Delegates at the PCA’s 43rd General Assembly

The Tim Keller Cult, commonly known as the Presbyterian Church in America, held its 43rd General Assembly (GA) last week. Several social justice warriors/teaching elders (SJW/TE) presented a resolution that the PCA repent of its role in St. Paul’s failure to demand the immediate manumission of Onesimus in his famous letter to the vile slave owner Philemon.

Onesimus and Philemon

SJW/TE J. Ligon Bonhoeffer explained to his fellow delegates, “It’s been over nineteen centuries, but we are called to repent for the sins of other Christians, no matter how long ago they occurred. Clearly, St. Paul was guilty of the inexcusable sin of racism, wickedly believed in the moral permissibility of slavery, spent much of his ministry microaggressing against women, and heinously insulted LGBTQ persons on more than one occasion. Who knows? If he were alive today, he may have even been guilty of the grievous sin of Holocaust trivialization. He made nasty racist generalizations about the Cretans (Titus 1:12-13), shockingly defined ‘his’ people by race rather than creed (Romans 9:3), and claimed that we have a greater responsibility to our blood relatives than to poor, starving people in Haiti and Nepal (1 Timothy 5:8). I won’t even tell you how long Caitlyn Jenner cried after she read Romans 1. The PCA must disassociate itself from this man’s hurtful words!” He received a standing ovation and many a “Hear, hear!” Numerous delegates quietly relayed to Tribal Theocrat that they’d privately held this conviction for some time, and were greatly encouraged that “the Ligster” was brave enough to publicly come out of the closet against St. Paul’s racism and hate.

Onesimus reaches the end of the Underground Railroad only to find an unsympathetic St. Paul

While support for the resolution was nearly universal among the participants, it was tabled until the 44th GA, because no delegate could provide a cogent definition of “racism” that clearly demonstrated how being a “racist” violated one or more of the Ten Commandments. “First we thought ‘racism’ was preferential love for your own kind, but we immediately came up against the 5th Commandment, and some of those unfortunate verses the Ligster mentioned. Then we thought that maybe it was believing one race to generally be better at some things than other races, but one of our scholars mentioned that factual observations and generalizations aren’t actually sinful, at least according to how the Westminster Standards define sin. We’ll keep working on it until the definition is ‘perfected’, but it was getting late and we were all in a ‘Kumbaya’ sort of mood,” stated Rev. Jack O. Binn.

Dr. J. Ligon Bonhoeffer

Tribal Theocrat was unable to find any delegate openly hostile to the proposed resolution, but a call to Kenneth Martel, a Presbyterian Kinist recently classified by the SPLC as “a neo-Confederate and really negative human being”, yielded at least one critic of the resolution. Martel told us, “This is as absurd as the PCA apologizing for something like…oh…let’s say, its failure to be involved in the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s, if you can imagine such a stupid thing. First of all, the PCA didn’t even exist then. Secondly, it’s not even a sin they’re supposedly repenting of. Scripture recognizes the ontological equality of men, but not their economic, or functional, equality. The Law recognizes the distinctions of believer vs. unbeliever, man vs. woman, slave vs. free, native vs. ger (sojourner) vs. nekhar (foreigner), co-tribalist vs. those outside the tribe, elders vs. the young, parent vs. child, etc. Scripture regulates slavery, making slavery in and of itself non-sinful. In my ridiculous Civil Rights example, FedGov’s civil rights legislation destroyed lawful use of one’s own property and demolished freedom of association. Christian unity is of the nature that Christians alive today have unity with the Church triumphant in Heaven. That sort of unity does not mean that a 90 year-old Bantu-speaking Christian pygmy can marry my 15 year-old sister, or that he has the right to sleep in my bedroom or take my inheritance. Third, none of these delegates are guilty of what they’re supposedly repenting of. While we can pray for forgiveness for the sins of the covenantal group to which we belong, that’s clearly not what’s going here. What the PCA did is little more than shameless whoring after diversity points. This is smug and self-congratulatory self-righteousness parading as pious and self-effacing ‘repentance’. The cultural zeitgeist is telling the PCA to bend over, and they’re cheerfully grabbing ankle.”

Another contrarian voice, Dr. Tyrone Bradley, African-American affirmative action hire at Kinsman Redeemer Seminary, told Tribal Theocrat, “I don’t care what those PCA crackers do or say, it will never make up for what their people have done. Only when I stand on the ashes of their civilization will I ever be satisfied that the horrors of Robert Dabney, James Thornwell, Guy T. Gillespie, John E. Richards, Morton H. Smith, and, yes, even the sins of Abraham and St. Paul, have been fully expiated. The wound is deep, and atonement requires sacrifice. Even today, Dr. J. Ligon Duncan is the John E. Richards Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. Why doesn’t he repent for something if he wants me to think he isn’t a racist?”

Rev. Jack O. Binn sponsored a resolution to pay reparations to Toby

Tim Keller, the eponymous leader of the cult, could not be directly reached for comment, but his office relayed this message prepared by Keller and his associate Dr. I. M. Screwtape, “While we are disappointed that the PCA took no action during this assembly, we congratulate them on taking up the cause of the Social Gospel. Never did we dream that the leaven of Generous Justice would so rapidly spread through the Church. The great heroes of the Faith from Marx to Rauschenbusch would be proud of what you’ve accomplished! Press forward, gentlemen, and keep making your cities great places for saints and sinners alike!”

If you like this article, you may like (or maybe you won’t):

https://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/what-is-racism/
https://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/general-assembly-roundup/
http://highlandspastor.blogspot.com/2015/06/pca-hotly-debates-delaying-formal.html
http://theaquilareport.com/pca-general-assembly-refers-personal-resolution-on-personal-resolution-on-civil-rights-remembrance-to-the/
http://www.dranthonybradley.com/why-did-it-take-50-years-for-calvinists-to-care-about-race/