is a reminder that Tisby has been on a long journey, from RTS poster child in 2015 to working for Ibram Kendi’s outfit in 2021. Indeed, even The Color of Compromise, a book with which I have some stated disagreements, is surely not representative of where he is today. The fact is, the summer of 2020 appears to have been a radicalizing watershed for Tisby as for many others on both sides of the political divide. The college can hardly be blamed for failing in 2019 to predict the radicalization of the RTS graduate who had recently been seen as the emerging African American bridge-builder in conservative reformed Presbyterianism.
In an email exchange, the editor of The American Reformer expressed concern to me that Grove City College was platforming Tisby while not platforming faculty like me on woke issues. Well, Tisby came to campus for one day and (I believe) spoke twice. Then he left and has not returned. As for me, I lecture for several hours every day on campus to classes that are full. I speak in chapel every year. I write things almost weekly at places like First Things and World that whack wokeness. The college launched its Great Lectures series by showcasing me on identity issues as they culminate in today’s identity politics. The college arranged for me to speak to a Washington D.C. group of Capitol Hill staffers twice in the last 18 months—once on sexual-identity issues, once on race. Even in the last three weeks, I have taught classes on campus criticizing the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision and Bruce Jenner’s gender transition—career-damaging lectures at almost any other institution of higher education in the United States. And I have for many years been one of the most vocal opponents of the way in which identity politics, particularly that of the LGBTQ+ movement, has damaged our culture and public life. I have received nothing but support from the college administration as I have continued to speak up on such matters. And from my vantage point, the same could be said of my colleagues who share my support of GCC’s Christ-centered mission, but do not come down on every hard issue where I do.
That makes Grove City College, even with all of its mortal failings and human flaws, a remarkable place. My wife and I recently hosted students at our house for a dessert evening. One of them asked if I hoped to stay at Grove City College until I retire. I responded yes, because I love the college and, more significantly, because my writings and lecturing have made me likely unemployable almost anywhere else in this age of the woke. As evidence, I told them about a Christian college where I gave a lecture by Zoom in the last year. The professor who invited me to speak asked if he could record the session because he expected to be the subject of a complaint that he had created an unsafe learning environment by having someone of my views speak. And that was a Christian college. A Christian college. That would not happen at Grove City College.
Is Grove City College perfect?  No more than I am. But I am a conservative and a Christian and that means that I believe certain things are true. For example, I believe that no institution can ever make no mistakes and do the right thing every time. And the larger the institution, the more likely it is that issues will arise. With nearly 200 faculty, a large staff, a student body of more than 2,000, and more than 800 courses taught each semester, GCC is too big for even the most perfect administration to micromanage. Built from the crooked timber of fallen humanity, Grove City College, like all institutions, reflects our own failings and weaknesses. But if the test of people’s character is not whether they live a perfect life but how they handle their mistakes and failings, then the test of an institution’s integrity is how it addresses those things which have not gone as planned or have proved unexpectedly counter-productive. GCC’s management of this continuing challenge is smart and effective. It strives to hire excellent scholars with solid Christian convictions. There is no tenure; everyone gets a one-year contract requiring affirmation of the college’s mission and values. When occasional issues arise, direct and constructive conversations take place with the expectation of missional alignment. That is why it is sad that the college’s recent statement about its commitment to addressing the matters raised by the petition has met with such cynicism from an ostensibly conservative Christian source.
I do appreciate my friend praying for me. I hope that he prays that all of us at Grove City College will stand firm for God’s truth, academic freedom, and intellectual integrity in this storm of wokeness that surrounds us. But above all, I hope that he gives thanks that I and my colleagues work at a place where we have the freedom to be faithful in our callings, a freedom that exists in few other institutions of higher education today.
Carl R. Trueman is professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College. This article is used with permission.

As Session saw it, the Jonesboro 7 were in rebellion against the will of Christ. But had not told them how they were in rebellion against Christ. At the hearing the SJC Judges would later question how the men would be able to show proper evidence of repentance given the lack of specificity; one SJC judge asked whether proper repentance might seem to include having to vote for TE Wreyford. As the SJC would later point out, however, “Session had neither the responsibility nor authority to determine or direct who, if anyone, would stand for election as the pastor of the mission church upon its organization as a particular church.” Session had gravely transcended its authority.

