A Sad Day
Tags: church, church practices, culture, marriage, sexuality
It was a very sad day for the Christian church, for Protestantism, and particularly for Presbyterianism. May 10, 2011 the Presbytery of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, voted to remove all restrictions on practicing homosexuals (and practicing fornicators for that matter) from serving as clergy. Because it was the 87th Presbytery to do so, their vote to amend the church’s constitution confirmed the action last summer of the PCUSA’s General Assembly, opening the door for their ordination. The new policy will be effective July 10.
How do things like this happen? How can it be that the denominational heirs of John Calvin and John Knox, of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge, of B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen, have come to this? The answer is, it took about 100 years, about ten thousand small steps, and, more recently, stick-to-it- ness by the radicals when similar attempts failed in 1997, 2001, and 2008. How can Presbyterians approve of essentially no fixed sexual standards, and jettison previous constitutional language which specified for clergy “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness”? The answer is simple: once the church begins to listen to the spirit of the age rather than the Spirit of Christ, it is only a matter of time.
Turn back the clock to 1911, or even 1941, or even 1961. Would anyone have even imagined such a development? The church sanctioning homosexuality? The church normalizing homosexuality? The church declaring that homosexual acts are compatible with Christian discipleship? Not even the liberals of a generation ago would have countenanced such a thing, just like today they can’t countenance polygamy. Yet Mormons of a certain stripe practice polygamy. Muslims practice it. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before polygamy, prostitution, and all manner of perversion are sanctioned and normalized by churches which are no longer churches.
Ridiculous? Here’s the problem. Can we today draw any permanent line anywhere which separates legitimate from illegitimate forms of sexual expression? Any? Mainline Protestants increasingly are unwilling to do so. The PCUSA, in one sense, is only walking down a path that the Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists (the U.C.C.) have already trod. What holds these religious bodies back from condoning other forms of deviancy? Only popular opinion. Once the spirit of the age blows through again (see the popularity of TV shows featuring polygamy; see also the impact of Muslim immigration), the line will move or be rubbed out altogether. For the PCUSA to make this decision it has to ignore the laws of nature, 3500 years of Judeo-Christian ethical consensus, 2000 years of church practice, and ignore the utterly unambiguous teaching of Scripture. Recognize what this means: there are no longer any institutional restraints to prevent a succession of deviations, moral, theological, and ecclesiastical, in the years ahead.
The PCUSA has unchurched itself. It has apostasied. There are still good individual PCUSA churches. But the denomination as such has gone to hell. Denominational bricks and mortar, representing the prayers, sweat, and tears of generations of the faithful, are now in the hands of infidels. Weep for the loss. Grieve this catastrophe. My counsel to faithful congregations is to come out, come out and be separate and do not touch what is unclean (2 Cor 6:17). My counsel to faithful individuals in unfaithful congregations is the same. Leave. Get out. Your church is no longer a church. It has been hijacked by people with a different agenda and a different religion. Find a Bible-believing, Christ-honoring church to attend and go. Leave them to their political game.
Hopefully the victors in the PCUSA will change their label. It annoys me endlessly that they call themselves Presbyterians. They’re not. Yet they’ll continue to muddy our reputation as long as they retain the name. Even now, when we say, “We’re Presbyterian,” we have to add, “But we’re not them.” “No,” we say, “we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.” Or, “we don’t believe in abortion.” Now we’ll have to add, “We’re not the kind of ‘Presbyterian’ that ordains homosexuals.”
Sad day. Sad, sad day. Once again, the zeitgeist has proven irresistible. A church of Christ has become a synagogue of Satan (Rev. 2:9, 3:9). Greater is He who is in us, yet the spirit of the world is very strong, especially when the church would rather listen to it rather than the Spirit of Christ.
—Terry Johnson