Maybe it’s a teapot tempest to what’s belaboring the 20-times-larger Southern Baptists, but my 390,000-member denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, is immersed in (or at least sprinkled by) a debate regarding a panel discussion scheduled for its General Assembly next month.
The panel’s topic is a good one: “How to Be Supportive of Your Pastor and Church Leaders in a Polarized Political Year.” The panel includes pastor David Coffin, Grove City College president Paul McNulty, Georgia nonprofit leader Randy Hicks, and New York Times columnist/religious liberty advocate David French.
A small slice of the Internet has gone berserk, as some on the right imitate the Marxist style of using not just a person’s last name to create an ideology (as in “Marxism”) but both names: “EarlBrowderism” in the 1940s regarding a minor Communist leader, “DavidFrenchism” in the 2020s. One irritant for the opposition: French is an old-style-Republican critic of Donald Trump, and some in the PCA are Trump devotees.
A second strike against French is that he and his family left a PCA church after taking a lot of abuse—but that’s exactly why his testimony is so important for PCA elders to hear. At many churches, members weary of politically-red (or blue) rhetoric just slip away. Church leaders need to discuss ways to stop the slide.
A third strike in the eyes of some myopic umpires is that French in his column vigorously criticizes radical right polarizers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Conservatives should understand that they and their church equivalents are the radical left’s best friends. Leaders who don’t understand this contribute to the sad process by which some evangelicals become exvangelicals.
I might have a slight sympathy for the critics if French were the keynote speaker, but—lighten up, guys—he’s on a panel, and he’ll make it more interesting that it otherwise might be. We might remember that the PCA politically has red, blue, and purple churches (I’m blessed to be an elder in a purple one), and if we can’t get along with each other how do we expect the U.S not to fall apart?
UPDATE: The PCA canceled the panel.
Speaking of “getting along with each other,” was it really necessary to include the gratuitous jabs at the Left? This is an intramural dispute among conservatives and has nothing to do with leftism or liberal politics. Naming ideologies after people in order to caricature them is hardly unique to the left, and authoritarianism is a temptation for people on all sides. It is unnecessary to present an amorphous “radical left” as some bogeyman that has corrupted the otherwise pure souls on the right. Unless your actual point is to blame all the right’s ills on the left, you can make your arguments without involving them.