Controversy in the Church and the Evangelical Public Square

A Reflection Occasioned by Jake Meador's Recent Opinions on the Alistair Begg Affair

Where there is the church there will be controversy. The people of Israel were divided over Christ (Jn. 7:43; 9:16; 10:19). After his resurrection the first sermon bearing witness to him arose because many of the Jews mocked the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:13), and soon thereafter the apostles so irritated the authorities that they were threatened and commanded to no more preach Christ’s gospel (4:1-21). When Paul and Barnabas visited Thessalonica, the Jews and pagans drew some believers before the magistrates with the bitter accusation that “these men who have turned the world upside down” were “acting against the decrees of Caesar” (17:5-9).

And as Christ and his people caused controversy in Israel and the Roman Empire, so also was there much internal controversy from an early date. From the first extension of the gospel to the gentiles there was controversy over their inclusion (11:2-3; 15:1-21), and there were subsequent internal conflicts which gave occasion for writing much of the New Testament. False teaching of various stripes (1 Cor. 15:12; Col. 2:8, 16-23; 2 Tim. 2:16-19; 1 Jn. 2:13-14, 18-26) and other internal disagreements appeared (2 Cor. 11:4-5, 13-15; Phil. 4:2; 3 Jn. 9), and Christ himself controverted the practices of some churches (Rev. 2:4-6, 14-16, 20-23; 3:2-4; 15-16). Shifting one’s survey to later church history shows that controversy was a recurrent theme. Heresy after heresy arose, and there were major schisms even where heresy does not seem to have prevailed (e.g. the Donatist split).

None of this should be surprising. Christ said:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34).

And Paul said “there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor. 11:19). Indeed, so common was controversy that he regarded it as an essential trait of elders that they know how to avoid it where it was unprofitable (1 Tim. 3:3; 2 Tim. 2:16; Tit. 3:9), and how to handle it where it was appropriate (2 Tim. 2:25; Tit. 1:9).

In this we touch a matter of the utmost importance. Granting that controversy is inevitable, God has given us instructions on how to handle it. If someone controverts sound doctrine or stirs up division and will not repent when rebuked, he is to be avoided:

“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.” (Rom. 16:27)

“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” (Tit. 3:9)

“Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.” (2 Thess. 3:6)

“If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.” (2 Thess. 3:14)

Indeed, scripture provides for much stricter discipline than we are inclined to imagine. 2 John 10 says that we are not even to greet false teachers. 1 Cor. 5:11 says to not even eat with anyone who professes faith and is guilty of certain severe moral faults. And Christ says that those who refuse to repent private offenses are to be regarded as outside the church (Matt. 18:15-17). These things being so, how much more worthy of avoidance are those that stubbornly promote false doctrine or commit scandal before the whole world!

And yet there are some in our day who seem to be discontent with such straightforward instructions, or who are perplexed that controversy is so common in our midst and receives the response mentioned above. In a recent article Jake Meador wrings his hands anxiously because he believes that ‘evangelicalism’ is a “controversy generator machine,” and he believes that this is the source of needless strife that admits of no clear resolution. By contrast, he sees in the institutional church a suitable alternative that has prescribed processes for resolving controversy. I confess, such an opinion makes me want to lay my head in my hands and weep. Meador and I are both members and frequent observers of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)’s internal controversies, and for him to make such claims is extraordinary indeed.

One, the church is not merely an institution represented in those formal ecclesiastical bodies that Meador vaunts, but is also the communion of saints, comprising “all those throughout the world that profess the true religion,” as the PCA’s official confession of faith puts it (Westminster Confession 25.2). The vast bulk of professing believers are outside the jurisdiction of our denomination, but that does not mean that we are thereby absolved of any responsibilities toward them. As the above establishes, a brother in another denomination or parachurch organization who errs ought to be called to repent, and if he fails to do so, we are to avoid him, his being outside our own denomination’s jurisdiction notwithstanding.

Two, the institutional church is the source of as much controversy as the wider evangelical community (as I would call it) or ‘evangelicalism’ (as Meador and others like to call it) – arguably more. The PCA in particular has been roiled by repeated controversy over the last several years, as have other prominent denominations, both evangelical and mainline. To imagine that having formal ecclesiastical links means more peace is to blind one’s eyes to what our churches are actually experiencing at present.

