That was excellent, not simply for dissecting this situation, but the broader movements at work over a whole range of issues.
The persecution of Zachary Garris
- Thread starter DanSSwing
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That was excellent, not simply for dissecting this situation, but the broader movements at work over a whole range of issues.
Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Matthew Everhard is someone whose commentary on various issues I regularly appreciate. I would have imagined he was too nice to meet Edward's approval. Wonders never cease.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
I'm not so sure this is a Reformed Baptist problem, at least not in the same way as the others listed.
Under Congregational polity (big "C") or congregational polity (little "c," which includes Baptists and most other modern American evangelicals), a man accused of using “unwholesome speech” will face trial by his elders, church board, or the congregational meeting. That means the people who know him best, and see how he acts from day to day, will determine what to do with him.
Under Dutch Reformed polity, the minister's membership and credentials are in the local church. While the classis will be involved with major accusations that disturb the peace of the church, as a practical matter, the local elders determine their pastor's future.
That's not how Presbyterianism works. Ordained ministers are members of a presbytery, not a local church, and that means the people who conduct a trial on allegations against a minister are not people who see him each week, and deal with him on a regular basis, but people who in most cases only see him at presbytery meetings.
I'm well aware that a case can be made for Presbyterian polity. I'm not trying to argue against that case. In fact, an argument could be made that the trial NEEDS to be outside the local church, by fellow ministers who are not personally invested in the man and his ministry.
And I trust it goes without saying that I think this presbytery would have a long list of problems with my own blunt speech.
I'm just saying that there is a fundamental difference between a denomination in which the decision on how to deal with accusations against a minister gets made by the people who know him best, i.e., his local church, or by a regional body.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Dealing here only with procedure, not the content -- it is not only common but normal for a judge or a jury in a criminal case to find that the person was NOT guilty of the primary offense, but WAS guilty of what is legally called a "lesser included offense." And then to throw the book at the person for the lesser offense.
My read of this is that the presbytery smelled a racist, kinist, or some other sort of bad actor, but couldn't prove it, so decided to punish "mean tweets."
I don't know this guy. I have a decades-long history of being the "conservative poster guy for hard-right interracial advocacy." I suspect that the more I read of what this guy wrote to or about Bradley, the angrier I'd get.
But you CANNOT convict a man for "mean tweets." Either make your case that he's a bigot, or go back and do your job.
Failure to prove the elements of a crime in a criminal case is grounds for acquittal. If the police and prosecutors didn't do their job, it's on them. You can't convict a guy because he's obnoxious and rude, even if he is.
And that, bluntly, is the real damage being caused here. From what I read, this is going to get overturned on appeal.
But this example of "hasty and extreme" action by a presbytery is going to make it more difficult to do hard work that really DOES need to be done to drive racist bigots out of the conservative Reformed world.
Leave it to the RPCNA and ARP to do good work, and for the PCA to muck stuff up.
Credit here to fellow PBer Rev. Glaser, or @Backwoods Presbyterian , for his hard work on this in the ARP.
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darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
I used to live in New Mexico and I concur. (I was hired as the police reporter for the Clovis News Journal, and later had the military and church beats added to my work). Eastern New Mexico is the conservative part of the state. Let's just say most of the state is a lot different. Even in Clovis, I was working for a newspaper that was one of the early papers to decide to run marriage announcements for gay couples, provided they had a legal marriage license, which at that time usually meant a trip overseas or to a fairly small number of states that were doing gay marriages.
In New Mexico, even many of the "conservatives" are libertarians. That's how you get things like the Clovis paper, which was anti-police and pro-drug legalization, and in a very conservative faith-based community, took a "let's avoid offending anyone" stance of saying, "Bring us a marriage license and we'll run your marriage announcement." You can imagine how popular I was with my editor for my "back the blue" stance on police. He put up with me largely because I gave him a ton of nasty stories about horrible crimes and I got those stories because of police tipping me off to things since they knew I didn't hate them and wanted to see me stay.
Such is life in a blue state. There are reasons I live in the ruby-red Ozarks.
That's a good indicator this is going to go badly for the preachers who do not have law degrees.
