Questions the Partial Report Leaves Unanswered
In a little under two weeks, hundreds of other officers of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and I will gather in Louisville, Kentucky, to conduct the business of the church.
One matter sure to garner attention is the partial report released last week by the denomination’s Ad-Interim Study Committee on Christian Nationalism. The committee was formed at last year’s General Assembly “to study the relationship between Christian Nationalism, Ethno-Nationalism, and related teachings” and offer any advice about whether these ideas “are in conformity with the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Standards.”
The partial report is just that: partial. I appreciate the magnitude of what these brothers were tasked to do, and I found every committee member I interacted with to be professional, courteous, and a serious scholar with pastoral sensitivity.
That said, what follows are the questions I have after reading the partial report—questions that may be answered in the forthcoming appendices, which the committee says “will provide robust exegetical, historical, and contemporary analysis of the central issues under discussion.” As it stands, however, here are the issues I believe warrant further attention.
The Subscription Question
Perhaps the most significant part of the report is its assessment of the “substantial changes” between the original Westminster Confession of Faith and the 1788 American revisions on the important topic of political theology.
This is a point of serious contention among some of the brightest minds in the denomination, including Kevin DeYoung, the moderator of last year’s General Assembly, and the person responsible for forming the committee. DeYoung’s argument, alluded to in the report, is that the two versions “represent genuinely different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.” Others argue the two versions are not contradictory but represent “different applications of the same shared principles to dissimilar political contexts.” The former say the 1788 revisions are a correction; the latter argue they are an adaptation to a new political reality.
Though the report denies any attempt to resolve the question definitively, one cannot help but sense that its conclusions betray a sympathy with the correctionist view.
While no one doubts the changes to WCF 23.3 were “substantial,” the committee goes further to assert that American Presbyterians made them because they believed the original confession “gave too much authority to the civil magistrate in matters of religion” and intended “to correct what they regarded as an error.”
The committee refers specifically to the removal of such magisterial rights and duties as suppressing heresies and calling synods delineated in the American revisions of WCF 23.3. The revisions also explicitly deny the magistrate the right to “interfere in matters of faith.” Any PCA officer who believes, in principle, that magistrates retain those rights and duties, the committee concludes, “is out of accord with the PCA’s Standards and must declare this difference to his examining body.”
PCA officers are bound to the 1788 revisions as stated in our Constitution. That much is true. However, the committee’s conclusion begs the question. It simply assumes that the removal of certain items equals their rejection and that revised language forbidding magistrates from interfering “in the least” in matters of faith settles the case.
Yet, the debate is precisely that. The revisions could represent a substantial reformation in political theology. They could also represent a substantial rethinking of subscription in a new political context. We do know that the 1788 revisions were the product of compromise, and the removal of certain items does not necessarily mean the American Presbyterians believed the confession contained theological error—only that it erred in requiring ministers to subscribe to ideas that were genuinely contested in good faith.
Indeed, the committee’s report admits “the Reformed tradition has not spoken with one voice on the relationship between church and state” and that “thoughtful, godly, confessional Presbyterians have held (and do hold) substantially different views on these questions.” For that reason, their recommendations regarding subscription leave me scratching my head.
For one, it would require officers to state differences with points that are not actually in the Confession. Regardless of what an officer believes about the magistrate’s capacity to call synods, for example, the 1788 Westminster Standards make no explicit reference to that question. It only says the magistrate may not “in the least, interfere in matters of faith.” Is the civil magistrate “interfering” by simply asking the church to conduct its own business?
More alarming is the “tension” the correctionist interpretation creates within the Standards themselves. Despite significant changes, the revisions still say the church is “countenanced and maintained” by civil magistrates (WLC 191) who are duty-bound to “maintain piety” (WCF 23.2), even to the point of “opposing all false worship” and, according to their place, “calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry” (WLC 109).
As I see it, the committee’s report could precipitate a situation where every PCA officer is required to state a difference, either with the language that’s not there or with the language that is.
The Ethnos Question
My second question concerns the partial report’s treatment of so-called “ethno-nationalism.”
Race-based identity politics is particularly distasteful and brings shame upon the bride of Christ. But pithy, sweeping declarations like the 52nd General Assembly’s condemnation of “any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics” leave us vulnerable to attack. If we want to neuter the threat of racial or ethnic vainglory, we can’t always play the part of club-swinging brute. We must also apply the precision and nuance that our Reformed forefathers regularly displayed in their works.
The committee’s partial report is a step in the right direction, but what should be an easy dismantling of racial ideology becomes a political judgment far beyond the scope of the church.
Take, for example, this paragraph from the partial report:
The gospel proclaims that in Christ, ethnic divisions are transcended, saying, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). It is the view of the Committee that any form of Christian Nationalism that elevates ethnic or racial identity to a position of theological significance, that treats ethnic homogeneity as a positive good to be pursued through civil law, or that justifies discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or race is inconsistent with the PCA’s constitutional Standards and with Scripture [emphasis added].
Notice that the report uses “ethnic,” not “racial,” “homogeneity”—a distinction that must be deliberate given that the preceding clause already separates the two terms.
In common parlance, race refers to immutable, physical traits, while ethnicity refers to ancestry, shared culture, customs, and tradition. Ethnicity more closely aligns with the word ethnos, or what our Bible often translates as “nation” or “people.” The incorporation of foreigners into Old Testament Israel demonstrates that two people need not share the same race to share an ethnos, so long as they’re united by common culture, history, and custom.
So what exactly is the committee’s report condemning? Rightly repudiating the idea of a state-enforced racial purity program is one thing. But as currently written, the language would likely rule out even the mildest policies of naturalization and assimilation—policies aimed at producing a stable civil order, which Christ did not come to destroy.
Ironically, such a standard would place the church above the state in defining the terms of citizenship, landing far closer to theocracy than anything proposed by the most reasonable Christian Nationalists.
The confusion deepens in the very next paragraph, where the committee cites Korean-language presbyteries as an example of “healthy cultural expression in church life.” But drawing this type of distinction seems to violate the standard the report just condemned. How do we determine whether a particular expression of ethnic association is “healthy”? And who decides?
As others have noted, it’s hard to miss the report’s affinity with modern liberal sentiment on this question. Which leads to my final question: Is it mere coincidence that the theological principles regarding political association articulated in this report just so happen to align with our current regime? The report’s implicit assumption seems to be that the American order today is the Christian nation par excellence. Since neither answer sounds quite right, some rethinking is in order.
An Opportunity for Learning
These concerns notwithstanding, I want to commend the report’s emphasis on the significance of Reformed political theology within our system of doctrine. It is unequivocal: debate over these questions “is no threat to the welfare of the church or the cause of Jesus Christ.” We ought to be grateful to God, the report says, “for a growing renewal of interest in Christian political theology.” The partial report rightly affirms the importance of political life, and I am grateful for that.
This matters especially for reaching new generations, many of whom are not just de-churched but un-churched. The world so often fumbles intellectual pursuits, twisting them into ideological or partisan exercises. Our church has a real opportunity to model serious scholarship and charity. May such blessings attend the committee’s ongoing work.
