Dr. John Gresham Machen (July 28, 1881 — January 1, 1937) became a confessionally Reformed Presbyterian minister and New Testament scholar renowned for his zeal defending civil as well as religious liberties. As a conservative Protestant activist, Machen in the 1920s and ’30s fought the currents of Modernism he saw as corroding the doctrinal integrity of Princeton Seminary and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America: respectively, the seminary and the mainline church of his day. The denouement of that struggle was not the reform originally intended for the existing institutions. Instead, his victory came in the form of a “faithful remnant” of ministers and seminarians to establish new Christian institutions. With the decay of Christian orthodoxy in the U.S., Machen was the central agent spearheading Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936, hoping to preserve a confessionally Reformed legacy. 

Although a confessional churchman, Machen has been described by some scholars as a libertarian. Yet, it’s important to qualify that “libertarian” in the 21st century does not mean the same as what “libertarian” might have meant in Machen’s day. A pithy example of Machen’s reflexive defense of civil freedom is his objection to jaywalking laws because he believed pedestrians should be able to cross roads even if inconveniencing motorists to stop, criticizing “the expense of liberty.” Machen ranted to a newspaper, “After all, the most serious objection to these doctrinaire, paternalistic laws is the bad effect which they have upon the mentality of people. I do think we ought to call a halt to the excessive mechanization of human life. When I am in one of those over-regulated Western cities, I always feel as though I were in some kind of penal institution.” But of course, for Machen, a standard vehicle in traffic had only 20 horsepower with a top speed of 45 mph, so this example of “liberty” illustrates the obvious difference of his era with the complexities of our modern world. 

Libertarianism as a worldview has evolved in ways that no doubt would be denounced by Machen, so if “libertarian” for Machen had its present-day definition, then he would avoid that label with more vigor than with which he distanced himself from the label of “fundamentalist” which was much closer to his conservatism. Be that as it may, without its modern connotations, “libertarian” most fundamentally means advocating liberty in thought and conduct, and that individual liberty is best achieved by limiting the power of a centralized government. Machen often lamented the overreach and overgrowth of the federal government, especially in education and militarization. 

Whether Machen was right or wrong in his political views, he was a libertarian in the basic sense. 

Machen was very much an independent thinker, recognized by friend as well as foe as militant in his jealousy to protect essential gospel truths from the insidious inroads of liberal theology, which later became more described as Modernism, exposed and dismantled in Christianity & Liberalism (1923), his best-known work. Machen was vexed by what he and many of his colleagues saw as systemic failures in Presbyterianism: a form of church government designed (in theory) to protect the Christian society with principles of parity, plurality, accountability, and submission among “the rulers,” the elders in graded church courts, and “those ruled,” the members of local congregations. 

Perhaps an antinomy of Machen’s personality is that he rigorously propounded a very high view of personal freedom and autonomy, yet, for his entire career he remained faithful to Presbyterianism. Anyone who doubts this is liable to drown in his affirmations of it up to the final years of his life. 

“… When a man has once come into sympathetic contact with that noble tradition of the Reformed faith, he will never readily be satisfied with a mere ‘Fundamentalism’ that seeks in some hasty modern statement a greatest common measure between men of different creeds. Rather will he strive always to stand in that great central current of the church’s life that has come down to us through Augustine and Calvin to the Standards of the Reformed faith. …
The presentation of that body of truth necessarily involves controversy with opposing views. …
In all controversy, however, the great principle of liberty should be preserved. I am old-fashioned in my belief that the Bible is true, but I am equally old-fashioned in my love of freedom. I am opposed to the attack on freedom in whatever form it may come. …
Just because I believe in liberty, I believe in the right of purely voluntary association. I believe in the right of a voluntary association like the Presbyterian church. And true Christian fellowship, not forced organizational union of those who disagree in the whole direction of their thought and life, is the real need of the hour.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” 1932

Our question may be: Why would a person who believes in formal submission to power structures — including a system of oaths and vows under ecclesiastical authorities — be so gung-ho about individual rights? Machen’s writings on personal freedom developed in the historical context of trying to cleanse his Church from aberrant ideologies he watched erode its doctrinal integrity; and obviously, it’s outside our scope to account for everything he ever wrote. Yet, anyone who peruses Machen’s work may infer his explicit defenses of personal liberty actually were broadly consistent and coterminous with his implicit defenses of intermutual submission. These he held in tension. 

So, examining Machen’s various writings, how may we synthesize his libertarian and Presbyterian sensibilities instead of settling for contradictions in his thinking? Well, without overcomplicating a complex and nuanced subject, the simple answer is that Machen believed in the individual being accountable, submitting to ecclesiastical authorities — but when authorities coerce the individual to violate his conscience and principles, that’s the time when the individual must draw the line. 

Put differently, as much as Machen believed that the Christian should submit to an elder-governed church, he believed that the Christian also has the right to leave if he is compelled by conscience. It is irregular for a member of the institutional church — such as a minister under a presbytery or a member under a session — to conscientiously resign membership, which may entail renouncing his vows, such that he may immediately become a member at another branch of the visible church without transfer, or may temporarily be a member at no institutional body. Yet, church authorities, through their misconduct, often directly cause or at least create conditions for such irregularities. 

For the scope of our present essay, we’ll examine Machen’s libertarianism in terms of voluntarism, the principle of relying on voluntary action and freedom of choice, particularly when associating with ecclesiastical structures. This voluntarism was worked out in many of Machen’s letters about church and civil politics, and ultimately was forced in Machen’s deposition from the PCUSA, and then his and his allies’ immediate and subsequent convocation of the OPC as a new denomination. 

After this examination of Machen, we’ll revisit a milestone controversy in modern Presbyterianism which, for better or worse, fatefully shaped the trajectory of one denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, in juxtaposition between ecclesiastical accountability and individual liberty. When that top Court’s verdict was set down, a sizable minority of GA commissioners dissented, postulating that resignation of membership is unprecedented in church history. As this survey will demonstrate, that is factually inaccurate. It’s just not true. Presbyterian and Reformed scholarship is found as prolific with credible ballast upholding “Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience.” 

A reasonable person might think the notion of a church as a “voluntary organization” is a truism of the most tautological; yet there would seem to be some professional practitioners of “ministry” in the PCA who may still need such clarification from their own rudimentary governing standards. 

“There is sometimes a salutary lack of logic which prevents the whole of a man’s faith being destroyed when he has given up a part. But the true way in which to examine a spiritual movement is in its logical relations; logic is the great dynamic, and the logical implications of any way of thinking are sooner or later certain to be worked out.” 

— Christianity and Liberalism: Legacy Edition, J. Gresham Machen, 1923, p. 177 

“A variety of contexts are important to consider when reading Machen. The most obvious, though perhaps not the best, is the so-called fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s and 1930s in which Machen played the role of highbrow-fundamentalist. …
The reason why the fundamentalist controversy may not be the most useful study for understanding Machen better is that much of the literature on that episode in American church history overlooks important differences among America’s largest Protestant denominations. Machen himself preferred to be called a Calvinist rather than a fundamentalist. For that reason, the history of American Presbyterianism is a more important context for appropriating Machen.” 

— J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D.G. Hart, “For Further Reading” 

“To be sure, we do not want to engage in Machen-envy and exaggerate our own plight or cast every contemporary disagreement in apocalyptic terms.” 

— Christianity & Liberalism: 100th Anniversary Edition, Foreword, Kevin DeYoung

The author admits that all Machen’s writings had respective historical contexts, yet, the principles he espoused are apposite. So, the best method to explain Machen’s libertarianism/voluntarism is to just block-quote his writings with as much context as feasible, avoiding overburdening our survey. 

 

1. Machen on the church’s operation and law keeping as a civil entity 

“At the foundation of the life of every corporation is the incorporation paper, in which the objects of the corporation are set forth. Other objects may be vastly more desirable than those objects, but if the directors use the name and resources of the corporation to pursue the other objects they acting ultra vires of the corporation. So it is with Christianity. It is perfectly conceivable that the originators of the Christian movement had no right to legislate for subsequent generations; but at any rate they did have an inalienable right to legislate for all generations that should choose to bear the name of ‘Christian.’ It is conceivable that Christianity may now have to be abandoned, and another religion substituted for it; but at any rate the question what Christianity is can be determined only by an examination of the beginnings of Christianity.” 

— Christianity and Liberalism: Legacy Edition, J. Gresham Machen, 1923, p. 20 

“One of the most important elements in civil and religious liberty is the right of voluntary association—the right of citizens to band themselves together for any lawful purpose whatever, whether that purpose does or does not commend itself to the generality of their fellow men. Now, a church is a voluntary association. No one is compelled to be a member of it; no one is compelled to be one of its accredited representatives. It is, therefore, no interference with liberty for a church to insist that those who do choose to be its accredited representatives shall not use the vantage ground of such a position to attack that for which the church exists.
… a true Christian church will be radically ethical.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age,” 1933 

“On the contrary, it [the General Assembly] has always maintained that the right to control the property of the members of the Church, to assess the amount of their contributions, or to prescribe how they shall dispose of their money, is utterly foreign to the spirit of Presbyterianism. Every contribution on the part of an individual member of the Church must be purely voluntary. In fact, the Presbyterian Church itself is a voluntary association. All of its members voluntarily associate themselves with the Church, and maintain their affiliation with it no longer than they voluntarily choose to do so. All that they do for its support, therefore, is a voluntary donation, and there is no power which can compel them to contribute to any ecclesiastical object to which they are not willing to give.” 

— Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 1934, General Assembly Minutes, as extracted by J. Gresham Machen in “Statement to the Presbytery of New Brunswick,” 1935 

The Westminster Confession of Faith 

Chapter 23: Of the Civil Magistrate

3. Civil magistrates may not … in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord … And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever …
4. It is the duty of people to pray for magistrates, to honor their persons, to pay them tribute or other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and to be subject to their authority, for conscience’ sake. Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrates’ just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to them: from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted … upon any other pretense whatsoever. 

 

2. Machen on liberty, volition, and conscience in ecclesial contexts

“Nothing engenders strife so much as a forced unity, within the same organization, of those who disagree fundamentally in aim.
But is not advocacy of such separation a flagrant instance of intolerance? The objection is often raised. But it ignores altogether the difference between involuntary and voluntary organizations. Involuntary organizations ought to be tolerant, but voluntary organizations, so far as the fundamental purpose of their existence is concerned, must be intolerant or else cease to exist. The state is an involuntary organization; a man is forced to be a member of it whether he will or no. It is therefore an interference with liberty for the state to prescribe any one type of opinion or any one type of education for its citizens. But within the state, individual citizens who desire to unite for some special purpose should be permitted to do so. Especially in the sphere of religion, such permission of individuals to unite is one of the rights which lie at the very foundation of our civil and religious liberty. The state does not scrutinize the rightness or wrongness of the religious purpose for which such voluntary religious associations are formed—if it did undertake such scrutiny all religious liberty would be gone—but it merely protects the right of individuals to unite for any religious purpose which they may choose.
Among such voluntary associations are to be found the evangelical churches. An evangelical church is composed of a number of persons who have come to agreement in a certain message about Christ and who desire to unite in the propagation of that message, as it set forth in their creed on the basis of the Bible. No one is forced to unite himself with the body thus formed; and because of this total absence of compulsion there can be no interference with liberty in the maintenance of any specific purpose—for example, the propagation of a message—as a fundamental purpose of the association. …
It is never kind to encourage a man to enter into a life of dishonesty. The fact often seems to be forgotten that the evangelical Churches are purely voluntary organizations; no one is required to enter into their service. If a man cannot accept the belief of such churches, there are other ecclesiastical bodies in which he can find a place. The belief of the Presbyterian Church, for example, is plainly set forth in the Confession of Faith, and the Church will never afford any warmth of communion or engage with any real vigor in her work until her ministers are in whole-hearted agreement with that belief. It is strange how in the interests of an utterly false kindness to men, Christiansare sometimes willing to relinquish their loyalty to the crucified Lord.” 

— Christianity and Liberalism: Legacy Edition, J. Gresham Machen, 1923, pp. 171-172, 179 

“It is true that Christianity as over against certain social tendencies of the present day insists upon the rights of the individual soul. We do not deny the fact; on the contrary, we glory in it.
Christianity, if it is true Christianity, must place itself squarely in opposition to the soul-killing collectivism which is threatening to dominate our social life; it must provide the individual soul with a secret place of refuge from the tyranny of psychological experts; it must fight the great battle for the liberty of the children of God.
The rapidly progressing loss of liberty is one of the most striking phenomena of recent years. At times it makes itself felt in blatant ways, as in the notorious Lusk laws for the licensing of teachers in the State of New York, or in the Oregon school law now being tested in the United States courts. Liberty still has some bulwarks, but even those bulwarks are threatened. In Nebraska, for example, were the study of languages other than English was forbidden and thus literary education was made a crime, all outer defenses were broken through and the enemy was checked only by the last bulwark of liberty, the United States Supreme Court. But unless the temper of the people changes, that bulwark also will fall. If liberty is to be preserved against the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, there must be something more than courts and legal guarantees; freedom must be written not merely in the constitution but in the people’s heart. And it can be written in the heart, we believe, only as a result of the redeeming work of Christ. Other means in the long run will fail. Sometimes, it is true, self-interest will accomplish beneficent results. The Lusk Laws, for example, which attacked liberty of speech in the State of New York, were opposed partly by the socialists against whom the laws were originally aimed. But the trouble is that socialism, if it were ever put into effect, would mean a physical, intellectual, and spiritual slavery more appalling than that which prevailed under the worst despotisms that the world so far has ever known. The real defenders of liberty are those who are devoted to it for its own sake, who believe that freedom of speech means not only freedom for those with whom they are agreed but also freedom for those to whom they are opposed. It is such a defense of liberty which is favored by the true followers of Christ.
But at this point an objection might arise. ‘Fundamentalism,’ it is said, ‘is a synonym of intolerance; and the writer of the present article desires to cast out of the ministry of his church those who hold views different from his own.’ How can such a person pretend to be a lover of liberty?
The objection ignores the distinction between voluntary and involuntary organizations. The state is an involuntary organization, an organization to which a man is forced to belong whether he will or not. For such an organization to prescribe any one type of education for its members is an intolerable interference with liberty. But the church is a purely voluntary organization, and no one is forced to enter its ministry. For such an organization to prescribe terms of admission and to insist that its authorized teachers shall be in agreement with the creed or message for the propagation of which the church exists involves not the slightest interference with liberty, but is a matter of plain common honesty and common sense.
Insistence on fundamental agreement within a voluntary organization is therefore not at all inconsistent with insistence upon the widest tolerance in the state. Indeed, the two things are not merely consistent, but are connected logically in the closest possible way. One of the essential elements in civil and religious liberty is the right of voluntary association—the right of individuals to associate themselves closely for the propagation of anything that they may desire, no matter how foolish it may seem to others to be. This right is being maintained by ‘Fundamentalists,’ and it is being combated subtly but nonetheless dangerously by some of their opponents. The most serious danger to liberty in America today is found in the widespread tendency toward a centralized state monopoly in education—the tendency which has manifested itself crassly and brutally in the Oregon school law, and which manifests itself more subtly in the proposed development of a federal department of education, which will make another great addition to the vast Washington bureaucracy, the bureaucracy which with its discouragement of spiritual initiative is doing so much to drain the lifeblood of the people. The same tendency manifests itself also in the advocacy of anti-theological and anti-evangelical propaganda under the guise of ‘character-building’ in monopolistic public schools. Under these circumstances, it has come about—paradoxical though it may seem—that one of the chief defenders of American liberty is the Roman Catholic church. Catholics and ‘Fundamentalists,’ despite their immense differences, are at least agreed, in America, in their insistence upon the right of voluntary association; and such insistence is the very foundation of civil and religious liberty. To persuade Catholic parents to send their children to non-Catholic schools is no doubt in many cases wise; to force them to do so, no matter how high the motive of the compulsion, is tyranny. The end, we hold, does not justify the means, and violation of sacred rights will in the long run, through the retributive justice of God, bring ruin. … The process of decadence has been going on apace, and it is high time to seek a way of rescue if mankind is to be saved from the abyss. Such a way of rescue is provided by the Christian religion, with its supernatural origin and supernatural power. It is a great mistake to represent us who are adherents of historic Christianity as though we were clinging desperately to the past merely because it is old, and as though we had no message of hope. On the contrary, our eyes are turned eagerly to the future. We are seeking no mere continuation of spiritual conditions that now exist but an outburst of new power; we are looking for a mighty revival of the Christian religion which like the Reformation of the sixteenth century will bring light and liberty to mankind. When such a revival comes, it will destroy no fine or unselfish or noble thing; it will hasten and not hinder the relief of the physical distress of men and the improvement of conditions in this world. But it will do far more than all that. It will also descend into the depths—those depths into which utilitarianism can never enter—and will again bring mankind into the glorious liberty of communion with the living God.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Does Fundamentalism Obstruct Social Progress?”, 1924 

“It is intolerance because it is based upon the denial of that right of voluntary association which is at the very basis of liberty.
A creedal church seems foolish to the Modernist preachers, but if they are really intolerant they will recognize its right in a free country to exist and to maintain its existence by insisting that its accredited representatives shall not combat its fundamental purpose from within. We who insist upon honesty in creed-subscription are really insisting not merely upon honesty but also upon the central principles of freedom.
But such right of voluntary association—voluntary association even for purposes which to other persons seem foolish and absurd—is possible only where there is tolerance on the part of the state.
There is a fundamental distinction between an involuntary organization like the state, an organization to which a man must belong whether he will or no, and a purely voluntary organization like the church. For if a man does not agree with that type of teaching, he can seek another platform in which he can really speak his full mind. …
But entirely different is an involuntary association like the state. For the state to force any one type of teaching upon its citizens, or upon the children of its citizens, is the crassest tyranny. Within the state there should be tolerance, or liberty is at an end.
Tolerance, moreover, means not merely tolerance for that with which we are agreed but also tolerance for that to which we are most thoroughly opposed. … Tolerance, to me, does not mean merely tolerance for what I hold to be good, but also tolerance for what I hold to be abominably bad.
… Against such tyranny, I do cherish some hope that Jews and Christians, Roman Catholics and Protestants, if they are lovers of liberty, may present a united front. I am for my part an inveterate propagandist; but the same right of propaganda which I desire for myself I want to see also in the possession of others.
What absurdities are uttered in the name of a pseudo-Americanism today! People object to the Roman Catholics, for example, because they engage in ‘propaganda.’ But why should they not engage in propaganda? And how should we have any respect for them if, holding the view which they do hold—that outside of the Roman church there is no salvation—they did not engage in propaganda first, last, and all the time? Clearly they have a right to do so, and clearly we have a right to do the same.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Relations between Jews and Christians,” 1924 

