Category: ecclesiology

Wolfe Rightly Laments The Modern Reformed Clergy Scene

“Ministers and theologians across the (“conservative” “Reformed”) board see their role as tempering the will for political action.”

Stephen Wolfe

This is almost true. To make this 100% true one would have to say instead that;

“Ministers and theologians across the (“conservative” “Reformed”) board see their role as tempering the will for political action in overthrowing cultural Marxism.”

Ministers and theologians have no problem whatsoever with political pushing from the left and toward the left. Clergy and theologians have become agents and shills for the Cultural Marxist agenda. This is found to be the case inasmuch as they refuse to resist it as from the pulpit. They are letting this degraded swill of a culture continue to go unchallenged. Can you imagine a minister giving a series of sermons on the sin of Tattoos or the sin of the redistribution of wealth, or the sin that is the existence of the Federal Reserve. Those topics are NEVER touched by the overwhelming lion’s share of modern putative conservative Reformed clergy and by the refusal to address those issues and issues like them the Reformed clergy aid and abet cultural Marxism.

And I end here with a quote from Stephen Wolfe in his podcast. Wolfe is responding to DeYoung’s “Six Questions For Christian Nationalists.” At one point in both exasperation and lamentation Wolfe, being entirely serious could say of DeYoung’s argumentation;

“It’s really a silly argument and I am annoyed I have to deal with it again.”

Stephen Wolfe
Complaining about a Kevin DeYoung argument

Gen. Z. & The Current Ecclesiastical Landscape

I write the below as one who has a son and sons-in-law whom I love who are just a few years older than the Gen. Z. parameters. I also have Gen. Z. chaps in the congregation I serve whom I also love and I witness the difficulties all these men are navigating.

Gen Z white males are done with being shamed and with the notion that they have anything for which to apologize . They’re tired of being treated like the villain in a movie they weren’t even alive to watch, let alone direct. Tired of being told they’re “privileged” while working three jobs and getting shut out of conversations because of their skin color. Tired of being insulted, shamed, and then expected to smile through it to avoid being called racist, fascist, or worse.

They just don’t care anymore. Call them “Racist.” Call them “Misogynist.” Call them “Anti-Semite.” Their response is more than likely going to be given with a quizzical look; “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” They don’t care about your words or what you think. You are irrelevant to them.
Some of us got to this point when Gen. Z were still in diapers. Some of us did the reading and knew the smegma that was being dished out as truth was indeed smegma. Even some of us Boomers long ago were made to walk the social disapproval plank. Some of us considered “Boomers” have done more “struggle sessions” than Jay Leno did guest hosting for Johnny Carson in the day. The result is that not only do we not care, but we who have lived with this shaming routine are absolutely full on nutcase hostile to ANYBODY who dares try to shame us or suggest that somehow we don’t know what we are talking about on any number of subjects that are the bete noire of the Cultural Marxist left.

As for Gen. Z likewise taking this disposition … well the preceding generations have earned their despite. The previous generations (notable exceptions notwithstanding) pushed and lobbed insult/shaming grenades at Gen. Z like they were Oompa Loompas tossing around Jelly Beans at the Willy Wonka factory. Nobody cares anymore. They’re over it. They don’t want your approval. In point of fact they are positively aghast at the notion that you might ever approve them. Take your approval and shove it up your southernmost aperture is their attitude.

Take just one example. There was a time when people would absolutely melt in protest if someone called you a “racist.” Those days are over. When Piers Morgan, in an interview, recently asked Gen. Z. rep Nick Fuentes; “Are you a racist,” Fuentes simply said “yeah, I’m a racist.”

Now I don’t think Fuentes did himself any favors but admitting to Piers Morgan that he was a racist. He should have said instead;

“Look Piers, in your cultural Marxist worldview I am indeed a racist. But I don’t share your worldview and in my Christian worldview I am a man who merely loves his own people first and foremost. I also am not afraid to commit the sin of noticing. However, my committing the sin of noticing  ia something you people from your generation find appalling. Now, I have all of Western civilization history up until 1960 or so on my side on this subject. You have the civil rights movement forward and now the fall of the West on your side. In light of that I have no problem with you wanting to label me a ‘racist.’ You call me a ‘racist,’ I call you an ‘idiot.’
You and your disapproval are just a few years away from the grave. Soon enough your disapproval…. your political correctness… your cultural Marxism … is going to be covered with dirt just like you.

You’ve lost … it’s just a matter of time before you come to accept it.”

