JoeInStLouis

Christian/Husband/Father, studying Scripture used in St Louis to teach skin color & sexual orientation; critical social identity as deconstruction in the church

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@kyleakeating @presbycast He used "celibate" rather than "chaste" for years on his public blog. Are you trying to distinguish between "homosexual" and SSA?

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@KevinRVasquez Could you say more about this?

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Notes for the RE taking Mo Pres to the SJC.

The TE in question affirms that homosexuality is sin. But his public Side B blog reframes sexual sin by treating it socially (publicly, voluntarily, casually) rather than traditionally (privately, with sorrow, in repentance, in discipline, in confession). Here are 4 overlapping areas you'll see that reversal plays out

1)Knowledge
Traditionally, a man loves his neighbor by allowing his neighbor’s sexual sins of the heart to remain private. Revoice advocacy teaches the opposite: that to be known and loved, the neighbor’s sexual sin must be public.

2)Ethics
Traditionally, sexual sins of the heart are considered breaches of the historic Biblical sexual ethic. How much more so for teaching them socially!? Yet Revoices advocacy makes novel and provocative claims while saying it affirms the historic Biblical sexual ethic.

3)Freedom
Traditionally, freedom from sexual sins of the heart is in the forgiveness of private confession. Revoice advocacy reverses that, teaching freedom through public profession.

4)Safety
Traditionally, sexual sin was considered a danger to those around the sinner. Side B swaps the identity of the dangerous party by teaching it is the sinner who needs to be kept safe.

Tentative conclusion: These expressions of social identity are necessarily critical.

If National Coming Out Day is people being “encouraged to be honest,” then teaching boundaries around publicizing sexual sin would be dishonesty.

Expressing sin in sorrow, in private confession, and in repentance is the narrow gate to forgiveness, and assurance. But teaching sexual sin as a social issue (casual, voluntary, and public) has novel and provocative applications in safety, freedom, and ethics.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@NeilShenvi I'm looking forward to this.

The 2017 public petition against Mortification of Spin was one of the first instances on my radar of using critical social identity to deconstruct Jesus' ministry.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@PastorAndyWebb Please pray for all involved. Note that it's an RE who filed the complaint! I imagine that many of the Presbyters are glad to see this happen but could jeopardize relationships and their livelihoods by speaking out.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@presbycast Note that this complaint was filed by a ruling elder. Wow!

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Dave, you don't think the PCA restricts the use of the titles of the ordained offices for the unordained?

Please consider BCO 7-3: No one who holds office in the Church ought to usurp authority therein, or receive any official titles of spiritual preeminence, except such as are employed in the Scriptures. Furthermore, unordained people shall not be referred to as, or given the titles of, the ordained offices of pastor/elder, or deacon.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Eli, I appreciate you.

Can you help me understand what you're saying is misleading? I believe [celibate] homosexuality is taught as a critical social identity in the church in the PCA.

Those who commended Revoice came from dozens of PCA churches; those who attended Revoice came from hundreds of churches; some Revoice speakers are PCA pastors and professors. The commendations from the Missouri Presbytery authoritatively represent scores of churches within that Presbytery. The nature of Presbyterian government is necessarily associative.

Consider the 2021 A Faithful PCA petition, commended by 15 former PCA moderators. Side B authoritatively platforms [celibate] homosexuality as a positive basis for representation, in/exclusion, affirmation etc in the church. This 2021 letter publicly charges those who do not “celebrate such honesty” of *invalidating* “every claim to the power of the Gospel.” This is not simply a show of solidarity and earthly power, it is also has great doctrinal significance. It is not simply cyber bullying -- it is an astonishing accusation signed by hundreds of PCA pastors. Revoice had been going on for years at that point as a major movement within the denomination and its proponents were not shy -- this was all public.

Please here this sincerely: Don't you know all this?

The idea that "only one PCA church was ever associated with Revoice" is new to me.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Yes, the denominations can be confusing.

The Revoice vision in from 2018 suggests LGBT identity should be “open and transparent … without feeling inferior,” and that leaders should “boast about the faith of LGBT people.” That was taught in PCA churches for years. No one suggested that they were not LGBT in the "true sense."
https://t.co/py3wUBg3nw

7 years in, PCA GA 2025 argued that homosexuals should feel “known, loved, and fully included.” No mention of the qualification of the true sense.
https://t.co/AJ3kQFnro0

If you want to read Mo Pres' BCO 31-2 report, it commends homosexual identity for the sake of being known in weakness, to live transparently for the sake of others, for the maturing of the church, and to bear witness to unbelievers. [PG 28] Some of the men involved in writing that are still in PCA churches. None of that material has been walked back, to my knowledge. The BCO 31-2 at every point relies on the idea that Johnson's sin is real and true.