“There is one advantage about facts—they ‘stay put.’ If a thing really happened, it can never possibly be made by the passage of time or by the advance of science into a thing that has not happened. New facts may be discovered, and certainly we Christians welcome the discovery of new facts with all our heart; but old facts, if they are really facts, will remain facts beyond the end of time.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “What Fundamentalism Stands for Now,” 1925 

“Such are my ecclesiastical and theological views. If they disqualify a man … I only request that it should be based upon the true ground—that if the real objection to me is found in my ecclesiastical views and my consistent carrying out of the implications of them, my character should not continue to be maligned by making alleged ‘temperamental defects,’ or harshness or bitterness or the like, the reason for what is done. If zeal for the defense of the Presbyterian church—even a zeal that many think excessive—disqualifies a man … then I only ask that the fact should be made clearly known.
I venture, however, to hope that you will bring in no such report. … I venture still to ask that you do not content yourselves with a technical opinion but that you express your judgment regarding the charges that have been brought against me. Whatever the form of your report with regard to the legal aspects of the case, I seek and respectfully request public vindication at your hands. …
Perhaps it may be objected that if we continue to be tolerated, we shall harm the church by an insistence upon the maintenance of a strict view of its doctrinal standards. … The truth, after all, will prevail.
If we are wrong, we shall come to naught. Surely it would be better to tolerate our teaching and to refute it in public discussion than to engage in a method of suppression which clearly would involve a breach of faith.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Statement to the Committee to Investigate Princeton,” 1926 

“Conviction has issued here truly into Christian life.
… It may come squarely into conflict, at some points, with the present leadership of the church. But because the fervent piety … may be opposed at some points to the ecclesiastical machinery, it does not follow that the ecclesiastical machinery should be allowed to crush it out.
Long has been the conflict, during nineteen centuries, between ecclesiastical authority and the free and mysterious operation of the Spirit of God. But under our Presbyterian institutions the tyrannical practices to which ecclesiastical authority has elsewhere resorted are an anomaly and a shame.
… In discussing ‘the future of evangelical Christianity,’ we do not mean the ultimate future. The ultimate future, according to the great and precious promises of God, is sure; if evangelical Christianity is true, it cannot ultimately fail.
But the future of which we are speaking is the immediate future. The gospel will triumph in the end, but meanwhile we are living in a time of conflict when we need to ask what it is God’s will that we should do. …
Ecclesiastical action can never, indeed, destroy vital Christianity from human hearts. …
Vital Christianity never will be crushed out of the world by action of church legislatures or courts. The gospel of Christ is still enshrined, even in these sad, cold days, in the hearts of men.
But though vital Christianity cannot be destroyed by ecclesiastical action, it may be driven out of the Presbyterian church; Christian people are trying vainly to keep the waters sweet when the fountain is corrupt. It will be a sad day if Presbyterianism in America falls into such a condition as that. …
But possibly the leaders may come to see, on sober second thought, that even from their point of view the end is being attained at too great a cost, that in running roughshod over the principles of liberty in the church they are really harming their own cause, that theological pacifism will hardly prosper in the long run if it is stained with crime.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “The Attack upon Princeton Seminary: A Plea for Fair Play,” 1927 

“The Present Duty of the Conservatives
Under these discouraging circumstances, what should be done by the sound elements in the church? The answer might seem to be that they ought to withdraw from the existing organization and form a real Presbyterian church that should be true to the Reformed faith.
From such a course of action—upon which God has put such signal marks of his favor both in Holland and in the Christian Reformed church in America—they have been deterred especially by the conviction, which many of them cherish, that the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. is fundamentally sound and that if its rank and file only knew what is going on, it would stand true to the Word of God.
In support of this conviction, some things undoubtedly may be said. Those who are in control of the ecclesiastical machinery have done everything in their power to prevent light from being shed upon the issues of the day. … Hence many votes unquestionably were cast in complete ignorance of the issues that were at stake.
It is, indeed, very strange that if the heart of our church is really sound, it does not react vigorously against such unjust and ruthless measures … But doubtful though we hold the optimistic conviction about the soundness of the church to be, that conviction is at least natural; and since God, alas, has raised up no Abraham Kuyper to lead us in the true path, many of our number are at present uncertain what our immediate ecclesiastical duty is. …
One thing, at least, is clear—if there is to be any conservation of the sound element in the Presbyterian church, we must have a truly Reformed, and ringingly polemic, source of ministerial supply.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Is There a Future for Calvinism in the Presbyterian Church?” The Banner 65, 1930 

“What, then if it is not found in incidentals—even so stupendous as incidental as the world war—is the real indictment against the modern world? The answer seems clear enough to some of us. The real indictment against the modern world is that by the modern world human liberty is being destroyed.
At that point, no doubt, many readers will only with difficulty repress a smile. The word ‘liberty’ today has a decidedly archaic sound. It suggests G. A. Rnety, flag-waving, the boys of ’76, and the like. Twentieth-century intellectuals, it is thought, have long ago outgrown all such childishness as that. So the modern historians are writing ‘liberty’ in quotation marks, when they are obliged to use the ridiculous word: no principle, they are telling us, for example, was involved in the American Revolution; economic causes alone produced that struggle; and Patrick Henry was indulging in cheap melodrama when he said: ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ Certainly, at any rate, whatever our estimate of history, liberty is out of date in modern life. Standardization and efficiency have very largely taken its place.
… The trouble is not that the modern world has been unsuccessful in an effort to preserve liberty, but that it is not seeking to preserve liberty at all. Mussolini is thought to be a benefactor of the race because, although liberty of speech is destroyed in Italy, the streets of Italian cities are clean. The Soviet tyrants in Russia are said not to be efficient, but it never seems to occur to modern critics that they would be far more dangerous tyrants if they were. Mankind, in other words, has become willing to buy material benefits at any price. I do not know how the bargain will turn out in detail. But in the bargain something at any rate will have been lost. We may have gained the whole world, but we are in danger of losing our own soul.
… What is to be thought of such a mechanistic world? I will tell you what we think of it: we think it is a world in which all zest, all glory, all that makes life worth living will have been destroyed. It will no doubt have its advantages. In it, no doubt, the span of our life may be extended far beyond the previously allotted period of threescore years and ten. Experts appointed by the state will always be by our side to examine our physical and mental condition and keep us alive upon the earth. But what will be the use? Who would want to live longer in a world where life is so little worth living?
From such a slavery, which is already stalking through the earth in the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, from such a world of unrelieved drabness, we seek escape in the high adventure of the Christian religion. Men call us, indeed, devotees of a book. They are right. We are devotees of a book. But the book to which we are devoted is the Magna Charta of human liberty—the book which alone can make men free.
At that point I am particularly desirous of not being misunderstood. I do not mean for one moment that a man can ever become a real Christian merely through a desire to attain civil or political freedom or even the very highest of worldly ends. Valuable are the by-products of Christianity, and one of them is the civil liberty of the race. But if a man carries on this undertaking for the sake of the by-products, the undertaking and the by-products are both sure to be lost. Jesus said indeed: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’: but if a man seeks the kingdom of God and his righteousness in order that all these things may be added unto him, he will miss the kingdom of God and those other things as well.
But what I do mean is that the defects of the modern world, though they will never make a man a Christian in themselves, may yet lead him to a consideration of far profounder needs. He may begin by seeking escape from mechanism and go on to seek escape from sin. In the Christian religion, we find a liberty that is far deeper than the civil and religious liberty of which we have spoken. It is a liberty that enters into the depths of the soul.
In the Bible, we find, in the first place, God. Back of the stupendous mechanism of the world there stands, as the Master of it and not as its slave, no machine but a living person. He is enveloped, indeed, in awful mystery; a dreadful curtain veils his being from the gaze of men. But unlike the world, he is free, and he has chosen in his freedom to lift the veil and grant us just a look beyond. In that look we have freedom from the mechanism of the world. God is free, and where he is, there is liberty and life.
In the Bible, we find, in the second place, we find man; we regain that birthright of freedom which had been taken from us by the modern mind. It is a dreadful birthright indeed. For with freedom goes responsibility, and with responsibility, for us, there goes the awful guilt of sin. That conscience awakens which makes cowards of us all. Gone for us Christians is the complacency of the modern mind; gone is the lax, comforting notion that crime is only a disease; gone is the notion that strips the ermine from the judge and makes him but the agent of a utilitarian society; gone is the blindness that refuses to face the moral facts. The Christian world, unlike the modern world, is a world of nameless terrors; the Christian views man as standing over a bottomless abyss. Such a view will find little sympathy from the experts of the present day; they will doubtless apply to it their usual method of dealing with a thing that they do not understand—they will give it a long name and let it go. But is their judgment really to be trusted? There are some of us who think not. There are some of us who think that the moral judgments of us sinners, even when they are the judgments of experts, are not always to be trusted, and that the real pathway of advance for humanity lies through a rediscovery of the law of God.
In the third place, in the Bible we find redemption. Into this vast universe, into this world of sin, there came in God’s good time a divine Redeemer. No mere teacher is he to us, no mere example, no mere leader into a larger life, no mere symbol or embodiment of an all-pervading divinity. No; we stand to him, if we are really his, in a relationship far dearer, far closer than all that. For us he gave his precious life upon the cross to make all well between us sinners and the righteous God, by whose love he came. …
And then, by God’s grace, there may come, when you least expect it, a flash of light into your soul, and all will be as clear as day. Then you will say with Paul, as you contemplate the Savior upon the cross: ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’ Thus will the ancient burden fall from our back; then do we become true moderns at last. ‘Old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.’ Then and then only will you have true freedom. It will be a freedom from mechanism, but the freedom from mechanism will be rooted in a freedom from sin. …
No, the battle between naturalism and supernaturalism, between mechanism and liberty, has to be fought out sooner or later; and I do not believe that there is any advantage in letting the enemy choose the ground on which it shall be fought. The strongest defense of the Christian religion is the outer defense; a reduced and inconsistent Christianity is weak; our real safety lies in the exultant supernaturalism of God’s Word.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Liberty,” 1931 