Give the Catholics credit on this -- they have formal programs leading to a doctorate in canon law (J.C.D.) and before that, a J.C.L. (licentiate in canon law). The PCA is too small to have a formal program to certify "canon lawyers," but I am very much aware how, in the Dutch Reformed world, certain ministers were experts on the church order, and the same for certain elders (often but not always themselves lawyers in their non-church lives) and their advice was rarely ignored.
A major case in an ecclesiastical court in which the court doesn't have a lawyer, but the defense does, is probably going to be riddled with errors.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
Per BCO 30-1: "30-1. The censures, which may be inflicted by church courts, are admonition, suspension from the Sacraments, excommunication, suspension from office, and deposition from office. The censures of admonition or definite suspension from office shall be administered to an accused who, upon conviction, satisfies the court as to his repentance and makes such restitution as is appropriate. Such censure concludes the judicial process. The censures of indefinite suspension or excommunication shall be administered to an accused who, upon conviction, remains impenitent."
So, on the one hand, even if the offense was small, Garris's refusal to repent upon a verdict of guilt would necessitate suspension. Procedurally, the presbytery wouldn't have any other option. At least, that's how I'm reading this chapter of the BCO, and I haven't seen anybody argue otherwise.
On the flip side, I'm probably wasting words restating what so many others have said in this thread - that it's absurd that he was brought up on charges for these tweets, and absurd that he was found guilty on this basis. It smacks strongly of lawfare - if you know that BCO 30-1 necessitates suspension for someone who refuses to admit guilt upon conviction, all you have to do is get one ridiculous charge to stick. It's too bad that conservatives in the PCA don't seem to have the numbers needed to give progressives a taste of their own medicine. Not a good sign for the denomination that Garris can be suspended over two mild tweets but David Cassidy (one of those listed as going after Garris) can't be charged for church by-laws that subvert the PCA's standards for ordination.
So, on the one hand, even if the offense was small, Garris's refusal to repent upon a verdict of guilt would necessitate suspension. Procedurally, the presbytery wouldn't have any other option. At least, that's how I'm reading this chapter of the BCO, and I haven't seen anybody argue otherwise.
On the flip side, I'm probably wasting words restating what so many others have said in this thread - that it's absurd that he was brought up on charges for these tweets, and absurd that he was found guilty on this basis. It smacks strongly of lawfare - if you know that BCO 30-1 necessitates suspension for someone who refuses to admit guilt upon conviction, all you have to do is get one ridiculous charge to stick. It's too bad that conservatives in the PCA don't seem to have the numbers needed to give progressives a taste of their own medicine. Not a good sign for the denomination that Garris can be suspended over two mild tweets but David Cassidy (one of those listed as going after Garris) can't be charged for church by-laws that subvert the PCA's standards for ordination.
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
That is not a settled practice. For example, in the RPCNA, a minister (1) is a member of the congregation and (2) his ministerial credentials are held by the presbytery. Why the majority of presbyterian bodies in the US do not recognize the minister as a member of his local congregation has always perplexed me - how can he, along with the other elders chosen by the congregation, be a voting member of a particular congregation without being a member of that congregation?
The current majority practice has no basis in the original Form of Presbyterian Church Government according to the Westminster Standards - rather, it seems to support the Covenanter practice of the minister also being a member of the congregation: "The pastor and people must so nearly cohabit together, as that they may mutually perform their duties each to other with most conveniency. In this company some must be set apart to bear office." ("Of Particular Congregations."). This sounds like the pastor is coming (being "set apart") from within a "fixed congregation" - presbytery ordains him and then a congregation calls him, at which point he becomes a member of the congregation set apart to do the minister the word and sacraments.
Solparvus
Puritan Board Senior
My seminary training is now past, and I've been thinking more about the need to develop in my understanding of polity. You have just convinced me how utterly necessary this is, and how extensive it should be. Thank you.
(On a side-note, I absolutely love all the very interesting anecdotes you bring into your posts)
With his "original jurisdiction" being Presbytery, he is afforded some additional support or protection for fulfilling the demands of his office.
The pastor is a member of the local Session, but not the congregation. That sessional composition is a defined term. The pastor does not vote in a congregational meeting, because he is not a member of it.
ZackF
Puritan Board Doctor
Many Roman Catholic cannon lawyers, especially among laymen, are often secular lawyers as well. Priest cannon lawyers are less likely to hold secular credentials for obvious reasons.
