Truth Unites - Ortlund and Zoomer Have a Respectful Clash

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Gavin Ortlund and Redeemed Zoomer discuss mainline and evangelical expressions of Protestantism.See Redeemed Zoomer's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@redeemedzoomer6053Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

So my question to you would be, why is almost every modern church split the conservatives leaving and not the liberals leaving? I've never been stoned to death for stating my views. When that starts happening, then we can talk about separation from the BC USA. I would rather worship Jesus in a sewer with orthodoxy than in a cathedral with heresy. Hey, everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am here with Redeemed Zoomer. Been looking forward to this conversation. We are friends.

and we're going to have a good discussion. We're going to talk about what we agree on, where we disagree, talk about evangelicalism and the mainline denominations. So this would be great. Richard, thanks for taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show again, Gavin. I've loved your channel for many, many years. It's something I recommend to all my friends.

So, yeah, I know we disagree slightly on the topic of evangelicalism, but this is going to be good. This is going to be very good, and I love your adverb there slightly, because I do think we actually, well, this will be fun to explore and see how slight. I mean, I don't want to get ahead. of ourselves, but I think it's probably, I know we have substantial areas of agreement. And I wrote down seven questions that we don't have to get to them. And you can throw in your own questions as well. But I thought, uh, let's dive right in. And the first one was actually about this. So where do we agree? Where do we disagree? If it's okay, I'll take a second to lay out some agreements.

And, um, and by the way, for people clicking on this video, if they want to get a little bit of the backstory, they could watch my previous video. And then also, um, redeemed zoomers dialogue with Trent Horn. So that's a little bit of the backstory here. That leads us to this present moment. But a couple things I'd say is, number one, we are fellow Christians. You're my Christian brother, whom I love and respect. Number two, I think your goals, like I said in my video, I want you to succeed in returning mainline churches to orthodoxy. So I'm rooting for you to succeed. I'm praying for you to succeed. That goal is noble. And so that's good. And number three, I really receive.

you personally for actually acting out your convictions and not just basically criticizing people from the sidelines or from the audience. That's really easy for people to do in there, even anonymously leaving comments on social media antagonistically doing this. And that doesn't help the world. But you're, you know, you're acting. You're building something. You're building a movement. And I respect that. So, kudos to you for that. I think the areas of disagreement that I've already identified that we can work through is one is I want to defend evangelicalism more, both the label and what I see is the reality it refers to. And number two, I think there's a time for separation and I see more need for separation than I think you might, but we'll talk that through.

So that's some big picture structural comments. Let me kick it over to you. Agreements, disagreements, what would you identify here? I think you nailed down our disagreements correctly. I think the only two things we disagree on is whether evangelicalism should be sort of fixed or abandoned. I think it should be abandoned. And when is the time to split? Like, I basically have a very strict mindset of never leave the church unless you're actually forced out, as in excommunicated, not just defrock, not just facing some social opposition, no, actually excommunicated from the church. So, but I think another area, an additional area of agreement we have, is theological triage and the importance of doing that. You and I both talk about that a lot, that how not every cultural hot button issue is actually a primary issue.

Not every cultural hot button issue is a litmus test for faithfulness to scripture. It's like, I don't really care what you believe on climate change if you want to be faithful to scripture. I think we can also agree that. You mean climate change is kind of? going to come up? Wow. I never knew this. I think certain people really prioritize like more social aspects of theology over the more, you know, core theological concepts like the Trinity and Christology. Like most of the right-wing people on Twitter would rather have an Aryan male pastor than a Trinitarian female pastor. And that is just absurd. That is insane. Okay. So like women's

should not be prioritized as high as it is on the internet because when there's social implications of theological issues, it gets very emotionally charged from both sides. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I agree with you that the term heresy is used way too easily for a lot of these second ring issues. The triage stuff is something I have. It's not like I like that intellectually. It's not like I stumbled across that because I just think it's fun or interesting. I came across that idea as a pastoral necessity, and I think it's so urgently needed right now in the world, and I agree with your instinct to define, what I hear you saying there is define orthodoxy in light of theology, not just the political and social issues of the day, important as they are,

but, you know, basically have some historical awareness. I think a lot of modern-day evangelicals, they're well-intentioned in some cases, but they are simply unaware of the fact that their views are such, that they're going to make, you know, Augustine of Hippo a heretic. Meanwhile, the people who are heretics in Augustine of Hippo's day, they are naive to the dangers with. Right. And I think denominations have usually only split over social issues in recent years, because you remember a hundred years ago, there was like blatant atheism and anti-Trinitarianism running rampant in the mainstream Protestant churches. Nobody really split over that. Maybe there was the OPC that was a very small splinter group. Um, but,

now when there's the issues of women's ordination and gay marriage, those are the issues people choose to split over. Those are not as important as the Trinity or whether miracles exist. I'm sorry. That may be a point where we're starting to get into a disagreement, which let's circle back to that as we go. Because I would say, you know, in Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, there's these passages where he's talking about how moral issues can be matters of heresy. And I would say there have been these splits over some of those issues. But let's circle back to that because in agreement with you, I would say it depends on which the moral issues are. And part of the thing here is I think you and I would agree that a lot of people have a very

American perspective about what Christian orthodoxy is. And it's not only divorced from church history, it's divorced from just global Christianity where some of these hot-button issues aren't viewed the same way by our Christian brothers and sisters in the Southern Hemisphere, for example, and so forth. So, yeah. But we have a lot of other agreements, too. I mean, my gosh, it would be a boring. video if we spent the whole time enumerating them because they are they are uh it's a it's going to be a long

list yeah um i think we both care about restoring traditional protestant doctrines i really respect that you hold to the traditional baptist doctrines of the sacraments like you believe baptism saves you believe real presence in the eucharist and you've actually convinced me you haven't convinced me that baptists can be reformed you have convinced me that baptists can be protestant in a traditional sense and hold to a traditional Protestant view of the sacraments. That's why I no longer say Baptists are Anabaptists. I see them as, you know, Protestants. And I think there is a strong tradition of, you know, mainline Baptists, like the American

Baptist Church is USA, which I know used to be a part of, which founded Brown University. There's a great tradition there that I used to neglect. Several years ago when I would always, you know, poop on Baptists in my YouTube videos. Back then, I had never actually been to a Baptist church ever. the first Baptist church I went to, it was an American Baptist church, I felt way more at home than in any PCA church I've ever been to even. So I've gained a lot more respect for the Baptist heritage in recent years, in large part thanks to your videos. Oh, that's great to hear. Yeah, yeah, I want to defend Baptists. Even while I criticize Baptist appropriately, because I'm a Baptist, I want to be able to, you know, there's a lot we need to, a lot of reforming and renewing we need.

But yeah, Baptists, people go back to the 17th, 18th, 19th century Baptist Congregational. a denomination that sometimes gets completely overlooked. I love the congregationalists. They're actually like my second favorite denomination. If I couldn't be PCUSA, I'd be congregationalist. Yeah. And there's a lot of common ancestry and common roots for those two, as well as with the Presbyterians and other reforms.

They have a lot of overlap and shared history. What about, okay, another thing we agree on and that we appreciate about each other is commitment to local church. Both of us see people online who have fierce loyalty to a particular Christian tradition. Meanwhile, they don't actually attend a local church of that tradition. And from what I understand, you even have aspirations of seminary training or ministry or things like that. Anything you want to say about your commitment to those things or the importance of them. Yes, I am going to try to become pastor in the PCUSA. So do you know what the word for that is when somebody identifies as a

tradition? LARPING. LARPING, yes. I'm not, I'm old, but I know some of the lingo. There's a lot of that going on. So yeah, we have a common commitment to the local church. I mean, I do think there a place for denominational loyalty. And I think that might be an area where we disagree. Like I firmly am an institutionalist, I believe, in loyalty to institutions and denominations. But, yeah, we both agree that you need to be part of a local church and your religious identity should come from the community that you're actually a part of rather than the online internet group that you're a part of. Yeah.

Okay. Any other agreements before? I'd love to ask a clarifying question just about defining some terms as well here. Yeah, go ahead. So you mentioned leaving evangelicalism or abandoning evangelicalism. What do you mean by that word evangelicalism? Right. So I think we should both define what we mean by Protestant evangelical.

We probably don't mean the same things. I'm aware that the definition of evangelical has meant many different things throughout history. Some people say it's time to just retire the term because it's meant so many different things. I'm aware that during the Reformation, evangelical was synonymous with. Protestant. And then during the awakenings, evangelical meant the people who supported the awakenings, even though some of those people were still in the mainline Protestant churches. But nowadays, generally evangelical is, you know, the opposite of mainline Protestant. There's like mainline Protestants and there's evangelical Protestants. And modern evangelicalism has

this connotation of this very anti-sacramental, non-denominational, anti-institutional, contemporary style of Christianity. So my definition of evangelicalism, which I know I'm engaging in some wordplay here, but I just think there's no better term for it than evangelical. My definition of evangelicalism is just non-institutional Christianity. So it is Christianity. So I wouldn't group like Mormons under that. And Mormons actually are a bit institutional. But evangelicalism would be stuff that is Christianity legitimately so, but not. not institutional. So I'd say generally with Protestantism, there's mainline Protestants and there's evangelicals.

And I'd say the schismatic Protestant groups are sort of like in an in-between stage. They almost always drift in an evangelical direction over time. But yeah, generally speaking, you can classify all Protestants globally even as evangelicals, which would encompass Pentecostals, non-denominationals, and probably a lot of Baptists, and mainline Protestants, which make up 300 million Christian. world-wide, which is more than all of Eastern Orthodoxy. Okay. So I would say the term evangelical has three main uses. First, like you say, synonymous with Protestant. Second, for someone like what Wesley and Whitfield were doing in

the 18th century, the so-called great evangelical awakening. And then third, what sometimes is synonymous with neo-evangelical, what Billy Graham and Carl Henry were doing in the mid-20th century, where you have a movement that appropriates that term to distinguish themselves from the fundamentalists and the liberals. That's the meaning of the term that I think has the most sort of backlog leading us to the current moment. I think part of the concerns I have about using the term as you are is just conceptual confusion. I just think there's an apples to oranges comparison going on here because a lot of the mainline churches that are more conservative will use the term evangelical to distinguish themselves. So it's like, okay, now you have a mainline evangelical church.

Now, this is just going to get confusing. If you're saying we need to abandon the evangelical churches for the mainline churches, but some of these churches call themselves evangelical. So the idea here is evangelical really isn't a term for one particular institution or tradition. It's sort of a more of a theological descriptor term, like a word like conservative or something like that. And therefore, to say abandon evangelicalism, I just think it, in other words, that usage tends to see it as more of like a concrete entity, whereas historically it's always been used for, you know, you've got the evangelical Presbyterians versus the fundamentalist Presbyterians

versus the liberal Presbyterians, but it's not like it's evangelical versus Presbyterian or something like that. And so, and then, you know, I like this word because the Evangel is the gospel. It has a rich etymology, so I'm slow to abandon it. I also think we, you know, you, your definition of anti-institutional, as I said in my video, I just think that is just not true, just verifiably not true. Evangelicals have institutions, often have a high view of the sacraments, and globally outside of America, evangelicals are really don't fit that profile very well. So I think it's kind of an American definition too. So you can use that term. I would, I would hope to persuade you to use a different word, you know, just, but, but at least we're recognizing we're using

the term differently. Right. So I think. think it's the best term for me to use to describe like anti-institutional Protestantism, whether Calvary Chapel, Pentecostalism, non-denominationalism, Christian Missionary Alliance, it's all part of the same, you know, contemporary Christian soup. However, I do think you're right that saying abandon evangelicalism is not the most helpful because you are right. A lot of the conservative PCUSA congregations that my nonprofit is allied with actually calls themselves evangelical congregations on their website. They don't mean the same thing that I mean when I say evangelical.

