andrewnrice
Puritan Board Freshman
Thank you, I'll check it out!
Redeemed Zoomer & Presbyterians for the Kingdom - From Quixotic to Cultic
- Thread starter PointyHaired Calvinist
- Start date
- Status
I have something possibly interesting to report.
In my recent time in Tel Aviv, I have had the opportunity to attend two different churches. This Sunday, after church, I fellowshipped with an Israeli college student, very fluent in English, who was apparently part of the same ideological movement as Richard Ackerman in terms of condemnation of denominationalism and schism, condemnation of liturgical minimalism and unvestmented clergy, condemnation of unadorned church buildings, and who blamed the separation of small faithful denominations for the dismal state of the main-line denominations. He voiced an affinity for Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, at least in terms of aesthetics, although he attended an Anglican church. He was aware of Ackerman though he did not consider himself to be a follower.
Granting that EO and RC are traditionally prominent influences upon the relatively small Christian population of Israel and the Levant, perhaps the thinking of this young man might lend credence, to the idea that Ackerman is, if not the leader, a prominent example of a generational movement within christianity that is international in scope. On the other hand, maybe the small protestant population and scarcity of English-speaking congregations made it more likely I would encounter someone who thought this way.
In my recent time in Tel Aviv, I have had the opportunity to attend two different churches. This Sunday, after church, I fellowshipped with an Israeli college student, very fluent in English, who was apparently part of the same ideological movement as Richard Ackerman in terms of condemnation of denominationalism and schism, condemnation of liturgical minimalism and unvestmented clergy, condemnation of unadorned church buildings, and who blamed the separation of small faithful denominations for the dismal state of the main-line denominations. He voiced an affinity for Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, at least in terms of aesthetics, although he attended an Anglican church. He was aware of Ackerman though he did not consider himself to be a follower.
Granting that EO and RC are traditionally prominent influences upon the relatively small Christian population of Israel and the Levant, perhaps the thinking of this young man might lend credence, to the idea that Ackerman is, if not the leader, a prominent example of a generational movement within christianity that is international in scope. On the other hand, maybe the small protestant population and scarcity of English-speaking congregations made it more likely I would encounter someone who thought this way.
andrewnrice
Puritan Board Freshman
Reminds me of this quote from Machen:
"Little groups of humble people [the Apostolic church] without great buildings, meeting here in an upper room, there perhaps at spare hours in a rhetorician's school. Yet it was the Church of the living God, the temple of the Holy Ghost. What can we learn from that, my friends? Well, surely we can learn at least this-that buildings large or small are not essential to the Christian Church. Please understand me when I say that. I did not say that buildings even great and beautiful buildings are not important for the Christian Church. I only said that they are not essential.... I cannot for the life of me see why the love of beauty, like other parts of man's endowments, may not be consecrated to the service of God: The sight of a noble building, the roll of a great organ that peals with solemn sound these things may well be received with thankfulness as gifts of our heavenly Father. Yet even the best of God's gifts may become a snare if they are clung to at the expense of faithfulness to our Lord. So church buildings are at the present moment leading many away from Christ—church buildings useful, commodious, beautiful, hallowed by precious associations. How often in these days, when men put church buildings on one side and Christ on the other, do they choose the buildings and let Christ go!"
J. Gresham Machen, The Church of God
I listened to the debate. I thought it was interesting, but it also crystallized something that has increasingly bothered me about Redeemed Zoomer's argument.
He seems to "canonize," for lack of a better word, the old Presbyterian moderate position. As long as the institution continues to tolerate both conservatives and heretics, and does not literally require the conservatives to affirm the heresy, then the institution remains the presumptive locus of the visible church and anyone who leaves it to constitute another Presbyterian body is guilty of schism.
That strikes me as making institutional continuity carry far more weight than it should.
