This is the social justice gospel exposing itself openly, without modesty and without regard to how repulsive it is to the many other PCA members who believe in the spirituality of the church (Col. 3:1-3), the prudence of minding one’s own affairs rather than those of other communities (Prov. 26:17), and the propriety of an armed citizenry (Neh. 4:7-23). It has nothing to do with the duties of Cassidy’s office, not anything to do with our denomination or its faith: it is contemporary urban political preference presented as edifying Christian teaching, a coercion to agree masquerading as earnest Christian appeal.

David Cassidy is very animated about what he perceives as the insufficiency of our nation’s response to criminal homicides, particularly those which involve firearms. In an article at By Faith, the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), he inveighs against what he regards as a mistaken attitude about prayer, vehemently asserting that prayer which is unaccompanied by work is “presumptuous theism” and a far cry from the need of the moment, which is, on his view, the “diligent, bi-partisan work of elected officials and citizens ready to tackle the legion of issues that have created this plague” of gun-related crime. Pondering his claims, one might fancy that his feelings have gotten the better of his reason and led him into writing an article of which we might say, in the words of Proverbs 19:2, that “desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.”
He makes some strange claims. He says that  “neither the individual Christian nor the elected official . . . can go on using prayer as a cover for inaction.” Yet the case which inspired his article, the Ralph Yarl shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, has not been attended by inaction: the shooter has been charged with felonious assault and if convicted will probably be imprisoned for the rest of his life. When Cassidy talks of inaction he must mean something else then, though he is short on particulars and speaks in generalities like this:
We must all start working for a safer society. It’s time to stop excusing our lack of progress in reducing mass shootings and work on creating and implementing the solutions that will foster a safer society for all. With the first responders, medical personnel, police, and all who in every way work to preserve life, let’s get on with the good work that needs to be done.
Elsewhere he says, “We can’t merely pray about a kid being gunned down for no reason other than he rang the wrong doorbell.” One wonders how it is that Cassidy knows that Ralph Yarl was shot because “he rang the wrong doorbell” when his accused assailant has not yet had a chance to present his side or to defend himself in court. To be sure, such information as is available suggests (key word) that this was a senseless act, but it is not just to tacitly assume that the media’s narrative of events is accurate, not least given its record for inaccuracy in reporting; and much less is it just to condemn a man in the court of public opinion before he has been tried in the court of law (comp. Jn. 7:51; Prov. 18:13, 17). “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike” (Deut. 1:17). By assuming the truth of the media’s narrative Cassidy is not being an impartial judge, nor is he hearing everyone alike.
Yet such claims pale in comparison to four others that Cassidy makes. He says that “elected officials in this country need a timeout on calls to prayer and should instead get to work on the problem of gun violence, the leading cause of death among children in this nation.” We do indeed need a “timeout on [politician’s] calls for prayer,” but not for the reason Cassidy suggests. We need such a thing because such displays savor of hypocrisy and receive our Lord’s explicit condemnation (Matt. 6:5-7) – a thing which Cassidy and By Faith seem to have elsewhere forgotten.
As for gun violence being “the leading cause of death among children,” this is factually false. Using CDC data on causes of death by age, available here, we see that in 2020, the last year available, homicide by any means fell in fourth place for deaths among minors, with 2,059, behind unintentional injuries (5,746), congenital anomalies (4,860), and short gestation (3,141). Even subtracting infants it is second in the 1 to 17 age group, being outnumbered by accidental deaths by a factor of 2.51 to 1. Going back farther or widening the time range pushes it farther down the list. In the 2010-2020 period Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), suicide, malignant neoplasms (cancer), and pregnancy complications all outnumbered it in number of deaths, and its ratio in relation to accidental deaths was 1 to 4.21. And of course not all homicides were conducted with firearms: in 2020 the 1,376 known firearm homicides similarly trail SIDS (1,389) and cancer (1,407) deaths. Such an enormous error of fact exposes not only Cassidy but also By Faith and its editors and, indeed, our whole denomination to ridicule, for they should have not allowed such a statement to be published, and it suggests that he and they do not understand this matter about which they feel so strongly.
Also, using the Census Bureau’s low estimates, there were about 74.4 million minors in 2020, meaning about 1 in 36,145 of them died of homicide that year. Hardly a crisis, yet it does not prevent Cassidy from saying that “our current situation is as hellish as it is unsustainable.” In fact, if one compares total homicides among minors in the 1981-1998 and 1999-2020 periods he will see that there were more homicides in the former (shorter) era, the first for which the CDC’s WISQARS provides data, and yet our nation did not collapse and has seen its population increase from about 229 million in 1981 to about 330 million in 2020. The vast majority of minors have made it to adulthood, in other words, which means that Cassidy’s talk about the situation being “unsustainable” is nothing more than grossly exaggerated and irresponsible rhetoric.