“The ecclesiastical machinery seems to have done its work well. …
It is evident that any consistent Christian man will count it a disgrace to be acquitted on any doctrinal issue by such a court, and an honor to be condemned. But the composition of the court shows that the corporate life of the Presbyterian church is corrupt at the very core, and that until the sin of the church is honestly faced and removed, all the great swelling words about the church’s work and all the bustle of its organizational activities can avail but little in the sight of God.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “The Truth about the Presbyterian Church,” Christianity Today, November 1931, December 1931, January 1932 

“An account of personal experiences may be interesting for one of two reasons: (1) because the writer is in some way remarkable; (2) because, not being at all remarkable, he may be able to set forth in a concrete way the experience of a considerable body of men.
… When a man has once come into sympathetic contact with that noble tradition of the Reformed faith, he will never readily be satisfied with a mere ‘Fundamentalism’ that seeks in some hasty modern statement a greatest common measure between men of different creeds. Rather will he strive always to stand in that great central current of the church’s life that has come down to us through Augustine and Calvin to the Standards of the Reformed faith. …
The presentation of that body of truth necessarily involves controversy with opposing views. People sometimes tell us that they are tired of controversy in the church. ‘Let us cease this tiresome controversy,’ they say, ‘and ask God, instead, for a great revival.’ Well, one thing is clear about revivals—a revival that does not stir up controversy is sure to be a sham revival, not a real one. That has been clear ever since our Lord said that he had come not to bring peace upon the earth but a sword. A man who is really on fire with a message never thinks of decrying controversy but speaks the truth that God has given him to speak without thought of the favor of men.
In all controversy, however, the great principle of liberty should be preserved. I am old-fashioned in my belief that the Bible is true, but I am equally old-fashioned in my love of freedom. I am opposed to the attack on freedom in whatever form it may come. I am opposed to the Soviets, and I am opposed to Mussolini. For the same reason also, I am opposed to the rapidly growing bureaucracy in this country.
I am opposed to a federal department of education; I am opposed to monopolistic public schools; I am opposed to a standardization that treats human beings as though they were Ford cars.
For the same reason, to say nothing for far deeper reasons, I am opposed to a church union, which is the deadliest enemy of Christian unity. I am opposed with all my mind and heart to the depressing dream of a monopolistic Protestant church organization placing the whole Protestant world under one set of tyrannical committees and boards. I am opposed to the growing discouragement of free discussion in my own church and other churches. I am opposed to secret church courts of judicial commissions. In all ecclesiastical affairs I believe in open covenants openly arrived at. I am opposed with all my might to actions like the action of the last Presbyterian General Assembly tending to discourage publicity regarding measures proposed for adoption by the church.
Just because I believe in liberty, I believe in the right of purely voluntary association.
I believe in the right of a voluntary association like the Presbyterian church. If a man does not believe that the Bible is true, and in his interpretation of the Bible is not an adherent of the Reformed faith, I am opposed to exerting any compulsion on him to become a Presbyterian minister. If he adopts some position other than that of the Presbyterian church, let him have full liberty to become a minister in some other body. But if he does choose to become a Presbyterian minister, I hold that he should be able honestly, and without mental reservation, to subscribe to the ordination pledge setting forth that for which the Presbyterian church exists. Without such honesty there can be no possibility of Christian fellowship anywhere for those who do with their whole heart hold to what that pledge sets forth. And true Christian fellowship, not forced organizational union of those who disagree in the whole direction of their thought and life, is the real need of the hour.
… Contrast the glories of God’s Word … contrast the liberty of the sons of God with the ever-increasing slavery into which mankind is falling in our time, and I think we shall come to see with new clearness, despite the opposition of the world, that we have no reason to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” 1932

“Something very similar needs to be said in the realm of political and social science. There, too, something is being lost—something very precious, though very intangible and very difficult of defense before those who have not the love of it in their hearts. I refer to civil and religious liberty, for which our fathers were willing to sacrifice so much.
The word ‘liberty’ has a very archaic sound today; it is often put in quotation marks by those who are obliged to use the ridiculous word at all. Yet despised though liberty is, there are still those who love it; and unless their love of it can be eradicated from their unprogressive souls, they will never be able to agree, in their estimate of the modern age, with those who do not love it.
To those lovers of civil and religious liberty I confess that I belong; in fact, civil and religious liberty seems to me to be more valuable than any other earthly thing—than any other thing short of the truer and profounder liberty which only God can give.
What estimate of the present age can possibly be complete that does not take account of what is so marked a feature of it—namely, the loss of those civil liberties for which men formerly were willing to sacrifice all that they possessed? In some countries, such as Russia and Italy, the attack upon liberty has been blatant and extreme, but exactly the same forces which appear there in more consistent form appear in practically all the countries of the earth. Everywhere we have the substitution of economic considerations for great principles in the conduct of the state; everywhere a centralized state, working as the state necessarily must work, by the use of force, is taking possession of the most intimate fields of individual and family life.
These tendencies have proceeded more rapidly in America than in most other countries of the world; for if they have not progressed so far here as elsewhere, that is only because in America they had a greater handicap to overcome. Thirty years ago we hated bureaucracy and pitied those countries in Europe that were under bureaucratic control; today we are rapidly becoming one of the most bureaucratic countries in the world.
… If that battle is lost, if collectivism finally triumphs, if we come to live in a world where recreation as well as labor is prescribed for us by experts appointed by the state, if the sweetness and the sorrows of family relationships are alike eliminated and liberty becomes a thing of the past, we ought to place the blame of this sad denouement—for this sad result of all the pathetic strivings of the human race—exactly where it belongs. And it does not belong to the external conditions of modern life. I know that there are those who say that it does belong there; I know that there are those who tell us that individualism is impossible in an industrial age. But I do not believe them for one moment. Unquestionably, industrialism, with the accompanying achievements of modern science in both the physical and the social realm, does constitute a great temptation to destroy freedom; but temptation is not a compulsion, and of real compulsion there is none.
No, my friends, there is no real reason for mankind to surrender to the machine. If liberty is crushed out, if standardization has its perfect work, if the worst of all tyrannies, the tyranny of the expert, becomes universal, if the finer aspirations of humanity give way to drab efficiency, do not blame the external conditions in the world today. If human life becomes mechanized, do not blame the machine. Put the blame exactly where it belongs—upon the soul of man.
… But in general, the false position in which they stand has militated against their highest usefulness. Equivocation, the double use of traditional terminology, subscription to solemn creedal statements in a sense different from the sense originally intended in those statements—these things give a man a poor platform upon which to stand, no matter what it is that he proposes, upon that platform, to do.
… a true Christian church will be radically intolerant. At that point, however, a word of explanation is in place. The intolerance of the church, in the sense in which I am speaking of it, does not involve any interference with liberty; on the contrary, it means the preservation of liberty. One of the most important elements in civil and religious liberty is the right of voluntary association—the right of citizens to band themselves together for any lawful purpose whatever, whether that purpose does or does not commend itself to the generality of their fellow men. Now, a church is a voluntary association. No one is compelled to be a member of it; no one is compelled to be one of its accredited representatives. It is, therefore, no interference with liberty for a church to insist that those who do choose to be its accredited representatives shall not use the vantage ground of such a position to attack that for which the church exists.
… a true Christian church will be radically ethical.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age,” 1933

“WHY I CANNOT OBEY THE ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 

A. Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would involve support of a propaganda that is contrary to the gospel of Christ.
… Evidence in support of this assertion was adduced in my argument … The charges against the policy … that were made in the argument have never been refuted. …
Actions of the General Assembly … which have been taken after the issuance of my argument have not all served to invalidate the charges made in that argument, but have rather served to substantiate them. … 