The Westminster Standards do not identify the visible catholic Church with the continuing legal or institutional existence of a particular denomination. WCF 25 explicitly speaks of particular churches as "more or less pure," and even capable of degenerating terribly. WCF 31 reminds us that synods and councils can err and are not the rule of faith or practice. WCF 20 also has something important to say about liberty of conscience and ecclesiastical commands.
So I do not think the question can simply be: Who left the institution? Nor can the threshold be: Were the orthodox finally excommunicated for believing orthodox doctrine?
A church court can itself become an instrument of division by tolerating false teachers while disciplining faithful men. One can remain in possession of the name, property, boards, seminaries, and bureaucratic machinery of a denomination while being the party that has actually ruptured its confessional communion. That is why I think RZ's distinction between "internal" and "external" schism begs a large part of the question. External institutional continuity does not by itself establish ecclesiastical faithfulness.
And the Machen case is considerably more difficult for RZ's thesis than saying, "Well, nobody made Machen deny the virgin birth."
Machen first pursued reform through Presbyterian channels. The controversy concerned whether the denomination's foreign missions apparatus was faithfully proclaiming the Gospel. After attempts to reform the Board of Foreign Missions failed, Machen and others organized the Independent Board to conduct what they expressly described as "truly Biblical and truly Presbyterian mission work." The denomination then ordered ministers associated with it to sever that relationship. Machen refused. He was tried and suspended from the ministry, and the General Assembly upheld that discipline in 1936. The formation of the OPC followed.
That is very different from a man saying, "There are liberals in my denomination and I don't like them, so I am leaving."
Machen was placed in the position of either submitting to an ecclesiastical command that required him to abandon an orthodox Presbyterian mission agency, or suffering discipline. RZ can certainly argue that Machen was wrong about the legitimacy of that agency, but he cannot make the problem disappear by saying that Machen was still technically permitted to believe the Westminster Confession. The question concerns the lawful limits of ecclesiastical authority and what happens when the courts of the church use discipline to enforce institutional loyalty against a conscientious effort to carry out the mission of the Church.
This is where I think RZ's repeated appeal to Rutherford, Baillie, Ball, etc. becomes problematic. I value those men enormously, but a collection of quotations from particular seventeenth-century controversies does not become an additional chapter of the Westminster Confession. They have to be interpreted in their own polemical contexts and then related to the actual confessional doctrine of the Church.
Otherwise "historic Presbyterianism" starts to mean "my synthesis of selected Presbyterian writers."
It also raises an obvious historical problem. If the rule really is that Presbyterians may not constitute a new visible Presbyterian body so long as the existing institution remains in some sense a true church, what do we do with the Disruption of 1843? Roughly a third of the ministers of the Church of Scotland left the establishment and constituted the Free Church over the spiritual independence of the Church. The Free Church itself still regards that stand as part of its confessional heritage. Are Chalmers, Cunningham, Candlish, and the Disruption fathers also simply schismatics because they physically left the institution?
This is why I think there is an ecclesiological assumption hiding underneath the argument. RZ's project places enormous value upon recovering and maintaining the historic mainline institution. The institution itself begins to function almost as a mark of the Church.
And that brings us back to missions, which I thought was strangely underappreciated in the debate.
Machen's controversy was not peripheral. It was about the Great Commission. What Gospel is the Presbyterian Church sending into the world? What sort of missionaries is it supporting? Can an orthodox minister support a genuinely evangelical Presbyterian mission when he believes the official machinery has become compromised?
There is something almost providentially poignant about looking at the result ninety years later. In March 2025 the PC(USA) closed Presbyterian World Mission and terminated its appointed Mission Co-Worker positions. The PC(USA)'s own 2026 reporting describes precisely that action. It is replacing the old missionary-sending model with a different model of global partnerships.
That fact by itself does not prove that Machen was right in 1936. History cannot retroactively determine the morality of an ecclesiastical action. But it certainly ought to give us pause before treating preservation of the institution as the great ecclesiastical good.