So I guess if I use the word abandon, I guess what I really want people to abandon is anti-institutional Christianity, namely the vast majority of non-denominational churches. I'm aware there's a few non-denominational churches here and there that might be committed to historic Christian views. I don't want to make a complete blanket statement,

but we both know that the vast, vast majority of non-denominational churches are very, historic and I don't really see that as something that can be fixed because the roots of non-denominationalism are anti-institutional and I think you can't reconquista something into something it never was supposed to be to begin with. I understand there's also the definition of evangelical as fundamentalists who wanted to distance themselves from other fundamentalists, but I think there's still fundamentally fundamentalists. So that's why I understand that there's the four categories of

fundamentalist evangelical neo-Orthodox and liberal from the 20th century, I'd call myself neo-Orthodox. Like, I align a lot more with figures like Carl Bart and T. F. Torrance than figures like Billy Graham or the other evangelicals you mentioned. And you said evangelicals do build institutions. I think that's our biggest area of disagreement. There's this book by Mark Null, who like is a major evangelical leader called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, where he basically admits, yeah, the problem with the evangelicals, they don't really build institutions, and when they do, they're very, you know, bottom tier level institutions. So I think that's something we could talk about.

Yeah, okay. And you mentioned a moment ago, we both know that the vast majority of non-denominational churches are like unhistoric. Well, again, this is good. We're kind of ticking off where we agree, where we disagree. That actually isn't something we agree on. So I would be have a, I would agree that we should abandon anti-institutional Christianity. So in that sense, like the main root sinful problem or weakness or eccentricity or sort of deficient form of Christianity, we want to oppose. Lots of disagreements about terminology and then lots of disagreements about how much that maps on to what is actually out there. So I have less of a negative view of non-denominational. and also I don't agree about how anti-institutional.

I mean, I don't even think Mark Knoll would say evangelicals are anti-institutional. That book is all about, I've heard in a lecture about this a lot. He's talking about the anti, a certain mindset with which evangelicals engage culture, but evangelicals build tons. I mean, it's just verifiable to look at all the evangelical institutions that are out there. I mentioned a bunch of them in my video, especially if you look outside the United States and you look in places like Iran. Okay, so some of the fastest growing evangelical contexts are places where there's fierce persecution.

So a few years ago, Operation World talked about Iran as the place where the evangelical movement is growing most rapidly. Well, they can't build a lot of institutions in Iran because they're getting their heads chopped off. But that's the fastest growing evangelical movement in the world. So part of the concern here, too, is just going to be not having too American a perspective about evangelicalism. because I think looking globally actually, I mean, I just got to be honest with you, my heart swells with pride and admiration for evangelical movements around the world that are just, honestly, they're the places where Christianity is flourishing outside of America in evangelical contexts from my vantage point. I understand that that is the fastest growing and most

flourishing form of Christianity, but I see that as just sort of like a side effect of the fall of the West. Like if the West was back in its prime, then the more traditional denominations would be the strongest. I think evangelicalism is just expanding to fill the void left by more traditional forms of Western Christianity. And what I kind of seek to do is revive those traditional forms of Western Christianity. Because I really believe in kingdom theology. N.T. Wright talks about this a lot, where the kingdom of God transforms this world. And the gospel is not just about getting souls into heaven. I'll admit that evangelicalism is good at getting souls into heaven, but that's not the only concern of the church. It is a major concern, but that's part of the broader

kingdom transformation of this world. And the main way in which the church has transformed the world historically has been through the creation of the modern university. That's the, that's the crown jewel of Western Christendom is the modern university, which produced almost everything we enjoy today about modern culture. That's classical music, you know, modern medicine, modern science. So many great things come from the university. The university is like sacred. And Catholics and mainline Protestants both start really advanced universities, not just any universities, but really advanced universities. You know, Puritans started Harvard and Yale. Presbyterians started Princeton. Methodists started Duke and Baptists even started Brown University. Modern evangelicals

don't start that level of universities. I think Wheaton and are like the best examples. And even those, they're nowhere near the Ivy League level. They're not really recognized or respected outside of evangelical circles, whereas everyone in the universe respects Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. So it's like, yeah, they make some institutions, but not institutions that really have a global transformative impact, not just in theology, but also in STEM and the arts as well. Okay.

with you on, so we agree on NT Wright and Kingdom Transformation. That is a general framework. Now you said the Puritans, and I would say Wheaton College is very respected. It's a great place. I mean, there's lots of evangelical places that are respected by non-evangelicals. But taking your general point, the Puritans founded some of these institutions you mentioned. The Puritans were a separatist group, correct? No. There were some separatist Puritans, but the New England, Puritans were not separatists. Well, that would be, that seems kind of an eccentric way of thinking.

So what do you mean by separatists then? There were some Puritans who actually wanted to, like, separate from the Church of England. The New England Puritans just wanted religious freedom. They were being persecuted. And I think when we talk about when it's okay to sort of leave a mainstream established church, the standard that Samuel Rutherford gives, and he's like the main, one of the main architects of Presbyterian ecclesiology, is under persecution. or expulsion, not just disagreement.

But the New England... But isn't sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and having no formal ties separating? In some sense, but they weren't known as like the radical separatists that the Presbyterians were writing against in their writings condemning voluntary schism. They, you can read those writings. You can read the writings from Samuel Rutherford and Robert Bailey, the Scottish Presbyterian authors of the Westminster Confession. They are really harsh against some of the Puritan congregationalists in England. to have a very separatist mindset. But then they talk about the New England Puritans,

and they're like, eh, these guys are cool. Well, Sam your Rutherford, maybe. I mean, the Puritans were radical. They were definitely perceived as the radicals out there. I mean, but regardless of how they're perceived, they, in fact, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and had no formal ties. Yeah, because they were being persecuted.

Yeah. Well, yeah, there was persecution going on. And I think persecution can happen today. If the PC USA sends like a death squad after me, then we can talk. But there's really not persecution of conservatives in mainline churches. There's disagreement. There's social opposition.

That's not the same as persecution. Okay. So for persecution, you would say, you know, getting banned because of insisting you won't ordain, participate in the ordination of a woman pastor. And so therefore you're banned and maybe fined. You would say that's not persecution? No. There's been cases of church discipline all the time where people don't schism because of it.

Well, yeah, okay, whether they schism or not is different. I'm just saying, is it persecution? I would see that as a milder form of persecution. That's not persecution. Well, if you've, it depends on how much you're fined. What if you can't pay? I mean, did like Walter Canyon go bankrupt because of that or something? It's like, I think that's even if that did happen, that's a very mild form of persecution

and could hardly be called persecution at all. Like persecution implies like the power of the state usually, which is never something that happens in America. That's why I think like the only reason you should ever split from a church in America is if you're actually excommunicated because religious persecution basically does not happen in America. We're a nation of religious freedom. Okay. So I don't think I wouldn't agree that persecution always has to come from the state. I think persecution can come from a private citizen. I also think there's just different levels of persecution.

So we don't want to have a persecution complex and act like, oh, woe is us. we're getting some level of pressure against us, therefore we're the same as the martyrs of the early church. Nonetheless, I think it can discount the suffering of some conservatives if you act like they haven't been through hell because some of them have. It's still not really persecution. It's like persecution, like you're talking about these countries like Iran and China, yet that's persecution.

And I think I'm not really concerned with how many fancy universities the Iranian Christians are starting right now, you know, because they're under persecution. That's fine. in the West, we're not. I feel like we're spoiled in the West. American Christians are never, I mean, I hope not, but at least they have never in the past few centuries received the same type of persecution or really anything that could be called persecution that people, Christians and other countries are experiencing. So just because there's opposition, just because there's, you know, conflict and denominational politics, I wouldn't exactly call that persecution.

So Rutherford says, you know, persecution and expulsion or anathematization, Those are the only grounds for separation. And it's implying that you can only separate if the other person already separated you, and you're just following through with that. So that's why I wouldn't call the Puritans in New England separatists, because they didn't have this voluntary schismatic mindset that the more radical independence or the brownists, as they were called, following the sky brown. They didn't have that same sort of voluntary schismatic mindset.

They were people, they were Puritans. They wanted to purify the Church of England, but that was just not an option for them. They were persecuted and expelled, so that's why they came to America. And likewise, the Baptists were not, didn't commit voluntary schism either. At least the American Baptist didn't, because the Puritans, it's funny, they sailed to America for religious freedom, and then they set up like a theocracy where nobody had religious freedom except them. So then the Baptists had to go to Rhode Island to have religious freedom, and they were the first to, like, actually allow for religious freedom. Okay.

Let me make two comments. then you can have the last word on this point, and then I want to throw out a question. First comment is on persecution. When I've preached sermons on persecution, one of the points I've found pastorally helpful is to recognize that persecution can come in a variety of different ways and to not minimize it if it's through, say, speech, for example, as opposed to physical violence. And one of the points have often made just not even thinking about our conversation right now

in terms of churches, but just at the individual level. If you're a Christian and you're at your workplace and you're fired, because of your Christian convictions, that can be considered a milder expression of persecution. It's not the same as if you're getting your head chopped off with a samurai sword, but it still can, you know, I think the pastoral concern here is not minimizing what that person is going through because they need to think about verses in the New Testament that talk about persecution to understand what they have experienced at a psychological and spiritual level so that they have the categories to know, oh, I actually can rejoice in Christ.

you know, for me, honestly, I am, my life is great. I don't, I've not been viciously persecuted, you know, but even I need to go to Matthew 5 and say, when people speak ill of you rejoice, and I need to go to those texts. And so categorically, I have a concern with sort of sidelining certain forms of persecution that may be milder or they may come through speech or social pressure as though it's not persecution and only using that word for the big things. So that's a point of disagreement. I just think we just have to recognize there's just, yeah, it may not be as severe as what our brothers and sisters elsewhere have gone through, but it's still the same stuff. You're still fighting the same fundamental battle. Actually, it helps Christians to realize that a beautiful phrase, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. I think persecution is, I mean, Paul promises anyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

That verse applies to Americans. it's going to look something. You know, it could be your friend at your school who is making fun of you because you were a cross around your neck or whatever, and that may be very small. That happened to me a lot in high school. Like, I had no friends in high school, partly because I have my Christian convictions. I wouldn't say I was persecuted in high school. Well, do you think First Timothy, too, is true that everyone who wants to live a godly life

in Christ Jesus will be persecuted? I mean, perhaps. Maybe you could use that term, but that's, definitely wasn't how the 1600s Presbyterians were using the term because they lived in the age of the English Civil War, where persecution was their wives being drowned in the rising tide. So you could maybe use that term. I'm not going to nitpick the word persecution, but I still think the way they were using the term when they talked about what warrants voluntary schism, there had to be some actual compulsion, not just social pressure. I would disagree. Even historically, the Puritans are very pastorally sensitive about the sin. of speech, the sin of slander, and they will use the word persecution for that. We don't want to minimize that category of Christian experience. Again, it's like, what is going to help someone

when they're in that moment? And I'm sorry, you went through it. Again, some expressions are milder. Some expressions are more severe. We're not saying all persecution is the same. But I think, you know, this is, I guess, a pastoral point unrelated to the larger question. So maybe we shouldn't dwell on this. But the other thing I was just going to say is I think by any sane definition of the word separate, the Puritans separated. And this is what I would see as an irony of your position here is you're saying, go to the main lines, which are themselves separatist. So, they separated. And, and even in their history of the seven major ones, they've got all manner of mergers, transitions, splits. Some of them come, not from the 16th century, but from the second great awakening,

like the Christian church. Well, I don't consider that one of the seven main lines. I replaced that one with the RCA personally. Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, that typically considered mainline. I don't consider the restoration. It's the mainline at all. But basically, I'll just send you the quote that I'm talking about when I talk about persecution and separation. This is from Samuel Rutherford. I put it in the in the Zoom chat. So it says, before the rise of Luther, the Albagencies and others acted rightly in making a negative separation, for they did not communicate with the idolatry of the Catholics. Although before condemnation, which means like anathema, condemnation, persecution, and expulsion, they did not make a positive

separation. So basically what a positive separation by forming a new visible church. So what Samuel Rutherford says is nobody was justified in splitting from the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, until the time of Luther. There was lots of what you would call more mild persecution and a lot less mild persecution of proto-Protestants before the time of Luther. We can agree on that. There was lots of, but until it was like actually impossible for them to have, any impact. It was not permissible, according to Rutherford, to actually make a voluntary schism from the Roman Catholic Church until the time of Luther, when there was official anathemas and persecution, like violent persecution with a price on their head of anyone who spoke out against

the Pope. Yeah, but I mean, in point of fact, the Waldensians, the Hussites, the Lollards, they did separate in the sense that they refused to submit to the reigning established church and they established their own congregations where they had their own governance. And they, as you say, and as Rutherford mentions, they got burned alive, killed in the most horrific manner of ways,

including the women and the children, in the case of the Waldensians. So they were separating in any functional definition of that word separation, they did not submit to the reigning established church. So I think, I guess I would need some clarity on what you really mean by the word separate.