B. Obedience to the order of the General Assembly would involve the substitution of a human authority for the authority of the Word of God. …
That obedience on my part will be generally taken to mean just this is also made clear by the fact that the principle of implicit obedience to boards and agencies is being widely advocated in the church. … The same principle has been advocated widely in the church in other ways. …
I cannot evade the issue. If I obey the order of the General Assembly … I shall plainly be taken as holding that support of the official boards and agencies is an obligation of all ministers and members in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; and that will plainly mean that I shall have substituted a human authority for the authority of the Word of God. …
It is true, the action of the General Assembly in another place does give lip service to freedom. …
The Bible forbids a man to substitute any human authority for the Word of God.
‘Ye were bought with a price,’ says the Bible; ‘be not ye the servants of men’ (1 Cor. 7:23).
That verse only summarizes the whole teaching of the Bible with regard to the seat of authority. The conflict between the Bible and the General Assembly is here particularly plain. I cannot hesitate about the side that I shall take in that conflict.
In demanding that I shall shift my message to suit the shifting votes of an Assembly that is elected anew every year, the General Assembly is attacking Christian liberty; but what should never be forgotten is that to attack Christian liberty is to attack the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
I desire to say very plainly to the Presbytery of New Brunswick that as a minister I have placed myself under the orders of Jesus Christ as his will is made known to me through the Scriptures. That is at the heart and core of Protestantism. It is also at the heart and core of the teaching of the Word of God. I cannot give it up.
If I read the Bible aright, a man who obtains his message from the pronouncements of presbyteries or General Assemblies instead of from the Bible is not truly a minister of Jesus Christ. He may wear the garb of a minister, but he is not a minister in the sight of God.
By the issuance of this command, the General Assembly has attached the authority of the Bible in very much the same way as the way in which it is attacked by the Roman Catholic church. The Roman Catholic church does not deny the authority of the Bible. Indeed, it defends the truth of the Bible, and noble service is being rendered in that defense, in our times, by Roman Catholic scholars. But we are opposed to the Roman Catholic position for one great central reason—because it holds that there is a living human authority that has a right to give an authoritative interpretation of the Bible. We are opposed to it because it holds that the seat of authority in religion is not just the Bible but the Bible interpreted authoritatively by the church. That, we hold, is a deadly error indeed: it puts fallible men in a place of authority that belongs only to the Word of God.
The same thing exactly was done by the 1934 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. That Assembly abandoned the Reformation and returned essentially to the Roman Catholic position.
… it held that a minister must take his Bible from his pulpit desk and put the last minutes of the General Assembly in its place—or rather, that he must keep the Bible there but put the minutes of the General Assembly on top of it, limiting his interpretation of the Bible to what the last General Assembly says the Bible means.
That command was contrary to the heart and core of Protestantism. But it was contrary to something more than Protestantism; it was contrary to the Word of the living God. I desire to say very plainly to the Presbytery of New Brunswick that I cannot obey such a command. If I obeyed it, in order to obtain ecclesiastical favor, then the ministry would have become for me only a profession, and rather a contemptible profession too. I cannot thus deny my Savior and Lord.
I must obey God rather than men. …
The action of the General Assembly, involving as it does, and as I have shown above, the substitution of a human authority for the Word of God, is contrary to the express provisions of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and to the entire tenor of that constitution from beginning to end. …
The policy of the boards and agencies may change completely from year to year, since the boards are elected by successive General Assemblies. Therefore, the program of the boards may be one program this year and an opposite program next year. ‘Never mind,’ says the action of the General Assembly in effect; ‘a man must support any program which the General Assembly establishes no matter how much that program may differ from the program which it established the previous year.’ …
b. This Action of the General Assembly, the meaning of which is, as I have said, made perfectly plain by the application of the principle involved in it in the addition to the manual of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, is contrary to the Confession of Faith, which contains the following paragraph (Chapter XX, Section ii):

II. God alone is lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.

If anything in this world could be held to involve ‘the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute blind obedience’ it is the action of the General Assembly and the addition to the manual of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, of which we are speaking just now.
c. The action of the General Assembly, with the addition to the manual of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, is contrary also to the following paragraph of the Confession of Faith (Chapter XXXI, Section iii):

III. All synods or councils since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore, they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both. 

It is true that the immediately preceding section in the Confession of Faith is as follows (Chapter XXXI, Section ii):

II. It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially, to determine the controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of mal-administration, and authoritatively to determine the same: which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his Word.

But in the use which has been made argumentatively of this section, great mischief has been wrought by failure to notice the momentous words ‘if consonant to the Word of God.’ The decrees and determinations of synods and councils are not to be received unless they are consonant to the Word of God. To ignore those words is to do away with Protestantism, and return, essentially, to the Roman Catholic position. If those words are ignored, one has to ignore the rest of our Protestant and particularly Presbyterian view of the government of the church.
d. This action of the General Assembly, again as its meaning is made clear by the addition to the manual of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, is shown to be contrary to the whole tenor of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., because persons who submit to it are binding themselves either to conduct which is contrary to common honesty or else to conduct which is an evasion of the plain responsibilities of a member or a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. … What course of action is open to such a minister? He is convinced that the boards and agencies are dishonest. The General Assembly is convinced that they are honest. What shall he do in such a situation? …
Support of any particular human agency is most emphatically not required in the Word of God. It is really a very dreadful thing when a fallible human agency sets up its particular program for any one year as being on a par with a holy ordinance instituted by Christ and given by him to the church. I really do not see how human presumption could go much further than that presumption of which the last General Assembly has made itself guilty.
That dreadful sentence, which has seemed to some devout men in the church to be almost blasphemous, is certainly abhorrent not only to the express provisions of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. but to the whole tenor of that constitution from beginning to end. … The action of the General Assembly is contrary to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. because it requires support of an agency … which at present is unfaithful to the Word of God.
It is not necessary to labor this point. If the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. is unfaithful to what is set forth in the Word of God, then I doubt whether anyone would be quite bold enough to argue that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. can possibly require support of such a board.
But what I want to make perfectly plain is that all the rest of my argument in the present statement is entirely valid even if I am wrong in holding that the Board of Foreign Missions is at present unfaithful. The point is that if I am conscientiously convinced that it is unfaithful, then, whether I am right or wrong in that, the constitution of the church forbids my being coerced in the manner that is involved in the action of the General Assembly. 

CONCLUSION
It has been shown in the foregoing statement that the action of the 1934 General Assembly ordering certain persons to sever their connection with the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and ordering certain presbyteries to take disciplinary steps in case these persons should not obey that part of the order addressed to them is contrary to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
What should be done about the matter?
The answer to that question is very simple. Since the action of the General Assembly was unconstitutional, it should be ignored both by the individuals concerned and by the presbyteries.” 

— J. Gresham Machen, “Statement to the Presbytery of New Brunswick,” 1935 

 

3. Machen’s biographer on his defense of ecclesiastical and civil liberties

“A distressing aspect of the entire controversy is that the charges … were often made by men who simply by-passed the issue of honesty. …
In the last analysis … he … was willing to labour in season and out of season regardless of personal cost. He was bound therefore to be identified prominently with that cause, and to be attacked by those who were attacking it. But there were also several times when [he] became the victim of false charges and rumours that were widely circulated, and so his good name was besmirched. Dr Macartney once characterized the abusive letters which he and other valiant defenders of the faith received as ‘the liturgy of execration.’ But the letters themselves could easily be destroyed. It was not so easy to destroy the evil effects of slander and false rumour. …
One of the most astonishing features of the situation was that Dr Eerdman never acknowledged, at least not in print, that Machen had been unfairly attacked. …
What has been added in these few pages is thought advisable only because of a concern to put to silence once and for all malicious and irresponsible false witness by means of disclosure of the facts.
It has indeed been a sordid piece of business that, in the name of religion, men have resorted to the spread of false rumours in order to weaken Machen’s testimony and to belittle the cause for which he suffered and toiled.
But he bore this trial with self-denial and patience, and with such single-minded dedication to the cause of the truth, that the nobility of his character shone forth the more brightly because of the ignominy that was heaped upon him.” 

— J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, Ned B. Stonehouse, circa 1925-1926, pp. 388, 428, 434, 454 

“But Machen, ever alert to threats to individual liberty … Machen’s outlook is not grasped at all unless one discerns that he was passionately devoted to liberty and that this commitment was anchored profoundly in his Christian faith and outlook. In an era when the state was encroaching more and more upon the liberty of the individual, Machen was greatly exercised that men should be aroused to pay the price necessary to preserve it.” 

