Fireworks may be fewer, but important issues remain
The Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly takes place near the end of June in Chattanooga, TN. Every year, the gathered assembly (all teaching elders and a proportional number of ruling elders from every church) votes on a series of overtures to potentially change our governing documents, whether our Confession of Faith, Book of Church Order, or other related documents. Individual presbyteries (regional bodies of elders) are normally the entities that send overtures to the General Assembly to be voted on, though occasionally individual church sessions, or even individual elders, send overtures. At the General Assembly there is an Overtures Committee that votes to carry out of variety of tasks related to these overtures: it sometimes alters the language of the overtures, merges similar overtures into a single one, and most importantly, votes on whether to recommend an overture be passed or rejected by the entire General Assembly. The General Assembly, however, is not required to adhere to the Overtures Committee’s recommendations.
Over the last few years there had been some overtures pertaining to Revoice, women in church office, and other controversial matters. This year there are not as many overtures that are quite so controversial on the surface, though a few of the most debated issues in the PCA are nonetheless addressed. In this article I will focus on those I think will be most debated and more briefly mention others.
Christian Nationalism
There are two overtures (Overtures 3 and 4) from different presbyteries requesting a study committee be formed to create a report on “Christian Nationalism.” I doubt these will pass for the following reasons. First, many in the PCA have study committee fatigue. Study committees are expensive, time-consuming, and have no constitutional authority. Regardless of what a committee determines, no ruling or teaching elder in the PCA is required to adhere to its findings (though this does not stop people from acting as if they represent the “position” of the PCA). In addition, other things, such as postmillennialism and theonomy, are being grouped into these overtures. Regardless of what one thinks of those views, there have already been study committees on those very topics. Furthermore, the PCA has already determined what its view of the civil magistrate is: it is expressed in Chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1788 version) and in various Larger and Shorter Catechism questions. The Confession and Catechisms, along with any relevant portions of our other constitutional documents (BCO, etc.), are the only standard that a minister or elder can be held to on these matters. I would argue, therefore, that presbyteries already have sufficient confessional guidance on what is or is not an acceptable position in the PCA.
Mission to North America, Immigration Laws, and Racial Affinity Worship
Overture 28 from Northwest Georgia Presbytery has to do with recent publications by Mission to North America (MNA) wherein it linked to guidance to help illegal aliens illegally evade U.S. immigration law and thus avoid deportation (all while calling them “undocumented persons”… what documents, one might ask, are they lacking?). This guidance was removed from the MNA website when it became known to the public, and a mild apology was issued, but this overture (if passed) would require Mission to North American (MNA) to:
- Write and submit a statement to the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General of the United States, and the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services which apologizes for the offence of encouraging illegal immigrants to evade lawful authority; and
- Write and submit a statement of repentance to the Presbyterian Church in America for permitting to exist within the ranks of MNA an environment among its staff in which a statement of the nature described herein would be released online for distribution, thus dishonoring the name of Christ and bringing shame upon our denomination; and
- Terminate the employment of any individual on the MNA staff who participated in any manner in the preparation and release of the online statement which counseled undocumented persons on ways to avoid being detained by authorities of the United States Government.
This overture has real teeth. Is change possible without genuine consequences? Is it sufficient to claim that MNA simply made mistakes? For an entity even to make such mistakes is itself unacceptable according to this overture, and I suspect many would agree. This overture does not even address the controversy surrounding MNA personnel supporting and participating in “racial affinity worship” services.
Racial Diversity, Partiality and Statistics
Three overtures from Calvary Presbytery deal with the statistical data collected by the PCA. Overture 41 would have the Administrative Committee collect data on worship times in all PCA churches, data that is sometimes difficult to discover on church websites. Overtures 42 and 43 would require that the Stated Clerk’s office cease collecting statistics on age and ethnicity. There is an alarming trend among some advocating that certain levels of ethnic or racial diversity are a necessary reflection of a church’s faithfulness to the Great Commission. Such statistic could be used to reinforce this view. Thus, Overture 42 rightly notes that
the theological commitments of the PCA derived from Scripture and expressed in the PCA’s subordinate Standards and Constitute militate against the collection of data pertaining to ethnicity, for the PCA confesses with Scripture that though our members come from many different backgrounds (ethnic and otherwise), our Triune God has united us together as “one body” (1 Cor. 12:12), with Christ Himself being “our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (Eph. 32 2:14), baptizing all “by one Spirit…into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves of free,” and making all “to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13), even while acknowledging that Old Testament historical narratives, ceremonial laws, and prophecies frequently refer to people groups by familial origin, tribal associations, ethnic affinities, nations, and what some commentators might refer to as racial distinctions, yet never in such a way so as to accept as appropriate the continuing use of such distinctions in the formal categorization of members of the church of Jesus Christ . . .
and that
the collection of data pertaining to age or ethnicity gives the appearance of the sins of partiality (James 2:9) and pride, which must not be indulged even at the first stirring of the same (James 1:14-15), as illustrated in King David’s sinful (and deadly) census recorded in 2 Samuel 24 and cited in 1 Chronicles 21 . . .