Consider Greg Johnson's testimony at GA in 2019. Many were offended and many applauded him but the idea that he's not gay in the "true" sense is new to me.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Hans Madueme’s 2025 PCA GA seminar is called “Sin, Identity & Same-Sex Desire: Some Lessons from Disability.” I share many warm agreements with my brother in Christ and am glad for his perspective on critical social identity.

1)Madueme criticizes giving homosexuality special treatment. He says [~39] that it’s problematic to speak in detailed ways about the sinfulness of same sex desires but then be relatively silent about all the concupiscent desires that plague Christians every day.” …He says “the problem is that we’re giving everyone else a pass and focusing on one particular form of concupiscence.” He criticizes [48:49]syncretistic expression of Christianity by conservatives and tries to address the [47:15]“blatant hypocrisy” of treating homosexual concupiscence differently.

Teaching same sex desire as a social identity – a public, positive, casual and voluntary group identity – is novel and provocative. As homosexual marriage is legalized and transgenderism sweeps through the western world, the church now also breaks from the historic biblical sexual ethic? There is some tension in Madueme's suggestion that conservatives are hypocritical for treating SSA/SSD differently: Clearly it is Revoice who is insisting on different treatment.

2)Madueme compares Revoice and Disability studies: “[44:27]Historically, disabled people have not seen the church as a welcoming community. Church attitudes in the past stigmatize people with disabilities. ….such views led to the “othering” of disabled people."

Christians agree that all people should be treated with respect and dignity. But novel and provocative teaching in morality and ethics should not be lightly downgraded to issues of hospitality and welcome. Madueme joins the consensus of the entire western world as he warns the church against stigmatizing those with same sex desires.

3)Consider that Madueme says that should feel “known, loved, and fully included” [49:25] in church.

Christians agree that we should love our neighbors. But historically, to know and love a neighbor committed me to ignorance about his sexual desires, and doubly so for those that are sinful. Do we now teach that in order to love a neighbor I must know about his sexual desires? You can see why some consider this immodest and unchaste.

Traditionally, being full included means NOT being known socially by sinful desires. Those ideas are historically mutually exclusive. It is novel and provocative to bring them together under the auspices of Christian love/law.

4)Consider the repeated exhortation to [46]pastoral sensitivity, [47]orthopathy, and [48]compassion.

Christians agree that the law requires new hearts, not simply outward Godliness. But asking for compassion implies “less than.” We do not have compassion on excellence, but on sorrow. And Madueme’s case is that treating homosexual concupiscence differently is “blatant hypocrisy.” Do you see the tension? Compassion means “inferior,” but Madueme’s case is that [35:11]concupiscence levels everyone.

I absolutely agree with Madueme in terms of soteriology (WLC 152) but not in terms of sanctification (WLC 150 & 151). Historically, sinners who identify by their sin in sorrow, in repentance, in confession, in accountability, are taught to ask for forgiveness not compassion. It may be that treating sin as a social identity (public, positive, casual, voluntary) is not consistent with historic teaching on forgiveness.

5)Consider Madueme’s commendation of the question [36:48-58] “Why do people like me in the PCA place such a heavy burden on them?”

Who is “people like me”? Who is “them”? This identity and categorization is quite novel and provocative, done broadly and without consent. It is also an accusation to identify the burden “on them” as something placed by “people like me.” Same sex desire as a social identity is necessarily *critical*. But its criticism is a complete reversal of reality: It is clearly treating sexual sin as a social issue (public, positive, casual, and voluntary) that placed a new burden on the church.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

I believe the PCA teaches that homosexuals should feel known, loved, and fully included. Its ministers support homosexual identity for many reasons (to be known in weakness, to live transparently, for the maturing of the church, and as a witness to unbelievers). The idea that they do not support homosexual leadership in the “true sense” strikes me novel and provocative, a reversal of years of teaching and public record.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding?

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@joesfreshwrc @dokimazete Joe, you wrote "Todd Warhurst" and you might have meant "Steven Warhurst"?