The observations above are coming from someone, who, almost weekly, receives unexpected phone calls out of the blue from Gen. Z. types telling me about their latest “struggle session” with their “Elders” at their church, or I get a request to help someone start a church because all the churches in their area are “Piers Morgan like,” or I have young men (remember I’m 66 so it doesn’t take much for someone on the other end of the phone to be a ‘young man’) asking me; “what am I supposed to do in terms of church for myself and my family?” Monthly I take a phone call from a chap in Europe in this situation. He merely wants to know that someone with clerical authority is bleeding with him a little bit. Believe me I do. Recently, a chap from Australia (of all places) phoned asking the same question about what can be done when there are no decent churches.

On this issue the church and the clergy are a wasteland. I can count on my fingers the clergy I would in good conscience steer someone towards (And yes, some of them are even Baptist). Now, I’m confident that there are many more good clergy than I personally know of, but regardless the number is comparatively small.

Consistent with my observations above, the political philosopher Samuel T. Francis, offered over 30 years ago now;

“The institutional Christianity that flourishes today is no longer the same religion as that practiced by Charlemagne and his successors, and it can no longer support the civilization they formed. Indeed, organized Christianity today is the enemy of the West and the race that created it.”
Organized Institutional Christianity in order to be esteemed must be gazed upon from a mile away in order to admire it because the minute you get too close to the organized Institutional Christianity you begin to see how awful and dilapidated it really is. If anyone who is a true believer ever becomes a part of that organized Institutional Christianity they will not be able to last in it for very long due to the monumental gross hypocrisy, terrifying lack of intelligence, and stultifying indistinguishable mediocrity. No one with an ounce of self awareness or self respect can last long in the little shop of horrors that is now Institutional organized Christianity. Some of the best men on the planet that I personally call “friend” have been tossed because they embrace the Christianity that existed prior to 1960 or so.

If one could find a mythical organized central Headquarters of organized Institutional Christianity over the door that serves as the entryway would be the motto;

“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”

So, Gen. Z has very few places to turn in terms of the Christian faith, and that truth should make strong men weep. I know it makes this weak man weep. I can’t say what the result of all this will be but, in the short term, it isn’t good. The highest hope I have is that new Reformed denominations might be started, yet, I know that is a uphill climb that requires a great deal.

Still, the Lord of the Harvest will not be left without His church and there will come a time when the Church will once again be healthy. Be of good cheer my friends for Christ has overcome the world.

From the Mailbox; Why Do You Say The CREC Belongs To The Left?

Dear Pastor,

Can you tell me why you say that the CREC is a Christian denomination that is on the left? As a Pastor in the CREC I think I should know this.

Kent

Bret Responds,

Hello Kent,

Thank you for writing and asking.

Of course, I am speaking of the denominational spokesmen like Doug Wilson, Uri Brito, and Rich Lusk. Even if you’re not on the left yourself those people who are the face of the denomination you’re part of are on the left. If the wife I’m married to is a whore it says something about me if I stay married to her.

These are my observations thus about the CREC

1.) They are Alienists (multiculturalists). They insist that race does not exist or that race is a social construct. They keep pushing for documents to be accepted by the denomination that will codify those beliefs. Nobody of any stature before the rise of Franz Boas believed this. Franz Boas non-Christian Gnostic anthropology is what is informing the CREC’s push when it comes to race issues. This is a position on the left.

2.) Doug Wilson is on record as advocating voting for a female for political office (Sarah Palin). This is a position on the left.

3.) Doug Wilson has said

“Our family would be much more involved on an active personal level if terrorists overran Israel that we would if terrorists overran Vermont.”

This is a take from the left. It is a confusion of categories. It is a reversal of the Ordo Amoris to love the stranger and alien over your own countrymen. It is Alienism.

And if Doug insists that it is not Alienism because his wife, and grandchildren putatively have so much Jewish blood in them then it is Kinism which Doug derisively calls “skinism.” A derision that only rises as from the left.

Doug Wilson is the face of your denomination (whether you like it or not) and when he speaks he paints everyone who is part of the denomination. Doug is, as I have said repeatedly now, a man who is holding down the right side of the left, yet even as on the right side of the left he is on the left.

4.) The inclusion by the CREC of both Baptists and non-Baptists in one denomination is a position that only the left could embrace. Reformed Baptists and Reformed non-Baptists are different expressions of the Christian faith so significant that to combine them in one denomination communicates that the denomination doesn’t understand the idea of distinctions. This is a position of the left.