Three, people who react to public wrong on the part of people in the evangelical community by avoiding said people – canceling their invites to conferences and programs on the radio, refusing to listen to them, etc. – are simply doing what God commands in those verses listed above. Meador acts as though he is scandalized by people doing so viz. the recent Alistair Begg controversy, not least since such action is undertaken by individual believers (or organizations) in accords with their own consciences, and apart from the ecclesiastical processes he wishes to promote.

Four, a distinction must be made between God’s ordained processes for dealing with offenders as revealed in scripture, and the church’s extra-scriptural processes for doing so. The PCA’s judicial processes are quite tedious and complicated, as they include many particular steps that scripture does not prescribe. They are, indeed, something of a byword for denied justice among many in our denomination, as many of our people despair of them ever accomplishing justice. Some people and churches have gone so far as to leave the denomination because they believe the PCA is neither able nor willing to meaningfully restrain and punish wrong in her midst, while many others simply do not bother with trying to use the formal processes because they think them a hopelessly convoluted waste of time or have no clue how to go about using them. And yet Meador says it is such processes that are what separate us from the anarchy of endless controversy that ‘evangelicalism’ exposes us to.

Five, those judicial processes that Meador promotes don’t actually resolve controversy in many cases even when they are used. There was intense controversy in the PCA over some of the actions of Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, and the matter was taken all the way to the denomination’s high court, the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC), who issued rulings in accordance with the prescribed processes. That did not resolve the controversy in the slightest, as Meador well knows, seeing as he wrote an article arguing we should ‘move on’ from it around the time of the SJC rulings. Only the departure of the church in question has partially abated the controversy, but in some measure it continues, with a continued effort to amend the PCA’s Book of Church Order to keep people who experience especially depraved lust that Lev. 18:22 prohibits from being ordained in the denomination.

For Meador to prefer the institutional church and its convoluted and extra-scriptural judicial processes over the church as communion of saints and as prone to actually use God’s prescribed methods for dealing with wrong is a curious thing indeed, especially given the recent history of our own denomination. It is hard to escape the feeling that it is the tendency for individual believers to act contrary to how Meador wants that lies behind much of his bizarre rumination here. For he is a part of the contemporary Christian intelligentsia, whereas many of the people who have reacted to Alistair Begg’s recent advocacy of sin¹(see footnote) are common believers, and there is a tendency for those who write for a living to have a vastly different perspective than those of us who do not, and to often feel a certain embarrassment at how blunt our behavior is in such cases. We common folks are not polished, nuanced, or overly concerned about the feelings our justified behavior might elicit in offenders when we react to wrong as God commands, and we are certainly not concerned with how we are perceived by the wider world in such cases. But the intelligentsia are always tempted – and alas, seem often to succumb – to the inclination to be concerned with our image in the eyes of the watching world, and to wish to maintain a certain respectability lest we be thought bigoted, simple-minded rubes.

That sometimes leads to publicly waxing theoretical in such matters, the literary form of shifting nervously in one’s seat and saying ‘yes, but’ and making a multitude of attempted mitigations lest matters be uncomfortably stark. I believe that is what Meador’s article represents, and I would urge you, dear reader, to remember that it is an ill thing when people are discomfited by Christ’s words (which Begg’s boycotters are obeying) and try to find a solace in belabored analysis that occurs independently of God’s revelation (Meador quotes scripture not once). This is a contemporary problem in the evangelical churches: someone does something wrong and is rightly confronted about it, and then many other people with influence go to great lengths to act like the problem is not with the original instigator, but with everyone else for reacting against his impenitent offense too strongly (or unreasonably, uncharitably, in an un-Christlike manner, etc.). The fault is always with the reactionaries and with the larger set of circumstances and never simply with a wrongdoer, in other words, and I think I speak for many evangelicals when I say that such misdirection of blame and squeamishness about the just disapproval of wrong is highly disappointing and needs to stop.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Greenville Co., SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at tomhervey@substack.com. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

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1. Unless you go there to crash it, participating in a wedding is celebrating the union of the people being wedded. No believer can celebrate something that perverts God’s design for marriage, especially where that relationship will involve behavior God abominates, and will prove a snare that will make it harder for the participants to repent the sin in view. The only part a believer may lawfully play in such occasions as Begg dealt with is to warn the participants that the behavior in view is wrong and to publicly refuse to be a part of celebrating it. If it be rejoined that would probably mean losing the relationship in view, we can only reply that Jesus said from the first that following him would mean such things (Matt. 10:35-36), and that someone who is not willing to pay such a price is not fit to be Christ’s disciple (vv. 37-39).