The very issue over which Machen was disciplined was whether Presbyterian missions would remain explicitly evangelical and confessional. Today the denomination whose institutional continuity RZ prizes has eliminated the very missionary-sending structure that stood at the center of that controversy.
Meanwhile the allegedly "schismatic" Presbyterian bodies continue planting churches, sending missionaries, preaching the Gospel, administering the sacraments, exercising discipline, and entering into ecclesiastical fellowship with other Reformed churches.
That seems much more significant to me than determining whether Machen could have remained within the PCUSA indefinitely provided he kept his orthodoxy private enough to avoid the machinery of discipline.
The Church catholic is larger than the PCUSA. Presbyterianism is larger than the PCUSA. And visible catholicity cannot mean that whichever party retains the property, bureaucracy, denominational name, and General Assembly is presumptively "the Church," while those who continue the confession, worship, discipline, and mission of the Church are presumptively schismatics because they had the temerity to organize separately.
At some point "recover the mainline" can become less an argument for catholicity than an argument for preserving an institution.
I've not spent any time on this because it struck me as fantasy. This guy will have to make vows that preclude him from pursuing any kind of alternative to the progressive views of the PCUSA; he is going to a seminary that will not teach him Reformed doctrine but PCUSA progressive ideology; I assume he wants credentials that will be accepted but that begs the question of what God requires in a minister. He won't be a reformer but a conformist; but he can enjoy the buildings and cash reserve for a while. There is no one as consequenial to presbyterian polity as James Durham and he lays it for a rule that a rent church has a duty to unite. But that didn't factor in a century old division when the mother church has become a synagogue of Satan; or at the most charitable, run by Jezabels and Balaamites; but what is immeidately required of the Lord is getting rid of them; which a merger cannot do but tolerates them. It is such a confused proposition that I hope at worst the debate exposed how shallow the whole thesis is.
Chris, I agree that it is ultimately a silly proposition. My concern is that, to someone attracted to what sounds like a historically sophisticated and intellectually rigorous argument, RZ does not sound silly. There is a certain neatness to the theory that can be very attractive, especially to a younger person discovering Presbyterian history and the catholicity of the Church.
But when you actually work out the implications, it is a very strange position.
It effectively canonizes the moderate position. You can have orthodox churches and heretical churches existing together under the same denominational structure, and as long as the institution itself remains intact and does not finally drive the orthodox completely out, separation becomes the greater sin. The institution can become increasingly lukewarm, tolerate unbelief, undermine its own confession, and even become practically incapable of fulfilling the Great Commission, but the great ecclesiastical imperative remains: do not leave the institution.
In other words, the theory seems much more concerned with preserving the visible organizational continuity of the denomination than asking whether that denomination is actually functioning faithfully as a Church.
I can understand why that appeals to a certain young mind. It provides a very clean "theory of schism." The tragedy of Presbyterianism then becomes fragmentation, and the solution becomes equally simple: orthodox congregations should rejoin the historic mainline, remain collectively patient with its corruption, and eventually "recover" the institution.
But that conclusion is being smuggled into the argument.
Where is the Scriptural case that says this is what catholicity requires? Where is the Scriptural principle that says the continuing denominational corporation possesses a kind of ecclesiastical priority such that orthodox Presbyterians are obligated to remain within it until some extraordinarily high threshold of apostasy is crossed?
Instead, much of the argument seems to proceed by collecting quotations from Rutherford, Baillie, Ball, Augustine, Cyprian, etc., and then treating the resulting synthesis as though that establishes the Presbyterian doctrine of schism.
I have enormous respect for those men, but "what selected fathers believed about particular schisms in their historical circumstances" is not itself our final authority for defining when separation is sinful. Historic Presbyterianism is valuable precisely because it is subordinate to Scripture, not because Presbyterian divines collectively constitute another magisterium.
That is what I find so odd about the argument. It begins as an appeal to catholicity but can end by making faithfulness to an inherited institution the controlling principle of ecclesiology.
And once you do that, being a moderate who can live indefinitely within a lukewarm institution starts looking like the great Presbyterian virtue.