5.) Then there is the whole Federal Vision thing which is humanist to its core since it advocates works salvation. This is the position of humanism and so is on the left. Individual Pastors may not agree with Federal Vision theology but if they are in a denomination that salutes it they are in a denomination that is on the left.

6.) I know for a fact that Wilson has been phoning Pastors of other denominations in order to warn those Pastors against young men who the CREC have deemed unworthy because those young men took up race realist views. This is a position on the left.

You may be my Brother in Christ Pastor Kent and as such it is my responsibility to tell you that you are in a denomination that is on the left.

With Apologies to James Stuart Blackie

Twas the thirty-first of August, in the twenty twenty-five,
On the Sabbath morn from the Grace Mosaic PCA Dive
Rev. Joel Littlepage let it be known that he’d play Rome’s fool
Sadly the spirit of Jenny Geddes was nowhere with a stool

Irwyn Ince, with Elders and Shepherdesses cheering approval
Never thought of Rev. Littlepage’s rebuke or removal
Never thought of any Presbyterian or Christian rule
Neither was there one Jenny Geddes Shepherdess with a stool

Rev. Littlepage mounted the Pulpit with solemn clergy tone
In twenty-three minutes he explained how he had grown
“Seeking the Lord’s face”, he said, “has me moving old school”
And nobody greeted his Romish words with Jenny Geddes stool

Rev. Littlepage spoke about his ministry as “assigned vocation”
For the time he spent during his Presbyterian long duration
No laughter was heard, nor was there sounds of deserved ridicules
And no denunciations of Geddes were heard nor her flying stools

Then pops up the head of the PCA, MNA, Irwyn Ince to speak
With praise upon his lips for the Joel Littlepage Papist geek
The effusiveness of Ince’s praise caused the MNA chief to drool
And still there was no shuffling sound that promised hurling stools

But the story is still not yet told, the affront not yet fully explained
The honor of our Lord Christ had not yet reached total stain
This papist Littlepage now serves the Lord’s table as a Romish tool
And still there is no multiplicity of hurled Jenny Geddes stools

Now we come to the laying on of hands upon family Littlepage
“Dear God we pray you will bless the future of this alienage
And bless wife Melissa as she works for a sodomite Democrat fool”
Somewhere Jenny was weeping over the absence of just one stool

And thus no mighty deed was done by a modern Jenny fan
No removal of foppish Popery from the Washington DC PCA land
But the time is coming and now is when Romish ghouls
Will once again be greeted with Jenny Geddes famous stools

Kevin DeYoung’s Attempt To Institutionalize Polytheism In The Westminster Confession

There has been a debate that has arisen in “conservative” “Presbyterian” circles that finds a certain party in these denominations insisting that their founding revised 1788 American Westminster Confession of faith (WCF) was a repudiation of the 1646 Original WCF on the matter of how the Civil Magistrate is related to the claims of Biblical Christianity. The argument being advanced by Judas Goats like Kevin DeYoung is that in 1788 American Presbyterians had become recalcitrant in extending Establishmentarian religious authority to the state and consequently drafted a “revision” that had “more robust notions of religious liberty,” than what had previously existed in the original WCF. In the mind of the Quislings like DeYoung the American adaptation represent movement of the Reformed from historically Reformed position to a more Anabaptist/Libertarian understanding on the subject of Magistrates. DeYoung’s position putatively allows for more religious toleration. More religious toleration is, by definition, less religious toleration for those whose religion teaches that Christ and His Word is to be King over the civil Magistrate and that the Civil Magistrate is to be a “Nursing father to the Christian Church (Isaiah 49:23).”

We see here then that DeYoung and his pirate crew is not really pursuing a course that leads to an expanding of religious toleration but rather DeYoung and his pirate crew is pursuing a course that diminishes toleration for Biblical Christianity, with its claim that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and that all Kings must submit to Him. That DeYoung is on such a course is seen in his own words;

“As new debates about the proper relationship between church and state continue to multiply, it’s important to recognize that the two versions of WCF 23:3 represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.”

Dr. Kevin DeYoung
Presbyterian “Minister”

In DeYoung’s pursuit of revising the 23:3 WCF revision so that it is interpreted in a more Anabaptist/polytheistic fashion DeYoung is staking out the territory that disallows 23:3 to be read in such a way wherein the civil Magistrate is to be uniquely committed to upholding the first table of the law, while requiring the Magistrate to be more of a Pontifex Maximus putatively representing the interests of all the religions in the Republic. Of course we know that such a Pontifex Maximus doesn’t really represent the interest of all religions in the Republic because such a Magistrate could not represent the religion that said all the religions in the Republic except Christianity must, in light of the 1st commandment, be abominated by the Christian Magistrate.