If you don't think the Puritans or the Waldenzian separated, what do you mean by separate? When I talk about separatists or schismatics, I'm talking about voluntary schism. In all these cases of these old times of groups splitting from each other, neither side really believed in religious liberty or tolerance for a variety of viewpoints. Both sides had like a my way or the highway mindset. So in these cases back then, it wasn't really possible to just hold a different view than the leadership of your denomination and still remain there. It was known that if you did speak out against the Pope in any way, that was sort of an automatic separation. You were automatically separated from the Catholic Church. The cases of liberalism are a lot different.

That's why most of the schismatic denominations that I'm like against are the ones that schismed because of liberalism. In those cases, nobody was really making them leave the denomination. They just chose to voluntarily withdraw themselves because they did not approve of what was happening in the denomination. Not just withdrawing themselves from, like, idolatrous worship in certain congregations, which even I would do in some cases in the PCUSA, but actually withdrawing themselves from the infrastructure of the denomination just because they don't like the direction that it's heading.

So that's what I would call the more voluntary schismatic mindset, where, like, Rutherford makes a lot of distinctions. between voluntary schism and forced schism. And his whole argument is, we Protestants were not schismatics because we didn't commit voluntary schism. Our schism was forced, essentially. So you could nitpick the historical details of this, but the principle still stands that traditionally Presbyterians are against voluntary schism, and they do not think voluntary

schism is justified. And if you'd like, I could send you some quotes from Robert Bailey, another one of the most important Scottish Westminster divines, saying that even blasphemy of the UK, and heresy in the church does not justify schism. Let me send you that quote right now. So Robert Bailey says this. I'm posting this in the Zoom chat. He says,

In 1 Corinthians, fundamental errors, open idolatry, grievous scandal, bitter contentions, profanation of the Lord's table. In Galatians, such errors has destroyed grace and made Christ of no effect. In the Church of Ephesus of Laudacy and the other golden candlesticks, diverse members were so evidently faulty that the candlestick is threatened to be removed. yet from none of these churches did any of the apostles ever separate, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation from any of them. The full work is Robert Bailey's a dissuasive against the errors of our time, particularly of the independence, and he's railing against the radical separatist congregationalists in England. And then he talks about the New England congregationalists, and he's like, yeah, they're a lot less bad, and we can find a lot more agreement with them.

So these are, there's just the context for where my position is coming from. My position is the position of the Scottish Westminster Divines on when it's okay to separate and when it's not okay to separate. Okay. I agree with Bailey's quote about Revelation 2 to 3, but I do think there's some confusion here, and I don't think your position is the same as theirs or of Turritons, which I cited. So let's probe the use of the term voluntary here. were the Lawlards who chose to follow John Wickliff over and against the established church

to not meet in the established churches but to form their own separate gatherings that have no formal ties to any established church. Was that not a voluntary decision of theirs? So did the Lawlords venerate icons? No. Were they against the veneration of icons? Yes, quite vehemently. At that point, what had the Catholic Church infallibly said about those who do not venerate icons?

You know this very well. Yeah, well, people could see my videos on this. So let's just cut to the chase here. Are you saying voluntary, it's not voluntary if there's heresy being taught? Is that what you're saying? No, I'm saying that if you're actually excommunicated, whether personally or just automatically by a council, then it's not exactly voluntary schism, because the Lawlards for their positions are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church

because they condemn the veneration of icons, and their position, centuries prior, had already been declared heresy by the Catholic Church. So that's why I don't think they committed voluntary schism. However, these proto-Protisan sects still advocated for a reformation of the Catholic Church. it wasn't really until the capital R reformation that you began to see, like, large portions of the church actually cutting ties with Rome. Yeah. Well, okay.

So here's where we're at is I agree with the general framework that there's a lot of willy-nilly separatism that is sinful and wrong. So, I mean, let me not rush past that point either. That's a serious issue. Okay. People who are on my side of this conversation, more evangelical sympathies than mainline, really need to work at that. But I, so yeah, you don't just separate willy-nilly.

The principle, which I'll unfold in just a second, is out of the New Testament, basically, Acts Chapter 4, obey God rather than man. Where I disagree is the application of that unto, and this is where I want to ask you some questions to better get your view. So let me ask you this before, and then I'll lay out my rationale for where I think separation is justified from mainline contexts. But first, before I give that, I want to make sure I understand what you think, when you think you should separate. So basically, to lay up my question here, I have two concerns about requiring or encouraging or casting it as cowardice not to do so, participation in the mainline.

One of them would be ethical, just is it the right thing? The other would be practical. Is it, does it actually work? And the basic concern here is that, again, let me say this very clearly. In the mainline contexts, there's a lot of great people and a lot of great churches, a lot of wonderful, faithful Christians. I pastored a mainline church. People don't know this, okay, for five and a half years.

Amazing church, ABC, American Baptist. There's lots of wonderful faithful churches like that in the mainline context. People sometimes paint with two broad a brush. Now, at the same time, in mainline contexts, there is also sometimes a pretty severe departures from orthodoxy that can take place, as well as aggressive enforcement of that through gatekeeping, through bureaucratic structures, through pretty entrenched liberalism, not just kind of a soft, penetrable liberalism. And so in some cases, I think to, you know, for young men who are going to get ordained and go serve in a church or for young families with

young children, the children being taught by Sunday school teachers in the church and so forth, to send people into some of these contexts, I think, gets to a point where it's actually inconsistent with the very principles you've laid out, that I certainly laid out from Turriton, and you've laid out from Rutherford and Bailey. But that's where I want to ask for clarification. So let's suppose there's a town, and you've got first prez and second prez. Okay, first prez is mainline. Second prez is evangelical, okay? Let's use that term. So first prez, I mean, how bad, do you always have to go to, is it always cowardice in your view to go to second pres? And if not, what's the cutoff point where you think it would be justified to go to second press?

So I think when I say cowardice regarding the schismatics, I think that's more of like a collective thing, like the collective spirit of the denomination rather than individuals in the denomination being guilty of it. So I don't think like every family that attends a PCA church is cowardly. of course not. But I do think that unless, like, if First Pres in your example is just completely devoid of all the marks of the church, I would say in some cases attending Second Presby's would be a necessary evil, because it is an evil to claim to be Presbyterian and to not be able or willing to attend the Presbyterian Church, the mainline Presbyterian Church. However, if First Press has like some issues, but there's still, you know, faithful Christians there are still faithful Christians you can get to know. If there's still preaching of the word and ministering the sacraments, even if it's not as pure as you would like, I would say it's definitely worth attending a church that is a congregation that is less good by several metrics if it's mainline than a congregation that is more good by several metrics if it's not mainline. because I think denominational loyalty is a major factor that is like not a factor at all for the vast majority of modern American Christians, period, let alone evangelicals. So we're not as far off then.

I mean, because I didn't know why you'd answer this question, but because I don't think, at least on this specific point, because I don't think, again, I want you to succeed in renewing and re-centering into orthodoxy, particular mainline congregations. my concerns are and I think the sometimes it might be the rhetoric you use to express the concern of cowardice I think sometimes that can be unwise and unhelpful and sometimes I think it is a little naive in terms of just the actual on-the-ground experience of what it is like to do I mean I think pastors my own dad is a pastor that I respect tremendously he's been a part of congregational renewal other pastors I know who've done this for decades. They go in and they do, and I, as I listen to them, and as I consider my own pastoral experience, I think it is very easy to underestimate the amount of pain that can go on there. A lot of times the, so especially because the liberalism can become so entrenched,

liberalism can become so entrenched, to the point where there is, there are moments, and this is where I was going to make the case, but I think you would agree with the case that I am going to make based upon what you just said, that, you know, when the disciples shake the dust off their feet in Matthew 10, that's not cowardice. When Paul doesn't try to reconquer the Sanhedron, but just goes and plants churches, that's not cowardice. When the apostles say, we are not going to obey, we're going to obey God. That's not cowardice in Acts 4. Sometimes the best way to deploy our lives for God's kingdom is by departing an unfaithful institution and building. And it sounds like if you're saying, yeah, sometimes you have to attend second prez,

it sounds like you might agree with that in principle, at least in some cases. No, I would say that's a necessary evil for like individuals. I would say the end goal needs to be going back to the main line. I think there's a very clear standard, at least from the Presbyterian ecclesiology, of when it's okay to separate. That's basically if you're forced out. If you are forced out, then you're not going to try and, like, keep sneaking back in. But you have to understand, like, even after the leaders of the Jewish temple killed God,

the disciples still spent time worshipping in that same place, they didn't leave after the Pharisees committed heresy. They didn't leave after the Pharisees committed entrenched heresy. They left after they were expelled. They left after, like, Stephen was stoned to death, and they were expelled from the temple. That's when they left the temple. But there was a good period of time where they stayed. in the temple after the temple leaders killed God.

The same is true in the Old Testament. Robert Bailey says, if you read more of the quotes from that same work, he said, what to Moses and the prophets was not a sufficient cause for separation from the churches of their time, is not a sufficient cause for us to separate from the churches in our time. Remember, the temple was being used as a place of pagan demon worship many, many times, and nobody ever committed voluntary schism from the temple. because it's not like faithful Christians were kicked out of the temple. It's just that there was a lot of pagan idolatry going on.

That was not grounds for schisms. During the pornography in the 10th century, like almost every bishop had a prostitute. It occurred to nobody to commit voluntary schism from the Catholic Church simply on the grounds of that. So I do think that there is a standard for separation, of course. Otherwise, you know, why are the different Protestant groups separate from the Catholic Church? But that standard is when you are excommunicated.

That standard is when you are actually forced out, and it's never okay to just withdraw yourself from the church if you're not actually forced out. That's what I would say. You asked me what the consistent standard is. That's the standard that I would give. My question for you, though, is— But hold on, I got to just say—I got to at least say one sentence. I just don't think that's historically accurate. Absolutely people leave all the time.

I gave the example of the Nicene Christians willingly electing to not worship at the Aryan churches. the Puritans were not forced. Nobody chained them to the boat and said you can't go across the ocean and separate and form an independent church. Well, that's like Rutherford's distinction between the positive and negative separation. Like, I understand like the Athanasian, Athanasius' followers or the Trinitarian Christians didn't worship at Aryan congregations, but they didn't set up a new visible church institution. They did. They went outside the city and worshipped in a separate place with no formal ties to the Aryan church.

The Puritans have no formal ties. So I think there's confusion here, with all due respect, in your use of the term visible. I mean, yes, they're not starting a new church, but they are separating from there are no formal ties. There's no institutional connection. They are completely and in every sense of the term, separate. I think the, like, if you talk to any Catholic or Orthodox historian, they would dispute whether that's true. Like, there might have been some cases of, you know, Trinitarian Christians, you know, withdrawing themselves. some cities dominated by Aryanism or whatever,

but there weren't like two completely parallel church institutions. Like nobody formed the Nicene PCA or whatever. There was not like a parallel withdrawing of all the Athanasian trinitarian Christians from the church when it was dominated by Aryanism. That just didn't really happen. I mean, the Puritans have absolutely no formal connection to any previous structure or institution. that in terms of their church governance, they are not institutionally connected to any.

They did willingly sail across the ocean and separate. And there's so many examples of that. So, and you just said, you know, first pres can get to a point where you go to second press, right? So that's why I'm trying to probe where, because I hear you saying two different things. On the one hand, you can sometimes go to second press. But on the other hand, you can't, you know, voluntarily leave it. And I'm trying to figure out, okay, what do you mean by that? session I'm making to people who are weak in their faith, basically. I wouldn't go to second

press. I would go to first press no matter how liberal it gets. You said, oh, if someone has like children, they got a raise in the faith, I would say due to people's weakness of faith, maybe they could attend second press for a time until they get stronger in their faith. Then they should attend first press. Okay. So, so let me, that that would be the disagreement then, because I think you can willingly leave when there is apostasy. I mean, I've, I've walked by mainline churches where the, the not just the sign, but the whole ethos and draw is a God optional community. And you read through what they mean by that. And it's we're a community and God is optional. Now, if it's me trying to pastor people, I'm going to say you are actually, you might be in sin to go to that church rather than second

pres because at that point, you are obeying man rather than God, I would say, because you're embracing that which God rejects. Don't get me wrong, those are not the PCUSA churches or the mainline churches I tell anyone to attend. Luckily, those are a very small minority of mainline churches. They do exist. Like, I have seen them. I have been to some of those churches, and it's awful. But I guess I am employing the same type of negative separation that Rutherford talks about the

same type of negative separation that happened during the Aryan crisis. I do tell people to separate from those congregations and to join different congregations under the same denominational umbrella. So it's like if there's, like, let me put it this way, because a lot of people accuse me of only caring about the buildings for Reconquista. Let's say there's, let's use a different denomination so people don't get confused about our hypotheticals. Let's say first United Methodist Church is a beautiful cathedral, beautiful historic cathedral, but they advertise themselves as a God optional church.

