Today we contrast a thing I read yesterday: this precis of a 1100 page book — which has been sort of memry holed: it is available second hand or online. Gary North writes of the defeat of the Calvinists in the Presbyterian church. This precis was given to Vox Day, who posted it. (I have reformatted it for wordpress not blogger).

Crossed Fingers: How Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church
By Gary North / Institute for Christian Economics (September 1996)

• The single most important cause of the liberal capture of the Presbyterian Church was the conservatives’ failure to kick out liberal heretics and impose negative sanctions while they had the chance.
• Liberal strategies and characteristics that led to their victory:
1. Willingness to lie (they had their “fingers crossed” when swearing that they held to the Westminster Confession): “SJWs always lie”
2. Intense public calls for freedom of inquiry, tolerance, pluralism, unity while weak or assimilating power
3. Deliberate focus on institutional capture, which included the property, money, and brand prestige.
4. Long game perspective (the takeover took 60 years: 1875-1936)
5. Far superior skills at bureaucratic maneuvering, including an analog of a “code of conduct”.
6. Presence of amenable authorities (the WASP establishment, media) & outside money (esp. from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.)
7. The liberals “took care of their wounded” – anyone who suffered in the fight got a cushy job somewhere else.
8. Once they consolidated power they were willing to kick out conservative leaders like Machen.
• Conservative strategies and characteristics that led to their failure:
1. They also had “crossed fingers” and did not themselves fully support the Westminster Confession (e.g., they rejected six day creationism). This limited their ability to call out others for heresy.
2. They were on the “wrong side of history” with slavery (i.e., took a stance of neutrality on what the Bible said about it), which weakened their moral authority, rather like modern political conservatives and the Civil Right Act.
3. Initial inability to respond compellingly to key challenges to orthodoxy: Darwinism and Higher Criticism
4. Strategy was purely defensive – nothing on offense (“surrender on the installment plan”)
5. Focused on ideas, theology and church mission, not institutions and bureaucracy, and had a very weak understanding of bureaucratic warfare.
6. Were incredibly polite, charitable, and moderate in their rhetoric – they rarely dared to directly confront heretics

• Other lessons and implications

  1. The modernists were fighting to win the war; the conservatives didn’t even understand they were in one
  2. High standards people tend to lose out vs. low standards people. Key: conflict between orthodoxy and church growth mindset, stay pure but small or grow large but compromise on beliefs.
  3. The more bureaucratic and complex an organization, the more vulnerable to liberal takeover (Confessional documents and hierarchical structures were perceived as strengths but were – and are – really weaknesses)
  4. Confessional documents are irrelevant when faced with liars (cf: today’s US Constitutional law)
  5. Presbyterian takeover pre-dated Gramsci and could not have been inspired by him
  6. Presbyterian takeover pre-dated the modern political Conservative movement
  7. You can’t fight the tape – the tides of history were with the liberals
  8. Despite best efforts of smart but flawed conservatives, the liberals won: God preserved only a remnant and the Presbyterian church was lost
  9. The winners write history; noxious liberal causes like eugenics were memory holed.

A couple of points. The confidence that these liberals had in “science” was partial: a lie. They feel too quickly into pseudscience, be it Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism, or eugenics. But then, they lied. They have always lied.

And the side who had the truth forgot that sometimes you have to flog the scum out of the temple. Locally, the liberals lost heavily when their favoured leaders such as Geering where found guilty of heresy and cast down: again they were looked after. Otago made a professorial chair in religious studies… and the Presbyterian school of ministry is now run as distance learning, at arms length from the anorexic theology department in a downsized faculty of Arts.

But this we know: the church does not belong to the committees. it belongs to Christ. And Christ, our redeemer, lives.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

¹The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ²He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” ⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. ⁵Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”

⁷So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. ⁹Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

¹¹Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ ¹²Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.

Job 19:21-27a

²¹  Have pity on me, have pity on me,
O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
²²  Why do you, like God, pursue me,
never satisfied with my flesh?

²³  “O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴  O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock for ever!
²⁵  For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
²⁶  and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷  whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Brother Beau made the best comment on this situation. We need to be aware of the cost by which we were saved, and cling to Christ, casting away that which is evil. We need to reform. We need hope preached: the kingdom of God is near, not in a foreign land.

So…as to the question at hand. What is the path forward from here?

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Hoshea 10:12

Prepare your heart for a great awakening. Remove all known sin from your life. Remove anything questionable. Obey God. Go public with your experience of how Christ saved you.

Prepare your heart. The eyes of the Lord roam throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are completely his.

Prepare your heart. In every household their are vessels of clay, wood, silver and gold. Be refined, be the gold vessel ready for your master’s use.

Prepare your heart. Our master told us, “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” People in recovery dedicate themselves daily to staying sober, otherwise they won’t. How much more the disciples of Jesus dedicate themselves daily to denying themselves and following our Savior?

Great things start in the heart.

There is very little to add. The winnowing of this time will leave a remnant. Be in it. Shun this narrative, and save yourself from this depraved generation. For Christ will know his own.

UPDATE

There is a witness.