It would be great if there were some training materials prepared by believing attorneys to assist those involved in church court procedures whether or not a formal position exists.
I ran this by AI as I was seeing different things as far as whether the presbytery's hands were tied by process or they "chose' the nuclear option. AI's opinion (and the usual disclamier about AI) is the latter.
ZackF
Puritan Board Doctor
I like the "as you know from [James] Durham..." bit in the response. It is your model for sure.
Yea; AI wanted to know if I wanted it to cite James Durham and I explained why that wasn't necessary; then the usual fawning comes. AI is nothing if not a suck up.I like the "as you know from [James] Durham..." bit in the response. It is your model for sure.
Is AI interpreting "shall" in a way that is permissive and not directive? Because if "shall" is directive, the verbiage doesn't suggest that there is a range of progressive discipline options after conviction for someone who doesn't admit guilt.
There is an argument about the decision to indict and convict the charge on insufficient evidence, knowing it would result in indefinite suspension upon appeal, but the AI doesn't really support the contention that a non-suspension is possible for an unrepentant elder convicted in a church court of what is supposedly an actual sin. Do any of the footnotes cite the historical jurisprudence it mentions?
Northern Crofter
Puritan Board Junior
I'm not sure when this idea came about that the minister of a congregation can be a member of its session but not a member of the congregation. This seems foreign to the original Form of Presbyterian Church Government according to the Westminster Standards which states that the minister, like the rest of the elders in a congregation, is a member of that congregation, but, like the other elders, has an additional power to rule (on top of his duty to preach and teach: "FOR officers in a single congregation, there ought to be one at the least, both to labour in the word and doctrine, and to rule" [Of the Officers of a particular Congregation.]). Or as it states at the end of the section titled "Pastors" it states that "he hath also a ruling power over the flock as a pastor" (my emphasis added). Elders are distinct within their congregations by virtue of the power and duties of their office, but that does not mean they are therefore apart from their congregation as far as membership is concerned. There is no Biblical warrant for ones membership in the visible Church being solely in a presbytery, a thing simply proven by the fact that no one receives the signs and seals of such membership at a meeting of a presbytery.
It was the intent of the Westminster men that the non-pastoral elders should have equal power with the pastors in a presbytery: "THE scripture doth hold out a presbytery in a church. A presbytery consisteth of ministers of the word, and such other publick officers as are agreeable to and warranted by the word of God to be church-governors, to join with the ministers in the government of the church." (Of Classical Assemblies. my emphasis added). Having ones credentials in a presbytery does not mean they are not also a member of a local congregation. Such thinking conflates the parts of the body with the membership in the Body. "Ordination is the act of a presbytery" (Touching the Power of Ordination.) but "It is agreeable to the word, and very expedient, that such as are to be ordained ministers be designed to some particular church" (Concerning the Doctrinal Part of Ordination of Ministers.6).
This is one of the points Rutherford was arguing in Due Right of Presbyteries in his arguments against the New England congregationalists and their view that officers are not constituent parts of the church. One of the clearest places is in Chapter 1, Section 1, Prop 1 where he argues (somewhat mockingly) that a visible church is an organic body consisting of both officers and people: "And it is no lesse wonder that Officers and Rulers who are to feed, and governe the Flock, are but only accidents and not parts, not integrall members of a constituted Church" (Concl.2) Rather "[t]he instituted Church of the New Testament is an organicall body of diverse members, of eyes, eares, feete, hands, of Elders governing, and a people governed. 1 Cor. 12. 14, 15. Rom. 12. 4, 5, 6. Act. 20. 28." (Concl.3). Rutherford's point is that, if the Church - even in its most basic manifestation as a particular congregation - is a body, then the minister, as the head, is a part of it.
Again, I'm not sure when this idea was abandoned, but I think it would change how situations like the one in this thread are handled - if presbytery had an issue with a minister within its bounds, it would have to involve the minister's home session. I often hear that it is a protection for a minister to be a member of the presbytery and not the congregation he serves, but I think this is non-sensical. The session has a right and duty to protect its minister as a member of its congregation, just as the presbytery has a power and duty to protect a minister from being abused by his session.
Interesting but irrelevant to this thread. If you want to start a thread arguing that ministers ought to be members of the local congregation then take that up in a new thread.