One humorous aspect of this debate is that the American WCF, even as revised in 23:3 clearly still supports Christian Magistrates as we see in the Westminster Larger Catechism 191 where the Catechism answers “What does thy Kingdom come mean,” answering, in part with the statement that, “the church be …  countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate.” My friends, the Christian church can not be countenanced and maintained by the Christian civil magistrate if he, at the same time, is countenancing and maintaining all other pagan religions, for to countenance and maintain a pagan religion would be at the same time to discountenance and pull down the Christian church. Caesar can not serve two or more masters.

Pertaining to the WLC the above is not all. Previously, in teaching on the 5th commandment the WLC states that our superiors include not only “father and mother” but also those superiors as located in church and commonwealth, and then goes on to teach that all these superiors must provide “all things necessary for body and soul (Q. 124, 129).” This must as a shock to Rev. DeYoung, to think that the Magistrate must, as in their defined role as Magistrate, provide all things necessary for the soul, since for DeYoung the Magistrate is to be the Polytheistic Pontifex Maximus.

If humor is part of the landscape for this discussion nobody did a better stand up routine then when R2K guru, R. Scott Clark — he of “Recovering the Reformed Confessions” fame — recently offered on X that DeYoung is correct about the WCF being a complete revision of the WCF 1646 in an anti-Establishmentarian direction and that the inconsistencies of the WCF with the WLC could be explained by the fact that the Americans in 1788 just forgot to go ahead and change the WLC so as to be consistent with the 1788 WCF change. As we all know … remembering details can be a tricky thing.

Of course all this is being driven by the push in Reformed circles, since the days of Meredith Kline, to turn the Reformed faith into a R2K playground. Increasingly the Seminaries are embracing R2K and this sudden pursuit to officially change the WCF, in a Anabaptist/Libertarian direction, is just one more expression of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.” By insisting that the Magistrate has no obligation to the Christian church to be unto the Christian church a uniquely nursing father, R2K succeeds in their ongoing attempt to make all of life, in the words of D. G. Hart, a hyphenated life. If DeYoung’s effort succeeds to reinterpret 23:3 of the WCF the result will be an even more retreatist Christianity. Reformed Christianity will more and more be a religion that belongs to the catacombs. If DeYoung is successful Christianity will increasingly retreat from the public square.

DeYoung’s Christianity is the Christianity cherished by every polytheist in the public square. If Michael Servetus were alive today he might have taken DeYoung’s methodology to make room for his Socinianism in Geneva. The Mooselimbs, Talmudists, Hindus, etc. in America are all cheering on Dr. Kevin DeYoung’s attempt to officially strip the WCF of any notion that it might support Christian Nationalism. After all, if the 1646 WCF is correct then, by necessity Christian Nationalism is true. If Christian Magistrates are required by the WCF then of course that can not be apart from a Christian nation.

We should end by noting what a nation looks like if Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung gets his way. Such a nation would by definition have to be polytheistic. The kind of pluralism that DeYoung envisions cannot exist apart from the religious polytheism that drives political/sociological pluralism. It is an odd position to take when we are increasingly seeing what pluralism looks like in these united States. For example, recently in Minneapolis, a city ordinance was passed that allows for the public Mooslimb call to prayer 5 times a day regardless of the time that the call to prayer is required. Another example is found in Dearborn, Michigan where the Mooselimb Mayor hired a Mooselimb Chief of police who has recently arrested a non-Mooselimb for posting something on social media that was foolishly threatening in a vague manner Mooselimbs who were marching in Dearborn shouting “Death to America.” Another example of the implications of Rev. Dr. DeYoung’s heretical war against the 1st commandment would be the requirement of a state to allow Baphomet statues in state capitals such as was the case in Iowa in 2023. In Rev. Dr. DeYoung’s world such realities would not only have to be tolerated by Christians but they would also have to be applauded as part of the doctrinal foundation upon which Christianity is based.

If Benedict Arnolds like Kevin DeYoung are successful there will be no public roadblock to blasphemies of every shape and size. DeYoung’s views institutionalize Polytheism in the Westminster Confession and institutionalize polytheism in formerly Christian America. It is one more nail in the coffin of any notion of Christendom.

Keep in mind that Kevin DeYoung is the chap who is heading up the committee in the PCA taking up the subject of Christian Nationalism. Given this “man’s” views what do you think that PCA committee is going to produce as it speaks to the issue of Christian Nationalism?