Category: Apologetics

I’ve been out of town visiting family and so haven’t been able to write on the whole Rev. Zach Garris imbroglio. However, I wanted to add my two cents worth. Jon Harris, on his substack page, has done a fine job giving the timeline of the whole Garris travesty. I’d recommend reading that to get the context of the whole injustice leading up to yet another NAPARC Kangaroo court.

1.) Denominationalism

Denominations are akin to political parties. As such a denomination – any denomination – is only as good as the faction running the political party/ denomination. This already teaches us that there is nothing automatically sacrosanct about a denomination or any denomination’s “decisions.” A denomination is only as good as the faction successfully whipping the vote.

Keeping the above in mind we must remember that most political machines from Tammany Hall, to Daley’s Chicago, to the Kansas City Pendergrass machine are thoroughly corrupt and exist to serve the interest of the political machine. Denominations are no different. I’ve been around them whether Wesleyan, Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian Reformed my whole life and I can tell you that the best of men who run them are at best men. At best. At worst, which is more common, they are oft times absolutely clueless. (This is itself an improvement on the many times I’ve seen and experienced the absolutely wicked.)

Denominations exist, like political machines, first and foremost, to continue to exist. Anything that threatens the political faction that is operating the controls of the denomination is going to be squelched. These people, one had to understand, are not about truth. They are about power and control.

Dr. J. Gresham Machen discovered this in 1936 when he (like Garris) was suspended and deposed from the ministry of the PCUSA. Machen’s sin was touching the denominational money source by starting his own Mission agency. Another Machen sin was his constant harping on how Liberalism (actually neo-orthodoxy) had entered into the denominational. Machen was challenging the political faction in control of the denomination and they bounced him for doing so.

Much the same is true of the whole Rev. Zach Garris case. This isn’t about truth. This isn’t about unwholesome speech. This is about a particular political faction (Kellerites?) exercising raw power.

Lyndon B. Johnson, while Majority leader of the US House once told someone lobbying him that the person could get anything he wanted in the US House of Representatives as long as he had the votes. The question was only whether or not he had the votes. Garris didn’t have the votes. The issue was irrelevant. Garris was found guilty for being Garris and not belonging to the political faction in control of the Rio Grande Presbytery.

2.) Political Correctness 

Rev. Garris had the courage and misfortune to lay his metaphorical hand upon one of the PCA’s “magic negros,” who can do no wrong precisely because they are black. Rev. Garris dared to suggest that Dr. Anthony Bradley could not only be in error but danced with disaster by telling Dr. Bradley that “sometimes thing are too complex for a PhD  to understand,” and “arrogance can’t stand banter.” These two quotes are why Garris was indefinitely suspended by the Rio Grande Presbytery. Together these two comments constituted “unwholesome speech.” Imagine all the smelling salts that would have been needed for these lady Presbyters if they had been alive when Luther and Calvin were alive. The speech those men sometimes used could fry bacon to a crisp.

But Bradley is black. If Garris had said the above to a white man everybody would have yawned and moved on. The facts have it that Bradley himself has spoken in rather low and base ways to Meg Basham but has anyone brought Dr. Bradley up on charges? Certainly not and that is because in politically correct PCA poker a black Marxist male (Bradley) trumps a mildly conservative white female (Basham). However, a white male (Garris) is always trumped by a black man (Bradley).

The PCA is full on in the WOKE stream. Sure, it’s not as WOKE as the Methodists but it is in the stream and is being carried by the current. This was seen in the support of many of the members of the machine in control giving full throated support to the revoice conference combined with their inability to discipline Rev. Greg Johnson.

Keep in mind though that the PCA is not unique in its being in the WOKE stream. In the last few years the CREC, CRC, OPC, RPCNA, ARP, have all demonstrated that they have been infected by the spirit of the age.

3.) The Harvie Conn & Tim Keller Effect 

Both of these men were influenced by cultural Marxism as a world and live view. Keller was to Conn what Elisha was to Elijah.

Keller became a giant straddling over the PCA. His book “Generous Justice” was a primer teaching the social justice of cultural Marxism. Keller once famously said that,

This is just one example of Keller’s egregious tap dancing.

Conn and Keller come up here because it is the Kellerites who are the political faction who have the muscle in the PCA. To be sure there are those who oppose them in the PCA but at this point their numbers are vastly insufficient to stop the Keller political faction that controls the denomination. Keller’s followers are now to the PCA what the followers of Boss Tweed once were to Tammany Hall.

4.) The Loss of the Seminaries

All these votes in the PCA as coming from ordained men find their genesis in their Seminary training. Men like Sean Michael Lucas stalk the halls of the Seminaries. Men like J. Ligon Duncan say stupid things like,