Touch Grass, See Clearly: Why the Reformed World Must Wake Up

This may upset some people, but those of you who avoid serious discussions on social media because of the discomfort of controversy need to wake up. Controversy is here, whether it’s comfortable or not. Everything significant in the real world—politics, business, culture, religion—is being hashed out on X (formerly Twitter) a year or more before it reaches other spaces and becomes operationalized. The democratization of knowledge is upon us, and we’re living in a cultural moment as seismic as the invention of the printing press. Burying your head in the sand or clinging to your discomfort won’t change this reality.

In Reformed church circles, if you rely on certain prominent bloggers (pastors? popes?) and talking heads, you’re likely being misled about where things are headed. These figures seem primarily interested in defending their current control of movements, positioning themselves at the conservative edge of the existing liberalizing order, and upholding its taboos. However, the broader cultural winds have shifted. There is a massive, reality-based, traditionalist backlash brewing on the right—industrious, pious, and unapologetically so. This could, I pray, mark the beginnings of a revival. Like all moves of God, it is dividing people and exposing long-cherished lies and sins, especially among church leaders. Churches that stood firm against tyranny, political, social, and ecclesiastical, during COVID have now seen an influx and concentration of a different kind of Protestant man in their churches, and while the renewal and growth is welcomed, it brings new tensions with conservative-normie leaders.

If what I’m observing is accurate, those retreating into Boomer-generation platitudes like:

“Israel is our greatest ally; there’s no Jewish conspiracy to corrupt Christian societies.”

“There’s no real sin of gluttony, and we’re not being poisoned.”

“Working out is gay.”

“Christian men are the problem, women are always victims.”

“Diversity is our strength, and race isn’t real.”

“Humility means doing what your rebellious parents want.”

“If people get upset at you, you have been unwise.”

“Stop wasting time by talking about these things, they don’t matter because they don’t matter to me.”

will soon face some cold, hard truths. For example, wave after wave of scandal and downgrades proves the conservative evangelical movement, and its fractured tiny denominations, are being exposed for conserving little besides men’s egos. Why won’t your church and denomination be next? Younger men are not buying it, wanting to see reality instead of posturing/marketing, even when shamed as “rebels.” They can sniff out the hypocrisy. The cyclical circus of new controversies and new heroes and new doctrines every ten years is less than entertaining, and many Christian men are developing the discernment to recognize the nonsense. “Maybe this time it will work” is no longer convincing. The democratization of Reformed theological resources and the recovered memory of the men our fathers once were mean that ordinary men can now bypass the filters of now self-serving leaders who cherry-pick the tradition to suit their marketing emphasis or ecclesiastical politics agendas. The little popes and their arbitrary decrees seem, well, silly, hypocritical, and arbitrary.

So, friend, I know this is uncomfortable. But it’s better to open your eyes, touch grass, and learn God’s Word from the old dead guys who weren’t making it up as they went along, unlike today’s institutional leaders who largely wear our tradition like a skin suit. Put on some reading glasses, blink, and adjust your eyes to see what your fathers saw. Realize that if men hate your fathers, they hate you, and they hate your children. The traditional Protestant way of thinking and living was robust, realistic, godly, and multigenerational. Everything good we have in the West is a fruit of that Protestant catholic tradition. Yes, this perspective is deeply out of fashion with those clinging to the “conservatism” of the last decades, who barely even memorialize our fathers now, but I see a small cloud on the horizon (shaped like an X?). It may herald a big change, a new day.

I’ve warned men in ecclesiastical settings before not to resist what is good simply because it’s uncomfortable for the current order. Too often, they wake up five years later, feeling foolish for lacking courage. Few listened then, but more are listening now. We are witnessing another such moment in the Reformed world. For over a century, evangelical fathers (pastors, institutions) have generally failed their children by failing to honor our past fathers. Instead, they labeled the godly as rebellious or prideful for refusing to join in their folly, and they rewarded the sycophants and pliable. A generation raised like this is now largely in charge of conservative Reformed institutions, but the steel spined rowdies are at the gate

We MUST honor our fathers, especially those who are dead, stable, proven, and clear-headed. It is a chief expression of honoring our Father in heaven. We are their fruits, their generations, their heritage only if we imitate their doctrine and life. But when we follow the loudest mouths in the religious marketplace and embrace doctrines and emphases that would excommunicate our godly fathers, we join the rebellion of the Boomers and their prideful arrogance. Honoring our fathers does not mean honoring their rebellion and foolishness. Instead, we should enter the room with a sheet to cover their shame—and take the keys.