In addition, we might object to his rhetoric on the ground that no man should make light of hell, least of all a minister of the gospel. Such language is far beneath his office, and is vulgar and implicitly impious: for unlike our society, hell is a place of perfect justice, a place where sin is punished as it deserves, not one where it runs amok. The misery of hell is a deserved misery inflicted by God’s holy wrath and resulting from his retributive justice, not an inexplicable, woe-inducing misery that results from human sin such as is bewailed by psalmists and prophets.
For one to speak of our earthly crime situation as “hellish” when what is meant seems to mean simply “miserable” is to misuse the word and to distort the concept in the popular understanding, which is a serious fault in a churchman. This nation is not hell, and we should not be quick to compare it to that dreadful place of eternal perdition, even in flights of impassioned literary rhetoric. No one who is truly impressed by the awful nature of hell can so easily use it to describe social affairs, even displeasing ones like youth homicides, yet Cassidy did not hesitate to do so, to our shame.
His statement here is an example of that profane speech which our shorter catechism condemns in Question 55 when it says that, “The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God maketh himself known.” Who can deny that hell is a means whereby God has revealed himself to us as the God who judges the earth in righteousness? And yet Cassidy uses the term, not to call men to repentance, as our Lord would have him to do (Lk. 12:4-5), but to call for political reform, and that in terms so vague as to be practically useless. I tell you, my dear reader, as a man of unclean lips who dwells among a people of unclean lips (Isa. 6:5), and as a man who has said similar and worse things and is trying to repent the evil habit, that such a thing is a great evil and a cheapening of the gospel of which Cassidy has been ordained a minister. Speaking of our crime situation as “hellish” does not bring me around to his view on that matter; but it does make me think, given the statistics above, that perhaps hell is not such a terrible place after all, seeing as Cassidy can use it, not to warn me of its terrors, but rather as a comment about affairs in this life. To profane a thing is to convert it from a sacred use to a common one, and Cassidy has done it here with hell, by taking it from a solemn ground for urging men to convert to Christ in faith to a mere bit of angry rhetoric about our domestic affairs.
That is a serious thing, and it is worse still that a foul-tongued sinner such as myself, whose sins of the tongue are so frequent that he often doubts his union with Christ on that account (Matt. 12:34-27; Jas.1:26), can yet angrily say, as I do now: ‘I may be lost, and my sins of speech may burn brighter than anything James could suggest in his epistle (Jas. 3:5-12); yet even this vile sinner can see that Cassidy’s speech is profane and tends rather to men’s harm than their edification.’ And if, as is more frequent still, I think the grace of God is greater than my own sin, then we are in the territory of ‘causing little ones to stumble’ (Matt. 18:6), and the offense is scarcely less. Either way I object, as a repentant blasphemer, to Cassidy’s language – for I understand that if I am to be saved from such sin it can only occur in a church whose ministers are characterized by holiness of speech and who would never dare profane such a dreadful doctrine as that of hell by using it as mere political rhetoric.
Lastly, Cassidy says that, “Now is the time to work on curtailing the violence and ending this insanity — that’s authentic holiness in action.” Mark that well reader: for Cassidy “authentic holiness in action” is found in political activism. Not in personal righteousness in one’s dealings with other people (Lev. 19:35-36; Deut. 25:13-16; Prov. 11:1; Am. 8:4-7, Mic. 6:8, 10-12), nor conformity to the image of Christ (Rom. 12:1; 2 Cor. 7:1; 1 Thess. 4:2-7; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Pet. 1:15-16), but rather in agitating for legislative change. The New Testament says that we are to aspire to live quiet lives (1 Thess. 4:11) and Christ himself refused to judge in temporal questions (Lk. 12:13-14), said his kingdom was not of this world (Jn. 18:36), and avoided the popular movement to give him earthly power (Jn. 6:15), yet Cassidy would have us believe that we are under a moral and spiritual obligation to engage in political activism, conducted, no doubt, along his preferred lines.
Let me be clear that this ought to be a scandal. The PCA’s ministers should not use her magazine to push political propaganda dressed up in Christian garb which is long on emotional rhetoric and at odds with the facts about the crimes which it purportedly wishes to solve. This is the social justice gospel exposing itself openly, without modesty and without regard to how repulsive it is to the many other PCA members who believe in the spirituality of the church (Col. 3:1-3), the prudence of minding one’s own affairs rather than those of other communities (Prov. 26:17), and the propriety of an armed citizenry (Neh. 4:7-23). It has nothing to do with the duties of Cassidy’s office, not anything to do with our denomination or its faith: it is contemporary urban political preference presented as edifying Christian teaching, a coercion to agree masquerading as earnest Christian appeal. And while I think believers can disagree about most questions of domestic politics, I also think we should be able to agree that we should do so as citizens and in the proper (civil) forums, not as church officers or members or in official church publications.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name.