— ibid., pp. 466, 470 

“Thus with one stroke Machen was denied the right of having his day in court to prove that the order which he disobeyed was an unlawful order. It remains almost incredible that a Presbyterian court should thus have flouted the most elementary principles of justice. That it happened can only be attributed to a shocking disregard of the basic Protestant principles that God alone is Lord of the conscience and that the Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice by which all controversies are to be judged.
The Verdict
As a matter of course Machen thus was not accorded an opportunity of defence. And so the verdict of ‘Guilty’ rendered on March 29 could be foreseen. The judgment was that he should be suspended from the ministry. Appeal was taken to the Synod and ultimately to the General Assembly, but both Synod and Assembly (the Syracuse Assembly of 1936) rejected the appeal. And so one of the most extraordinary developments in modern church history came to pass.
There was widespread astonishment at the nature and results of the trial. …
The possibility of the eventuation of a separation from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. was in view for many years as the strenuous efforts at reformation seemed to be of little or no avail.
If Machen had yielded to the course calculated to give him the utmost personal happiness and ease, he would long before have left the Presbyterian Church. Added to the coldness or hostility with which his reformatory labours were generally greeted was the bitter and depressing experience of being made the object of abuse and slander. But considerations of principle restrained him from precipitate action. Machen did not share the widespread depreciation of the doctrine of the visible church which had found expression among many fundamentalists who remained in the organized churches or had come to more consistent expression in contemporary undenominationalism. Nor did he hold to independency. He was nothing more nor less than a Presbyterian.
Moreover, as a minister in the Presbyterian Church his zeal to uphold the Constitution was second to none. Indeed to a large extent the issue of the day, as he viewed it, was whether the Constitution was to be maintained. Accordingly, his was not a sense of estrangement from or slackening of loyalty to historic Presbyterianism. Not he but those who were proving unfaithful to their vows, he felt, should have taken the honest course of leaving the church. Schism, moreover, and for the same basic reasons of principle, was abhorrent to him. On one occasion he spoke of it as ‘a very heinous sin’. Separation from a church could be countenanced only if it was demonstrated that that organization had abandoned the authority of the word of God for another authority, only, that is, if it proved thereby that it was not really a church of Jesus Christ. Under such circumstances, however, it would virtually be an act of schism to remain, for then one would be separating oneself from the true church of Jesus Christ. …
In this atmosphere of tyranny preparations were made for eventualities through the organization of the Constitutional Covenant Union on June 27, 1935. As the central features of its constitution it adopted articles on Purpose and Pledge which precisely delineated its character. … it stated: 

The purpose of this Covenant Union shall be to defend and maintain the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.—that is, to defend (1) the word of God upon which the Constitution is based, (2) the full, glorious system of revealed truth contained in the Confession of Faith and Catechisms, commonly called (to distinguish it from various forms of error) the ‘Reformed Faith’, and (3) the truly scriptural principles of Presbyterian church government guaranteeing the Christian’s freedom from implicit obedience to any human councils and courts and recognizing instead, in the high biblical sense, the authority of God.” 

— ibid., pp. 577-578, 581-582, 584 

 

4. Historical theology propounding the Christian’s liberty of conscience 

Church history is pregnant with presbyterians, from apostolic times through the Reformation and post-Reformation periods, drawing the line between proper submission and errant subservience.

“But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’” 

— Acts 5:29 

“Question 3. … We obey lawful (and not tyrannical) governors, according to the Fifth Commandment, and in doing so, obey God. …
Question 30. Are those citizens of a tyrannical government called to a passive obedience? And what if they flee the despotic powers?
Is that lawful by God and Nature (the revelation written on our hearts and observed as ‘common sense’)?
While the Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 2:18, admonishes the people to show patience and bear up under persecution, and while Jesus’ own non-resistance is a virtue for us, yet these do not require that we give up self-defense. We must resist if given an unlawful order. If one flees in order to obey God rather than Man, this is not a sin.” 

— Lex, Rex, Samuel Rutherford, 1644 

“Tyranny was defined as ruling without the sanction of God. Rutherford held that a tyrannical government is always immoral. He said that ‘a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of power.’ It follows from Rutherford’s thesis that citizens have a moral obligation to resist unjust and tyrannical government.” 

— Francis Schaeffer, as quoted in Foundations for a Moral Government: Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex, A New Annotated Version in Standard English, Michael Milton, p. 39 

“That to resist a misled King, is not to resist God, nor yet his Ordinance …” 

— “THE FOVRTH BOOK OF The Progresse and Continuance of true Religion within SCOTLAND,” Historie of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland, John Knox, 1644, p. 394 

“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual. … Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.” 

— John Hancock, first signatory of the Declaration of Independence, History of the United States of America, Vol. II, p. 229 

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” 

— Thomas Jefferson, first signatory of the Declaration of Independence, 1776 

“How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!” 

— Samuel Adams in a letter to John Pitts, 1776

The Westminster Confession of Faith

Chapter 20: Of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience

2. God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of … an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.
3. They who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty; which is, that, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.
4. And because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which God hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another, they who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. And, for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity (whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation), or to the power of godliness; or, such erroneous opinions or practices, as either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the church, they may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against, by the censures of the church. 

Part II. Power of the Church
Chapter IV. The Extent and Limits of Church Power
“When church power is employed ministerially to declare the truth of God in a question of faith, or ministerially to judge in a question of government or discipline, the declaration of doctrine and the decision of law are to be received and submitted to on two grounds: first, and chiefly, because they are agreeable to the Word of God; but second, and in a subordinate sense, because they are emitted by the Church, as an ordinance of God instituted for that very purpose. And what is true, as intimated in the Confession, in regard to the exercise of Church power in matters of faith, or government, or discipline, is true also of Church power in any of its other exercises,—as, for example, in regard to the administration of the Sacraments in the Christian Church.
… The exercise of Church power, when in accordance with the Word of God, will have a blessing more and better than the exercise of a merely human power when in accordance with that Word; just because the one is of God, and the other of man. The use of Church authority, when agreeable to the Scriptures, will have in it a power more and better than human authority when agreeable to the Scripture; just because the one is Divine and the other is not. In fine, the power of the Church is one of authority and not only of advice, when employed in the administration of government; because it is Christ’s ordinance for rule. The power of the Church is a power of blessing, and not a power without a blessing, when employed in the dispensation of ordinance and Sacrament; because it is Christ’s appointed channel to bless. The power of the Church is one judicial, and not extrajudicial, when employed in the execution of discipline; because it is Christ’s ordinance on earth to bind or to loose.
To this extent the power of the Church unquestionably goes, being ‘an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in His Word.’ …
There can be no such thing in the discipline of the Church as a judicial act sufficient to bind or loose; for discipline in its highest form, as excommunication, can be no more than is the exclusion of a member by any private or voluntary society. Under such a system there would be laws without authority, ordinances without grace, and discipline without judgment. It is not necessary to delay to deal with such a theory of the Church and of Church power as this. It is plainly founded on the doctrine, which has already been considered and found wanting, that the Church is no more than a private and voluntary society, and that its prerogatives and privileges are derived from the delegation and consent of its members.
If the Church be of God, it has powers and prerogatives, not its own, but His. If the Church be His ordinance for administering doctrine, government, Sacrament, and discipline on earth, the power of the Church must be something more and higher than merely human power, or human permission.” 

— The Church of Christ: A Treatise on the Nature, Powers, Ordinances, Discipline, and Government of the Christian Church, James Bannerman, pp. 249-251 

“Part III. Matters in Regard to Which Church Power is Exercised
Division III. Church Power Exercised in Regard to Discipline
Chapter I. Nature, Design, and Limits of the Discipline of the Christian Church
“… that exercise of church authority which respects discipline, may be held to be directed to two grand objects, which are essentially necessary for the order and well-being of the Christian society. In the first place, its aim is to carry into effect the institutions of Christ in regard to the admission and exclusion of members in connection with the Christian society.
There are certain principles laid down in His Word which sufficiently indicate the terms of membership which Christ has enacted for His Church, and the character and qualifications of those entitled to be received into the Christian society, or to remain in it as its members. And the first object which that particular branch of Christian authority which respects discipline contemplates, is to execute the laws of Christ in the admission to Church membership of those entitled to the privilege, and in the exclusion of those who are not. In the second place, its aim is to carry into effect the instructions of Christ in regard to those who belong to the Church as its members, in the way of securing their obedience to His laws, and of promoting their spiritual edification. There are certain laws which Christ has appointed, not only for the admission and exclusion of members, but also for the regulation of the conduct of those within the Church,—prescribing to them the duties to be done, and the order to be observed by them, as members of the Christian society.
And, accordingly, the second object which this branch of Church power contemplates is to promote and secure both the obedience and the edification of the members of the Church, by the restraints of ecclesiastical authority imposed upon them; by the inflictions of the penalties of censure and rebuke, and deprivation of the privileges of the society, when these have been merited; and by the operation of a system of spiritual rewards and punishments, calculated to promote the order and profit of the Christian community. Speaking generally, these are the two grand aims of that exercise of spiritual authority in the Church which relates to discipline. It provides for the execution of the laws of Christ as these have been revealed in connection with, first, the admission of parties into, or their exclusion from, the Christian society; and second, the obedience and edification of Church members.
Such being the general nature and design of that power of discipline claimed by the Church, the question that meets us at the outset of the discussion is, as to the ground on which this claim rests. It will not be difficult to show that the right to exercise such a power is one that belongs to the Christian Church, both by the law of nature, as evinced by reason, and by the law of Christ, as revealed in His Word.
I. The power to regulate the matter of the admission and the exclusion of members, as well as their conduct while they continue members of that society, belongs to the Church by the light of nature itself. It is an inherent right vested in every voluntary association of whatever nature it may be, and necessary to its existence and well-being as an orderly society.
The very conditions necessary to the subsistence of an organized body of men, and the order implied in combined operations, obviously require that they shall agree on some fixed principles both of union and action,—a compliance with which forms the terms of their admission into and continuance in the society as members, and departure from which must entail the forfeiture of the privileges of membership. 