Let's say second United Methodist Church is, you know, they meet in a strip mall, they've contemporary worship, very, you know, evangelical type theology, but they are firmly committed to scripture and discipleship and the preaching of the war and sacraments. I would tell absolutely everyone to attend the ugly strip mall second United Methodist Church if it's still under the umbrella of the United Methodist denomination. I would absolutely agree that, yes, it is good to flee the society of those Aryan congregations

that were like explicitly heretical. If a church, if a congregation is explicitly heretical, then I would say it is expedient to attend a different congregation of the same denomination that is not explicitly heretical. This is what I'm trying to get clarity on, and that's helpful. That shows, okay, where we're different, we're not as far off. Did I then mishear you a moment ago when you said you would attend first press no matter how liberal it gets? If there was not another mainline option in the city, it's like if the other option was part of a schismatic denomination, Then, yeah, and I would say like, oh, some people, it's like we, some people do to the, like, it'd be balancing evils, choosing the lesser of two evils.

I would say it's always an evil to be a schismatic, but a greater evil would be to, you know, be an atheist. And if someone would definitely become an atheist, if they are in a church like that, then I would say it would be a concession I make. It'd be the, it'd be the lesser of two evils for that person to attend second prez. but the ideal would be once they are at a place where they are strong enough in their faith to attend first press. I mean, ideally, I would tell people to, like, not live in an area where there's not a mainline church that's not heretical. Like, I can tell you, I would never be willing to live in a place that did not have a solid church of the PC USA in it. Yeah, so, okay, so then let me, I'm still trying to get, I feel like I'm hearing two different things and I'm trying to understand. Because on the one hand, you're saying this, I thought with what you said,

said about Methodists that you would encourage them to go to the strip mall, the contemporary worship, as the lesser to evils. But then I asked you about your own words about, would you go to the first pres, the liberal mainline church no matter what? And you said, you know, unless there's another option. Okay, but hold on. So again, second pres, there is no other option in this scenario. First pres is mainline. Second prez is evangelical. First prez has a pastor who does not believe Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. They say it's a symbol, not an event. Do you go to, do you personally, and there's no other mainline church around, do you personally still go to First Press? That's what I'm trying to get clarity on. I would. And I did for several years in high school and I had a

pastor who did deny the bodily resurrection of Christ. Okay. So that would be there, now, is that a personal decision or would you say that, suppose there's someone else who's strong in their faith? Would you also give that counsel to others? Yes. If they're strong in their faith, it's like, when you first introduce the scenario, you said, oh, they have, like, kids, they have to raise in the faith. If someone has kids, they have to raise in the faith, I would discourage them from going to a church that's explicitly heretical, like, one of those God optional churches.

But if it's an option, like, if that's not the case, if they are strong enough in their faith, and most people are, I think we often lack faith in the Holy Spirit, and we underest, you know how much opposition our faith can handle in most cases this is a rare scenario if you're in America there's almost certainly some faithful mainline church near you so in your scenario with people that like have kids and they're weak in their faith yeah I'd probably say it's a necessary lesser of two evils to go to a non mainline church it's very very rare that people are in that situation if they are in that situation yeah I would concede that right and my I guess my

purpose in asking this question isn't just how common is it, but trying to understand the principle and the philosophy and the overall vision, because I would say, so if a person is strong in their faith, they go to the church that has a pastor who denies the resurrection. Now, in the mainline churches, as you know, there are, you know, ELCA, they'll have transgender pastors. They don't all have transgender pastors. I don't, I don't say, I didn't say they all do. I said that exists in that denomination so so so you know again it's like where at what point and and my i guess i would have two concerns one is the biblical principle from second corinthian six go out from among them what fellowship does light have with darkness and i say this as someone who's often pushing in the

other direction and totally acknowledging that in the churches that and the conferences i tend to attend and so forth we're often erring in the other direction and i think there's much noble in your principles that you're working with that we need to consider. I just think it goes too far to say you can't separate from that kind of context. So that's the biblical principle. The other principle would be the Protestant principle. I mean, my gosh, these mainline churches themselves resulted from separations. And you might as well just say to Luther himself,

if today you can go to the church where they deny the resurrection, which is like to me, if there's anything that's a heresy, that's a heresy to separate from, then why would Luther protest the Roman Catholic context, where arguably the concerns aren't as strong as a denial of the resurrection of Christ? Because Luther was that? Because all Protestants in Luther's context had been excommunicated for like 600 years. That's the big difference.

That's what I keep trying to hammer home is voluntary schism is different than being excommunicated by the church. Okay. So, well, I agree that Luther was excommunicated. I also think it's a little confusing here because, many particular individuals who embrace Protestantism, it is their voluntary decision, and many of those who will enter into a mainline context where it's aggressively liberal are banned. And they will, for example, they will not be allowed to be ordained. So it's not their decision.

So I don't think the contrast there is neat. But let me just say this. That's not excommunication. I can't really find examples of conservatives being excommunicated from mainline churches. And it's not like mainline churches don't do excommunications. I know PCUSA pastors who have. excommunicated people for sexual immorality. The LCMS, excommunicated Corey Mahler for being a racist.

So modern churches do excommunicate people. People will point to examples of people being fired in the mainline churches for being conservative. Not across the board, by the way. There's always sections of the main line where you can be fired from being conservative in sections where you won't be. But in Luther's time, it wasn't just being fired. It was everyone across the board who held to any Protestant convictions whatsoever

had already been excommunicated for centuries upon centuries before his time. Well, I still don't agree the contrast is so absolute, but I do agree there's a contrast here between whether it's coming from excommunication or just from more liberal heresy. Part of that is the nature of the heresy in question is just, though it does happen, as you point out, it's less likely to enact church discipline because of the nature of what liberalism is. But how would you respond to the concern that is simply bad for people

to go to a church where they're sitting under preaching? I mean, the marks of a church in historic Protestantism are preaching of the word, proper administration of the sacraments, and the practice of church discipline. In a lot of cases, if you have someone who does not believe in the resurrection of Christ, I would say, you don't have preaching of the word. You don't have the word of the gospel. If you don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, I would say, then you're not a Christian. And so to sit under non-Christian preaching at what I think historically would be classified as not a Christian church, don't you think that's bad for people? Well, why didn't anyone separate from the Old Testament church

when the temple is being used as a place of pagan demon worship? Like, that's obviously not good for your soul either. But that didn't warrant voluntary schism from the Old Testament church. Well, I think in the Old Testament it's a little different because you have the people of God as both a nation with their own language and borders and government and geography as well as a spiritual entity. I think the more relevant example would probably be New Testament

where you do have, you know, Paul categorizing churches already in the first century as in Galatians 1 is abandoning the gospel. You do have calling, you know, the New Testament does not say stick it out no matter what. It says have nothing to do with false teaching. Right. Robert Bailey replies to your objections that the Old Testament context is different. He said, Robert Bailey says the Old Testament context is not different. Now, there are a lot of verses in the New Testament about separating yourself or like being separate from, false teaching and stuff. But like, I did a debate about the Reconquista two years ago, and I looked into how those verses were interpreted by the church fathers. They were never

interpreted to mean ecclesiastical separation. Some of them are interpreted to mean you excommunicate heretics from your congregation or from your assembly. It doesn't mean you let them kick you out or you withdraw yourself from the assembly where they continue to persist and you aren't succeeding right now in getting them out of there. That's not what that's not, that's not, that's not what the Bible means when it says, you know, light hath no fellowship with darkness. It says, you kick them out, not you let them peer pressure you out. It's not the same thing. Well, what do you do like in an Episcopal church government situation, which will characterize some of the main lines, the presiding bishop will have authority over the minister, and it will simply not be possible,

according to their church polity for the members of the church to remove the pastor who denies the resurrection. So essentially, at that point, it seems to me you'd be placing yourself in a position that is just going to be injurious to your soul to sit under non-Christian preaching at what, you know, a church where the base, the fundamental tenets of the gospel are denied. Well, there was a time when all of the mainline churches were very much confessionally and structurally against liberalism. That didn't stop the, liberals from hijacking them because they were just persistent. So I would say just because the structure is against you now doesn't mean it will always be.

And I think that the fact that the structure seems against you doesn't mean you need to give up. And also like there have been times in church history where there has been deeply entrenched sinful errors like the pornography. Why didn't why didn't occur to anyone to make a voluntary schism from the church during the pornography in the 10th century? Well, I think it did. there's about 18 different proto-protestan groups. And if you ask why they're not more common, a lot of times it's because they got treated like cockroaches.

They were absolutely massacred and butchered. The Waldensians, just to mention that one of about 18 others, I would just say, whatever, however we're defining the words, voluntary and schism differently, in point of fact, in any meaningful sense of practical governance, they did separate.

They were not a part of the reigning church. and issues of morality among the clergy were a huge part of that. And actually these movements pop up everywhere. You know, the Hussites, this was one of their main burdens, is we cannot submit to tyranny. And this is Francis Turriton's principle. Schism, I mean, I put the words on the screen in my response video to you, not all schism is sin, or not all separation is sin,

only if it is rashly and unjust. done. In other words, there is a time for 2 Corinthians 6 toward humanly accrued institutions that do not have direct divine sanction to say, no, we're not starting a new church, but we are removing the yoke of this particular institution, and the rationale is we will obey God rather than man. We're not going to submit to teaching, for example, that denies that Jesus rose from the dead. That just is a matter of, to me, it's as simple as you want to obey God. So, yeah, we talked about this with those proto-Protisan groups, like they were excommunicated for their views of theology. They're excommunicated for their views of like icon veneration

and other theological issues. That is why they were separated. So it wasn't voluntary schism for them. But it was. That's what I'm trying to say historical accuracy. It's not the case that all the proto-Protestants stayed under the Roman Catholic hierarchy until they were excommunicated. They voluntarily withdrew and worshipped separately. It is the case because before any of the proto-Protestine groups existed, their views were already excommunicated by the Catholic Church, like in Nicaea 2. All of them were against icon veneration. Nicaa 2 anathematizes all who are against icon veneration.

So it's not voluntary schism if they had already been automatically excommunicated. Okay, so that would be similar then to I would say. withdrawing from First Press, because there already is this fundamental theological divide. No, not just a theological divide. I'm talking about if you are actually excommunicated. If the General Assembly of the PCOSA says, if anyone says Jesus bodily rose from the dead, let him be anathema, yet then it's time to leave. You're asking me when it's time to leave, that's when it's time to leave, okay? But that hasn't happened yet. Conservatives have not been am traumatized.

So this is good to drill down into this, and I hope it's okay. I'm posing questions and we're working at this. So it seems to me somewhat arbitrary to say, if they excommunicate you, then you leave, but only if they do so, not if they're teaching heresy and promoting that heresy. And the reason is just practical considerations of, first of all, I don't agree about the historical record. So I think groups like the Puritans were not formally excommunicated. voluntarily left in search of religious freedom. That is a, I think that's historically the case. Second of all, if you're in a context where you are sitting under preaching,

I think you can justifiably claim this is not a church because it doesn't have the marks of the church. And at that point, I wouldn't see that as a voluntary schism or something like that. I would actually see that as building and constructing and serving the true church, namely the one that does teach that Christ rose from the dead. So let me pause there, let you interact with that, and then we'll see where to go from there. I don't think it's arbitrary. I think it's principles that come directly from Scripture, because we all know that the Old Testament church had times of severe idolatry.

