It is hard for some in mainline Protestant churches to understand, but a few denominations like my own, the Christian Reformed Church, are still debating whether women should be allowed to serve as ruling or teaching elders (elders and pastors). For many on both sides it is strictly a question of being faithful to Scripture. […]

This article was an address delivered at Chapel, January 28, 1997, Westminster Theological Seminary (PA). Text: Titus 2 (NASV) The word “celebrate” has fallen on hard times these days. Here I am I referring specifically to the use of the Word in the context of worship. It used to be that if we spoke of […]

During the first half of the twentieth century J. Gresham Machen was widely regarded as conservative Protestantism’s most articulate and forceful defender. When he died suddenly on January 1, 1937 at the age of 55, Presbyterians and Reformed mourned the loss of a man who had almost single-handedly kept Calvinism alive even if not entirely […]

When J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, the book was not the sort that would win friends or advance his career. He pulled no punches. Machen’s thesis that liberalism was “unChristian” infuriated many Protestants who still maintained great influence within America’s leading cultural institutions. Machen also wrote that liberalism was “the greatest […]

In 1929 J. Gresham Machen wrote to his mother, “I hate this whole ecclesiastical business, for my part, with all my soul.” The reason for his discouragement was Machen’s imminent departure from Princeton, New Jersey, to nearby Philadelphia. And the reason for his sudden change of address was the founding of a new school of […]

The Presbyterian controversy over theological liberalism was not simply a debate about the ideas of pampered scholars published in obscure theological journals. Rather it concerned the very witness and practice of the church. Was Christ a Savior or was Jesus the greatest ethical teacher ever to live? How Presbyterians answered that question had enormous significance […]

In 1935 J. Gresham Machen was tried by the Presbytery of New Brunswick of the Northern Presbyterian Church for violating his ordination vows, renouncing and disobeying the rules and lawful authority of the church, advocating rebellious defiance against the lawful authority of the church, showing contempt of and rebellion against his ecclesiastical superiors, and refusing […]