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.

A text without a context

For Pentecost this last Lord's Day, I preached from John 15 and 16, in the course of which it occurred to me that many Christians might like to hear their long-winded pastors echo Jesus' words in John 16:12: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

As "a former Lutheran pastor transitioning to the Roman Catholic Church," Russell Saltzman doesn't have to worry about how stepping on toes might threaten his livelihood anymore, as is displayed by his "Advice to Inactive Christians." He says what every pastor would like to say to the person who hasn't attended services in years and suggests that he might start again if only the pastor and Church would accomodate some personal preference. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing, but as that would be pointless, let this give you reason to go read it yourself:

There is a singularly arrogant message in these sorts of gesturing declarations. The inactive member is saying he or she sets the terms of his or her return and it all depends on likability. [Raul] Castro framed it well: “If the pope continues this way.” Inactive members expect, as G.K. Chesterton remarked, that “Christians must embrace every creed except their own.”

Cutting the Eucharistic knot (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: p. 1416, vol. 2)

Presbyterians occasionally mock the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation because a physical presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper seems to them inherently ridiculous, if not offensive to reason. It's certainly offensive to my reason, but I have some sympathy with Lutherans and Romanists who struggle to understand how Christ can really and actually be present if he is not physically present. As the literature on the Lord's Supper over the millenia amply demonstrates, determining the precise relationship between the materials of the bread and cup and the physical body of Christ is where many Christians and theological traditions get stuck.

Alexander the Great, so they say, took a non-linear approach to loosing the Gordian Knot, which was impossible to untie: he cut it in half. In a passage explaining why the administration of the Lord's Supper must be accompanied by the preaching of the Word, John Calvin discusses an error which arose because this did not happen.

[T]hey did not observe that those promises by which consecration is accomplished are directed not to the elements themselves but to those who receive them. Certainly Christ does not say to the bread that it shall become his body, but he commands his disciples to eat and promises them participation in his body and blood. Paul's teaching takes the same form, that the promises are offered to believers along with the bread and the cup.

Attentive listening to, and exegesis of, the words of institution found in the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11 will keep us from focusing on what happens to the elements of the Supper: instead, they direct our attention to its recipients. Since they receive the sacraments by faith, and faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, we begin to see the Spirit is the agent who unites us to Christ.

Proper exegesis, Calvin suggests, offers the Romanist or Lutheran the freedom to step outside his or her dilemma and approach the sacramental knot in a non-linear and more fruitful manner.

What is marriage?

You may have an answer to that question, but it may not be the correct one. In "What is Marriage to Evangelical Millennials?," Abigail Rine helpfully points out that a revisionist definition of marriage (marriage is a formalized romantic attachment) took root in our culture, and in evangelical circles, several decades ago, and has rather completely usurped the much older understanding of marriage which is rooted in Bibilical, natural, and common law.

It's an extremely helpful explanation of both the origin of today's same-sex marriage debate and why evangelicals seem unable to speak coherently to, much less against, it. It's also a helpful reminder that what the modern mind assumes takes for granted as the natural order of things is, in fact, often only a philosophical fashion of very recent vintage.

And those of us who are dismayed by recent cultural trends may be heartened by the realization that fashions change.

Which got eaten first?

Evangelical vs. Liturgical?

My critical review of Melanie C. Ross' Evangelical vs. Liturgical? Defying a Dichotomy appears in this month's Ordained Servant.