Presbyterian Polity and Political Pavanes

I cannot help but come to the inevitable conclusion that the 21st-century American church at large is a fundamentally unserious institution, especially my theological tradition of Reformed Protestantism. I cannot help but come to this inevitable conclusion, because I am also a member of a broader, overwhelmingly secularized society that has multiple institutions of its own, most of them functioning with more practical and ethical clarity and consistency than any denomination I can think of. I work in secular industry, where the sociopathy I see tolerated, and often celebrated, in the church is rightly anathematized—the way some pastors, theologians and pundits publicly conduct themselves would get one punched in the face, with no sympathy for it, in the secular, urban society I grew up in. I must belong to the 21st-century American Protestant church, but I am not required to pretend its overall behavior is worthy of commendation.

There are, of course, good churches and good churchmen, but they’re not driving the culture of the church at large. In my experience, while they run their individual domains with honor, they publicly defer to denominational apparatchiks playing a cynical game of political expediency. Take Presbyterian Church in America pastor Kevin DeYoung’s latest article, 6 Questions for Christian Nationalists, which laughably commends pastor Doug Wilson for his recent attempt to distance himself from ethnonationalists. There is no way DeYoung, who reviewed Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism is unaware that Wilson’s Canon Press continues to profit from a book he even says in the piece contains “a blurring of nation and ethnicity.” There is no way he doesn’t know Wilson’s long history of dubious statements on ethnicity and his deliberate, continual winks to ethnonationalists, including affirming the Curse of Ham trope and encouraging people to “have white babies,” which the open white nationalists—once his fans, now his adversaries—took at face value. DeYoung sidesteps all of this, like he admittedly sidestepped Wilson’s laundry list of scandals to complain about “the Moscow mood.” He, once again, gave undue deference to one of the most thoroughly disqualified pastors in the Reformed world, a man who would not pass the examination of any credible presbytery, and created his own boutique denomination, yet has still been at the center of most of its internal scandals. Why, but for the fact that Wilson has also amassed considerable influence (and a sizable social media mob) in the Reformed media industry DeYoung does considerable business in?

Meanwhile, the very people Wilson and his lackeys have been encouraging for the last several years are the figureheads of a wing of Christian Nationalism that has descended into open white supremacy. When I exposed a kinist church in Wilson’s denomination in February of 2024, he called me a slanderer for it. His “evidence” that I slandered the kinist church was a dubiously titled “Statement on Ethnic Balance” given to him by Shane Anderson, member of the church and one of the closest compatriots of divested neo-Nazi pastor Michael Spangler—a statement which Wilson said he would “gladly sign.” Wilson continues to profit from Wolfe’s book, even after Wolfe brought his openly white-nationalist cohost, Thomas Achord, also a member of the kinist church, back on his podcast. Again, I am a member of a broader society that sees this nonsense and has no issue recognizing it for what it is. Why can’t DeYoung?

Why should I give deference to this ridiculous political dance? I’m too old and have too much self-respect for that.