No society created for a common end, and requiring a common action, could possibly subsist upon the principle of being compelled to admit, or to continue to regard as its members, those who transgressed its regulations, or set themselves in opposition to the ends for which it is established. There must be in every voluntary association a right to impose its own laws on its members,—a power to refuse admission to such as give no guarantee for their conformity with the rules and ends of the society,—and, when no other remedy is sufficient, authority to deprive of its privileges and expel from its fellowship those who perseveringly and systematically depart from the order and obligations of the institution. If a society be a lawful association at all, it must have this right to exercise the power of order and authority over its members which is necessary to the very ends for which it is instituted.
The existence of the right as belonging to the Church, in common with every other lawful society of men, is clearly demonstrated from the light of nature itself.
And from the same source it is not difficult to gather a proof, not only of the justice of such a claim, on the part of the Christian society, but also of the limits that are justly appointed to the right. In regulating the order of the society and the conduct of the members, and in exercising the right of admission and expulsion in conformity with its fixed principles, there are two limitations plainly set to the power so used. First, no society has a right of this kind beyond the circle of its own members, or of those who have voluntarily come under the rules and obligations of the society. The right of order and authority exercised by it does not extend to those beyond the association. And second, in enforcing its regulations even upon its own members, it can award, in the case of transgressions, no other kind or amount of penalty than the deprivation of some or all of the rights or advantages which the society itself has conferred. When it has deprived the offender of the privileges he enjoyed in communion with the society, and expelled him from its membership, it has exhausted all its rightful authority and its legitimate power in the way of punishment. And these two limitations, which are plainly set to the powers of any voluntary society over its members, restrict also the exercise by the Christian Church of its powers of discipline. By the very law of nature, applicable to the Christian society as well as any other, it may lawfully assert a right to regulate the admission and expulsion of its members, and their conduct while they continue members within it. But first, the Church has no power of discipline or authority over those who have not sought or adopted its communion; and second, the Church has no penalties in its storehouse of authority beyond the forfeiture it may award to offenders of the privileges which they have received from its communion. And when the sentence of expulsion from these is pronounced, in the case of the last extremity, its authority is then and there exhausted and at an end.” 

— ibid., pp. 704-706 

“Men are commonly ruined by things in which they put their trust or take most delight. The whole Mosaic system, with its rites and ceremonies, was the ground of confidence and boasting to the Jews, and it was the cause of their destruction. So, in our day, those who take refuge in some ecclesiastical organization instead of Christ, will find what they expected would prove their salvation, to be their ruin. So, too, all misimproved or perverted blessings are made the severest curses, vers. 9, 10.” 

— A Commentary on Romans, on chapter 10, Charles Hodge, p. 360 

“All organized communities, civil and ecclesiastical, have a common responsibility, a moral personality in the sight of God, and are dealt with accordingly, rewarded or punished according to their conduct, as such. As their organized existence is confined to this world, so must the retributive dispensations of God respecting them be. Witness the rejection, dispersion, and sufferings of the Jews, as a national punishment for their national rejection of the Messiah.
Witness the state of all the Eastern churches broken off from the olive-tree for the unbelief of former generations. Their fathers sinned, and their children’s children, to the third and fourth generation, suffer the penalty, as they share in the guilt, vers. 11-24.
5. The security of every individual Christian is suspended on his continuing in faith and holy obedience; which is indeed rendered certain by the purpose and promise of God. In like manner, the security of every civil and ecclesiastical society, in the enjoyment of its peculiar advantages, is suspended on its fidelity as such, for which fidelity there is no special promise with regard to any country or any church, vers. 20-24. …
The dealings of God with his ancient people should, moreover, teach us—1. That we have no security for the continuance of our privileges but constant fidelity, ver. 20. 2. That, consequently, instead of being proud and self-confident, we should be humble and cautious, vers. 20, 21. 3. That God will probably not bear with us as long as he bore with the Jews, ver. 21. 4. That if for our unbelief we are cast out of the church, our punishment will probably will be more severe. There is no special covenant securing the restoration of any apostate branch of the Christian church, vers. 21, 24, with 16, 27-29.” 

— ibid., on chapter 11, pp. 380-381 

“On the contrary, it [the General Assembly] has always maintained that the right to control the property of the members of the Church, to assess the amount of their contributions, or to prescribe how they shall dispose of their money, is utterly foreign to the spirit of Presbyterianism. Every contribution on the part of an individual member of the Church must be purely voluntary. In fact, the Presbyterian Church itself is a voluntary association. All of its members voluntarily associate themselves with the Church, and maintain their affiliation with it no longer than they voluntarily choose to do so. All that they do for its support, therefore, is a voluntary donation, and there is no power which can compel them to contribute to any ecclesiastical object to which they are not willing to give.” 

— Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 1934, General Assembly Minutes, as extracted by J. Gresham Machen in “Statement to the Presbytery of New Brunswick,” 1935 

“Machen’s message for the church is just as urgent in 2023 as it was in 1923. Will we listen?” 

— Ligonier Ministries, e-blast advertising its Christianity & Liberalism Special Edition Book and Companion Teaching Series, July 11, 2023

 

5. PCA’s principle of ‘voluntary association’ as extended to an individual

The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America, chapter 14, section 7, binds the denomination’s subordinate courts to the decisions of its supreme Court, the General Assembly.

Actions of the General Assembly pursuant to the provision of BCO 14-6 such as … judicial decisions are to be given due and serious consideration by the Church and its lower courts when deliberating matters related to such action. Judicial decisions shall be binding and conclusive on the parties who are directly involved in the matter being adjudicated, and may be appealed to in subsequent similar cases as to any principle which may have been decided. (See BCO 3-5 and 6, and WCF 31:3.) 

Along came the 1993 Complaint of Dr. and Mrs. Stuart S. Chen vs. Ascension Presbytery, which made its way by appeal to the top of the denomination. During those early years of the Standing Judicial Commission’s existence, this ultimate judicatory heard all the appeals that ascended to its docket, and never dismissed anything as “administratively out of order,” so far as the GA’s official minutes indicate. So, the 22nd PCA General Assembly adopted the formal judgment in SJC 93-3. 

“On April 26, 1992, Dr. Chen wrote a letter to the Session of the Church of the Savior in response to a suggestion by a Ruling Elder (ROC p. 51). In this letter he stated that he and his wife did not intend to return to the Church of the Savior; that he and his wife were looking for another church; and that they were worshipping at evangelical churches every Sunday; but they had not yet found a church home. He further stated in said letter: 

‘Be assured that we believe that active and committed local church membership is very important. So important, in fact, that thorough study is needed before a commitment can responsibly be made. This means we will not rush to transfer our membership.’ (ROC p. 51) 

Dr. Chen then concludes with this paragraph: 

‘If this creates a problem for you regarding what to do with our membership status, please declare us inactive as spelled out in CSPCA [local church] Bylaws, or simply remove our names from the rolls.’ (ROC p. 51) (Emphasis added) 

We conclude that this request of Dr. Chen is analogous to the resignation letter of Carl Fox. We further conclude that it certainly meets one of the conditions set out in BCO 46-5, i.e. ‘when a member … has made it known that he or she has no intention of fulfilling the church vows.’ But instead of granting Dr. Chen’s request to ‘simply remove our names from the rolls’, the Session of the Church of the Savior instituted judicial process against them and on December 5, 1992 suspended them from the sacraments. We think the Session should have followed BCO 46-5 which states that under this condition ‘then the Session should delete such names from the church rolls …’ … Respondents thus ignore the plain language of the BCO and the judicial interpretation thereof by the 18th General Assembly in the Carl Fox matter.
… PCA is a voluntary association of people committed to a common faith and order. The BCO 25-11 explicitly expresses this voluntary principle as it applies to the association of a local church with the denomination: 

25-11: ‘… Particular churches need to remain in association with any court of this body only so long as they themselves so desire. The relationship is voluntary, based upon mutual love and confidence, and is in no sense to be maintained by the exercise of any force or coercion whatsoever. A particular church may withdraw from any court of this body at any time for reason which seem to it sufficient.’ 

We believe this same voluntary principle applies to an individual’s association with a local PCA congregation. …
In the light of the above, our Judgment of the case is that Respondents erred; and we reverse the judgment of the Session of the Church of the Savior and remove the censure of Stuart and Pam Chen in suspending them from the Sacraments.
We urge the Session of the Church of the Savior to grant the Chens a letter of dismissal to an evangelical church, if they have requested the same, or, if not, to delete their names from the rolls under BCO 46-5.
Heard on August 19, 1993 and signed this 21st day of January, 1994.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/RE John B. White, Jr.” 

(Minutes of the Twenty-Second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 110-123)

Three years later, in 1997, Robert C. Cannada and W. Jack Williamson, ruling elders and founding fathers of the Presbyterian Church in America, affirmed the spirit of the courts’ and congregations’ voluntary association in BCO 25-11 as appurtenant to emancipatory rights of individual members. 

“The concept expressed in 25-11 of the BCO dealing with the relationship between a Presbytery and its members is also the concept applicable to the relationship between a congregation and its members and between the General Assembly and the presbyteries. This concept is expressed in 25-11 as follows:
‘Particular churches need remain in association with any court of this body only so long as they themselves so desire.
The relationship is voluntary, based upon mutual love and confidence, and is in no sense to be maintained by the exercise of any force or coercion whatsoever.
A particular church may withdraw from any court of this body at any time for reasons which seem to it sufficient.’ (Emphasis added [by the authors, Cannada and Williamson])
Likewise, a member of a congregation may withdraw from membership or may be dismissed from membership by appropriate action of the session, and a presbytery may withdraw from the PCA or may be dismissed by the General Assembly. This is in accord with the concept contained in the eight basic principles as approved by the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America in 1789.” 