But when you actually work out the implications, it is a very strange position.
It effectively canonizes the moderate position. You can have orthodox churches and heretical churches existing together under the same denominational structure, and as long as the institution itself remains intact and does not finally drive the orthodox completely out, separation becomes the greater sin. The institution can become increasingly lukewarm, tolerate unbelief, undermine its own confession, and even become practically incapable of fulfilling the Great Commission, but the great ecclesiastical imperative remains: do not leave the institution.
In other words, the theory seems much more concerned with preserving the visible organizational continuity of the denomination than asking whether that denomination is actually functioning faithfully as a Church.
I can understand why that appeals to a certain young mind. It provides a very clean "theory of schism." The tragedy of Presbyterianism then becomes fragmentation, and the solution becomes equally simple: orthodox congregations should rejoin the historic mainline, remain collectively patient with its corruption, and eventually "recover" the institution.
But that conclusion is being smuggled into the argument.
Where is the Scriptural case that says this is what catholicity requires? Where is the Scriptural principle that says the continuing denominational corporation possesses a kind of ecclesiastical priority such that orthodox Presbyterians are obligated to remain within it until some extraordinarily high threshold of apostasy is crossed?
Instead, much of the argument seems to proceed by collecting quotations from Rutherford, Baillie, Ball, Augustine, Cyprian, etc., and then treating the resulting synthesis as though that establishes the Presbyterian doctrine of schism.
I have enormous respect for those men, but "what selected fathers believed about particular schisms in their historical circumstances" is not itself our final authority for defining when separation is sinful. Historic Presbyterianism is valuable precisely because it is subordinate to Scripture, not because Presbyterian divines collectively constitute another magisterium.
That is what I find so odd about the argument. It begins as an appeal to catholicity but can end by making faithfulness to an inherited institution the controlling principle of ecclesiology.
And once you do that, being a moderate who can live indefinitely within a lukewarm institution starts looking like the great Presbyterian virtue.
andrewnrice
Puritan Board Freshman
I've seen a few people challenge Mr. Ackerman's interpretation of Rutherford.
Andrew, yes. And I should probably clarify what I mean because I am not claiming that RZ simply invents quotations from Rutherford. Rutherford really is strongly opposed to unnecessary separation. The problem is the way RZ pulls those statements together into a much broader theory in which institutional continuity becomes the controlling principle.
Looking more carefully at Rutherford, you can see how RZ ultimately gets him wrong in several important ways.
First, Rutherford's target is largely the Separatist/Brownist argument that corruption in ministers or members makes communion with a true church unlawful. His question in A Peaceable and Temperate Plea is specifically whether one may separate from a true visible church because of "the corruption of teachers, and the wickedness of pastors and professors." He is arguing against the idea that the sins of fellow worshipers contaminate otherwise lawful worship. That is quite different from saying that a denomination may institutionally protect false doctrine, bind consciences, discipline orthodox ministers, and nevertheless retain an indefeasible claim upon them until it formally excommunicates them.
Second, Rutherford carefully distinguishes different kinds and degrees of separation. There is separation within the visible church versus separation from the visible church, partial versus total separation, and negative versus positive separation. Most importantly, his first conclusion is that "we are to separate in the true visible Church, from all communion wherein need-force we cannot choose but sin." So Rutherford's criterion is not RZ's criterion: "You must remain until formally excommunicated." Rutherford recognizes that conscience may require refusing particular acts of communion while still acknowledging that the body retains something of the nature of a church.
Third, Rutherford explicitly recognizes what he calls "forced separation through tyranny" and says, "The former is not our sin." That seems especially important when discussing Machen. Machen did not simply shop around for a purer denomination. The PCUSA ordered ministers associated with the Independent Board to abandon it, prosecuted those who refused, and suspended Machen and others from the ministry. The OPC itself describes those trials, convictions, and suspensions as providing the rationale for its formation.
