Maybe I can go back down South now

I am a Union man. The Kingsburys (at least our branch of the Kingsburys) were for the Union, and I am no different. Nonetheless, depending on how you reckon your geography, I have spent about half my life in the deep South (Houston occupying that liminal space which is both entirely the South and entirely the West), and have the very firm opinions about grits to prove it.

I love the South, and I love the Presbyterian Church in America, in which I was ordained a deacon and had the privilege to be licensed to preach the Gospel. But I am a Union man, and I am not naive about the South or the PCA. Racism, albeit of the soft sort, still exists in the deep South and in the PCA (especially amongst her revered old men), and I have a black daughter. It's hard enough to be black in the American West. It occurred to me a while back that I couldn't in good conscience make it any harder by placing her in a white Church, in the deep South, that merely winked at the racism held to and practiced by her revered fathers. I decided that, come what may, I wouldn't be taking my family back to Virginia, much less any place any further south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Then I read this post on a protest at the 43rd General Assembly of the PCA. God bless Ligon Duncan and Sean Lucas. Finally, Southern Presbyterianism is waking up to the original sin at the heart of the American experiment in representative democracy.

Let's be clear: no one has asked me to go back down south, and I don't expect any ever to do so (other than a brief visit to Virginia in the autumn of this year). But maybe now there is a place for a Union man and his black daughter.

And maybe I can find someone with whom to have a reasonable conversation about grits.

Fall Singles Retreat

I am to speak on "The Cruciform Life" at the OPC Singles Retreat, October 2-4, 2015, at the Machen Retreat and Conference Center, located at the northern end of Virginia's lovely Shenandoah Valley and scheduled during the peak of its spectacular fall colors. The fee is quite reasonable ($60), given the speaker's insight and erudition, and any excuse to visit the Shenandoah Valley and its surrounding mountains is a good excuse.

With apologies to the married folk amongst my vast international readership.

2: Death does not sanctify our works

In the hallway outside my study door hang the original architectural drawings for our Church building, discovered a few years ago by a particularly determined member who decided to go spelunking in a storage closet which turned out to be far larger than anyone currently in our congregation knew. The drawings show a sanctuary with a seating capacity of around 160, in contrast to our actual sanctuary, which can seat maybe half that number. I don't know the reasons behind our smaller building, but I can guess limited finances were the major constraint. Today, our congregation's building and land are owned free and clear, but we have neither the room to grow our membership nor (and largely because of our relatively small membership) the money to expand our building.

In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, this situation is hardly unusual. In the aftermath of the Great Depresssion and the Second World War, the founding generation of our denomination was rich in spiritual commitment and vigor, but not so much in cash on hand. Heroically, they did the best they could, and their best established an OPC culture of relatively small congregations (on average, under 100 in membership, including children) and buildings. Those who have lived in the OPC for any amount of time know the advantages and blessings of this culture, but we all should recognize that this aspect of our Church culture derives from historical accident, not Biblical principle.

Death does not sanctify our works, nor does it those of our spiritual fathers and mothers in the OPC. If small congregations and buildings hinder the Church's work in our day, we should be prepared to leave them behind.

1: The fathers were heroes

The first generation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was genuinely heroic. When they left the old Presbyterian Church in the USA, they embraced a radical change (something always difficult for presbyterians) in order to hold on to the Gospel. Moreover, they embraced radical sacrifice, sacrifice too radical for many sympathetic brethren to endure. Congregations lost buildings and endowments: inheritances left to them by faithful forebears which they had to leave in the hands of faithless and vindictive liberal presbyteries. Pastors lost homes, salaries, pensions, and what little financial security they had. Seminarians lost secure careers. Almost no one in 1936 who joined what would become the OPC suffered no loss.

Left with nothing, they built from the ground up. In a country still wracked by the Great Depression, they sacrificed still more to erect Church buildings and manses. Pastors worked a secular job (or two or three) in order to shepherd small congregations. Those congregations gave and gave in order to fund Christian education curricula and foreign missionaries and new Church plants close to home. The first generation of the OPC built the OPC: without their heroic sacrifices, we would have no Church today.

The fathers were heroes.