I see Brad Edwards signed both the public protest against Todd Pruitt and the public protest against Steven Warhurst.

I see John Houmes signed the public protest against Todd Pruitt.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@dokimazete CF the petition against Todd Pruitt in 2017; but if you go back to Presbyterians Together in 2006 you'll see Cassidy.
https://t.co/PtgsuMmErB

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

It's like a who's who of ... something:

CF PCA Prayer & Lament with petition against Todd Pruitt’s accusations against Truth Table & Michelle
Rev. Dr. Irwyn Ince
Rev. Mike Khandjian
Rev. David Richter
Rev. Justin Edgar
Rev. Dan Adamson

CF Warhurst petition with petition against Todd's accusations against Truth Table & Michelle (cf 2021 Open Letter to PCA)
Rev. Dr. Irwyn Ince (2021)
Rev. Doug Serven (2021)
Rev. David Richter (2021)
Rev. Kevin VandenBrink (2021)
Rev. Brad Edwards (2021)
Rev. David Schweissing (2021)
Rev. Charles Johnson (2021)
Rev. Robbie Schmidtberger (2021)
Rev. Ewan Kennedy (2021)
Rev. Hansoo Jin (2021)
Rev. Justin Edgar (2021)
Rev. Jeff Birch (2021)
Rev. Ethan Smith (2021)
Rev. Greg Ward (2021)
Rev. Kevin Twit
Rev. Curran Bishop (2021)
Rev. Dan Adamson (2021)
Rev. Hace Cargo (2021)
Rev. Lance E. Lewis (2021)
Rev. Robert Binion
Rev. Austin Pfeiffer (2021)
Rev. Wesley Martin

CF Warhurst petition with PCA Prayer & Lament
Own Lee (2021)
Irwyn Ince (2021)
Charles McKnight
Howard Brown
David Richter (2021)
Andy Moehn (2021)
Justin Edgard (2021)
Jeff Suhr (2021)
Matt Guzi (2021)
Brian LoPiccolo (2021)
Randy Lovelace (2021)
Dan Adamason (2021)
Jason Hsu
David Wallover (2021)
Aaron Ingle
Glenn Hobart (2021)

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

I hear you saying that submission does not entail ontological inferiority of the sort that devalues one in God's eyes. Think children, employees, students. But are there other sorts of inferiority you're teaching? It would be helpful to have a positive vision for this.

Maybe WLC 127-129, which seem to link superior/inferior to submission and authority, could be helpful?

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

@dokimazete https://t.co/1gtmip96gc

[Jeff Taylor @JeffTaylorLR]

The movement from walking to riding horses was not a dehumanizing event. Nor was the shift from horse to chariot, or from chariot to motor car, or from motor car to silicon. These transitions are not departures from “life.” They are ordinary developments within the providential ordering of human history — the history through which God conducts His covenantal purposes.

Scripture never treats technological advance as a threat to humanity. It treats it as morally ambivalent: capable of serving idolatry, capable of serving neighbor‑love, never possessing spiritual agency of its own. The chariot is not a rival to God; trusting in chariots is. The city is not rebellion; the heart that builds a name for itself is. The tool is never the problem. The covenant‑breaker is.

Ellul’s anxiety about “Technique” collapses all technological development into a single totalizing force that erodes human personhood. But the Bible does not share that fear. The biblical drama is not man vs. machine. It is man vs. idolatry. The escalation from horse to chariot to engine to algorithm is not a drift away from life. It is the unfolding of human capacity under God’s providence, always subject to judgment, never autonomous, never demonic.

Christians do not locate humanity in pre‑technological modes of existence. We locate humanity in covenant — in the image of God renewed in Christ. Technology cannot bestow life, and it cannot steal life. It can only reveal the heart that wields it.

The real question is not whether technology dehumanizes. The real question is whether we remember that life is defined by Christ, not by the tools we use.

#CovenantTheology #Klinean #ProvidenceNotTechnique #ChristCenteredWisdom #ReformedTheology #BiblicalTheology #TechnologyAndFaith #NoEllulianFear #HumanityInChrist #CovenantalAnthropology

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

Is there room for a middle ground here? I don't think Keller is teaching raging race-based hatred. But I also don't think you're represent the problem fairly by suggesting it's a single video out of context.

