Machen cares not for your Christian Nationalism:

"For example, there is the problem of the immigrants; great populations have found a place in our country; they do not speak our language or know our customs; and we do not know what to do with them. We have attacked them by… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

https://twitter.com/presbycast/status/1351261840689557504?s=20

Christian nationalism led to liberal unbelief in the early 20th century and it would do something similar in the 21st. In part because it would require the worst form of ecumenism.

Drive through any town or city in the US and notice how many older churches have blacked out their windows for the benefit of screens and stage lighting. Many newer churches have windowless worship spaces for the same reason. The reasons behind this are doctrinal. It's not obvious from the outside, but this church is a windowless worship dungeon. The interior walls and floors have even been darkened—totally dependent on artificial light—and there's barely sufficient light to read the printed word if you are not on the stage.

How many minutes does it take you to get to church, whether you walk, cycle, drive, or use public transport? One reason for asking—the 17th-c. Massachusetts puritans (who were totally nuts in a number of ways) who wanted everyone to live within a half mile of the meetinghouse.

"What is lost when presbyterian worship is no longer led by presbyters (elders)? Well, in a word, what is lost is presbyterianism, or—at the very least—any form of presbyterianism known before the 20th century. Presbyters are not simply preachers and teachers or members of an... "administrative board. They are shepherds who lead the flock in worship, not as coordinators, directors, or curators of the order of worship, but as true leaders who lead from the front…the front of the church’s worship space!

Rural America is likely to become even more of a confessional presbyterian and Reformed wasteland unless pastors/planters are willing to be bi-vocational or serve multiple churches. Many of those baptist, pentecostal, and even UMC churches don't have full-time pastors. Circuit riders and tentmakers may be required. Are P&R folk too good for that? Are we satisfied being the gifted and talented program for evangelicals who read, a place for upwardly-mobile baptists, a group of denominations almost exclusively for affluent suburbs and cities?

Keeping your head is literally Hitler in 2023!

"Historical perspective could alleviate some of these sociologists’ fears. An earlier generation of scholars wrote about Xian nationalism, admitted it had its problems, all the while keeping their heads."
acton.org/religion-liber… RIP narrative: "Why then did scholars 50 years ago practice restraint compared to the hysteria that characterizes academic literature on Christian nationalism today? One obvious explanation is the election of Donald Trump and the support he received from white evangelicals.

A PHILOSOPHICAL NEW #PRESBYCASTEATS: Convenience store roller items! @MrSeanGMorris gets a mention.

Only horrible trollish cranks would joke that this might be a PCA church! HT: @jrwhitehead

America is in the midst of a culture war and Christians who wish to uphold biblical morality (especially re: sex and gender) are caught on the wrong side of it. Our best, brightest, and most urbane are scrambling to fashion winsome, nuanced third ways, but getting traditional... Christians to take a political course that countenances abortion, normalizes drag queen story hours, and queers everything is not going to work. Strategies that resemble pacifism or accommodation will not be acceptable, even if lots of winsome gospel dust is heaped upon them.

Calvin on Genesis 2:22:

Moses now relates that marriage was divinely instituted, which is especially useful to be known; for since Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God, the sanctity of marriage hence... more clearly appears, because we recognize God as its Author. The more Satan has endeavored to dishonor marriage, the more should we vindicate it from all reproach and abuse, that it may receive its due reverence. Thence it will follow that the children of God may embrace a...

Thesis: No confessional presbyterian church will long remain confessional or presbyterian if it loses Reformed worship.

First, some definitions:

-Confessional: orthodox soteriology and doctrine (especially of God) according to the Reformed confessions -Presbyterian: government by ordained male (per scripture) elders organized in accountable, graded courts

-Reformed worship: scripturally regulated (RPW), simple, ordinary means of grace worship—a Reformed bucket to carry Reformed water.

Metro Atlanta, Potomac, Southeast Alabama, and Warrior presbyteries will debate and vote on the BCO amendments/overtures today. Prediction: two will approve, two will not. Warrior Presbytery answers overture 23 (16-14) and 37 (20-10) in the affirmative.

Machen had thoughts on ecclesial secrecy & shenanigans (from @oldlife's thesis):

Examples of secrecy did not end with church courts. Machen complained that bureaucrats within centralized committees rather than local presbyteries were controlling the General Assembly's agenda. Too often questions of policy were considered without sufficient debate. Streamlining the decision-making process, he felt, prevented "the plain man" from making his views known and hearing others. Even when discussion was permitted at the General Assembly, Machen complained,

From a PCA tent-dwelling friend on Facebook:

It's good to be reminded that the "bigger [tent] is better" impulse is not one supported by our Presbyterian fathers and heritage. the 'smallness of the seed [or tent] need not disturb us': “A church, Calvinistic in origin and still recognizable by its Calvinistic confession, which lacks the courage, nay rather which no longer feels the impulse to defend that confession boldly and bravely against all the world, such a church dishonors not Calvinism but itself.

Our landmark 300th show is up and on-brand: DENOMINATION BLUES with PCA RE Gabe Williams on the challenges and blessing of being in a presbyterian denomination and the particular challenges facing the PCA in 2021. presbycast.libsyn.com/our-300th-show… Contains an all-time great FUN WITH BAPTISTS segment.

Machen deplored Christian Nationalism -- secular religion in the service of "100% Americanism":

"The conservative Presbyterian disdain for the tenets of '100% Americanism' continued into the 1920s. J. Gresham Machen left Princeton Seminary in the 1920s because he feared the liberal direction in which he perceived it to be heading and then founded Westminster Seminary, the flagship of conservative, intellectual response to Liberalism. But, his conservatism did not cause him to look favorably upon Americanism. He bemoaned the fact that his age was a

The charity displayed in sharing (in tranquil January 2021) a two-year-old hit piece based on a private letter written 23 years before the death of man born in the 19th century is amazing.

https://twitter.com/PcaMemorial/status/1350902488149463042

Casual readers of the quoted concern tweet will not know that Machen changed in many ways after 1913 (in part because of WW1 experience), and that he was the farthest thing from a Christian nationalist. He wrote (and testified before Congress) in support of families, minorities,

10 Mencken quotes on the glories of American politics:

1. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

(attn: @oldlife) 2. Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.

3. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

4. Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

David Platt (first image) seems to discount freedom. Machen (images 2-4) loved liberty and warned against tyranny pre WW2:
thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospe… Machen source: opc.org/machen/mountai…

"Political but not partisan" sounds like "spiritual but not religious." There is no special less icky ballot for the cool and enlightened. You wanted that postmil ballot, but you got that premil one.