Taking My Ball and Going Home

I find myself at a theological and ecclesial crossroads, brought about by four conclusions I have reached on the modern American church, after much deliberation:

Firstly, congregationalist polity simply doesn’t work. Any church, especially in our modern evangelical culture, can quickly become a cult of personality, but having each church be an island to itself, where the pastor has no accountability outside of the internal power-structure he personally oversees, is asking for trouble. Any bad-acting pastor will simply surround himself with yes men elders, or, as is more often the case nowadays, he will simply set up a corporate structure where he’s unassailable, and foster a mindset among the laity that keeps him in his position. Associations become little more than social clubs for pastors looking to increase their status, and, on the national level, mostly political and money-making organizations masquerading as ecclesial bodies. Nothing demonstrates this more than the Southern Baptist Convention, where, despite yearly grandstanding, nobody dependent on its conglomeration of multi-million dollar businesses will step forward for the cause of Christ to a degree that puts his meal-ticket at risk. Pastors can openly behave in ways that would have them surely defrocked under denominational polity, and yet they are allowed to continue as members in good standing in the SBC, because having no standards for pastoral conduct is baked into the congregationalist system. Denominational polity isn’t perfect, and has its own mechanisms that provide bad-acting pastors and elders cover, but, within the liberty of conscience area of church polity, I must conclude that it is objectively better.

Secondly, it’s not okay to turn Jesus into a business model. In fact, it’s disgustingly impious and directly contrary to the model for overseers in 1 Timothy 3—or do you not know that the main reason nonbelievers in America think Christianity is fake is because they see our thought-leaders as being lovers of money? American evangelical culture has so normalized pastors and theologians becoming relatively wealthy through the multi-million-dollar Christian book, podcast and conference racket that one can expect to be shamed for openly rejecting it. But I am not ashamed, I am a deconstructed Christian reconstructed by Jesus Christ, and I am still repulsed by the same for-profit angles that caused me to walk away from the church for over a decade. Now a Christian of the Reformed persuasion, I continue to reject those mechanisms that utterly pervade the Presbyterian and Reformed Baptist world, no matter how much it tries to pretend that its media apparatus is anything other than TBN with TULIP.

Which leads to my third conclusion, that the Reformed church is obsessed with its celebrity pastors and theologians, who have overwhelmingly syncretized the predominant American religion of politics to an untenable degree. I don’t know a single Reformed teaching or ruling elder who doesn’t have a series of podcasts from Reformed personalities that they devotedly listen to, meaning that their political theology and ecclesiology is being shaped by people beholden to:

• Podcast sponsorships from companies selling an obsessive audience on products like “Christian” beef jerky and soap.

• Five-figure speaker’s fees from what seems to be an endless parade of unnecessary conferences.

• Royalties for their bi-annual book of the month instructing Christians on how to address this year’s political crisis or which professing believers they need to denounce for holding different liberty of conscience opinions.

• Annual checks for the number of students watching the video lectures they recorded for another conference-hopper’s boutique, unaccredited seminary.

It’s the very same racket driving the political obsessions in our country and, more often than not, is comprised of the exact same talking points, but with a thin “Christian” veneer. The for-profit Reformed media industry is making us and our ecclesial leadership obsessed with everything but the One whom we are to be obsessed with. It is, in our place and time, the primary obstacle inside the church to denying ourselves, picking up our cross, and following Christ (Luke 9:23), and, to paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, any immediacy before Christ is hatred of Christ.

Fourthly, and lastly, the evangelical church has all but abandoned the requirement of personal sanctification. I recently committed myself to reading all thirty-eight volumes of The Early Church Fathers, up to the Seventh Eccumenical Council (I’m currently in volume two). The only conclusion I can draw from reading almost everything from the first and second centuries (I only have Clement of Alexandria left) is that I see nothing at all contradicting that justification is by faith, but our works of faith matter, and there will be an accounting (1 Corinthians 3:12-13, Matthew 25:14-30). Those discipled by the Apostles, and the men discipled by those men, were very concerned with how their works would be received at the judgement, and we should also be concerned. Yet, the evangelical church in America has become so obsessed with defending Sola Fide (which I affirm), that it often ignores the requirements of progressive sanctification, especially how so much of the Epistles are dedicated to instructing us on how to be cognizant of not only our own spiritual fruit, but that of those we fellowship with. The result is that the church often allows incredibly destructive wolves in its midst, as long as those wolves give a verbal assent to the gospel.

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Ultimately what this means for my praxis is that I no longer see myself as a Particular Baptist, and my family and I will likely return to the Presbyterian Church in America. I’ve always been a bit of a fence-sitter on baptism, but very partial to Covenant Theology. While congregationalist polity and credobaptism are not explicitly intertwined, there exists a closer intertwining of paedobaptism and Covenant Theology, so I’m reexamining my position. I cannot ignore the end result of laissez-faire theological and doctrinal insanity from four centuries of credobaptist congregationalism, and I consider baptism to be a liberty of conscience matter.

This really doesn’t matter for my likely PCA membership, because, being disillusioned with the American evangelical church, I have no desire to hold an ordained position, now or ever. One does not have to give full assent to the Westminster Confession of Faith to be a member of an orthodox Presbyterian church. Besides, I still prefer the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith’s stance on church and state, which is “no thanks.” I’m perfectly happy to once again become a regular member of a church, whom other members can count on, but who has no major ministry obligations.

In the long run, I think closely following Christ is to do what He did, and dedicate yourself to individuals over institutions.