Denominational Death

Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Reformed- it doesn't matter. In 2024, wherever you look in Protestantism it is some variation of the same sad story. Apart from some micro or regional denominational iterations or independent congregations carrying on their respective traditions alone, all the nationwide, legacy denominations are fried or nearly fried, doctrinally and morally speaking. It goes without saying that this is true of the Mainline churches, and has been for decades. I am not primarily thinking of them, but more specifically have their "conservative" cousins in mind- the ones that likely exist because of some previous split with an apostatizing Mainline denomination and that were founded with the explicit intention of conserving the historic teachings and practices of their respective traditions.

I am prompted to make these observations after the latest betrayal of the faith by the bishops of ACNA, which unanimously selected a pro-women’s ordination and race woke archbishop last weekend, despite a significant internal division about the WO issue, and woke batshittery in general, throughout the communion. One observer commented:

“ACNA is unserious about the orthodox faith and traditional Anglicanism. Conservative resurgence is on a ventilator now. But maybe it always was. There are no ACNA based bishops. Knock it off.”

You could swap out ACNA/Anglicanism/bishops with almost any other denomination/tradition/top officers and the statement would be just as true. This is happening everywhere in conservative Protestantism. The Left advances within them inexorably, the conservative wing of leadership talks a big game about standing firm or taking it back, said leadership caves or fights incompetently, the faithful laity and less influential leaders are betrayed. At best, the orthodox might have a good year or two at synod, GA, or whatever, and the lurch seems to be stopped temporarily. But it always resumes because the troublemakers are never rebuked, discipline, or purged. They continue to plot and caucus and manipulate the levers of soft and hard power while the cucked conservatives refuse to sully their hands with such ungentlemanly tactics and box out the few based people in their ranks who would.

Yes, faithful minorities within each denomination hang on no matter how bad it goes. Yes, these churches are not all equally far gone. But the elite apparatus in them all is riddled with regimevangelicals and pretend conservatives that won't really fight them, and the necessary resources and manpower to reverse the leftward momentum has already been eroded away. They are all of them living on borrowed time. The days of the major “evangelical” bodies in every Protestant stream are numbered. The orthodox parties within them will eventually be brought to heel and made to accept the current heresy, convincing themselves that it was a principled compromise and they will not allow any further drift next time, so that they can sleep at night. Those with more integrity will be driven out by disciplinary action or compelled to withdraw by conscience or disgust as dialogue becomes diktat and orthodox doctrine moves from the standard to just one option in a “big tent” to being proscribed altogether. And then these “conservative,” “confessional,” “traditional,” “Bible-believing” denominations will go full Mainline, joining the family of Regime-approved state denominations before their eventual demographic death.

Is this the end of Protestantism? No, I don’t think so. I believe the future of Protestantism is going to be orthodox believers of various traditions informally partnering and standing together against a hostile culture and a hostile set of state churches. Many congregations have already departed from these failed denominations. Some are going it alone for now. Others have found or formed new networks and alliances. I do not believe independency is any kind of ideal for church polity, but it seems to be an understandable necessity for many congregations in this time. Why join a legacy denomination when every option you have is currently sinking?

As these legacy denominations tank, more congregations will be fleeing from them. Some will likely stay in but ignore everything from denominational HQ until they get tossed. There are many possible ways things can play out for faithful Protestants in the coming years. It is quite likely that based churches will begin to support one another locally, even though they are from different traditions and could never have a full union with each other in a traditional denomination. If the economy and infrastructure of the nation continue to crumble, and if the nation begins to balkanize, local association will become much more important. The Anglicans and Baptists in the same county, fighting the same enemies are going to be natural allies more than Anglicans on opposite coasts in totally different contexts that cannot even really have much physical connection anyway.