RZ's insistence that they needed to wait for the additional technical act of excommunication from membership before they could leave seems to be his rule, not Rutherford's.
Fourth, and perhaps most damaging to the institutional-continuity thesis, Rutherford says something almost exactly contrary to the idea that whoever possesses the denominational machinery is presumptively "the Church." He writes that when "the greatest part of a church makes defection from the truth," the greater part may actually be "the church of separatists." He then says that although the numerical majority may possess "the actual exercise of discipline," nevertheless, "in the case of right discipline, the best though fewest is the church." His wonderful image is that truth is like life withdrawing from the extremities into the heart when the body is endangered.
That is almost the reverse of the use RZ wants to make of Rutherford. Rutherford does not say that the faction retaining the courts, property, legal succession, and denominational name necessarily possesses the superior ecclesiastical claim. The majority exercising the institutional discipline can itself be the separating party if it has defected from the truth.
Rutherford makes the same point when defending the Reformation. He does not concede, "Yes, we separated from the historic institution, but circumstances justified our schism." He says that Rome made the separation. His image is that the "rotten wall makes the schism in the house" when the wall falls away while the house remains. In other words, schism is not determined simply by asking who organizationally departed from whom. Truth and faithfulness determine which party has actually departed.
That, I think, is the fundamental problem with RZ's use of Rutherford.
Rutherford certainly teaches extraordinary patience with an impure church. He absolutely rejects separation merely because wicked people, corrupt ministers, or even serious disorders exist within it. I am not trying to turn Rutherford into a 19th-century American voluntary-church Presbyterian.
But neither does Rutherford teach the simple proposition RZ needs: "As long as the institution continues to recognize you as a member and has not formally excommunicated you, forming another Presbyterian body is sinful schism."
Rutherford's actual categories are considerably richer. He asks whether the true faith is being maintained, whether one is being required to participate in sin, whether tyranny has forced the separation, whether the majority has defected from the truth, and, most importantly, which party has actually remained with the truth.
That is why I think RZ's use of him is fraught. He takes Rutherford's very strong opposition to Separatism and incorporates it into a modern theory of denominational institutional continuity that Rutherford himself repeatedly complicates and, at significant points, seems positively to contradict.
So yes, people challenging his reading of Rutherford have a point. My concern is broader still. RZ uses selected parts of Rutherford to help construct a narrative in which the "moderate" who preserves the institution becomes the Presbyterian norm. Read Rutherford more fully, and that picture is much harder to sustain.
PointyHaired Calvinist
Puritan Board Junior
Henes did a much better job than Everhard (who I love) or Wilson. He took the question seriously and, in spite of Ackerman and his gotchas, fought for his position well. I’m happy to see Reformed ministers take him seriously. He hasn’t thought deeply about his position, but it seems he’s been quote mining. He’s also compromising more on stuff like LGBT.
“@pftk_org affirms and celebrates that the PC(USA) is a big tent, meaning we are committed to working alongside our LGBTQ[IA+] colleagues … We do not consider LGBTQ[IA+] an essential issue, meaning there are true Christians on both sides that can work together in mutual forbearance as the church.”
pres-outlook.org
“@pftk_org affirms and celebrates that the PC(USA) is a big tent, meaning we are committed to working alongside our LGBTQ[IA+] colleagues … We do not consider LGBTQ[IA+] an essential issue, meaning there are true Christians on both sides that can work together in mutual forbearance as the church.”
PC(USA) Young Adult Advisory Delegates struggle to reconcile differences
YAADs described sharply different experiences of a reconciliation gathering, with some appreciating the effort and others saying key concerns went unaddressed.
pres-outlook.org
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
Has this guy ever even addressed the marks of a true church? How does he deal with the argument that the PCUSA is a false church, since the marks of a true church are absent from it, therefore, not only is it justified to separate from it, but if any is to be accused of schism it is they for their heretical and schismatic religion which is the cause of schism?