Editorial Note: What follows will be controversial and disturbing as it deals with abuse. Reader discretion is advised. In preparing this series, official documents and public comments have been extensively used to compose the narrative. No attempt is made to assign motives to any of the parties in this case. Reference will be made to inferences drawn by the judges on the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission as they carefully reviewed the case and noted the process was “abused” and offenses “imagined” by a Temporary Session of Elders against the Jonesboro 7. Any objection to the use of the term “abused” should be directed to the SJC Judges rather than the author of this series who simply reports the judgment of the PCA General Assembly regarding the actions of the Temporary Session in this case.
This is part three in a series. You can read Part One as well as Part Two. I have also written about this mater on PCA Polity.
Seven men from a small church plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas desired to see a distinctively Reformed and Presbyterian church planted in their city. Covenant Presbytery had called a church planter, TE Jeff Wreyford, to organize the work there. But the seven men, the Jonesboro 7, had a different ministerial philosophy than TE Wreyford and they had not perceived the cultivation of a distinctively Reformed and Presbyterian church to be a priority for him.
The seven men went to the Session of elders overseeing the work and stated that when the time came to consider extending a call to a permanent pastor, that they desired to consider other candidates rather than TE Wreyford. You can read more of that in part two.
The Session, of which TE Wreyford was moderator, eventually responded by indicting the Jonesboro 7. The Session wrote them claiming it was “fair to assume,” the Jonesboro 7 had broken the ninth commandment in arriving at their conclusions about TE Wreyford. It remains unclear why the Session believed that was a fair assumption.
These “dirt kickers” from Jonesboro, who attended a fledgling church plant of about 45 people, were summoned for a trial on July 12, 2021, however the wife of one of the Accused was pregnant and her due date was that same day. But despite the request of the Jonesboro 7 for the trial to be moved to the city where they worshiped and where the offenses were alleged to have taken place, the Session of Elders insisted it would be held at IPC Memphis, where most of them were on staff or already ruling elders.
We can only speculate as to how the added stress of allegations from Christ’s under-shepherds and ultimately an indictment would have impacted the young family as they awaited the arrival of their child.
The Session graciously accommodated the soon-to-be father by offering him a choice: choose to be absent from his own trial and represented by counsel or, if the delivery “providentially hindered” him, they would schedule a new hearing date for him. Mr Hurston ultimately chose to be near his wife on that date and was represented by one of the other Accused.1
A Curious Trial
The trial was held at IPC Memphis about 70 miles from the men’s homes and from the church where they were members. It was quite a contrast; IPC Memphis is an historic, wealthy, and influential congregation, which reported an average morning attendance of 952 in 2020 when the Jonesboro 7’s troubles began. Christ Redeemer PCA in Jonesboro, had about 45 people attending the church plant in 2020.
The men had little reason to be optimistic about their impending trial; at the end of May, the Session sent each of the Jonesboro 7 a letter asserting: “Scripture reminds us that if we fail to confess our sins, we cannot expect the Lord’s blessing…you are on a pathway that leads to Sheol and death. Return to your first love, Jesus Christ….”2
Readers may recall that earlier the Session had declined to tell the men how they had sinned. And when the men begged to know what their specific sin(s) were, these under-shepherds of Christ accused the men of being “disingenuous.”
As such, it is curious TE Ed Norton would sign a letter urging the men to “Confess [their] sins,” but continue to refuse to tell the men what their particular sins were (Cf. WCF 15:5). The SJC would call this more than curious; it was “unfair.”3
Nonetheless, the men were committed to the PCA and submitted to a trial, still not knowing what the Session believed they had done in violation of Christ’s Law.
TE Mike Malone, at the time also a pastor at IPC Memphis, served as the prosecutor in the case. It was his job to prove the Jonesboro 7 had broken the Fifth and Ninth Commandments.