They were worshipping pagan demons, and that did not warrant voluntary schism from the church. And as the quotes I showed you, Robert Bailey says that the church in the days of Moses and the prophets was one and the same with the church of our days. So whatever moral evil doth defile the church now and is a just cause of, objection or separation, that must be so at all times, especially under the Old Testament. The Old Testament had more heresy than we can ever imagine. So that shows me from Scripture that simply churches being in heresy or having heresy in the church, that is not cause for separation. However, we do see in the New Testament when the true believers, when the Christians were

actually expelled from the temple and stone to death, it wasn't until that point they actually separated from the temple. If a conservative gets stoned to death by the leaders of the PCUSA, then I'm going to leave. But that hasn't happened yet. So that is the scriptural principle from where I get this standard. It's a very consistent standard that it's okay to leave if you're actually excommunicated or violently persecuted. During the English Civil War, there was violent persecution of Puritans. And it was after that they came to America.

So I don't think it's exactly true that there wasn't any persecution, like violent persecution or excommunication of them. Okay. So two clarifying questions. Number one, am I hearing you right to say you're saying basically the nature of the church and the nature of membership in the church is the exact same in Old Testament, Israel, and the New Covenant era? That's the Presbyterian view, yes.

Okay, well, I wouldn't agree. That's Presbyterian view. Presbyterians do recognize there's some changes within an overarching organic unity. There's some obvious changes. but but the question is oh dang it the other question left my mind every every issue of church polity that is relevant to the question of schism according to Robert Bailey is the same in the Old Testament whatever Bailey's laws as I like to call it is what what's what to Moses and the prophets was not a sufficient cause for separation from the churches of their time is not a

sufficient cause for us to separate from the churches in our times. That's what I call Bailey's law, and that is my pretty consistent standard that I applied all these cases. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's disagreements there, but I won't go into Old Testament cases of Elijah and others and the kinds of separation that happened, because I feel like that'd take us down the same areas we're talking about right now. The other question was, you added the qualification of persecution. So now I'm, several times throughout our conversation, I feel like you're saying one thing, and then you kind of change it later. So are you saying you can only ever leave when you're excommunicated or are you saying you can only ever leave when you're excommunicated or persecuted?

So I think violent persecution, that's another standard that Rutherford gives for when it's okay to separate. So that's different than just excommunication. That's a significant difference. That would completely be a game changer for like the Waldensians. Well, I think the Waldensians were excommunicated. So it doesn't matter if they were persecuted in addition to that for this question. because they already had justification to be separate due to their excommunication. Okay, so by excommunication, you don't mean a specific excommunication.

You just mean if there's doctrinal standards that have been erected that a group falls a foul of. Not just doctrinal standards, but when there's been an infallible declaration that whoever holds to these positions is anathema, yes. Okay. Well, I guess the main remaining question on my mind to put out on the table is, I think we, We have drilled down to some extent toward greater clarity about where some of our differences are. But the other remaining question is just assuming your position were correct in those differences, to what extent is the mainline itself really consistent with that position? Because I would say it's not just the Christian Church or Disciples of Christ,

which was traditionally regarded as mainline, and that was formed in the second grade. Awakening, but it's actually a lot of them, the Episcopal Church, the UMC, the biggest one. These groups do have what you would regard as voluntary schism as a part of their history. They are the result of various mergers and transitions and splits and reunions, various groups coming together that themselves had previously split because of doctrinal disagreements. And so I guess why is it cowardice to leave them? them today when they themselves have left others in the past. So I think it's important to clarify the definition of a denomination.

And I think denominations generally are nationally defined. Most scholars like the Gordon Conwell study of how many denominations there are, it lists the Catholic Church is like 300 denominations because there's the Catholic Church in each country. And traditional Protestant ecclesiology sees churches on a national rather than an international basis. That's why there's zero international Protestant bureaucracies. So I would say that different nations having, you know, separate denominations of the same brand, that's not exactly schism. Because I don't think it means much to have a denomination or an institution if the state isn't there to like be the judge of who owns what property and who owns what institutions. That's why I don't think it's schism for England and Scotland to have separate terms.

I don't think the Church of England and the Church of Scotland committed voluntary schism from each other. They eventually agreed on just having separate church governments and that was that. So likewise, for the Methodists and the Episcopalians were both originally, you know, Church of England people that after the American Revolution became separate from the Church of England, because you had two separate countries. That's also why I don't think Southern Baptists are exactly schismatics from the American Baptists, Because during the Civil War, it briefly was two different countries, and that's why the Southern Baptist Convention was formed. And yet, they haven't reunited after that the way the other denominations did. But I still don't think it's the same as withdrawing from the dominant institution in your own country and forming a parallel church in the same country, if that makes sense.

That is a fascinating qualification, and I appreciate it. And I would say that applies to some. but in the UMC, that denomination today is the result of mergers in the 20th century, and the denominations merging in the 20th century themselves did have splits that were not merely national. Some of them did, but most of these murders, like the bulk of what makes up the Methodist, the United Methodist Church is like the original Methodist Episcopal Church that divided into North and South and then reunified.

There were a few other splinter groups that sort of got grafted in. but like there are cases of mergers, yes, where a, you know, a mainline denomination will merge with somewhat schismatic or separatist denomination. Because unity is something we should champion, I don't think that contaminates the mainline with separatist heritage because by joining a mainline denomination, the separatist group is immediately renouncing their separatism. So I don't think that's really a problem for the UMC that some of their branches had a bit of a separatist heritage. because the same is true of a lot of the denominations, like even the PCUSA, there have been separatist branches that have been grafted back into the PCUSA, and that's fine. That's actually, not just fine, it's actually good. It's what we should encourage.

It's how we reunify the church and sort of defeat the separatism is with reunification. That's why I want all the separatist Presbyterian groups to come back into the fold of the PCUSA. Yeah, so I don't think that's how these groups at the time understood their efforts. But supposing that is true, I mean, is the distinction you're making, because I think even granting the principles that you're espousing for what constitutes schism and what voluntary schism is and so forth, I don't, I think that still results in focusing on the mainline denominations, especially when you exclude some of them that are traditionally included and then put the RCA in, that results in a fairly arbitrary set of boundaries.

Why these ones, would you, is your focus on the main line? a matter of emphasis and strategy, or is it more of an absolute cutoff where you say, because it sounds like you're saying if the concern is of schism, I mean, are people in the Christian Church, the disciples of Christ traditionally categorized as a mainline denomination, are they schismatic? Well, yeah, they're from the Restorationist movement. So, I mean, I understand the media generally categorizes them with the other mainlines. We don't let those people in the reconquista discord because we don't consider them a mainline

church. Okay. So what precisely are the boundaries where someone is going to be in schism or not in schism? I mean, can you give us the exact cutoff point? Because it sounds like it's not the traditional definition of the word mainline. It's related to the traditional definition of the word mainline because the traditional definition of mainline is just as opposed to these offshoots. Now, you could say in some sense, all the branches of Christianity are offshoots from one another. But most of the mainstream historic branches did not commit voluntary. There's sometimes where schisms happen, where it's sort of an equal schism, like the great schism between

East and West, where both sides have institutional continuity, and it's kind of just like a regional schism of the Magisterium in one place, it's just sort of breaking ties with the Magistarium in another place. That's why I don't think a regional separation, like between England and Scotland or between the East and the West, exactly counts as voluntary schism. I would say a mainline church is a non-schism church. And I'd say a schismatic church is one which voluntarily withdraws from the established church in a region when it doesn't have to and seeks to set up a parallel church. That is my definition of schismatic. When, okay, when it doesn't have to, but it sounds like you've added the qualification of

persecution there, right? Yeah, if you're, if you're violently, but when I say persecuted, I am talking about the things that, you know, actually caused the Christians to separate from the Jewish temple, which was like being stone to death. If you're being excommunicated or being stoned to death, then that counts as having to separate because you physically cannot keep being there in the assembly and being public about your opinions.

I agree with you that you must obey God rather than men. You should not keep your beliefs silent just to stay in the institution. So if someone is a Christian and they're trying to be in the Jewish temple, they shouldn't just be quiet about Jesus so they can stay in the Jewish temple. They should proclaim their beliefs boldly like the apostles did. And once the apostles started getting stone to death for that, starting with Stephen the Proto Mortar, they did separate from the Jewish church. However, even in some of the most liberal PCUSA churches I've been in, I've never been ejected for stating my views. I've never been stone to death for stating my views.

Maybe some people have been stone to death in the PCUSA know that they have not been stoned to death in the PCUSA. When that starts happening, then we can talk about separation from the PCUSA. Or when the PCUSA excommunicates people, then we can talk about that. And just to be clear, when you say stoned to death, am I right in assuming that's not the only method, but would you say, you know, any form of capital punishment, any, any, any, any form of death is is yeah and there was lots of that for the puritans lots of that yeah but not for all of them that's why so basically it my two two observations with all due respect is that i think as we are talking

there are fluctuations in in how you're envisioning things that are kind of emerging and then there is also a sense of arbitrariness of why draw the boundaries right there precisely because again some of the um mainline denominations would not fit the bill here. In the UMC, some of these groups did voluntarily split and then subsequently join. Now, you might look back and judge that as, well, they're joining this larger entity, but that's exactly what a lot of people outside the mainline thinks for their own group. I mean, look at globally at where Christianity is flourishing, and this is another question is looking outside of the United States or outside of the West where you have mainline churches at all.

how do you regard churches that are formed more spontaneously and don't have institutional ties to Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox prior communions? You know, groups of Muslims who have dreams of Christ get baptized, participate in the Eucharist, they're not a part, and let's say they are a Baptist church in their polity and doctrine. So they withhold the sacrament of baptism until people profess faith, and they are congregationally governed. Those are the two biggest Baptist distinctives, and they hold the separation of church and state. So they're Baptist in the theology. They don't have any connection to mainline anything.

That's a huge portion and a growing portion of Christendom. And again, probably one of the most cutting edge parts of Christendom. Yeah. How do you view all that? Like I said, denominations are nationally defined. I think those groups, it's good. I'm glad the Holy Spirit is working in those places. Those groups should try to enter into some kind of communion with other denominations overseas to get some legitimacy.

But like I said, denominations are nationally defined. So I'm not really that worried about what's going on in other countries. I'm worried about America and the West, more broadly speaking, because Western Christendom is something that's important to preserve. I don't think you can preserve Western Christendom while abandoning the mainline denominations and the mainline institutions of Western Christendom. You also said my standards are a bit arbitrary. All my standards I'm getting from the Scottish Westminster divines who get their standards from Scripture. There is some fuzziness in some particular cases, but I don't think the fact that there's some fuzziness around the boundaries negates the general principle. Because with any general principle, there are going to be some debatable cases.

It kind of feels like when ecclesialists try to dismiss the Protestant epistemology about the canon by appealing to a few fuzzy cases, like a few books. where it's not clear if they fit the principles that we're using to determine which books belong in the canon. I don't think some cases that are a bit fuzzy around the edges negates the general principle. The general principle is that you don't schism unless you're actually kicked out, whether by means of excommunication or persecution. I think it's a pretty clear standard. My concern is I don't think evangelicals or just any conservative Protestants who believe schism is okay. I really don't see any consistent standard that they have for when it's okay to schism.

So I would ask you, like, what exactly is your standards? Like the standard that the Scottish Covenenders give is pretty clear. There's some debatable cases. It's pretty clear. But what would you say your standard is? Okay, I'll answer that. But first, just to respond. I don't think it's fuzziness.

It's counter-examples. And it's, I would dispute that your principles are two things. Number one, that they are consistent with historic reformed views, such as the Scottish Covenanters. And number two, that that would result in. if applied consistently, this affirmation of these particular mainline churches, not the Christian church, but throwing in the RCA instead of that one. And then, so, you know, because basically to answer your question, my response would be that there is an additional category, and that is when the church is not killing you, and they are not, they have not formally excommunicated you,

but they depart from the gospel. And so, for example, if they deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus, then I would say that it is a case where passages like 2nd Corinthians 6 apply, and to me it's exceedingly simple. If someone is not Christian, you shouldn't act like they are a Christian. So if someone is not a church, if it's not a church, you shouldn't treat it as if it is a church. Churches do have the lampstands taken away.

