How serious is the threat of liberalism and cultural marxism taking root in the PCA? Dr. James White commented on the fact that 40% of the PCA General Assembly at one point refused to adopt the Nashville Statement, which he saw as a sign that "identity politics" and cultural marxism have already started placing their roots into the PCA, especially with the younger generation.
It's sort of a late question to be asking about an Overture from 2019 in which around 40% of GA commissioners present failed to vote in the affirmative to commend the Nashville statement as Biblically faithful.
The reason the Overture was put up had to do with a controversy beginning in 2018 with the first Revoice Conference at Memorial Pres in Saint Louis. It's too complicated to review all the concerns but it also coincided with Greg Johnson telling everyone he was gay. Except that he claimed he never really he said he was gay. Except that he would talk in ways that made the world think he was gay. Except that he would do the common double-speak of the Missional crowd and said that he was only speaking in a "missiologiacl" fashion.
The 2020 GA was canceled due to COVID, but the 2021 GA was called, by some, the "pitchfork" Assembly.
You have to understand that progressives are rarely in the majority, but the greatest enemy to the Church is often the "sweetness and light" moderate who is persuadable and follows the seemingly "nice" person.
The "Kellerith/Missional" movement had been in some ascendancy prior to this point. It had forced through a Women's Study Committee through a back door process in 2018 and an Overture changed the rules of assembly operations to allow that to happen again in reaction.
Greg Johnson has proved to be the undoing (so far) of over a decade of the Cultrualist wing to the PCA being in a slight majority at GA. As I said, 2021 led to the adoption of Overtures trying to address and stem the tide of Side B theology. In fact, at the same 2019 Assembly where Johnson made his tear-felt speech about having no one to receive his cremated ashes when he died (because he was gay, but not gay and could never marry because he was gay and not gay). The PCA erected a Study Committee on human sexuality that (surprise!) reiterated that our Standards (and by extension the Scriptures) are completely antithetical to the idea of Side B Christianity. Keller was one of the members of that committee, but I think a lot of the sharp theological baggage was carried by Kevin DeYoung.
Anyway, what you have to understand about the Missional crowd is that you could say that they didn't really understand our Standards very well as much as they understood how to be Missional in the sense of thinking they were doing theology in conversation with the culture. Many did not realize, for instance, that our internal temptations that arise form our corruption are sin.
I think what happened subsequently is that it woke up a lot of moderates and also caused a lot of RE's to show up to the Assembly. This meant that conservative voting has dominated the last 3 GA's It has changed the composition not only of committees of commissioners but the permanent committees. The most dominant progressive organizing voting blocs have all but dissolved, with the leader of the National Partnership having recently disgraced himself with fraud and other public sins.
So, does that mean that things will all just go well for the PCA? Not necessarily. It requires vigilance. Johnson saw to it that many of the power blocks are in tatters but it requires that Churches continue to care enough to send men to Presbytery and GA. The good news is that some Missional hotspots are in big trouble in terms of numbers and success.
timothyisaiahcho.medium.com
