What Geerhardus Vos combatted as liberal scholarship, the Church today faces under the banner of evangelicalism only in reference to Cultural Marxism. Evangelical scholarship now stunningly embraces many of the assumptions and methods of Cultural Marxism. In Vos’ words Evangelicals seem
“……resolute in showing kindness for what once was called liberalism. To put it frankly, there is an unnerving sympathy within evangelical scholarship for seeking light in darkness, for synthesizing antithesis, and even for wedding belief and unbelief. It has become all too acceptable to appropriate the methods of unbelieving scholarship, to assert common ground with its unbelieving assumptions, and to give such syncretism some credible-sounding, winsome label like ‘believing criticism.’”
Geerhardus Vos
The Institutional Reformed Church keeps doing the orthodox folks among the Reformed rank and file the favor of showing us who they really are. Earlier this year the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) tossed one Rev. Michael Spangler from their midst using some of the most unique and contrived methodologies possibly imagined. Most recently the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) via a majority report in the Rio Grande Presbytery brought charges against Rev. Zach Garris for noting that inasmuch as the Scriptures regulate slavery therefore the Scriptures do not forbid all types of slavery. Over in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) they are cooking up much the same kind of feminine outrage and hissy fit over some of the vanilla type things that Rev. Michael Hunter has said or written on the subject of race.
Keep in mind that anything and everything these chaps are writing and speaking about race have been said repeatedly by Reformed divines throughout Reformed church history. It is not as if these three chaps are acting like the Confederate soldiers at Ft. Pillow. What Spangler, Hunter, and Garris have said and written is moderate and supported with varied and sundry quotes from Southern Presbyterians.
Yet, despite the moderation coming from the pens of these good men, the institutional structures of these NAPARC churches are hell bent on treating them as if they are King Kleagles of the Klan.
Matters have gotten so bad in today’s Reformed and Presbyterian Church Aimee Byrd, Duke Kwon, Lamont English, Greg Johnson, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and Ron Burns have eclipsed R. L. Dabney, J. Gresham Machen, Morton Smith, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, James Henley Thornwell and John Girardeau as the heroes of the faith.
This isn’t your Father’s Presbyterian Church.
What we have here is a clear demonstration that the Reformed denominations in America have gone WOKE. The Confessions that they say they subscribe to have been displaced by what might well be referred to as “shadow confessions.” Shadow Confessions are Confessions that operatively are controlling men and so the church but exist as not explicitly stated. What has happened in the previously “Conservative” “Reformed” denominations is what happened in the US as explained by Christopher Caldwell in his book; “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.” In that book Caldwell argues that with the passage and embrace of Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s the US, in a defacto sense, took on a new Constitution that replaced the previous Constitution. Caldwell argues that ever since that time the original Constitution has existed in name only.
The same type of thing has happened in Reformed denominations. The Westminster Confession and the Three Forms of Unity are still present but they really are not the confessional standard by which the Churches are ruled. Instead, a shadow confession has been owned and that is the real standard that these non-Christian clergy in the denominations are operating in terms of their allegiance.
That shadow confession amounts to an embrace of Cultural Marxism categories. There is a good deal of information on Iron Ink on the subject of Cultural Marxism and I urge you to probe Iron Ink for more information on what Cultural Marxism is but as a shorthand explanation Cultural Marxism embraces the “Oppressor vs. the Oppressed” narrative and applies it in the Church to how the white man, playing the Oppressor, has allegedly mistreated the 0ppressed minority, oppressed females, and oppressed perverts. Now that we are aware of this long injustice we live in a time when the oppressed is to be given “justice” so that the oppressor is finally brought low. Part of this whole Cultural Marxist narrative that is operating as the shadow confession in the Reformed Church is the whole Critical Race Theory paradigm.