Churches do depart from the gospel. Even in the New Testament, Galatians 1 talks about churches departing from the gospel. when that happens, you are not obligated to attend them. And the quotations I've given from Turriton are one example where I actually think that is a historic Protestant mentality. And the reason is simple. Both practical and theological of what the church is and how the kingdom of God is best going to be advanced. If you go to First Pres rather than Second Pres, while Second Pres is a faithful church and First Pres has a pastor who denies the gospel, the spiritual fruits of that in real time are absolutely severe.

It's not a pleasant prospect to basically where you should be getting fed good food from the pulpit, and instead you're getting fed heresy and something that just isn't Christianity. So in other words, the church is not such that it just sort of rumbles on institutionally apart from the gospel. The institutions are there to serve the ministry of the gospel. And when the institutions depart, then you no longer have a church. And at that point, I would say it is, in some cases, merely permissible and in others

obligatory to depart. And I'm quoting Francis Turton when I say, we are injurious to God himself when we do not withdraw when that happens. So that's not just me making it. I'm appealing to classic reform principles of that. And I do have a concern that just in real time at the street level, I mean, just imagining these people who think, okay, we need to go and attend as long as we're strong enough in our faith, which is another qualification here that I think is sort of a little bit fuzzy in my mind of

how do you know when you're strong enough? And, you know, that's another, to me, it's like, it almost sounds like you schism if, unless you're not strong enough in your faith, which I would just say you should never, we should have a definition of schism that doesn't depend upon the strength of your faith. But I'm just imagining someone who maybe we can go ahead. It's still, they're still participating in a schismatic body, which is bad. I'm not saying it doesn't count a schism if you're not strong enough in your faith. I'm saying that it does count a schism and it's bad, but it's the lesser of two evils. That's what I said.

Okay. So sometimes schism is acceptable? Sometimes it's the lesser of two evils. There are cases in life where you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Okay. Now, to answer your question, like I would disagree with that third qualification. Like, if they deny the gospel, that's a reason to schism. but even with your qualifications, all that would change is that you would avoid certain mainline congregations.

But none of the mainline denominations, even the majority of them actually deny the gospel. Like the majority of every mainline denomination still affirms the Trinity and the resurrection of Christ. Yeah, it depends on, and that's why I said at the beginning. I'm not against going into mainline context and seeking reform and renewal. I'm not saying people should never go to mainline churches. I pastor to mainline church. Yeah. The concern is that, especially with some of the framing of an act of cowardice, but I would say there are some mainline churches that have denied the gospel. And when that is the case, then I would say it is permissible or obligatory, depending upon your circumstances, to, as Turriton says, withdraw so that we do not basically do injury to God and to God's purposes. And again, the heartbeat of this is actually a different vision of the church. is I don't think that the church,

I think the institutions in the church that accrue over time and do not have direct divine sanction are not obligatory. And they are there to serve the ministry of the gospel. And when they are enforcing an anti-gospel, then they are no longer obligatory on Christians. I think that's what Turton is saying as well.

I think Turton is mainly responding to the charges of schism from the Roman Catholics and the Turton knows that Protestants have been excommunicated from the Catholic Church for many, many years. So he's not making the exact same distinctions that Rutherford is between a positive and negative separation. But under your model, I just want to go back to that under your model, there's a lot of reason. Before we get to my model, I want to, well, go ahead, I don't want to interrupt you. So, like, you added that extra qualification if they deny the gospel. That would be reason to, like, not go to first prez ever.

unlike me where I would say you should still try to go if that's the only option, just make sure that it's, you're strong enough in your faith. That would be a difference between us. But even with your qualifications, there's not a reason for churches to withdraw from the denomination and form new ones because the denominations as a whole are not denying the gospel. There's just congregations in the denominations that are denying the gospel. In that particular context, you would have to withdraw. So you would have to just go and attend on a Sunday, drive down to second prez. if you want to hear, you know, go to an actual church that has an actual gospel. I know, but I'm saying under your, under your qualifications for when separation is okay,

there's no justification, there's still no justification for the formation of like the PCA or the OPC or these nominations that voluntarily schismed from the main line because the main line collectively as a whole was not denying the gospel, just because there were some congregations in it. So with your qualifications, yeah, you would have to not attend individual congregations that deny the gospel, but given that the mainline collectively doesn't deny the gospel, there's no justification for forming a new denomination that voluntarily schisms from the mainline. I think there would be.

Part of this will come to differences of church government. I'm a congregationalist, but I just say, unless there's another denomination, there won't be a second press. Well, in your model, I'm not talking about, like, the specific scenario where there's only two churches and one is mainline and one is schismatic. I'm saying that, like, I gave my qualifications for when separation is okay, and that's if you're actually forced out, whether by means of excommunication or violent persecution.

And then you said, oh, there's a third option. There's a third reason when it's okay to separate, which is when they're denying the gospel. But I'm saying that still does not justify the formation of any offshoot denominations. That would justify withdrawing yourselves from the heretical congregations in your denomination and joining Orthodox congregations in your denomination that would, wouldn't, that still wouldn't justify the formation of a new denomination unless the denomination collectively were to deny the gospel, which none of them have done so far. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I guess I could just clarify my view there. I would say it would, on my paradigm, I know you'll disagree, because you will, many people will then live in geographical

locations where, short of doing that, you simply would not have a church, which would also not be good. So, yeah, I mean, I, but, but just to say, I think on Turitan, you mentioned in a moment ago, I think his language is absolutely explicit. And I think he's saying the same thing that I'm saying. Namely, we must withdraw. And it's not, he doesn't mention capital punishment or anything, any of these kinds of things.

It's when there is apostasy. It's when we are disobeying God in the submission to these apostate authorities. So I really think that his, his position on that is pretty clear. I agree that it's occasioned by Roman Catholic polemics, but I don't think his language is unclear about that. I've drilled down to my level of awareness, or my level of satisfaction here.

I think, just to pause in the discussion, this to me has been a really good and fruitful discussion. Let me pause. We can keep going to. Let me pause and say, are you good with where we're at? Are you, of course. I want to, I want to say that, like, I do think Turton just contradicts Bailey. I think, like, when I said Turton's respond to Roman Catholic polemics, I think Bailey is actually specifically trying to write on ecclesiology and the issue of when it's okay to schism, because Bailey is writing polemics against separatists. TURTon is writing polemics against Roman Catholics. No, he's not, though. He's not. He's talking about separatists as well. He's talking about the Sosinians. He's talking about other separatist groups. He's fighting in both directions in that passage of the institutes.

Sure, my mistake. Now, as a Presbyterian, our ecclesiology doesn't really come from Turriton because there's lots of people under the Reformed banner who would have different ecclesiologies than we do. Like, there's a lot of Puritans who are reformed. They do not have Presbyterian ecclesiology. So I do think that, like, if Turton really says that, and I'll take your word for it that he does, that would just contradict what Bailey says, that, like, in this quote where he says, says, in 1 Corinthians, fundamental errors, open idolatry, grievous scandal, profanation of the Lord's table,

and Galatians such errors has destroyed grace and made Christ of no effect. Then he talks about the candlesticks being removed from the Church of Ephesus and Laudacea. And after all that, says, yet from none of these churches did any of the apostles ever separate, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation from any of them. Like, there is diversity within the reform tradition. Some of them are more strictly loyalist than others, and Bailey is known for being a very strict loyalist. Let's go through this Bailey quote, because I wouldn't agree with that. He says, first of all, so there's three examples here,

Corinthians, Galatians, and the churches of Revelation 2 and 3. Starting at the end of those, he says the candlestick is threatened to be removed. That is a completely different thing than a church that is no longer a church because it doesn't have a true gospel. Threatening to remove the candlestick and having the candlestick removed are two different things. But then right just before, he says in Galatians, their errors made Christ of no effect. Okay, so that's what I was going to say.

Let's go through each one of these. So I would also say about First Corinthians, the Corinthian church was still a church. It still had a true gospel. Paul says, I thank God for your faith and so forth. So that's also not comparable to the first present scenario. Now Galatians, he says in Galatians, such errors as destroyed grace and made Christ of no effect.

Yeah. So the epistle to the Galatians is written to a region. It's all the churches in Galatians. There's a number of different local congregations. I am not aware of anything in Galatians that says something to the effect of, you know, maintain attending a church where there has been a denial of the gospel. I don't know of any verse that says that. In fact, I see Paul accosting them for, to the extent that they have surrendered to gospel denial

and calling them out of that error and saying, basically, that is deadly. Do not do that. So I don't agree that Bailey is saying something that would support your advice of attend first prez, even though the pastor denies the resurrection. I just don't see that here. That wouldn't be comparable to any, either of those three points he points out so far as I can see. Well, it's clear we can agree that in Galatians, Bailey is talking about heresy. Such errors as destroyed, graced, and made Christ of no effect. That's heresy, right?

Yes. So after he's talking about churches where there is heresy, he says, yet from none of these churches did any of the apostles ever separate, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation from any of them. So what that tells me is that at least according to Bailey, maybe you can find some people who would say something different, but at least according to Bailey, heresy itself does not warrant schism. Okay, so schism depends on how we define that, I think. Separation. Heresy does not warrant voluntary separation. I would say Paul's writing in. Galatians makes it very clear that anyone who is embracing the teaching that is being described has forsaken the gospel and is in his language severed from Christ. Oh yeah, absolutely. I would say that too.

Like I would say, I would say that, you know, you should never, by being part of a mainline church, you should never affirm their heresies. Like I would say it's, you do separate yourself from Christ spiritually if you go to first pres and agree with their heresies or whatever. But like when I was at my church in high school, we had a pastor for two years. She denied the resurrection. I told her, plainly, I think that's really wrong and bad, and nobody kicked me out of the church for saying that. Right.

Yeah. And that can happen sometimes. On the other hand, there can be pressure against people who take such a view. Personally, I would say it's overpressing the book of Galatians to try to derive a principle from this that, therefore, even if you have like a Judaizer, you, you remain in that church because the historical context in that that letter is written to is a bunch of different churches, not just one particular church. And there aren't, it's not the same option that you have between First Pres and Second Pres. And my view of the church is such that First Pres and Second Pres, there's an overvaluing of institutionality here for what makes something

an actual church. I would say, I'll put it as blunt as I can, I would rather worship Jesus in a sewer with orthodoxy than in a cathedral with heresy. If the institutional power that backs it ultimately has gone to seed and ultimately has fallen away from the gospel, then I think that, and I think that is the historic Protestant view, you have to have fidelity to the gospel to be a church. You have to have proclamation of the true gospel. And if you don't have that, then you cease to be a church.

And so to require sustaining in that environment, I think, boy, you know, practically and theologically, I think that is very problematic. I wish what you would do is give space for that. So I want you to succeed in your efforts in the mainline context. But I wish you would give space for the reality that separation from those particular institutions, which I do think are a little arbitrarily defined

because now as we're talking and realizing it's not all of what are traditionally called mainline, line can sometimes be an act of faithfulness to God on the principle that what fellowship has light with darkness and and free the consciences of people to say hey if my preacher if the pastor of my church has fundamentally denied the gospel like the resurrection of Christ I am not yoked to that because that is not of God and at this point it's not even a church right so like I still don't think you're correctly understanding the Bailey quote because after saying that in Galatian such errors

as destroyed grace he says yeah from none of these churches even if it was in a region he didn't say yet from some of these churches they separate some of them they didn't he said yet from none of these churches was there any warrant to separate for many of them even though he's acknowledging that those churches had fallen into heresy

so he refers to them as churches that you shouldn't separate from after acknowledging that at least some if not many of them had fallen into heresy so I still think there is a according to Bailey at least, there is present for staying in a church where there's heresy

as long as you're not bound to the heresy. If you are bound to the heresy, then you must obey God rather than men. If disobeying the heresy would automatically excommunicate you from the church like it did in the cases of the proto-Protisan groups, sure, but

that's not the cases that Bailey's referring to and that's not the cases that we are in during in mainline liberalism. So do you acknowledge that Bailey sees some churches as heretical, but still calls them churches that you should not separate from? I think you're making a fair point. I would need to, I'd love to, I've not read him, to be honest with you.

So I'm just going by this one quote. So you may completely be right about him in general. And on this quote, you're right that he does say from none of them. And among those he lists are Galatians. And he's called those errors as destroyed grace and Christen of no effect. So yeah, just going by what I'm seeing here. I think you have a fair point on Bailey. I'll grant you Turk and you can grant me Bailey.

