Responding to national pressure from inside and outside their denomination, Missouri Presbytery put together an investigatory committee on Revoice and just issued their Report. This is another post in a series on Missouri Presbytery’s Report and the General Assembly’s response. For all Warhorn articles on Missouri Presbytery’s Revoice Report, see here. For all Warhorn articles on Revoice, see here.
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(7/28/19: NOTE FROM TB; Turns out Overture 7 came out of the session of a church pastored by a good friend who is neither suave, rich, nor famous. My apologies to him for being so sceptical of its support. Knowing the source of his own and his elders’ concern that the church carefully deal with the sexual abuse that is so pervasive today, I commend their work in writing the overture and seeing it through their presbytery to General Assembly.)
The PCA’s Bills and Overtures Committee will be recommending two study committees to the General Assembly. We’ve been following their reaction to Revoice which has led them to recommend the formation of a study committee on human sexuality. Meanwhile, Bills and Overtures is also recommending another study committee “to address matters related to domestic abuse, domestic oppression, and sexual assault.”
Nine overtures sent down to general assembly by notoriously liberal presbyteries including Missouri, Nashville, Pacific Northwest, and Atlanta Metro have been reduced to one—Overture 7 from Pacific Northwest Presbytery. Overture 7 will serve as the main recommendation to the assembly with the other eight answered by reference to Overture 7.
The contrast between these liberal pastors’ endless nuance concerning sodomy and effeminacy and their clarity and resolve concerning domestic abuse and sexual assault is telling. Look at how plainspoken and firm they are in their first four whereas clauses of their statement (also found in the Rationale statement of the main overture):
Whereas, the sins of domestic abuse and sexual assault are expressly forbidden (2 Timothy 6 3:2-5; Jude 7; Exodus 21:15; Deuteronomy 22:25-27; also WLC 135 and 139); and
Whereas, these sins are especially heinous because they are “against the express letter of the law,” “break many commandments,” “admit of no reparation,” and often involve various other aggravations (WLC 151); and
Whereas, these sins are grievously prevalent in our society; and
Whereas, these sins often produce in the victims a complex response of denial along with immense fear and shame that persist with varying severity throughout life (e.g., 2 16 Samuel 13:1-22); and
Whereas, it is the responsibility of the elders of the church to exercise their authority, severally and jointly, to shepherd those who are under their care by guarding against such sinful behavior as much as possible, by wisely caring for those victimized by the sins of others, and by appropriately disciplining those guilty of such sins toward a full repentance;
They mention the sin of sexual abuse in unequivocal terms; they point to the clear teaching of both Scripture and the Westminster Standards; they mention the shame of victims; they even mention repentance. Such wonderful clarity! Such a glaring contrast to their hemming and hawing over homosexuality and effeminacy even though both abuse and homosexuality are condemned with the same clarity in Scripture and the Standards.
Those two recommended study committees should be one. Homosexuality is sexual abuse. Sodomy is violent sexual abuse. Lesbians self-report as having relationships more marked by violent domestic abuse than their prior heterosexual relationships.
We’ve opposed Revoice because it is the modern church’s attempt to normalize the sin of effeminacy. Revoice is also contributing to the church’s increasing tenderness with the heinous sin of homosexuality.
Revoice thinks homosexuality is merely an aesthetic orientation, a discovered desire, a walk in the park. Fact of the matter, it is shameful sexual abuse marked by indiscriminate sexual encounters, disease, and physical decay. Then we must remind ourselves that homosexuals through the ages have always taken minor boys for their sexual partners.
As homosexuals age, it’s increasingly difficult for them to find someone willing to have sex with them. As gays age, they long for young flesh to help them forget their own decaying virility and looks. Effeminacy is the attempt by homosexually-tempted men to remain attractive to other men. Sodomy and lesbianism are always and forever characterized by sexual exploitation, emotional manipulation, and physical abuse.
To combine these two study committees on homosexuality and sexual abuse would be a strong affirmation of Scripture’s doctrine of sexuality. Separate sodomy and effeminacy for one committee’s study, and abuse for the other committee’s study, and lies will prevail.
Think about it: if things go as expected, the PCA will simultaneously have a study committee on domestic abuse/sexual assault and another study committee on homosexuality. While Missouri Presbytery’s men go soft on homosexuality, not finding it within themselves to call anything other than full-on sodomy a sin; these same men pull out all the stops to express their revulsion at domestic abuse and sexual assault.
Who isn’t revulsed at the sins and crimes of domestic abuse and sexual assault perpetrated against women and men so constantly, today? Meanwhile, something else needs to be said—something in no way opposed to the above statement.
If we should beware when the entire world speaks well of us, this might serve as a clue to those in the PCA who fall all over themselves pursuing the assembly’s approval of these two study committees.
Get a study committee to go soft on all things LGBTQish.
Get a study committee to go hard on all things MeTooish.
But of course, appoint men to those study committees who will baptize the world’s agenda in sophisticated theological gobbledygook so inscrutable and lengthy that no one will actually read it. All they’ll know is their liberal church politicians with the highest salary packages and largest congregations say self-affirming sodomites and the effeminate have been oppressed by the church, and that it is the same guys who oppress gaybies who beat and rape women.
Which is to say the rich liberal pastors so influential across the PCA do not get any tiniest part of their agenda from the Word of God, but always the New York Times, Puffington Host, and SJW tweets and memes.
The base strategy of rich liberal pastors and denominational leaders is dressing up the latest social justice fad in Biblical drag.
It will never end. Look to rich men for leadership and they’ll lead you into the same betrayal of Scripture that got them lots of money and very large congregations. So, dear reader, ask yourself what you want?
If you follow their leadership, don’t bother telling us. We know.
These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. (2Peter 2:17-19)