He affirms the three marks, but holds that inconsistency in the three marks is not abscence of them. He maintains that there are some, he says many, congregations in the PCUSA that preach the true gospel, rightly administer the sacraments, and exercise church discipline, and that, while they do so and are allowed by presbyteries, the presbyteries and the denomination are, in his terminology, a "true church".
Frisian Gardener
Puritan Board Freshman
How does the PCUSA's funding model work? Has RZ addressed the argument that even if a local church is faithful, it is still forced to contribute to apostate institutions and thus enable and participate in their sin?
PointyHaired Calvinist
Puritan Board Junior
Briefly, he would say "You still pay your taxes to the government that funds abortions. That doesn't make you guilty of that."
WithinThePale
Puritan Board Freshman
I wonder could we do a viral marketing campaign in favour of iconoclasm?
It seems that iconoclasm is now consigned to modernist thought and rejected by postmodernist young people. The young man I spoke with blamed protestants and the enlightenment for segregating the spiritual and secular in life and for removing what he considers the spiritually stimulating physical and visual trappings of Christian religion.
But maybe, if reformed traditions of reverent, scripturally regulated worship and worship-places are presented as things the modern church thoughtlessly abandoned (or deliberately tore down in iconoclastic fervor for modernity), which are now worthy of re-evaluation by open-minded post-modern people, we could begin to make them more attractive to post-moderns, in much the same way that other "trad" lifestyles have gone viral.
Reformed Catholic
Puritan Board Freshman
I see no one asking why so many young people would be drawn to Redeemed Zoomer and his Reconquista theology. No one is asking why so many are fed up with the shallowness of modern conservative churches. Why so many are drawn to Catholicism for the same reason.
Just a lot of nasty name-calling and "young people are so stupid"
Maybe Redeemed Zoomer's popularity should spur some self-reflection on the embarrassing state of evangelical churches today. Or, we can just continue bickering about how gullible and stupid the young people are, and how mean and horrible Redeemed Zoomer is, and then complain when large numbers of young people end up becoming Catholic, Orthodox, or joining a mainline tradition.
Just a lot of nasty name-calling and "young people are so stupid"
Maybe Redeemed Zoomer's popularity should spur some self-reflection on the embarrassing state of evangelical churches today. Or, we can just continue bickering about how gullible and stupid the young people are, and how mean and horrible Redeemed Zoomer is, and then complain when large numbers of young people end up becoming Catholic, Orthodox, or joining a mainline tradition.
I don't think this is a fair read of the thread. Granted there have been a few instances of name-calling, but there has also been more instances of deeper analysis and discussion of the situation, especially in wake of his recent interactions and debate with Pastor Henes. I don't think anyone here has said "young people are so stupid", and I think half the people contributing, including myself, are essentially in the same generation as Ackerman, so we do also have some insight on these trends.
PointyHaired Calvinist
Puritan Board Junior
I am the last person to call someone who follows him stupid. He certainly isn’t. But his thought is shallow and it’s dangerous. It also appeals to a legitimate desire people have for certainty. I don’t want to see him mocked but answered. We need to show why PCA, OPC, URC, and other denominations or legitimate biblical reformation churches, far more than the PCUSA.
Christodulus
Puritan Board Freshman
We don’t want to be attractive to postmodernists, and we don’t want to appeal to people who want to be “trad”. We are talking about unregenerate men who want to treat the faith like an article of clothing. The best way to attract seekers to the faith is by preaching law and gospel and doing so without compromise or concession.
My answer would be 1. this is factually false, faithful churches in the PCUSA are few and far between, and such churches and ministers are infamously persecuted and prevented by the presbyteries, which was the very occasion of the founding of the PCA 2. Even if there were such a minority of true churches in the PCUSA, it does not make the PCUSA a true church. During the Reformation there were Christians under the papacy who were faithful in this way, and even churches, and their duty was to come out of her, and many did. Before the Council of Trent, Peter Martyr Vermigli fled Italy for the Protestant north. The reasoning with which he condemns our churches also condemns the reformers.
andrewnrice
Puritan Board Freshman
As a young person, you're right. Maybe we evangelicals need a "reconquista" too.