— The Historic Polity of the PCA, Robert C. Cannada and W. Jack Williamson, p. 44 

These authors later asserted that a PCA church session, acting through its civil entity organized by state law, is subject to applicable civil laws of the state in the dismissal of members. 

“Church courts should respect the decisions of other church courts. Lower church courts should comply with the applicable decisions of higher church courts subject to the ultimate guidance of the Scriptures and of Christian conscience. Each presbytery and each session has the power, acting through the civil entity that each has formed and organized, to dismiss members from its membership for such reason as it determines to be appropriate subject to the applicable civil laws of the State.” 

— ibid., p. 78 

Dr. Frank J. Smith, the PCA’s first ministerial candidate and former teaching elder, later recounted the controversy of this landmark 1993 case ultimately decided by the SJC, and his dissent from it. 

“Dr. & Mrs. Stuart Chen vs. Ascension (1994)
This is a case which created a ‘constitutional crisis’ of conscience for numerous presbyters throughout the denomination. In this case, Stuart and Pamela Chen, who were members of the Church of the Savior in Williamsville, New York, were suspended from communion after being convicted of neglecting the church in which they were members.
The Chens had asked that their names either be declared to be ‘inactive’, or that they be removed from the membership roll. The congregation, meanwhile, changed the church’s bylaws to remove the Inactive Member list (which list is un-Constitutional under the PCA’s Book of Church Order). The Chens were cited to appear for a trial. The Session convicted them, and administered the censure of indefinite suspension. The Chens appealed, and the Presbytery denied the appeal.
In its ruling, the SJC overturned the censure of the Chens, and urged the Session ‘to consider deleting the names from the church roll under BCO 46-5 as requested by the Chens in their letter of April 26, 1992.’ The SJC referred to the Carl Fox case, and posited that the PCA ‘is a voluntary association of people committed to a common faith and order.’ It then stated that the same voluntary principle by which a congregation may elect to disassociate with the denomination ‘applies to an individual’s association with a local PCA congregation.’
An attempt to refer to the Commission’s interpretation of BCO 46-5 to a study committee failed; and the Assembly adopted the SJC report. Thereafter, Pastor David Coffin introduced a protest, and was joined by more than 125 others (in either protest or objection). Mr. Coffin argued that the SJC’s view of BCO 46-5 ‘not only neglects the actual language of the text, it introduces a novel conception of church membership, at least so far as biblical Presbyterians are concerned.’ After quoting from decisions by Presbyterian General Assemblies in the nineteenth century, the protester continued:
‘In my view the SJC’s reading of BCO 46-5 has undermined our character as a Presbyterian church, according to the biblical and historical meaning of the term. The adoption of this view fatally undermines the Christ-given and Christ-honoring power of discipline that properly belongs to the elders for the upbuilding of the church.’
The repercussions from the Chen case would be felt for several years. Resolving the crisis to the satisfaction of many men in the denomination required numerous overtures, and amendments to the Book of Church Order.” 

— The History of the Presbyterian Church in America: The Silver Anniversary Edition, Dr. Frank Joseph Smith, pp. 426-427 

Dr. Smith earlier interpreted/opined that the SJC set a novel, precarious precedent in Case 93-3. 

“The SJC committed itself to a ‘voluntaristic’ notion of church membership—an ideal to which the Commission would appeal in the Chen case in 1994. … The SJC’s commitment to the inability of higher courts to enforce decisions with regard to lower courts turned its own judgments into pious advice, with no ability, theoretically, to enforce them. This theory meant that the only action a higher court could do against a recalcitrant lower court is to dismiss it from the fellowship of the denomination—a highly unlikely prospect, particularly if the higher court had to choose between keeping one member, or keeping a whole congregation or possibly even an entire presbytery. … The series of decisions has also caused the PCA to be held up to ridicule.” 

— ibid., p. 411 

“Overview
The rulings in complaints and appeals have had a profound effect upon the denomination. Since the advent of the Standing Judicial Commission, the rulings have tended to engage in a broad sweep of opinion, much of it obiter dicta, rather than being confined to the matter at hand, as usually obtained under the original system. Moreover, the SJC was to provide an elite corps of knowledgeable judges who could rule in a coherent and consistent fashion. However, the SJC has on several occasions made rulings which, at least prima facie, appear to be contradictory.
The original system generally allowed for a cross-section of the General Assembly to serve on commissions. On the other hand, the current system, with popular election of the SJC members, has created a situation in which the dominant ‘party’ has been able to select its own slate, with few opposition candidates being able to attain office. These judges have then been able to rule in accord with a particular philosophy. The result has been that the SJC, whether by design or not, has effectively helped to implement a brand of polity and theology ‘unique’ to the PCA—a brand which seems often to be an historical anomaly.” 

— ibid., p. 448 

Concerning TE Smith’s quote of TE Coffin, support for Coffin’s Protest is available in its context. 

“The SJCs view of this provision not only neglects the actual language of the text, it introduces a novel conception of church membership, at least so far as biblical Presbyterians are concerned. Consider these testimonies from the soundest age of American Presbyterianism: 

‘No member of a Church can properly ever cease to be such, but by death, exclusion, a regular dismission, or an orderly withdrawing to join some other Christian denomination …’ [MGA 1825), p. 255; Baird (1855), p. 58.] 

In 1848 the General Assembly refused to adopt a recommendation that ‘members of Churches may voluntarily withdraw’. [MGA (1848), p. 24; Baird (1855), p. 61.]
‘Resolved, That in the opinion of the Assembly there is no constitutional or scriptural mode of separating members from the communion of the Church, except by death, by dismission to join another Church, or by discipline. …’ [MGA (1851), p. 33; Baird (1855), p. 61.]

‘May a member’s name be erased at his request?’
‘There are but three ways in which the name of a person can be removed from the roll of a church. These are by death, by dismission to another church and by the administration of discipline. …’ [citing MGA (1878), p. 58]. [From J. Aspinwall Hodge, What is Presbyterian Law As Defined By the Church Courts? (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1882), pp. 155-156.]

‘Being subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, they [members or officers] cannot cast off that jurisdiction at will without sinning against the Church. And she may surrender her jurisdiction only in the way of censure by excommunication or deposition, or in the way of correcting a mistake made by both here and the person, as in demission, or in the way of fraternal recognition of some other Church by dismission thereto. But no one may quit this Church without thereby violating his covenant with it, except with her consent; nor is she permitted to give her consent, except when transferring to some other Church of Christ …’ [From F. P. Ramsay, Exposition of the Form of Government (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1989), p. 264.]

(Minutes of the Twenty-Second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 110-123)

No one would dispute that church history has precedence denying “voluntary church membership.” 

Nonetheless, the claim that voluntary membership is “novel” or unprecedented in Presbyterianism, as corroborated by the abundance of scholarship in our preceding sections, is obviously incorrect. 

Despite siding with the dissenters, Dr. Smith himself has lamented churches’ election of Erastian governance structures, conceding that “If you live by the Corporation, you die by the Corporation.” 

Next, far from being a dead or abrogated precedent, SJC 93-3 resurfaced in a 2021 case within its historical stream: SJC 2019-13, the Complaint of Ms. Colleen Gendy v. Central Florida Presbytery — a case arising from the Session of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church of Orlando. Therein, the PCA supreme Court’s Reasoning and Opinion declared on application of the BCO Rules of Discipline, 

“The circular nature of the Presbytery’s argument is obvious when it is considered from the Complainant’s perspective. The Complainant is being told that she cannot complain about her removal from membership because she has been removed from membership. Put differently, fundamental fairness requires that a member facing formal process or removal without process retains standing to complain about the process or removal. Any other conclusion would permit a Session to remove any church member from membership for any reason or no reason without allowing that person to challenge the removal. …
In addition to the wording of the provision itself, the history of BCO 38-4 illustrates this distinction. Following the SJC decision in the case of Chen vs. Ascension Presbytery, which interpreted a predecessor BCO provision dealing with removal of a member’s name from the roll to mean that a member of the PCA essentially had a right to withdraw from church membership unilaterally, the General Assembly adopted the current language in BCO 38-4, moving the section from BCO chapter 46 (‘Jurisdiction’) and to BCO chapter 38 (‘Cases Without Process’) and adding the statement that ‘This erasure is an act of pastoral discipline,’ thus emphasizing that the action is a true ‘case’ of discipline, not merely an administrative procedure. Therefore, if a Session may sever a person’s membership in the church, surely that person should have the right to complain about it.
Ms. Gendy had standing to bring her Complaint. Presbytery should have so ruled and remanded the case to the St. Paul’s Session for consideration of Ms. Gendy’s original Complaint. Thus, we now remand the case to Presbytery so that it may take such action.” 

(Minutes of the Forty-Eighth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 796-800) 

As ecclesiologists like Bannerman and Machen pointed out long ago, the church and the state are different types of entities, in that a church is purely voluntary, where a person can choose to be a member or leave any time — whereas, a citizen cannot simply renounce citizenship in his country. 

Logically, the point of an accused person submitting to a “trial” is so he may continue membership in that particular church. A “trial” would be inapplicable to someone who already chose to resign. 

Meanwhile, any presbyter who might posit that an individual’s personal liberty to unilaterally end his own church membership saddles ministers with “a crisis of conscience” may be assuaged by the fallibility of all church courts affirmed in their Westminster Confession of Faith 31.3: “All synods or councils, since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both.”