At trial, TE Malone alleged the men were in sin to oppose TE Wreyford being offered as candidate for pastor; TE Malone asserted:
The session has continued to voice its support of [TE Wreyford] and believes without hesitation that he should be offered to the congregation as a candidate to serve as its pastor. That’s our job. That’s our responsibility as a provisional session.
The PCA Standing Judicial Commission quotes other arguments from TE Malone’s prosecution in which he alleged the Jonesboro 7 had sinned against the authority the Session “presumed” to have:
“The persistent insistence that [TE Wreyford’s] name be removed as a candidate to be pastor of this church reflects a fundamental unwillingness to fulfill membership vow number five, and is disruptive of the peace of the church.”4
Numerous witnesses were summoned against the accused. But none of them offered any evidence of the guilt of the accused, as the SJC would later point out (see the forthcoming Part Five).
One of the witnesses was TE Clint Wilcke who serves as the “Coordinator/Catalyst for the Mid-South Church Planting Network.” TE Wilcke’s testimony featured some memorable exchanges.
In one exchange, TE Clint Wilcke corrected a defendant for addressing him as “Mr Wilcke,” and instead insisted he be addressed as Reverend Wilcke.
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Sacred Scripture is the voice of God in the world. It is authoritative in that it has the right to command because its author is God Himself. God’s people walk the difficult, narrow path, which takes them to meet their Saviour face-to-face in eternity, by submitting their thoughts and moral standards to God’s Word. Many Reformers lost their lives because they labored to get the printed Word of God into the hands of their people. In our day we take the Word of God for granted and, as we said earlier, many so-called Christian leaders today actually denigrate it in the eyes of those they lead. 

12 There is a way which seems right to a man,But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 14:12 (LSB)
Several yeas ago  I posted “Is there a war going on between God and His forces on one side and Satan and his forces on the other?” In that post I mentioned a link sent to me by a friend to a post on another blog called The Emergent Village. On that blog I could not help noticing a link to another post by another writer there titled “The Bible is NOT the WORD OF GOD: a polemic against Christendom“. What that fellow had to say is the centerpiece of “Christian Liberalism.” Denying The Bible as the Word of God, a gift from God to His people is the first step into apostasy. Once that step is taken all other truths are no longer held as absolute.
Without that God-given anchor into His absolute truth all else is up for grabs. Those like the fellow who wrote that article and those who agree with him are those who also have a problem with what Orthodox Christianity holds as the gospel, the sovereignty of God, election, the exclusivity of genuine discipleship, et cetera. Because of this “liberalism” they also force a man-centered perspective on God’s Word in one form or another. These same people lean towards a form of Christianity that is almost all experiential. Since their view of how the gospel works and how God works with Man is wrongly focused and the Word of God contains clear teachings about the sovereignty of God, these people conceive of their entire “Christian” paradigm from a philosophical and existential base rather than on the authority of Sacred Scripture. They have to do this since they deny that what we call Sacred Scripture has any authority.
The Christian principle of the authority of Sacred Scripture is centered on the truth that God is its author and He has given it to direct the belief and behavior of His people. Instead of conceiving of God, His ways, and our conduct from a man-made, philosophical base, these understandings should be measured, tested, corrected, and enlarged according to God’s Word. The sad state of the 21st Century Church did not come from God’s people diligently adhering to this principle. No, the man-focused free-for-all we see all around us now with the doctrines of demons being preached from pulpits of very large churches, is the product of this principle being largely and deliberately ignored.
The main reason this has taken place is that the church leadership has been deceived with the lie that God’s word does not have the right to command. Part of this delusion came from the philosophies of men, which teach that there is no absolute truth. When these leaders threw off the yoke of adhering to God’s Word as the ultimate authority they instead took on the yoke of the social gospel as they gleefully proclaimed the mantra of liberal theology, which is that Christianity is all about the person rather than all about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit-their glory, their honor, not the glorification of Man.
My brethren, God has chosen to exercise His rule over us through His written Word, which is the embodiment of His truth and wisdom. Sacred Scripture is the instrument of Christ’s lordship over the Church. We see a working example of this principle in Revelation 2 & 3, which are the seven letters to the seven churches.
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