SojourningSøren
Puritan Board Freshman
It’s funny, because those “bells and whistles” of the mystical worship services attracted me to Eastern Orthodoxy initially. But I changed completely when I read through the Bible cover to cover and realized just how serious making images as worship to God was still idolatry. I became an iconoclast the more I read about how the Reformers pared down or otherwise got rid of elements in worship that detracts from God’s glory. I remember reading in Packer’s Knowing God how he viewed even a cross in a sanctuary can theoretically become an object of worship if one isn’t careful. That really rung my bell. Now I’m all about discarding man-made images that contradict or subvert God’s glory for an image or icon that will never compare with His greatness and immensity.
It’s honestly what led me on a journey through investigating RPW, because I want to worship God properly, and I know that worship shouldn’t be about my emotions, but about attributing awe and glory to God.
83r17h
Puritan Board Freshman
Can you dive into this a bit more? Which churches are we talking about?
The deepest church I have attended across the PCA, for instance, was an extremely conservative "ordinary means of grace" church. The shallowest one that I've attended has most of the session dedicated to being "liturgical" "historic" and whatnot (church calendar, corporate unison recitation of a prayer of confession, etc.). It was also moderately progressive (in the PCA).
What characterizes "deep" and "shallow" in your critique, and what is the association that you think there is between "conservative" and "shallow"? Am I misreading your critique?
jezk
Puritan Board Freshman
By the same token should we ask why so many people follow Paula White, Joel Osteen and Benny Hinn?
Reformed Catholic
Puritan Board Freshman
Look at the age demographics of their followers.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
This seems like kind of a harsh and strident post. At the very least, it's somewhat jarring in its contrast to the rest of the thread.
"I see no one asking..." Really? Where have you been looking? The shallowness of modern evangelicalism and the problem of high-publicity conversions to RC and EO... this has been in the headlines of the evangelical world for at least a decade, if not two. I hear pastors talk about it, I hear seminary professors talk about it, I have direct knowledge of people and families who are graplling with this.
"Just a lot of nasty name-calling..." Where have you seen this? Have you seen it on here? If so, where?
"Bickering about how gullible and stupid the young people are"; "how mean and horrible RZ is" - seriously, where are you getting this? Is it a reference to something you've seen here? Because the discussion about RZ has been pretty thoughtful and reasoned on here, and if you've watched Matthew Everhard's videos on the topic (which I believe have been linked here), they are in the same vein.
I'm really wondering where you are getting this; I'm sure you're getting it from somewhere, but it's at such striking odds with every discussion of RZ I've seen on here that I'm pretty sure you can't be reacting to something you've observed on this board.
So, in all seriousness, where does this post come from? What's driving it? It's not illegitimate to have some sympathy for RZ or to ask some of the questions you're asking, but the tone of your post suggests that something outside of this thread is driving you to speak the way you have.
With respect to the attractiveness of RC and EO, we are seeing the breakdown and death of post-modernity. In particular its subjectivism and its deconstruction of history. Post-modernity has left Western societies in a permanent state of flux with truth ever shifting and no grounding for well, anything. Historical institutions with claims to objective truth are appealing to a generation disenchanted by the ungrounded, listless, ever morphing culture of post-modernity. It seems RZ is seeking a Protestant counterpart. We, of course, should counteract that by appeal to our own historic confessions, the Reformers, and the Church Fathers.
jezk
Puritan Board Freshman
Why? A bad decision at 60 is the same as a bad decision at 20.
I think there is a recurring move here that needs to be challenged.
Criticism of Redeemed Zoomer is increasingly answered as though the criticism implies that we do not care about young people, do not recognize the problems in broader evangelicalism, or are oblivious to the attraction that Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy can exercise upon disaffected young Christians.
But none of those things follows.