DanSSwing
Puritan Board Sophomore
Sounds like a good thread to initiate with a poll.
I don't read Rutherford as saying the same thing that you do. Rutherford's target is the Congregationalist "church-covenant" model. He
is directly refuting the idea that a company of believers united in Church-Covenant is the only instituted visible church. This was the classic Independent position: that a local body of believers, by covenanting together, constitutes a complete church with full power, even before they have officers. Rutherford calls this view a "wonder" and argues it is incoherent. Why? Because such a body cannot administer the sacraments or exercise discipline without pastors. If it cannot do these things, it is not a fully constituted ministerial church.
For your interpretation to work it would require Rutherford to agree that the church mystical and the church ministerial are one and the same. But at that point he would have no disagreement with the congregationalists and his presbyterian view of the church would fall to the ground. As it stands, Rutherford is Presbyterian and he distinguishes the meaning of the word "church." He says it is one thing for a company to perform the actions of a Church mystical and redeemed of Christ, and another thing to perform actions ministerial of a Church instituted and ministerial. A group of believers may be the material cause -- the "matter" or "stones" of the church, but that does not make them a ministerial church capable of governing, ordaining, or exercising the keys. This ultimately leads to the conclusion that the visible Church which Christ instituted in the Gospel is not formally a company of believers meeting for public edification by common and joint consent. It is a presbytery. Hence, when Rutherford speaks of the members of a body he is speaking of a presbytery with power to ordain pastors over the congregation.
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My apologies. I was typing a response and posted it before I saw this. I can delete if desired, or leave it as part of a spin off thread.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Yes, I had forgotten that you had told me some time back -- maybe last year -- about the RPCNA practice on this issue.
I wonder how far back it goes, and why? Perhaps Dutch influence during the Covenanter/Killing Times period? Or the influence of Johannes G. Vos, the son of Geerhardus Vos who joined the RPCNA? As you may know, Van Til, despite being a member of the OPC, objected for years to the idea that ministers cannot be members of the same local church as their wives, and the result -- at least as it has been explained to me -- was the provision in the OPC allowing sessions to exercise pastoral care over ministers even though they remain members of their presbytery.
Apologies. @Northern Crofter was responding to my statement that discipline in this case is a matter for the presbytery, not the local church, because that's how Presbyterianism works.
I think a case can be made that this **IS** directly relevant because presbyteries don't know whether a minister has a habit of using inappropriate language, but local churches can't avoid that level of knowledge of the ministers' habits of speech. Some offenses are going to be much better known by a local church than by a regional court/assembly because they become a problem, not with one or two specific statements or actions, but a habit and a pattern of behavior.
But I'll drop the matter with this comment if the moderators consider it irrelevant.
Again, I'm **NOT** arguing against Presbyterian polity here. To the contrary, a case can be made that this is one of the distinct advantages of the system by having trials conducted by a body that includes many fellow ministers, and men who have a bit of distance from the local church.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Appreciate the love! ;-)
Regardless of our views on church government, it is VERY important for ministers, and helpful though not absolutely essential for ruling elders, to have a clear and detailed understanding of the polity of their denomination. That includes the biblical arguments for it, and being able to argue against the opposing biblical justifications for other forms of polity.
We are not American pietistic or pragmatic evangelicals. We are Reformed. We believe God has given a government to what is, after all, His church, not our church. We are not free to invent our own rules for God's house.
That's not new and we responded to the Roman Catholic claims of apostolic succession and episcopal/papal authority with biblical arguments.
Now I'm well aware that a Reformed case can be made for more than one form of church government, but what is NOT in dispute is that 1) too many ministers don't understand church government at all, and 2) too many ministers regard church government as being far less important that church worship and soteriology. Legitimate differences on how to apply the Reformed principles of church government don't mean the principles are not important, or that the correct application of those principles is not important.
Now obviously I will happily worship in a Reformed Episcopal or Reformed Baptist church while traveling. Soteriology is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing. But church membership requires (or should require) at least a willingness to submit to the church's form of government, and ordination as a pastor or elder SHOULD require not only submitting to it, but understanding it and being able to defend it.
A lot of people in today's Reformed world cannot do that, and that is a problem.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Spot on.
Maybe @fredtgreco may be listening and taking notes for the PCA? It's not every day that America's largest confessionally Reformed denomination gets a lawyer and a pastor as its stated clerk. Perhaps God put him there for a reason to clean up procedural problems?
