In the latest attempt by Christians to right the past, a Presbyterian denomination takes action against racist activism in its ranks… “The hope that a congregation and a denomination might prosper in this day and age while harboring a defense of racism — that’s just preposterous,” said Joel Belz, a former moderator of the PCA’s national governing body. “Presbyterianism in the South has to carry a special burden because early Presbyterians there sometimes defended what can only be described as racist perspectives. Because of those historical roots, we have an additional responsibility to be clear about what we believe on the subject.”
The PCA, or Presbyterian Church in America, has been talking about race for a while. In 2004, it issued a position paper that not only denounced racism, but also took responsibility for its past role in promoting it. The paper acknowledged that, historically, the Presbyterian Church—from which the PCA later emerged—had wrongly stated that some races are inferior, that slavery is acceptable, and that racial segregation is justified. The paper went further: It recognized that racism has not been completely eradicated from the 340,000-member PCA, which in 1973 split from the larger, mainline Presbyterian church. “For years we have left unattended in our midst the vestiges of racism, and the reality of its raw presence within corners of our denomination,” it said.
Animated by extremist theology, a group of neo-Confederate zealots are seeking control of Southern churches. Key members of a white supremacist organization, the League of the South (LOS), are moving to take control of conservative churches around the South, prompting a possible split in a major Presbyterian denomination.
We can only hope there is a split. But the LOS is not a supremacist organization, it is a separatist organization, although the word benders in the media treat those terms as cognate. Remember that separate, by judicial fiat, can never be equal.
The first two articles were written in 2010, that third, “Confederates in the Pulpit,” is from 2001. LOS is sadly poisoned by anti-“racism” and have been making fools of themselves for years. Dennis Wheeler wrote some good articles on the foolishness of the LOS, Ronald and Donald Kennedy and Thomas Fleming.
I am a member of a PCA Church. Most folks have more problems with Theonomy than they do with “race” issues, believe it or not.
Welcome, Hardmod.
I think what this thread is talking about is the stated goal of the PCA as a denomination, rather than the attitudes of the people in individual churches. Still, it’s interesting that you state that. What part of the country are you in (no telltale details, beyond the general, please)?
The “race” issue rarely ever arises in PCA churches. It’s too incendiary. Most of the larger PCA churches I’ve encountered are trying very hard to welcome “people of color” into their ranks to combat the “perceptions” about the denomination. There are certainly some “confederates in the pulpit” and nothing wrong with that. One of the greatest Presbyterian theologians, R.L. Dabney, whom we frequently cite here, was a Confederate chaplain and wrote a defense of slavery.
If you are a known White Nationalist, I tend to think you will encounter some challenges. I too attend a PCA church. I’d have to say they vary fairly widely in disposition, but I do think it would be a tough row to hoe being “out” on race in a PCA church.
If only the SPLC intelligence report were true. But like everything coming out of Morris Dees, it’s a distortion to scare the Jews, blacks, and self-hating whites who make up his subscriber base. But most of his funds come from CIA/FBI fronts. Personally, I think the organization is a research and “provocateur” operation of the modern equivalent of COINTELPRO.
And the LOS is almost completely peopled by FBI/BATF agents and those who aren’t are race queers, just like the John Birch Society.
” But most of his funds come from CIA/FBI fronts. Personally, I think the organization is a research and “provocateur” operation of the modern equivalent of COINTELPRO. And the LOS is almost completely peopled by FBI/BATF agents and those who aren’t are race queers, just like the John Birch Society.”
Mr. Marshall, again you astound with the observation many of us in the ‘race realist/kinist/Christendom’ camp have been thinking, are thinking, and will continue to think, in the eventuality that our freedom of thought (like all our other supposed ‘freedoms’) is being controlled in the manner in which it is, has been, but God willing, will be no longer- due to the absolute botch of a job the Obamanation is doing. Nothing dissuades a person of the fallacy of egalitarianism in race, than an incompetent Negro in charge of something….
I, too, am astounded that a Reformed denomination would be ‘afeared’ of Theonomy. What is to fear from God’s Law? That you might have to say to sodomites, and baby-killers, ‘Sorry, you’re not welcome here?” As someone once noted, God will have His law obeyed, for He is a holy God and HATES sin; and, as we all know, ‘sin is unrighteousness.’ Which is pretty much where the modern apostate has his heart- in bed, ideologically, and actually, with all unrighteousness. [Rom. 1] That even may mean the overtaking of our nation by Islam, and Sharia law, just as the Orthodox suffered under Ottoman rule, for some time, and as in the Babylonian Captivity in the O.T.
God is not mocked. His law (even when administered by the damned) WILL be obeyed. And His Chosen People WILL be brought to repentance, even if it is via the baptism of blood of martyrdom….
I am not saying that this is an eventuality, but it is the logical outcome of a Christian society that has turned her back on her Lord and King. May God grant us a spirit of repentance, to avert such evil. And may Ps. 109:8 come to pass.
Often the Lord’s punishments/disciplines are the sins themselves -i.e. a “giving them over” to their sin, in the sense that He has always protected us from the full consequences of sin. When He withdraws his protection, sin will lead to more accelerated decline.
I have no doubt that there are some “race friendly” PCA churches, but I think they are quite few and far between. There are several independent or splinter-denomination Presbyterian churches that are race conscious. Simply not enough. My experience is that the Eastern Orthodox trad. is the most friendly to the biblical doctrine of nations, and to the idea of “national churches.” I am not well-enough acquainted with the theological issues that underlay the great schism to know if it is a place for my family. I do know that I am strongly attracted to High Church worship that emphasizes a creedalist and liturgical approach. It’s one of the reasons I’ve looked at the REC. Some of the theological issues between the Roman and Eastern trads are too abstruse for me to understand their import. I do acknowledge the legitimacy of some of the critiques of Calvinism I’ve seen, and some of the issues with private interpretation that are quite thorny, if one is being honest. But a discussion of that would be a digression from our topic.
At every PCA church I’ve attended there seems to be an unacknowledged competition between the wealthy elders to see which can adopt the most foreign babies, and the ones that least resemble their adoptive families.
...some races are inferior, that slavery is acceptable, and that racial segregation is justified
Well, these would be the correct positions. While Kinism does not advocate “enslavement,” as in man-stealing, certainly indenture and secondary trade in slaves is acceptable. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was not revealed in order that it would overturn the established institutions of a society by force, as the Pauline and Pastoral Epistles make abundantly clear.
Arguing over the historical case of Negro chattel slavery in the U.S. is moot I think. Apologizing for something no one thought was a sin after the fact makes it seem as though there has been a “new revelation.” You are communicating as much to your parishioners. You are essentially calling the doctors of your own faith incompetent to minister. Since what you are repudiating was the position of the Western Church for centuries, you are also attesting to your belief that the Western Church itself, both Roman and Reformed, was in sin on this issue, and was incompetent to minister to the flock of Christ. A libel, and a baseless charge.
Chattel slavery is a phenomenon that has been “formally” extinguished in the West. Nevertheless, slavery abounds, and is universal. Rushdoony makes the point, that I think very cogent, that the arbitrary distinction between “ownership” and “interest in labor” provides us with the illusion that slavery does not exist, but it amounts to the same thing. Blacks merely exchanged the Federal plantation for the plantation of the Southern planter class.
Whatever power has a controlling interest in your labor is your slave master. Furthermore, there are numerous forms of slavery other than the technical or legal ownership of a human. The theoretical legal freedom to obtain control of of the means of production is a change of legal status of the Negro, and not of the de facto status. There are millions of white women enslaved in the sex trade, but there is no great outcry over them, because they are the wrong color.