When Keller came to St Louis in 2018, he transferred the Messianic reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles by Christ on the cross directly to black and white relations. He changed the "he did" of the Gospel to the "we ought" of the law, saying that Ephesians 2 is something we can "pull off" as a powerful missional witness.

Here's a link: https://t.co/MEEztMMLkl

If you're intersted, I can provide other instances where his teaching on race is novel and provocative.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

An example of contextualization
MO PRES (2020): We can and should be honest about the ways in which sin and misery of the Fall [sic] are a part of us (47th GA AIC). …to be known in weakness, to live transparently for the sake of others, for the maturing of the church, and to bear witness to unbelievers. [MOP BCO 31-2 pg 28]

MO PRES (2026): taken to the SJC for not giving special attention in ordination exam to 1) potential notorious concerns, 2)practical struggles against sinful actions, and 3)persistent sinful desires as required by the BCO.

https://t.co/auXvWhwmyN

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

I'd be curious to hear more about this.

The ten commandments aren't specifically sex-specific. Even the fifth specifies father AND mother. Or in terms of the NT law, the beatitudes and the fruit of the spirit are not specifically masculine or feminine.

I appreciate that sanctification is not androgynous in the sense that it takes place in men and women. But I want to be able to distinguish between sanctification and sexualization.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

From a social emotional perspective, the animating force behind both the blue haired liberal and the nazi flipflops in the same way -- between victim and victimizer. So on the one hand, you have the animating force in each instance (blue haired AND nazi) as transgressive -- this is the horseshoe effect for the term "edgelord."

But on the other hand, both justify their aggression through victim narratives that are, from a social emotional perspective, accusations.

[JoeInStLouis @JoeInStLouis]

3 quick readings of contextualization over coffee

I. 7 places where care is needed
II. 3 reasons to view contextualization as racialization
III. 2 short comments on contextualization as Law/Gospel

I. 7 places where care is needed
1)For the first few paragraphs, I thought Pastor Wang was arguing in favor of contextualization. But then he suggests every Gospel presentation is tautologically contextualized: “There is no such thing as an uncontextualized Gospel presentation.” He seemed to switch from “it should be” to “it already is.”

2)So I went back to reread what Stott’s bridge of contextualization is. How can Wang say that “Gospel proclamation must be thoughtfully adapted,” and then only a few paragraphs later say that “What we are never free to adapt is the [Gospel] message itself”? Perhaps the Gospel *proclamation* is the preaching, which includes adaptations such as Biblical background, illustration, and application; and the Gospel *message* he is saying we can never adapt is the content of the ministry of Jesus? This is muddled when Wang omits the word “proclamation” even when he is insisting on adaptation: “To confess, then, that the Gospel must be ‘thoughtfully adapted to its specific context’ is not a confession wrung from a reluctant orthodoxy.”

3)I am also confused by switching back and forth between the general nature of bridge-building/contextualization, and the particular application of missions to all nations.

Wang says that the bridge represents “the basic posture of every ministry of the Gospel,” and is not “only about preaching.” I interpret this along the lines of “all special revelation speaks into the context of general revelation,” or “saving grace breaks into and through common grace.” I think there’s good stuff there.

But how do we connect these generalizations to an article on missions? If all ministries of the Gospel share this quality, should the title be “Gospel ministries” rather than “missions”?

Again, in converse: If the article is about evangelism to other nations, why is there nothing about traveling or geography or food? If the article is about evangelism to other nations, why is there nothing about bivocational ministry or the joy of learning other languages?

4)Wang describes his concern: “Every sermon, every liturgy, every explanation of sin and grace already comes clothed in a particular vocabulary, assumes a particular set of cultural reference points, and answers questions a particular audience is actually asking.”

Certainly a pastor should be a student of the Word AND ideally also of his audience. But please note that Stott’s idea of the bridge is between the Biblical world and the modern world, not between two contemporary cultures. Further, Stott isn’t worried that two cultures ask two different questions, but instead believes all people ask questions to which Jesus is the answer: “People are actively seeking the very answers Jesus provides. People are asking the very questions Jesus can answer.”

5)Wang says that for a missionary not to recognize his cultural location would be to dangerously wear the “mask of faithfulness” and to unBiblically refuse “to translate Scripture into the language of the people he serves.”