How's that? Hey, we're split it down the middle. Based on the quotes we've read because neither of us know the full context of both by heart. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Hey, again, I'm pausing to make a parenthetical remark here that I've enjoyed this discussion. I think it's good.

I think it's fruitful. I think it's healthy for us to kind of wrestle through this. Are there any other points? I've kind of controlled the discussion a little bit. You want to jump in with any questions or thoughts where you want to discuss? discuss things before we start to wrap up. Yeah, I just want to talk about. There are some things I want to talk to you about more like the strategy of Orthodox Christianity

versus liberalism. There's one question I want to ask you. Okay. So that question would be, why is it that in the vast majority of modern church splits in the past 100 years or so, it's always been the liberals keeping the institutions and the traditional Christians splitting? Like when they talk about the United Methodist Church split or the Episcopal Church split or this or that, it's never like an equal split like the way the Great Schism was.

It's always been the church splitting into original and conservative. So what that tells me, if that happened like once or twice, that's just historical happenstance. But when that keeps happening, when every modern church split splits into original and conservative, what that tells me is there's really only two possibilities. Number one, liberals are just stronger than God's people and are just better at conquering things than God's people. Number two, God's people have been unfaithful and cowardly, which is something we see a lot in Scripture.

So when I talk about cowardice, I'm talking about the collective conservative paradigm of retreating. I'm not saying every individual who attends an offshoot or non-denominational church is a coward. I'm just talking about what other explanation is there for the fact that liberals have taken over almost every historic Protestant institution and almost every modern church split has been the conservatives leaving. So my question to you would be, why is almost every modern church split the conservatives leaving and not the liberals leaving? I would guess not being really an expert on this and not really, well, I don't want to qualify it too much. I would guess that it is because the conservatives are more likely to split from the liberals

than the liberals are to split from the conservatives. Because of the very nature of liberalism, which is sort of a theological and ah doctrinal and more lucy-goosey, it's less likely to have people who sort of don't have any strong, robust Orthodox beliefs and kind of have a feel-good version of Christianity that's very pluralist and so forth, it's more likely for them to sort of just make peace in whatever context they're at. whereas if you have someone who thinks like affirming the virgin birth is a matter of

essentiality to Christ and you just have to do that if you don't do that it's more likely that you're going to be the one to draw the line where I would differ in your interpretation of that and I appreciate the qualification you're making in terms of the judgment of motive of cowardice but I still sort of take offense at it

because where I would differ is it's not necessarily cowardice to withdraw. Sometimes it's obedience. And so, for example, the, I've mentioned some of these examples earlier, but just to state the principle, sometimes obeying 2 Corinthians 6 is not because you're weak. It's precisely the opposite. You do not fellowship with that which is no longer Christianity as if it were Christianity. Sometimes people have done this at tremendous cost with tremendous sacrifice, and it's been precisely an act of courage to withdraw and maintain fidelity to Christ and to the gospel. So I'm guessing the reason it's just the nature of liberalism

as a particularly and peculiarly modern error that tends to sort of mollify, and it's not the kind of thing that really divides much about anything, although there can be some very aggressive strands of it, of course. Well, yeah, there are two things I would say. Number one, I don't think every person who makes the decision to withdraw is a coward. I think when I say cowardice, it's this mindset that the mainlines are a hopeless case that we can't take them back because liberals were able to take them from the Christians. For many, many years, the mainline denominations were firmly institutionally against liberalism. The liberals were still able to conquer them.

So my mindset has always been, if they could take them, why can't, we take them back unless they are stronger than us. And I think this lack of faith in, you know, God's people and God empowering God's people, that's what I would call cowardice. And it would exist in the minds of people who just have this mindset that liberals could take the institutions, but we can't take them back. Some of it might be influenced by, you know, latent dispensationalism where it's just this, you know, pessimistic mindset of things are just inevitably going to get worse.

and I'm not an unconditional optimist either. I think that, you know, objectively, physically, both sides have an equal chance. You know, God is actually on one of those sides, so that should be an important factor. So that's why I think just this general, very broad mindset of liberals can take institutions easily, but we can't ever take them back. I think that is a lack of faith in God's power and in God's people. The second thing I would say is you mentioned that, with these denomination splits, the liberals don't have doctrines.

That's not true. They are very doctrinal, not about orthodoxy, but they have a lot of firm doctrines about the agendas they want to push. A very good case study for conservative cowardice is the United Methodist Global Methodist split. In 2019, the United Methodist Church officially rejected LGBT strongly and firmly, He said it's incompatible with Christian teaching. The progressives, there are a lot of progressive articles and media from that time that said, we are heartbroken by this, but we are not going to split off.

We are going to keep working for reform. There was a tiny group of liberals that tried to split off into the Methodist connection or whatever, but that ended very fast and they just went back to the United Methodist Church. And just four years later, the progressives took back the United Methodist Church, And the conservative mindset was not just to immediately split off once that happened. It was to preemptively split off before that happened. Do you see the strong disparity in the mindset of the progressives after they had already lost and the conservatives before they even had lost? Okay. I'll say a point of disagreement and a point of agreement.

So on the disagreement, I think where I find the charge of cowardice unhelpful is that, I think it would be better, far better, to leave room for explicit differences of judgment, of ecclesiology, and of strategy for what it means to be courageous, rather than think of it in terms of cowardice. You might, even if more conservative strategies and principles of ecclesiology are erroneous on your judgment, in the vast majority of cases, I actually don't think cowardice is the right category. Point of agreement would be,

I do agree with you that there is a real problem of retreatism, and especially with the influence of kind of dispensational eschatology, kind of just withdraw and give up. I do agree with you. That happens a lot, and it is a besetting sin of conservative faction groups. Again, I want to reiterate something you said, beginning and that is that I mean so as I'm looking at things from my vantage point if I'm

looking over at the main line over here and I'm looking over at evangelicals over here both of these entities require and need tremendous reform and renewal both of them need the Holy Spirit to breathe of fresh work and that is true and that is true for the evangelicals and one area where that is needed is a tendency towards separatism anti-institutionalism a lot of your concerns not only do I agree with them, I need to underscore them. I need to draw them out and emphasize them of besetting sins within evangelicalism. So even if I don't agree with all the solutions, we're looking at a lot of the same problems. So that's a point that, you know, and we could, again, like we said at the beginning, if we were going to talk through our points of agreement, this conversation would

probably be longer because we do have lots of areas where I think we're seeing a lot of the same problems and I think we desire the same goals, but we have disagreements on how to go about things. Right. So you're right that I should be very careful when I use the word coward because I don't want to, I want to be like, have surgical precision with what I'm targeting. I'm not targeting individuals or congregations. I'm targeting the denominational identities that I think were wrongly formed. However, I do think there is some place for that language. I don't think it's purely a strategic disagreement. Because in the book of numbers, when, you know, God's people did not conquer the land of Canaan because they were scared because they thought Canaan was stronger,

that wasn't just a, you know, bad strategy. They were condemned for their lack of faith in God. They were condemned for the implicit belief that the Canaanites were stronger than God's people. And I think there's a parallel with people implicitly believing that liberals are stronger than God's people. and that liberals can conquer institutions, but God's people can't take them back. So I would say that mindset is not purely a strategic error. I think that is a lack of faith in God. And I'm not saying you hold to this. I'm not saying everyone who's in the offshoots holds to this.

I'm saying that mindset exists and where it exists and needs to be called out. And I think cowardice is a term that would be accurate to describe that particular mindset. Okay. I think with those last two sentences, I could agree that that does exist, and that's fair to call that out. And that could exist in the opposite direction, too. Cowardists can manifest in different decisions. In your metaphor, it sounds like the land of Canaan corresponds to the main line. And that's where, of course, whether that is the case is a point of difference of judgment,

whether that is the land that we are to take, whether this is the hill to die on. This is what God calls us to do is a difference of opinion in terms of not just strategy, but principles of ecclesiology, and what is the role of these particular institutions that, I emphasize, have accrued over time and are not divine institutions. They're not divine institutions, but if we want to have an incarnational theology,

we should be devoted to the institutions through which God's kingdom has blessed the world over the centuries. We could talk for hours on that. I want to go down a rabbit hole there. I understand that there is a difference of opinion there. I do think these loyalty to these institutions is important. I would say maybe

we disagree on just how valuable these institutions are. But I still do think that the same mindset applies that if we are to retake the West, because I think we are living

in exile from our own institutions. Harvard and Yale and Princeton were founded by Christians and now are being used against us. Would you say it makes sense to say that in the modern West for the past 40 years or so, Christians have sort of been living in exile in our own land? For past 40 years. I admit, forget that number, but, you know, it does feel like we're living in exile from our

own institutions. I think part of that has been not being willing to preserve them. I will say that the label of coward does not just apply to schismatics. I would say it also applies to certain mainline conservatives who did stay in the denomination and still refuse to speak up about it. So I'm not just dissing the evangelicals. There's a lot of mainline conservatives who really disagree

with the liberal actions of the mainline churches, but they don't speak up because of cowardice, honestly. So I would say that is just as bad as, you know, splitting off is staying in the denomination but not really doing anything and just letting stuff happen, especially when you actually are in the denomination, have the ability to change things,

which they all do, especially if it's a more low church government like the Presbyterian Church. So I would say I should maybe also criticize mainline conservatives who don't speak up rather than just criticizing the evangelicals who do speak up, but they spoke up by leaving or they left after they spoke up. And to whatever extent,

just to throw out some two cents of worth advice, to whatever extent you're able to look over to the other side to the conservatives and say that one I think is expressing the sin of cowardice and here's why but that guy over there is is wrong he's bravely wrong and make that distinction I think that will probably help people appreciate your concern even if they end up disagreeing with it to answer your question about the you know are we in exile yeah but I would say it's not it's in exile in general in the West um not just from mainline institutions, but from Christendom as a whole. Christians as a whole are in exile. And I worry about it. You know, you mentioned like Harvard and Yale. In terms of what to do about that,

we find ourselves in post-Christendom. What do we do about that? Well, I think both you and I are trying to spend our lives to try to help that. You know, we want to basically evangelize. We want to serve the cause of Christ. I want to give my life to basically sharing the gospel, encouraging Christians. We both are trying to do that. So in terms of the strategy of what to do in a post-Christendom situation, that's where we have differences. And one of mine that might be worthwhile to throw on the table is a concern of elitism in terms of what's really going to work. So Harvard and Yale, I guess I'm not so concerned that that is really as important. I mean, it'd be awesome if we could retake Harvard and Yale, and then they were these like thoroughly Christian places or at least

Christian friendly or Christian adjacent. But I guess, you know, when I think of like what really is making the difference in post-Christendom, I think of some of the churches that you might judge as as not, not, whatever, not doing the right thing, you know, like church plants, like the Redeemer set of churches and their church planning network in New York City. I'm saying that is having tremendous fruit in a post-Christiandom context. You're making a face. Am I annoying you? I hope not. Sorry as so. I, even though I went to one of those church plants for several years, in fact, my dad converted to Christianity in one of Tim Keller's, you know, New York City church plants,

I still don't think that's what we should be doing. That absolutely is an area of disagreement. And you're right. I am an elitist. I think we need a retake specifically Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I do not think we should try and rebuild. I think we should retake. because we are not in a place right now where we can rebuild Christendom 2.0 because these old institutions are relics of a more spiritually healthy age.

That's why most, you know, new church buildings look kind of ugly compared to old church buildings. It's just we're living through the fall of the Roman Empire. It's a less culturally healthy time. So I think the best thing to do is retake the old things. And even though Harvard-Yell and Princeton don't matter culturally as much as they're, used to. It's an indispensable part of the Western heritage that I don't think that should be abandoned.

I think if we do abandon this and try to build new institutions, then several generations later, nothing is going to stop people from leaving the new institutions we build and building new ones. You know, back in the day, people would spend 600 years building the same cathedral. Under the modern evangelical mindset, no one's going to do that because no one stays committed to the same institutions for more than a few generations. Do you see my, do you see my issue with the church planting mindset? Well, not really. I mean, I know we just. disagree here. I'm just, so that's why I'm trying to say is like we both want to, we both want to re-Christianize a decaying Christendom. I have tremendous value. I guess Harvard and Yale, I mean,

I think universities in general are very important, but I guess I worry about a little bit of an overfocus on the intellect and overfocus on that which has prestige in a worldly sense, even though those are tremendous places that do have tremendous value. But the reason I value something like church planting in an urban context that sees tons masses of people come to Christ and then leads to other church plants is because I think it's really good to have a Christian populace. If you're trying to re-Christianize the West, having a lot of Christians helps. And a lot of people become Christians.