As for the OPC... I attended almost every OPC General Assembly back during the 1990s when I was reporting on the CRC secession and the OPC's evaluation of the CRC, and eventually ending ecclesiastical fellowship with the CRC. I saw @Alan D. Strange on the floor. He could do the same for the OPC, but it may not be necessary. Tons of OPC pastors might as well already be canon lawyers!
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
@darrellmaurina (and anyone else who wants to weigh in, of course) - does the recent article from TRR about Zachary Garris seem reasonably objective to you? This seems like a good test case, since I think almost everyone on here would agree that what happened with Mr. Garris was a miscarriage of denominational justice.
I had to run at Google AI again to reconstruct the question with links. One problem is it seems to find Puritanboard a considerable source. Again, AI may be making mistakes. And I've never found AI's citations to be satisfactory; I have not check all the below out.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
My thoughts, very tentative, in response to the request by @Ploutos:
1. The use of the word "right wing" (and also "left wing") is generally considered pejorative in modern American usage. In news stories where the writer is not trying to give his or her own opinion, both are best avoided except in quoted material, or when people apply the terms to themselves.
2. I was surprised to see the word "right wing" in a headline. To put that term in a headline is a red flag. But two cautions apply here. First, in traditional print newspapers and magazines, headlines were almost never written by the author, but rather by an editor, and for that reason, sometimes don't reflect the author's intended tone of the article. Second, headlines are SUPPOSED to catch the readers' eyes and get them to read the article, so by necessity they are both short summaries and "eye grabbing." Furthermore, a number of the men quoted are outside the mainstream of conservative American evangelicalism, or even conservative Calvinism, and it's possible that the author, or his editor, was trying to put some distance between the people he was quoting and more typical conservative views. Even here on the Puritan Board, defending chattel slavery and so-called "race realism" is going to attract serious criticism and anyone doing that would need to be careful in defining terms to avoid attention by the moderators. We've seen people banned, even recently, for stuff that goes in that direction.
3. I know nothing about the author beyond his quoted biography: "Peter Johnson is a student at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is studying his Masters in Journalism." That means he has significant academic qualifications but I don't know his theological background or church affiliation. I would expect him to have formal academic competence in the field -- masters degrees in journalism are fairly rare, and when people get a masters in journalism, it is often because they have a non-journalism degree and want to take their prior experience in some other field and learn to write about it.
So yes, I see some concerns and one red flag that prompts more than "just concern." These are indicators of a potential slant in coverage or a personal or organizational agenda, but not enough, by themselves, to prove it.
Ploutos, you've previously said the Roys Report appears to have an egalitarian agenda. I won't disagree, and an article like this, and the selection of the headline, may provide data points to substantiate that claim.
But I'd make a counter-caution here. The Roys Report doesn't, so far as I know, claim to adhere to a specific type of Protestantism so it can't be held to confessional standards. It's evangelical, and by current evangelical standards is pretty conservative. Women's ordination is widely accepted in American evangelicalism, including by many of the largest charismatic denominations in the United States, and that means the "Overton window" of acceptability in most of the American evangelical world is quite a bit different from what is acceptable in the Reformed world, even in the PCA. The PCA tolerates a certain level of "right wing" views which would be very much out of line in a lot of American evangelicalism, and that's even more so of people in the Reformed Baptist and the more conservative NAPARC world.
Here's just one example of the sort of thing that might be shocking for the Roys Report people, but fairly common in the conservative Reformed world. When a prominent Reformed Baptist pastor said that if your church has a female pastor, you don't have a pastor or a church, he got a lot of "Amen brother!" attaboys in the Reformed world, including NAPARC men who were probably speaking before they were thinking. Do we REALLY want to say a church with a female pastor is not a church? That's a much more serious statement than saying the church has done something wrong and unbiblical, particularly for those of us in the Reformed world who confess that church membership is a biblical mandate and those who refuse to join a church are bringing their salvation into question. Things like that might be considered "right wing" by the Roys Report, but are commonly heard in the conservative Reformed world.
That's the problem with the term "right wing." It's a relative term, not an absolute term.