Consider marriage, for example. Limiting the spousal choices for our children to one congregation quickly results in a shallow gene pool. In days past our kids could look to the other nearby churches of the same tradition for options. But if all the other churches in that tradition are now pozzed, the nearest options in said tradition that are still solid might be states away. Economics, and more importantly, family rootedness and sense of place, might require marrying into the other based church from a different tradition. Paris may not be worth a mass, but is your family worth the Prayer Book instead of the Directory for Worship?

Where it goes from there, I can't guess. Maybe new, faithful national denominations of each stripe will eventually emerge to replace their failed predecessors. Maybe a new set of hybrid denominational traditions will be born of the camaraderie that forms in the trenches. Maybe this is the truly ecumenical moment, in which necessity forces pan-Protestant catholicity upon us, and makes us regard our traditional distinctives with the proper weight.

But what is clear is that the situation now is more extreme than we usually allow ourselves to think and we need to get into the right frame of mind about who our friends and enemies are. As a Reformed guy in a currently independent Reformed congregation I recognize the major Reformed denominations, as a whole, must be regarded as hostile, even as individual people and congregations in them are friendlies. And the people and congregations of rival Protestant streams that hold fast to the common faith of our fathers (and that includes morality as much as theology!) are also friends fighting their own set of hostiles. I have your back, insofar as I can help you. I hope you'll have mine.

We also need to get over the immature aspects of our denominational rivalries. We can still debate which of us has the superior understanding of sacraments, polity, finer points of election, and such. But we have to stop boasting about 'my tradition being the most faithful' because they've all crapped the bed right now. No time for that kind of vanity anymore. We don't have the luxury of arrogance. All of our confessions and polities - all of them - failed to keep the snakes and wolves out. Because no matter how biblical they are, none of them work without a prior loyalty to God and a commitment to holiness. We can stop trying to blame the onrush of liberalism on each other. We all succumbed to the same lies and false promises of modernity. We all failed to cultivate the same essential virtues. So let us be done with the pettiness that has existed between our tribes. May one of the blessings hidden in the curse of trashworld be an awakened appreciation of just how much orthodox Protestants have in common and how rich is our collective inheritance.

So let us each renew our commitments to our King and forge anew bonds of friendship with all who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And then let us fight for the Church - not just this or that passing denomination - the Church, wherever God has placed us within it. God shook his Church at the Reformation and things that seemed impossible happened. Horrible evils took place and glorious triumphs occurred. We are being shaken again. Where all the pieces will land cannot be seen. But our duties should be clear. Hold fast to the truth, love the brethren.

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A brief note for those sincerely committed to winning back the denominations: You probably think I overly pessimistic. You think you can save your church. I appreciate you and I pray for your success. I want you to win. Take your stands and be willing to go out fighting. It’s a noble work. But I ask of you two things: First, understand that regimevangelicals have mastered screwing over the orthodox through back alley caucusing, emotional blackmail, and denominational procedure, all with a big polished grin and warm handshake for the people they betray. You can't beat that while reciprocating their courtesy and warmth and committing to winning a street fight by Marquess of Queensbury rules. Get savage or get out. Be mean, break the BCO rules abused to sideline you, threaten to split the thing apart if they don't yield to you. Charge their guys with heresy non-stop. Lawfare is on the table. The liberals deserve no quarter. It’s not even dishonest to do these things at this point. It's probably already too late for even this to be enough, but if you won't even try that you aren't serious. Second, when you have drawn your red line, mean it. If you make your last stand, and it fails, go. Don’t keep redrawing it a few feet further back every year. You don’t get multiple last stands. Everyone can see that you aren’t serious if you keep renegotiating your ultimatums. This is the road to being just another cucked pretend conservative.