In fact, if I may say, with all due respect to the other side of this, the people, the churches that are actually growing and effectively evangelizing are the more. conservative and evangelical groups. And church plants often helpfully challenge the established churches to even see that because they sometimes don't even care. They're just not even, they don't even do evangelism. It's not even a priority. Sometimes they don't even believe in evangelism. So whatever we're doing, and even if you say we do want to retake the Ivy League universities, having a lot of Christians and the populace helps and churches that are making a lot of people become Christians, therefore are a good on either paradigm.

True. I mean, I understand that on a short-term local basis, church plants get more people in the door. There's a lot of statistics people don't talk about how a lot of church plants don't last a long time. And also, like, this is my same criticism of the Great Awakening's. Like, I'm of the school of thought, the old light, old school of thought that thinks both awakenings did more harm than good. First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, Charismatic Revivals, Church Plants, what they all have in common is they give a temporary boost in like the population of so-called believers or so-called converts, but it weakens the institutional church long-term, which leads to fewer souls being saved long-term. Because the 20th century was the largest rise in history of this non-institutional Christianity.

Meanwhile, Christianity overall declined in the West during the 20th century more than it ever had before. So I see church plants as more like sucking energy out of the established long-lasting churches than actually pumping new energy into Christendom overall. I think some of what they do is good, some of what they do is a bit parasitic to sort of leaching off the energy of the more established churches that we should really be investing in. So that's why in America I'm against church planting. In Somalia or Kazakhstan, plant all the churches you want, because those are not historically Christian societies.

but in a historically Christian society as you should be reviving the historic Christian institutions. Let me point out, if I may, gently and with love, an irony in your position here, if I hear you saying you're against the Great Awakening but you're in favor of the Ivy League, are you aware that several of the Ivy League were born out of the First Great Awakening?

I said they did more harm than good. There were some good. Like, I like Methodism and they came out of the Great Awakening. I think they did more harm the good, especially like the mindset produced by those awakenings. Okay. It does seem a little strange to me if you're saying, you know,

they did more harm than good, and yet the very examples that you first go to for retaining Christendom are actually the fruit of the First Great Awakening. I take that one. Against the First Great Awakening.

What's that? Harvard and Yale were against the First Great Awakening. Princeton was formed out of it, but Harvard and Yale were very strictly old school. And Brown and Dartmouth formed out of it as well.

And so who cares if some are against it. The point is these very institutions came out of that movement and not just those institutions. Tremendous fruits of Christianity. How many demons were cast out? How many people got saved? How many Christian institutions were built? I mean, having studied these things and seen the way, for example, the first great awakening in the UK, the great, the way God used John Wesley's ministry. He was profoundly opposed by the established clergy, by the established church. he was vilified for all of the reasons you're talking about, about working apart from the establishment.

And so he goes and he preaches in the minds and he preaches in prisons and they engage in social reform. And this evangelical movement, to use a completely acceptable historic use of that term, basically turned the world upside down for Christ. That is, in my mind, a great model of re-Christianization. preaching and social reform. And it happened outside of the established church and actually at the chagrin of a lot of the established clergy. They hated Wesley for his field preaching, for his quick

deployment of other pastors who hadn't been sufficiently ordained on their view. So these separatist movement, that's what I'm saying. This is partly, again, if you would do more of a both and with your vision on this and say, yeah, retake the mainline, but don't pour judgment on some of these separatist movements that are actually leading the charge. Would you agree that the evangelicals, churches are the ones converting most people to Christianity right now? Well, first of all, I'd say John Wesley was not a separatist at all. He was, he did things people didn't approve of. That's true. He wasn't a separatist. I would say that on a short-term scale, yeah, evangelicals are bringing more people to Christ, sure. But, you know, the First Great Awakening was not like a precursor

to the revival of Christendom. It was a precursor to the fall of Christendom. And directly after the first great awakening, there was a massive secularization of the, the institutions. So I think the both Great Awakening's were like a temporary boost, but they did not have long-term lasting effects. Of course, I don't think acknowledging complexity and acknowledging that almost no movement is entirely good or bad, I don't think it's contradictory. I don't think it's contradictory for me to say a lot of good institutions and saints like Wesley and Methodism came out of the First Great Awakening, but also that the mindset of many of the leaders of the First Great Awakening led to a lot of very dangerous things later on.

For example, as a Presbyterian, the main leader of the Presbyterian First Great Awakening was Gilbert Tennant. Have you read his sermon the danger of an unconverted ministry? Nope. Well, I've read that sermon. It is insane. And he basically says that any clergy person who does not support our passionate revivals is unsaved. And if you think your pastor is personally not saved, you should leave your church, even if the pastor preaches the right stuff and has good morals. It was insane, and he got kicked out of the Presbyterian Church for that. And that's what started the old side, new side split, which eventually got healed when he acknowledged how crazy he was

being and repented. But that was a lot of what was going on during the First Great Awakening. We hear the stories of the good things that came from the First Great Awakening, because those are the triumphant tales we tell. A lot of the negative qualities of evangelicalism, which you would which you would recognize our negative qualities, such as the over-emphasis on the born-again experience and being too quick to separate, those came from the first-grade awakening as well, and we have to recognize that. I wouldn't agree the first of those is bad, emphasis upon a born-again experience. It depends upon how...

Well, there's no emphasis to the extent where you would split from a church if you think your pastor's born-again experience wasn't good enough, because that's what they were doing. Sure, yeah. So that, yes. Yeah, okay, well, I think we just have to leave that one as a disagreement. The disagreements there go pretty profound. I do think you're kind of, it does feel like you're saying two different things, because on the one hand, you're saying, sounds like you're saying you're kind of against the first grade awakening, but at the same time you're acknowledging some of the things that came out of it. I had more thoughts. We're at a, we're over two hours now and I kind of need to start wrapping it up. So I'm not going to drill into that. I will just flag. I think we have a pretty profound disagreement about the first grade awakening. And you know, you were saying like it led to secularization. I mean, I just think, no, the country was England. prior to Wesley's ministry was thoroughly secular. After it, it was far more Christianized,

both institutionally and personally. And I think it's to think of it as kind of a short-term boost, which does more harm than good, it actually was good for institutional Christianity as well, in my judgment. So that's just a disagreement. We'll let the viewers decide on that, but I'll give you the final word on that. Go ahead. One more thing. Have you heard of like the burnt over district? Because I think even Edwards admitted, like the areas of the country that had the most passionate revivals became the most secular areas of the country, namely like New England. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper actually talks about this a lot, and his rhetoric on the First Great Awakening is similar to mine. That's where I first learned about the negative effects of the First Great Awakening because of things like the burntover district,

where a lot of these revivals led to greater secularization in the places where those revivals had been long term. Jordan Cooper's thesis is that the reason the Midwest is still so religious is because it's populated by Lutherans who didn't do those silly revivals. I'm simplifying a bit, but you know. How happy would Dr. Cooper be if we just finished out video saying, so everybody should be Lutheran. That is the answer here. They did hold on to their institutions better than any of the other mainstream Protestant groups.

Maybe Baptists did well, too. But Lutherans have the LCMS and they're doing great. There's the ELCA as well, but they have the LCS, which is mainline an institution. Yeah, so there's both, yeah. But anyway, God bless Dr. Cooper. I love him. I've been criticizing Lutherans lately, so anyways, not to go down that. Is there, I think it's been a great discussion. I feel like it's useful in that we've just kind of drilled into clarity in areas of disagreement. And at the same time, we love each other. And you're my Christian brother. And we have the same goals. We both want Christianity to flourish. This might be a good, tell me if you think this is a fair summary. We have different visions of how to get there, but we have some similar goals of what we should be aiming towards. What should we say by way of summing up that we'll be edifying for people watching? I would say we, yeah, we do have the same goals and we have a common commitment to traditional Protestantism and theological triage. I would just say I value traditional institutions a lot more, and you tend to value.

you like personal like pastoral situations more is that accurate i wouldn't say so uh those do weigh upon me but i part of my disagreement is with the framing with the word institution i again i think evangelicals build institutions i don't think they're shoddy second rate institutions i think some of the you know as i said princeton and dartmouth and brown are institutions built you know the social goods that um are uh trickling down into at the institutional level from the first great awakening are profound. So I think it's, I would frame it more as a different vision of what kinds of institutions and where we draw the boundaries and what we even mean by that word mainline. I've learned in this conversation that you have a different

definition of the word mainline than what you will get if you Google the term and ask Google, what are the mainline denominations. So I would say more it's which institutions and what role they serve and at what point do we without sin depart from them okay i guess the our disagreement would be like how committed should we be to the historic you know protestant institutions and and like here's a thing that separates me from a lot of people should we prioritize rebuilding or retaking because I am actively against most rebuilding efforts. I think we should just focus on retaking old institutions. You seem to be more focused on trying to rebuild.

No, no, no, both. Both and. Remember, I want you to succeed. I don't see much of the and from evangelicals, though. It's like I'm the only one who's really investing in retaking the old institutions. The evangelicals, they might say both and in theory, but in practice they only do one. I know a lot of evangelicals who go to Mainline churches. I did.

I pastor to Mainline Church for five. years. I know a lot of my friends who have gone into mainline context and do that. I think it happens. I agree there's no real visible movement. Well, there are some that are older. But like right now, among like the people who are watching our YouTube videos, there's probably not a visible movement like that. I'm for both hand, but I would say the things to be rebuilt are sometimes not even just the mainline churches, but other churches that need revitalization and so forth. And I see tremendous institutions down to the tune of even just beautiful buildings and stuff like that, outside the main line that also have tremendous value that are also sometimes they can veer off the path and they need

to be revitalized as well. So I don't, I wouldn't say build rather than renew. I mean, when I think about like the classic dichotomy of church plant versus revitalize, I think God calls people to both and both should be done and the revitalizing should be done in the main line and outside the main line. So I guess I'm just clarifying how I'm looking at it. You can disagree. I guess there's just a difference in emphasis. Like, I am more of an elitist. Like, we can, we can agree on that. Like, I value the traditional elite institutions like Harvard, Yale and Princeton a bit more. And I do have more of a, I do have more different priorities. Like, I do think in some cases, Christians should be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of preserving these historic institutions. So I don't think it's mainly,

like, a hardcore doctrinalist agreement, except on the question of when you must separate. I think more of just different emphasis, emphases. And that's what I notice in most denominational differences when you really drill each other on the specifics. It tends to be more of a difference in emphasis than a difference in actual hard doctrine. What if, here's just a random proposal, just popped into my head,

I so value maintaining communication and dialogue amidst our differences and amidst our commonalities and maintaining friendship and unity. in Christ amidst all of that, that I would love for this conversation to be just one of a longer threat of relationship, whether it be just further talks, you know, I hope we keep talking privately, of course. But even if we were to like, I don't know, a year from now, come back together and say, what have I changed my mind on? What have I changed my mind? What are you right about? I'm sure I'll have things. I'll say, wow, you know, you said this and I thought about it,

and I learned from that, that kind of thing. And then also keep, and we just kept this, because I think what you're doing is important. I hope to continue to serve Christ to the best of my ability, and I feel there'd be value in just sort of checking in with each other now and again. I'm not asking you to commit to anything, you know, a long term or something, but just just keep this conversation going. We've not resolved things, but we've gotten clarity, and I just would love to, you know, keep checking in about these things if that would have value to you. Let's do it. All right. Well, I love you. God bless you. You're my Good brother. Everybody watching this. Thanks for watching. Stay tuned for more. Maybe. So this is like late May. We're recording this. And this is come out late May, 2025. If it's April, no, no, no, I can't think. If it's June or summer, 2006, hammer us in the comments and say, hey, get together again for another conversation or another conversation because I think this is important. Everything we're talking about is important. We both have convictions. We disagree, but we agree on something. So we want to keep the conversation going. So thanks for watching everybody.

Boy, I'm out of steam. Anything else we say before we sign off? Nope. Just make sure to always serve Christ and work for His kingdom. And I'll say I've been thinking about adding this as my tagline for all ending videos. Jesus loves you. Go to church. Simple.

But hey, those are good things to do. All right. Thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you next time.