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Written by Christopher W. Parr |
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
As a Protestant, Witherspoon understood that the sure foundation for a Christian civilization is not an established state church imposing generic morals on a population; it is the presence of actual Christians with converted hearts and minds.

Christian Political Action at America’s Founding
Introduction
In October of 1753, John Witherspoon wrote a discernment blog. What the anonymous Ecclesiastical Characteristics lacked in the pugnacity and inaccuracies of today’s discernment blogs,  it made up for in its pointed satirical critique of the leaders of his own Church of Scotland (the Kirk). Having been a pastor for eight years in “North Britain,” Witherspoon (1723-1794) was jumping into the fray of denominational and political conflict in a Kirk divided into two warring factions. He was a leader in the Popular party of evangelicals who affirmed the faith of the Westminster Standards and prioritized personal regeneration. His opponents in the Moderate party, who made up Scotland’s theological and philosophical elite, defined Christianity as the pursuit of ethical ideals and rhetorical excellence which could lead their provincial nation into enlightened greatness. These theological battles would prepare Witherspoon for his second career as the president of what would become Princeton University, where he would train many younger American founders including Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, and James Madison. The only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, he set forth a uniquely Protestant understanding of the American Revolution, insisting on personal regeneration for the war’s success and the new nation’s public virtue.
The same Moderate theologians with whom Witherspoon battled throughout his ministerial career led the burgeoning Scottish Enlightenment. Many adopted the views of Francis Hutcheson, who proposed an enlightened natural law theory in which all humans possess a pre-rational moral sense which guides them toward virtue and sociability. In such a system, natural depravity and the need for individual regeneration take a backseat to societal improvement through cultural refinement. Rather than trusting in the common morality of all people to cultivate civic cohesion, Witherspoon and his compatriots in the Kirk preserved a heritage of confessional Calvinism which reached back to the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant. Because of the ravaging moral effects of human depravity, Witherspoon insisted, moral improvement was not sufficient to bring about Scottish national flourishing; regeneration of human hearts by the Holy Spirit was essential.
Witherspoon’s first career as a pastor raises the question as to why ehe used the terminology and categories of Scottish Enlightenment philosophers (including Hutcheson) as a part of his teaching and political advocacy. Examining Witherspoon’s corpus of undergraduate lecture notes, sermons, and congressional addresses, most recent scholarship has posited that Witherspoon underwent a “sea change” after his move to America. Historians such as Mark Noll, Douglas Sloan, and Jeffry Morrison previously asserted that Witherspoon served as a transmitter of a positive view of man’s nature and capacity for moral action, and that this was  significant in paving the way for American independence.
Gideon Mailer’s John Witherspoon’s American Revolution, published in 2017, questions the decades-long assumption that Witherspoon was “a simple conduit for enlightened sensibility in America.”1 An Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Mailer is an accomplished historian of the early modern Atlantic World. In an extensive study of both Witherspoon’s writings and his intellectual and political contexts on both sides of the Atlantic, he proposes that Witherspoon continued to believe in the necessity of personal conversion for Christian faith and civic virtue throughout his time at Princeton, eventually applying his reformed orthodoxy to the political debates surrounding the American Revolution.
Having experienced Parliament’s overreach in Scottish church life, Witherspoon worried, Mailer writes, “that the civic realm would impose barriers to the Kirk’s encouragement of spiritual salvation” (4). Later, perceiving the potential turmoil of the American Revolution, Witherspoon persisted in his conclusion that Hutcheson’s sensory natural law was insufficient to preserve American democracy’s moral convictions: personal faith in Christ was required. By examining the theological currents in Scottish and American Presbyterianism, as well as the moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, Mailer presents a Witherspoon who is concerned for theological fidelity in a New World more open to the spread of the gospel than an Old one paralyzed by theological controversies and political obstacles.
Witherspoon the Enlightened Philosopher?
In chapters on the various intellectual challenges that  Witherspoon faced, Mailer attempts to demonstrate how Presbyterian orthodoxy influenced his positions. While Chapter 1 and part of Chapter 2 lay a groundwork describing the state of the Kirk in the mid-eighteenth century, the book’s title indicates its American-centeredness. In his adopted country, Witherspoon sought to transform Princeton into a modern institution that could contribute to a developing  political theology for the new nation. In both of these, Mailer convincingly demonstrates that Witherspoon lost none of his Scottish confessional fervor. The perceived conflict between the philosophical idealism of Jonathan Edwards, Princeton’s president ten years prior, and Witherspoon’s affinity for Thomas Reid’s common sense realism has long confounded scholars. But Mailer suggests that Witherspoon’s realism aided his theological vocabulary: “a philosophical language that focused on sentiments and perception helped Witherspoon explain how individuals might come to terms with their sin through a passionate religious conversion and how a new sense of revealed morality could be implanted through grace in the regenerated heart” (147). While Edwards and Witherspoon disagreed on the philosophical principles of realism and idealism, both were theologically committed to the necessity of conversion.