Is this a reference to Islam, or are there pastors who teach that we should not translate Scripture?
When I took Spanish in college, I was glad to attend chapel and pray in Spanish. When I studied French in France, I went to an English-speaking worship service. Do we accuse the minister of wearing faithfulness as a mask? Would it be encouraging to know that French speakers attended the English service in order to learn English? Does Wang have a position on English Bible studies in campus ministries in America, where the elite from every nation send their children?

6)Wang says that “Word and deed belong together because the gospel makes claims about the whole of life” and I agree a little. But I want to explicitly subordinate deed to Word; and so does Stott: “Now both are important, and both are ministries, but the Apostles had been called to the ministry of the Word and not the ministry of tables. They had to delegate the ministry of the tables to other servants. We are not Apostles, but there is the work of teaching that has come to us in the unfolding of the apostolic message of the New Testament. This is our priority as pastors and preachers.”

7)One final point where care is needed. Wang cites Paul’s preaching in Athens to argue that the Gospel does not erase cultural particularity. But the examples Wang gives are not cultural — they are religious. And they are not maintained — in some ways they are erased.

Wang cites the alter to an unknown God, but Paul’s spirit was provoked by the city’s idols (Acts 17:16). Rather than maintain the alter or encourage the ignorance, Paul reverses each aspect.(Acts 17:23, 29, & 30).

Wang says Paul quotes the city’s poets, but the poem overturns the cultural particularity that Wang is teaching. He reads the poem (“we are indeed his offspring” Acts 17:28) as encouraging particularity but I see it as evidence of universal human dignity and value as Imago Dei.

Wang thinks Paul is making a culturally particular argument from nature. I think Paul is making a universal argument from revelation. Wang thinks Paul’s wants us to maintain cultural particularity. I think Paul wants us to repent of religious idolatry. If there is any truth to my ideas here, it reshapes Wang’s concerns over cultural reference points and vocabulary.

II. Contextualization as racialization

Wang’s concerns are framed around cultural forms, assumptions, and preferences that are largely unnamed.

1)His concern with social location reminds of Daniel Hill’s White Awake. That entire book builds on a social location technique to learn about white culture. But Hill does not educate us about white culture: food, music, arts, speech, not even church style. His cultural identity quest is actually only about one thing: how white people can see everything around them – their family, friends, artists, police, schools, churches – in terms of race.

Similarly, what sort of differences interest Wang? Not education — as when evangelism looks different to the uneducated than to those with graduate degrees; or class, as when golf might be a more regular sermon analogy in a white collar setting than in a blue collar setting; or wealth, as when financial stewardship might mean investing or praising a thrift store. Could it be age, as we speak differently to children than to adults? There is indeed a single mention of “generation” as en example of difference. But it looks like contextualization is largely about ethnic distinctives.

2)We can contextualize A4MR’s missional theology with the teaching of the previous petitions and protests endemic to A4MR leadership:
https://t.co/ywX7si14Cj

3)But the best way to understand the goals and concerns of pastors is to read the Scriptural basis. There is one Scriptural citation: “tribe & tongue” from Rev 7. It’s cited at least 5 times in Wang’s article. We recognize this as the foundation of the racialization movement, one offshoot of critical social identity.
I’ve written about my concerns surrounding the wooden and biblicist reading of this verse here:
https://t.co/UJo3ueaWC0

III. 2 short comments on contextualization as Law/Gospel

Wang says that “every act of contextualization” (which is “every sermon and liturgy and explanation of sin and grace”) has two dangers. On the one hand, antinomianism affirms rather than confronts sin. And legalism, on the other hand, might present “cultural forms, assumptions, and preferences” as Biblical requirements. Broadly speaking, I find this helpful and I wish there had been some explicit mention of “law” in this article.

I have two comments: First, we understand that Christians disagree on what Biblical requirements are. At the denominational level, some believe in infant baptism or Paedocommunion. Even within denominations, every year seminary-trained men of God petition their denominations to change what those Biblical requirements are: ordaining women [deacons], & celibate SSA/SSD Christians, for instance. And at the individual level, some believe that gambling or drinking is sinful. Paul’s epistles are so clear that we should be bound by our own conscience, and not shame the weaker brother.

And secondly, there is a worse distortion than antinomianism or legalism. We expect to differ over some matters of the law, but differences in the law must not be misrepresented as differences in Gospel. Paul is clear that teaching differences in law *as Gospel* is accursed. Resurrecting the ceremonial law should be rebuked openly.