I can agree that much of American evangelicalism is shallow. I can agree that many young Christians are looking for historical rootedness, seriousness, reverence, catholicity, and institutional stability. I can agree that Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy are benefiting from that dissatisfaction. I can agree that elders and pastors should understand what their young people are encountering online.
None of that requires me to agree with Redeemed Zoomer's ecclesiology.
Yet somehow the entire kitchen sink of problems in contemporary evangelicalism gets dragged into the discussion, as though criticism of RZ amounts to saying that everything is fine and there is nothing to see here.
That greatly overstates the case.
One of the advantages of getting older is that you have actually lived through several iterations of this same argument.
Every few years we are informed that this is the decisive generational moment. The Church is in crisis. Young people are facing unprecedented questions. The old methods do not work anymore. Pastors and elders do not understand the new generation. The ordinary ministry of the Church is inadequate to the present cultural challenge.
I have heard versions of this repeatedly.
We needed more "relevant" evangelicalism because doctrine was too dry.
We needed less emphasis on doctrine and more emphasis on the heart.
We needed contextualization because the old categories could not reach postmodern people.
Then we discovered that we no longer lived in Christendom.
Then we needed the missional church.
Then ancient-future worship.
Then Radical Orthodoxy.
Then more historical rootedness.
Then we were told that plain Reformed worship was incapable of competing with the beauty and transcendence of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy.
There is always a new reason why the ordinary ministry Christ gave His Church is suddenly insufficient for the present hour.
And now, apparently, the great crisis is that young people are attracted to an online personality who tells them that NAPARC churches are schismatic and that the path to catholicity runs through recovering historically mainline institutions.
That may be worth answering. I think it is worth answering.
But answering it is very different from accepting the premise that the Church must reorganize its understanding of ministry around it.
Some of us also have young adult children and Gen Z children who have remained in the faith. They are not all standing at the edge of Rome or Constantinople waiting to see whether their fathers and elders will finally understand Redeemed Zoomer.
Some of them see through this sort of attractional ecclesiology immediately.
They are thankful for fairly ordinary Reformed churches where they were taught the Scriptures, catechized, heard Christ preached week after week, received the sacraments, prayed with the saints, and watched Christians live ordinary lives of repentance and faith.
They have Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, charismatic, and broadly evangelical friends. They are capable of seeing that impressive aesthetics, confident institutional claims, emotional experience, or historical pedigree do not necessarily produce mature Christians.
That does not make their experience universal either. That is precisely the point.
We should be very careful about turning anecdotes about "the young" into sweeping claims about what the Church must now become.
The answer to young people attracted to Rome or Orthodoxy is not to panic and begin imitating whatever they presently find attractive. Nor is it to pretend their questions are unimportant.
It is to teach them better.
Teach them what the Church is. Teach them catholicity. Teach them why schism is sinful. Teach them why institutional succession is not identical with apostolic faithfulness. Teach them the history of Presbyterianism. Teach them why the Reformation happened. Teach them why the means of grace really are sufficient. And, above all, give them Christ.
That is quite different from saying that because RZ has identified real dissatisfaction among some young people, his peculiar solution to that dissatisfaction must therefore possess some special insight that older Christians are failing to appreciate.
There is a strange rhetorical escalation that occurs in these discussions:
RZ is reaching young people.
Therefore RZ has identified something the Church has missed.
Therefore criticism of RZ demonstrates that the Church does not understand young people.
Therefore failure to take up RZ's program contributes to young people leaving for Rome or Orthodoxy.
And before long we arrive at something very close to:
This is the hour. This is the emergency. You are either taking RZ seriously in the prescribed way, or you are against the future of the Church. Choose this day whom you will serve.
I have lived through too many ecclesiastical emergencies of the moment to find that particularly persuasive anymore.
The Church should certainly listen to its young people.
It should not panic every time someone announces that the ordinary means Christ instituted are inadequate to the latest generation.
- Status
Similar threads