As a result of this shadow confession of Cultural Marxism / Critical Race Theory in the Church both the Scriptures and the Confessions are read through that prism and reinterpreted in light of these new reigning shadow confessions. The truth of this was underscored for me when I heard of a ordination controversy that happened recently in one of the NAPARC denominations somewhere in the Southeast. It seems that the candidate up for ordination had admitted he was a socialist or had socialist leanings. There was some heated exchange on the floor until someone stood up and insisted that since the Westminster Confession didn’t speak explicitly to the issue of Socialism therefore there could be no barring of the candidate from being ordained. The problem with that reasoning is that it just isn’t so. Consider the Westminster Larger Catechism when explaining the sins that are condemned by the Eighth commandment;
all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbour what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves;
The above could stand as a definition of Socialism as socialism withholds from our neighbor what belongs to him so that we can enrich ourselves and worse yet it uses the State to accomplish this larceny.
The candidate was ordained and became another WOKE clergy in the bulging ranks of our WOKE Reformed clergy.
It is these types that are going after Spangler, Hunter, and Garris and they are going after them with such success that one can only conclude that the modern NAPARC churches are, generally speaking, anti-Christ churches. The fact that they are wickedly pursuing god fearing men like Spangler, Hunter, and Garris are proof of that. The fact that they brought down men like Ryan Louis Underwood in the United Episcopal Church of North America a few years ago testifies to how ubiquitous this anti-Christ malady exists as among the “Reformed” “clergy,” and denominations.
I am being told that the cancer is especially bad in the PCA as among their Mission to the World organization. In that organization there is a black chap named Lamont English who has a title who seems to be best exemplifying this Cultural Marxist mindset. It is English (irony abounds) who pressed the case against Rev. Zach Garris. MTW has been a problem in the PCA for at least a couple decades as clear back in the late 1990s they were largely controlled by a pagan Psychology mindset. (First hand experience here.)
Of course most of the rank and file in these denomination are clueless about this controversy. Unfortunately, the rank and file tend to trust their Pastors which right now is like the goat herd trusting the Judas Goat to lead them.
I’m pretty sure that this is not going to change. The Cultural Marxists/CRT crowd are controlling these NAPARC denominations. It strikes me that we are at a time where Biblical Christians need to flee these anti-Christ denominations and start new ones.
Keep in your prayers Rev. Hunter, Rev. Spangler, and Rev. Garris. Pray that God would vindicate them upon their and His enemies.
“The Confessions that they say they subscribe to have been displaced by what might well be referred to as “shadow confessions.” Shadow Confessions are Confessions that operatively are controlling men and so the church but exist as not explicitly stated.”
In other words, “traditions of men.” Which, as history teaches us, have the tendency to supplant the original Scriptural positions in favor of the new perceived needs and ideals of the congregation (or those of the clerical elite). The Pharisees did it, the Papists did it, the 19th century Rationalists did it, and now the Cultural Marxists are doing it.
And as this Bible commentary observes, it is typical of such neo-Pharisaism to treat the past heroes of the faith with condescension bordering on contempt – that they would excommunicate or defrock them for preaching “hatred” if they were living in their own day:
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/23-30.htm
“They professed to venerate the dead, but would not receive the living; they reverenced Abraham and Moses, but were about to murder the Christ to whom patriarch and prophet bore witness. Commentators quote the old adage, herein exemplified, “Sit licet divus, dummodo non vivus.””
The PCA sure did go to crap in a hurry. They actually started off good back in the 1970’s when they viewed themselves as the successor to Thornwell and the PCCSA as C. Gregg Singer pointed out.
As regards ‘Socialism’,
“SOCIALISM itself is no longer what its name signifies; the name has been seized and used to label anarchy. Judaistic influence creeping into the Christian church has kept the apostolic labels, but thoroughly destroyed the apostolic content; the disruptive work has gone on quietly and unhindered, because, often as the people looked, the same label was there — as the same old merchant’s name stays on the store the Jews have bought and cheapened. Thus, there are “reverends” who are both unreverend and irreverent, and there are shepherds who flock with the wolves.” p. 301.
Henry Ford, ‘The International Jew’