Avoiding such partiality should not be controversial. It remains to be seen whether it will be.
Other Potentially Controversial Overtures
Overture 9 is an attempt to ensure that the decision-making authority in the PCA remains in the hands of elders (who are the only men given biblical authority in the church to rule). It would change the BCO and RAO (Rules of Assembly Operations… essentially the General Assembly’s operating manual) to not allow members of the Administrative Committee (AC) merely appointed by the permanent committees of the PCA (which can include unordained men and women) to vote or attend meetings of the AC that go into executive session. As it currently stands, 45% of the members of the Administrative Committee are appointed (including non-elders), giving them significant influence in this important committee of the General Assembly.
Overture 44 would transition byFaith (the PCA’s web magazine) into a “press-release-based publication.” The rationale behind this is that the site should not provide opinion pieces or pieces that are largely reflective of only a certain sector of the PCA, but should instead limit itself to providing neutral informational items for PCA members. There have been some egregiously bad opinion pieces published at byFaith just this year, including one by a doctor insinuating that any divergence from the government Covid guidance of 2020 (which even the New York Times has come to recognize was flawed) is unloving and unchristian (this doctor also did not divulge in his article that he has been paid significant sums by vaccine manufacturers). Former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lawyer James Lawerence has written an excellent response at American Reformer. Also published (though retracted) at byFaith was an article recommending Karl Barth as a guide to Christian prayer. Barth was a thoroughly unorthodox theologian, one who denied the inerrancy of Scripture and the Protestant understanding of the work of Christ on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. Sticking to informational news items would certainly be a welcome change from articles like these, though, of course, even the selection of news items is not a neutral matter.
Judicial Procedure
A large number of overtures deal with judicial procedure. Overture 1 seeks to ensure that church courts can determine whether there is enough evidence (etc.) to move forward to charges in a discipline case.
Overture 7, which makes it easier for groups of presbyteries or the General Assembly to intervene in cases brought against a Teaching Elder when it is thought that the original presbytery is not acting faithfully, strikes me as written out of a lack of confidence in Presbyterian church government.
Many other overtures of a judicial nature, while not unimportant, seem to be primarily about clarifying existing procedures, rather than fundamentally changing them. Such overtures are not illegitimate, but there is often also a recognition that it is difficult ever to arrive at language that cannot be misunderstood, and therefore, these kinds of amendments are often met with their own version of the fatigue attendant upon proposed study committees.
Worship
Overtures touching on matters of worship may prove controversial. Overture 5 requests that 4 chapters of the Directory of Worship be given full constitutional status. The rationale behind this is that the PCA intended there to be a binding Directory of Worship at its founding, but through a variety of historical circumstances never came to create one. This overture would be a partial remedy of that situation. Overture 26 is similar, but more comprehensive, in that it pushes toward revising the Directory of Worship so as to create one that will become authoritative as a whole. The PCA currently approaches worship strangely from a historic Reformed position in that it treats various doctrines as authoritative (in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, including the teaching of those documents on how worship must take place [such as WCF 21.1]), but does not prescribe how worship must be carried out. John Calvin, in his treatise “On The Necessity of Reforming the Church” (1543), would see this as exactly backwards:
If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: that is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained.
For Calvin, nothing is more important than how the church worships God, not even the Bible’s teaching on salvation.
Overture 33 is an attempt to ensure that church sessions examine with sufficient care young people being presented to become communicants of the Lord’s Supper, and potentially to help resolve what some see as an anomaly where very young communicants are enabled to vote on things like pastoral calls.
Church Office
Several overtures pertain to matters of church office. Two stand out as particularly significant to me. Overture 10 would deal with the strange fact that the PCA has a class of “assistant” pastors who are called by a church session (not the congregation), have no vote on the session, but can vote in Presbytery and General Assembly. While I find this reality perplexing from a Presbyterian church government standpoint, I think this overture doesn’t actually address the root of the issue, which is the existence of a category of pastors who cannot vote in only one level of the church courts.
Overture 12 is a no-brainer: only ordained officers may distribute the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a sign and seal of our salvation in Christ and cannot be disconnected from the preaching of the word. Therefore, only those men appointed to church office should participate in the distribution of the sacrament.
Overture 8 would require that all ruling elders and deacons state any differences they might have with the Westminster Standards. Teaching Elders are already required to do this, and public accountability for all officers cannot but be a good thing.
Miscellaneous
Many other overtures will prove to be non-controversial. Five of them are simply to change the boundaries of various presbyteries, which is common as the number of churches in a given presbytery grows. The only controversy I would anticipate would be if a proposed division fundamentally altered the theological makeup of a presbytery. Perhaps it will become evident at GA that overtures I did not mention are more significant than they seem to me right now.
All-in-all this assembly, even though there are important issues being discussed, will likely have fewer fireworks than some assemblies of the last 4 or 5 years. Please join me in praying that the Lord would bless its deliberations, and that they all be carried out for his glory and for the good of his people.
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