I know female elders in the ECO who are "to the right" of the Missouri Presbytery of the PCA. Dr. Robert Gagnon, who a lot of people in the conservative Reformed world appreciate because of his fight against homosexuality as a PC(USA) elder and professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, was "right wing" in the PC(USA) but his views on women's ordination would, or at least should, make him unordainable in the PCA even though on a lot of issues he's "to the right" of a non-negligible number of PCA pastors.
A little side point of why I don't like the words "right wing" and "left wing" and why we need to be confessional, not using those terms: I would never do this in the real world because I value confessional integrity too much, but if I had multiple millions of dollars to spend disrupting liberalism in the PCA, I'd endow a chair on sexual ethics at some middle-of-the-road nondenominational Christian college in St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City, or elsewhere in eastern Missouri, have them hire Dr. Gagnon, and convince one of the "evangelical first, Reformed-lite" churches in the PCA's Missouri Presbytery to make him an elder, and sit back eating popcorn while watching the presbytery blow up with an elder who supports of women's ordination, and who has an interracial marriage, throwing grenades all over the PCA at people who agree with him on those two issues but not much else.
Remember that I was baptized in the UCC. I know how to play those "divide and conquer" games quite well within liberal denominations, and they work.
I got personally used that way in the Christian Reformed Church, and since the CRC was no longer in a meaningful sense confessionally Reformed, I didn't have a problem with that.
The PCA isn't -- thank God -- that far gone yet where the conservatives can no longer appeal to the confessions and have to use a "left-right" paradigm rather than asking if something is or is not confessional.
From a confessional Reformed perspective, our question shouldn't be, "Is he right or left of center," but rather, "Is he in agreement with the confessions, and if not, are his 'exceptions' within the acceptable boundaries of exceptions as determined by denominational precedent?"
I can't expect the people at Roys Report to understand that since they're not confessional and they work with a different approach to a conservative-liberal theological spectrum.
Does that help?
1. The use of the word "right wing" (and also "left wing") is generally considered pejorative in modern American usage. In news stories where the writer is not trying to give his or her own opinion, both are best avoided except in quoted material, or when people apply the terms to themselves.
2. I was surprised to see the word "right wing" in a headline. To put that term in a headline is a red flag. But two cautions apply here. First, in traditional print newspapers and magazines, headlines were almost never written by the author, but rather by an editor, and for that reason, sometimes don't reflect the author's intended tone of the article. Second, headlines are SUPPOSED to catch the readers' eyes and get them to read the article, so by necessity they are both short summaries and "eye grabbing." Furthermore, a number of the men quoted are outside the mainstream of conservative American evangelicalism, or even conservative Calvinism, and it's possible that the author, or his editor, was trying to put some distance between the people he was quoting and more typical conservative views. Even here on the Puritan Board, defending chattel slavery and so-called "race realism" is going to attract serious criticism and anyone doing that would need to be careful in defining terms to avoid attention by the moderators. We've seen people banned, even recently, for stuff that goes in that direction.
3. I know nothing about the author beyond his quoted biography: "Peter Johnson is a student at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is studying his Masters in Journalism." That means he has significant academic qualifications but I don't know his theological background or church affiliation. I would expect him to have formal academic competence in the field -- masters degrees in journalism are fairly rare, and when people get a masters in journalism, it is often because they have a non-journalism degree and want to take their prior experience in some other field and learn to write about it.
So yes, I see some concerns and one red flag that prompts more than "just concern." These are indicators of a potential slant in coverage or a personal or organizational agenda, but not enough, by themselves, to prove it.
Ploutos, you've previously said the Roys Report appears to have an egalitarian agenda. I won't disagree, and an article like this, and the selection of the headline, may provide data points to substantiate that claim.
But I'd make a counter-caution here. The Roys Report doesn't, so far as I know, claim to adhere to a specific type of Protestantism so it can't be held to confessional standards. It's evangelical, and by current evangelical standards is pretty conservative. Women's ordination is widely accepted in American evangelicalism, including by many of the largest charismatic denominations in the United States, and that means the "Overton window" of acceptability in most of the American evangelical world is quite a bit different from what is acceptable in the Reformed world, even in the PCA. The PCA tolerates a certain level of "right wing" views which would be very much out of line in a lot of American evangelicalism, and that's even more so of people in the Reformed Baptist and the more conservative NAPARC world.