As one of the most prominent religious leaders in colonial America, Witherspoon supported the Revolution with theological caveats not emphasized in either New England Puritanism or Lockean liberalism. Whereas many founders such as Benjamin Franklin used Hutchesonian moral sense theory to defend the superior virtue of the patriots against their British oppressors, Witherspoon maintained that all people, regardless of their nation, are naturally in bondage to sinful depravity. Thus, personal regeneration is essential to beneficial civic religion and public virtue (a note Witherspoon would sound again and again throughout his American sermons and political writings).
Further, just as he disliked Parliament’s meddling in the ecclesial affairs of his native Scotland, he supported the provincial desire of Americans to live apart from heavy-handed British rule, which he saw as limiting the free spread of Christian evangelism. After the 1707 Act of Union, which brought Scotland under the control of the British Parliament, ministerial appointments would be made by the  local nobility who tended to prefer Moderate, enlightened ministers in their parishes. For this reason Witherspoon would spend much of his time in Scotland challenging the “patronage controversy,” and the way it prevented the Kirk from focusing on the important work of evangelism.
Witherspoon Among the Moderates
Throughout the book, Mailer explains the historical context behind the era, places, and people which influenced Witherspoon. While these diversions are occasionally drawn out, they almost always provide essential nuances to Witherspoon’s intellectual influences, which other works do not adequately acknowledge. Chapters 1 and 2, “Augustinian Piety in Witherspoon’s Scotland” and “Kirk Divisions and American Prospects at Midcentury,” explain how an orthodox, popular minister like Witherspoon interacted with a Scottish intellectual culture which was rapidly changing  during the Enlightenment.
Most twentieth century treatments of Witherspoon’s moral philosophy merely highlight the similarity between his statements in Lectures on Moral Philosophy, delivered at Princeton, and ideas developed by Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, and other Moderate philosophers. However, John Witherspoon’s American Revolution begins by noting the great diversity in Scottish higher education when Witherspoon was a student at the University of Edinburgh. Future Moderate ministers like Alexander Carlyle, a classmate and future fierce opponent of Witherspoon, would claim years later that his friend had abandoned the Moderate, refined education they received. However, Mailer notes that the Augustinian theology of the Westminster Standards, with its skeptical view of human nature, maintained a strong hold on some Scottish divines well into the eighteenth century. Samuel Rutherford’s regency a century earlier and the transmission of Reformed scholastics like Francis Turretin and Benedict Pictet through Dutch professors into Scotland ensured continuity with continental Reformed convictions.
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Written by Patrick J. O’Banion |
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Works like Calvin’s masterpiece don’t belong to a small subset of trained pastors and theologians, much less to the secular academy. They belong to the church. And reading them ties the church of this century to all of those that have come before.

In his recent book Breaking Bread with the Dead [read TGC’s review], Alan Jacobs offers advice for achieving a “more tranquil mind”—a thing devoutly to be wished. At the heart of the book is the following insight: the more substantially we’re in touch with the past, the more effectively we’ll avoid being “trapped” in the “social structure and life patterns” all around us (14).
Like C. S. Lewis, who famously urged us to “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds” by reading old books, Jacobs argues that “you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion” unless you regularly step away from it (23). For Christians, this means attentively reading (and rereading) the great works of the church’s history.
But, let’s face it, reading Augustine’s City of God, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Milton’s Paradise Lost can be hard work. Helpful resources exist for potential readers, of course. You’re more likely to hang in there with the great, big books if those who have gone before us can reduce the friction (as it were) by telling you what to expect.
In that spirit, I’d like to point out some landmarks from a recent reading of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), one of those great works of the Christian past and a daunting tome to encounter. Think of the following as lessons learned—things I wish someone had told me before I took the plunge.
1. Calvin had a vast knowledge of Scripture.
Calvin often used the Institutes to address issues that didn’t fit into his sermons or commentaries. Scholars suggest interacting with all three genres—Institutes, commentaries, and sermons—to get the full picture. No doubt they’re correct, but Calvin’s interaction with the Bible bleeds over from his exegetical labors into the Institutes. Watch for his wide and deep knowledge of Scripture. Seeing it operate in a work of this scale is marvelous to behold.
2. Calvin engaged church history deeply.
Calvin understood that being a Christian meant being connected to all Christians who had gone before. In addition to theologians of his own day, Calvin read (widely) among the church fathers and (not quite as widely) among the medievals.
This allowed him to bring the debates of the past into conversation with the controversies of the present and, by considering how the church and her theologians had previously engaged those issues, to move his readers through confusion toward conclusions.
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