Conservative Wins At The PCAGA 2021

I was surprised and encouraged by many of the outcomes from the PCA GA yesterday. Here are some highlights...

(Note, all the Overtures, including the ones discussed below, can be found here: https://pcaga.org/resources/#overtures )

The passing of the committee's alternative recommendation on Overture 14: This one was easy to breeze over, but it is significant and a great victory for the PCA. This overture amends the MTW (Mission to the World) policy manual to include the statement "All MTW leaders in line authority over church planting or 38 church development ministry shall be ordained elders.” This is FANTASTIC news. During the debate portion for this overture, many men argued that this would prevent qualified-yet-unordainable women from being in administrative roles over missionary teams, including being over ordained elders in administrative capacities. Men arguing these points insisted that all the tools were in place to discern between ecclesiastical authority and non-ecclesiastical authority regarding church planting efforts, deferring to ordained elders in the former, while allowing room for "qualified" unordained men and women in the latter. In his counter-argument, Ruling Elder Matt Fender from James River Presbytery in Virginia put it thusly: "We're a church. All authority is ecclesiastical." He's exactly right. Whether intended or not, absence of this statement would continue to permit loopholes to rebellion by unordained men—and especially women—exercising authority over the bride of Christ (e.g. women presiding over mission budgets, which some of the elders at the Assembly actually defended). This has been a quiet, creeping cancer in the PCA and this is a great step towards remedying it. Praise the Lord!

The passing of Overture 38: This is a basic, crosses-the-low-bar statement on gender, marriage, and sexual sin and acknowledges that corrupt desires (such as same sex attraction) are *inherently* sinful. This is as basic as it gets, but it's a victory. Unsurprisingly, Greg Johnson expressed his disapproval of this Overture before the Assembly because, though he "agreed with it", he would vote against the Overture since it did not "apologize for how we have treated SSA Christians." Despite the efforts of wolves, this very basic and non-controversial Overture passed. Praise the Lord.

The passing of Overture 23: This is the big one that everyone was talking about. It was most critical that this be passed. The statement this overture sought to add was that "Men who self-identify as a 'gay Christian,' 'same-sex attracted Christian,' 'homosexual Christian,' or like term shall be deemed not qualified for ordination in the Presbyterian Church in America." Despite much debate against the point, this passed with 77% in favor. Those numbers would be discouragingly low in any other time in history, but given the present state of the PCA, this is very encouraging. Praise the Lord!

The Passing of Overture 37: This overture added the following statement to the Book of Church Order regarding the examination put up for the office of Teaching Elder specifically: "In the examination of the candidate’s personal character, the presbytery should give specific attention to potentially notorious concerns, such as but not limited to relational sins, sexual immorality (including homosexuality, fornication, and pornography), addictions, abusive behavior, and financial mismanagement. Careful reflection should be given to his practical struggle against sinful actions, as well as persistent sinful desires. The candidate shall give clear testimony of his reliance upon his union with Christ and the benefits thereof by the Holy Spirit, depending on this work of grace to make progress over sin (Psalm 103:2-5, Romans 8:29) and to bear fruit (Psalm 1:3; Gal. 5:22-23). While imperfection will remain, he should not be known by reputation or self-profession according to his remaining sinfulness (e.g., homosexual desires, etc.), but rather by the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 6:9-11). In order to maintain discretion and protect the honor of the pastoral office, the presbytery may empower a committee to conduct detailed examination into these matters and to give prayerful support to candidates." The overture also added language that Sessions presiding over the examination of men put up for this office should "give specific attention to potentially notorious concerns", listing homosexuality among them. Pushback was given in the form of an alternative recommendation in the committee's minority report, criticizing the language of this overture as being too ambiguous, providing a few exceptions where some men who may be technically qualified could not be ordained if judgement were carried out according to this clause. In my best estimation, this was word salad with little to contribute to the issue, drawing on exception to disprove the rule. It was pointed out by a few keen observers during the debate portion that the alternative recommendation would actually provide certain loopholes that work against the very intention of the original overture. So, by God's grace, the original recommendation was passed. Praise the Lord.