Here's just one example of the sort of thing that might be shocking for the Roys Report people, but fairly common in the conservative Reformed world. When a prominent Reformed Baptist pastor said that if your church has a female pastor, you don't have a pastor or a church, he got a lot of "Amen brother!" attaboys in the Reformed world, including NAPARC men who were probably speaking before they were thinking. Do we REALLY want to say a church with a female pastor is not a church? That's a much more serious statement than saying the church has done something wrong and unbiblical, particularly for those of us in the Reformed world who confess that church membership is a biblical mandate and those who refuse to join a church are bringing their salvation into question. Things like that might be considered "right wing" by the Roys Report, but are commonly heard in the conservative Reformed world.
That's the problem with the term "right wing." It's a relative term, not an absolute term.
I know female elders in the ECO who are "to the right" of the Missouri Presbytery of the PCA. Dr. Robert Gagnon, who a lot of people in the conservative Reformed world appreciate because of his fight against homosexuality as a PC(USA) elder and professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, was "right wing" in the PC(USA) but his views on women's ordination would, or at least should, make him unordainable in the PCA even though on a lot of issues he's "to the right" of a non-negligible number of PCA pastors.
A little side point of why I don't like the words "right wing" and "left wing" and why we need to be confessional, not using those terms: I would never do this in the real world because I value confessional integrity too much, but if I had multiple millions of dollars to spend disrupting liberalism in the PCA, I'd endow a chair on sexual ethics at some middle-of-the-road nondenominational Christian college in St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City, or elsewhere in eastern Missouri, have them hire Dr. Gagnon, and convince one of the "evangelical first, Reformed-lite" churches in the PCA's Missouri Presbytery to make him an elder, and sit back eating popcorn while watching the presbytery blow up with an elder who supports of women's ordination, and who has an interracial marriage, throwing grenades all over the PCA at people who agree with him on those two issues but not much else.
Remember that I was baptized in the UCC. I know how to play those "divide and conquer" games quite well within liberal denominations, and they work.
I got personally used that way in the Christian Reformed Church, and since the CRC was no longer in a meaningful sense confessionally Reformed, I didn't have a problem with that.
The PCA isn't -- thank God -- that far gone yet where the conservatives can no longer appeal to the confessions and have to use a "left-right" paradigm rather than asking if something is or is not confessional.
From a confessional Reformed perspective, our question shouldn't be, "Is he right or left of center," but rather, "Is he in agreement with the confessions, and if not, are his 'exceptions' within the acceptable boundaries of exceptions as determined by denominational precedent?"
I can't expect the people at Roys Report to understand that since they're not confessional and they work with a different approach to a conservative-liberal theological spectrum.
Does that help?
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No, not reasonably objective.
Edward
Puritanboard Commissioner
Absolutely not objective. It goes off on the tangent of the original debate between the two men, and ignores the actual charges upon which the suspension is based.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
That's a really insightful analysis. Thank you.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Thank you for posting, @Edward. I've watched the full video. Matthew Everhard is right, and two things stand out that make this particularly egregious.
1. The target of the allegedly "unwholesome speech" says he had nothing to do with the charges.
2. The target of the allegedly "unwholesome speech" had used similar, and arguably stronger, language himself.
I've gone through real controversies about problematic comments by conservatives. Anyone remember the Steve Schlissel controversy in the CRC? I'm going through I John right now in my Sunday morning messages, and using Calvin's commentary, so I am well aware of the use of strong language by the Reformers, and not just Martin Luther's crudities but people in our own circles. A legitimate question can be raised about whether the language used by our Reformed forefathers is prudent today, even if permitted, and I'd say it's often ineffective, while simultaneously agreeing that our modern feminized culture has created its own problems. "Winsomeness" may have worked a generation ago but it no longer does.
In other words, there are legitimate questions to be raised on this issue.
The comments in question, however, don't even come close to meeting any serious standard of "unwholesomeness."
This verdict must be overturned by the PCA. If that doesn't happen, and happen VERY quickly, it will give rise to a level of one-sided lawfare that will destroy the denomination.
Edward
Puritanboard Commissioner
My understanding is that the Ince crew was behind the complaint.
As for the 'victim', it is my conclusion that he can both dish it out and take it, which is something I can respect. Sounds like he'd be fun to have dinner with.
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