The Zach Garris Trial Explained in 15 Minutes

I already did a podcast where I talked about this in more of a long form, but I wanted to give those who didn't want to go searching in a long podcast, just a short form to understand what's going on.

I've known Zach since at least 2019, he wrote a book on feminism. It really was more of a republication, a recovery of what Robert Louis Dabney said about feminism and he wrote a little forward to it.

Well, if you read Dabney's works, he's extremely helpful, very insightful, and a lot of his essays apply to today. He's dealing with the early stages of progressivism in the United States, and he's predicting exactly where it's going to go.

Robert Louis Dabney on Progressivism, Public Education, and Feminism

He does this with public education, with feminism, and some other government policies. And so that's why I published this book, is just to make it more accessible. Even if you don't agree with everything he wrote or said, that's fine.

That's, I think, to be expected with anyone, and I don't think just because of his association with slavery that we should ignore him. I think that's to our detriment.

And I interviewed him for my podcast on this point. That was an issue at that time, it still is. And I've known since that point, at least, that there are those in the Presbyterian Church in America and in evangelicalism more broadly who don't like Zach because of his teachings on male patriarchy, on respect for figures like James Henley Thornwell, Robert Louis Dabney, despite the fact that some Presbyterians have tried to cancel them.

I think Zach is someone who is younger, who has a legal background.

He's accomplished.

He's a good scholar, and he's impressive. And so people who are, let's just say, on the Tim Keller wing of the Presbyterian Church, the PCA, they don't like Zach Garris particularly. And that's evidenced by the fact that one of the letters of complaint to his presbytery in Rio Grande, the Rio Grande Presbytery, has 60 or more people who signed it from around the country.

It just shows you that there are people who do not like Zach Garris. So that's some of the background. Zach's been known for talking about the male patriarchy issue for years now. And I think you have to understand that to understand what's going on right now.

The Presbyterian Church in America, for those who don't know, is the second largest Presbyterian body in the United States. They have almost 2 ,000 congregations. That means over 400 ,000 members. And they have 83 presbyteries.

Zach is in one of the most liberal ones, the Rio Grande Presbytery. Now this presbytery started to have a problem with Zach from the ground floor level. There were a number of people who voted against him to even be ordained in that particular presbytery.

He passed anyway, but he's had his enemies. The recent issue comes about because of a disagreement he got into online with an individual named Lamont English. This was in June 2024. Lamont English worked with the Mission to the World, which is the Presbyterian churches.

And I'm saying that shorthand. It's the Presbyterian Church in America. There's other Presbyterian bodies. But when I say Presbyterian for this video, I am talking about that particular denomination. So he was part of their mission's arm.

And he got into a dispute with Zach Garris over the issue of whether or not abolitionism in the 19th century American context was the only Christian position or the right Christian position and whether the slave master relationship was sinful in and of itself.

And so Zach tried to defend what he considered to be the Bible's teaching on this topic, that abolitionism in and of itself, the idea that these things are sinful in and of themselves, is not correct.

That would actually be against the Bible's teaching, but that he would still be generally anti-slavery because of the things that are connected to it. He issued a clarification to make sure that people did not misunderstand what he was saying, that he thinks it would be right to work against slavery.

He would be a gradual emancipationist had he lived back in the 19th century. But he doesn't think that the abolitionism position is the only Christian one or the correct one. Well, that got him in trouble.

Now, one other thing to note about Lamont English, he doesn't just work or didn't just work with the mission to the world. He was also the diversity, a diversity mobilizer for them. So the initiative that they had for diversifying missions in the PCA, Lamont English had that position and he had advocated many times before on online, publicly posting things that were very pro-diversity.

But even more than that, I mean, there's a picture of him with a shirt and a Black Lives Matter fist, and this is the kind of person he is. So Zack was definitely arguing with someone who is more woke.

The Investigation, Leaked Report, and Delayed Indictment

Now, despite his clarification, there were letters sent to Dustin Hunt, the Rio Grande Presbyterian estate clerk, calling for an investigation into Pastor Garris' views to determine whether they were in keeping with the Presbyterian doctrine.

So one letter condemned Zack Garris for opening the church up to slander and failing to live up to his ordination vows, especially in relation to personal piety and Christian unity. And this was the one signed by 60 PCA ministers, including David Cassidy, who's a more prominent member in the PCA, who's more on the left, and Pastor Erwin Ince, a coordinator of Mission to North America, the organization that Lamont English was working with.

He's also the former pastor of Grace DC Presbyterian Church and a former PCA General Assembly moderator. So kind of a big wig in the PCA. Now, there was a second letter, mainly supported by people in the Metro New York Presbytery.

I believe 19 of 21 of the signatures were people from that particular Presbytery. This is Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller's Presbytery. And they allege that Pastor Garris' views were out of step with the Westminster Larger Catechism on the sins forbidden in the commandments against stealing and murder.

So they're saying slavery is also, in the American context at least, connected to stealing, connected to murder. Zach is defending that. Zach is out of step. The Rio Grande Presbyteries convened an investigative committee in August 2024.

So it took them two months. They got an investigative body. I'll just name for you the people on it. John Standridge. You have Daniel Devalos. You have Gavin Chavez, Josh Speer, David Moon, and Matt McMillan.

And they adopted a majority report. There were two reports that the committee formed. One of them was the majority report, which found Zach guilty. One of them was a minority report that said he wasn't guilty.

And they also investigated beyond just the charges in these particular letters. They went through other public teachings of Zach to determine whether there were other problems. And we'll get to that in a moment because that's actually where the main controversy comes in with what they found.

In January 2025, the Rio Grande Presbytery adopted the report, which subsequently appeared online. A guy named Eli McGowan tweeted about how various elders had given him access to the report. Unfortunately, this sharing violated the PCA Book of Church Order provisions governing confidentiality and judicial proceedings.

In other words, this is an ongoing trial. They're not supposed to be publicly giving that kind of information out. They're not supposed to be talking about it. But yet here it is. And so this was a problem.

The Slavery Charges Were Rejected, but a Corrupt Speech Conviction Followed

It was not until January 2026, though, that the Rio Grande Presbytery officially indicted Pastor Zach Garris. You got to ask a question here. It took a year from this report being adopted to actually have a trial to indict him, to censure him ultimately, which is what happened.

Why a year? And I think in the PCA, the process is the punishment. You have this hanging over your head. And in that time, if you say more things that could potentially get on the radar of people who don't like you, then there's even more ammunition for a trial.

Now, the most controversial aspect of this entire ordeal concerns the trial verdict. And the reason for that is because the Rio Grande Presbytery found him not guilty on the issues related to slavery, on the issues related to whether or not he was within the doctrine of the Presbyterian Church, within the Westminster Standards, whether he was faithful to his ordination vows for the position that he held on 19th century American slavery.

And he was ruled to be not guilty. But they could have just said he wasn't guilty. Instead, they added a charge. And it would seem like a frivolous charge that he had spoken to Anthony Bradley, a PCA teaching elder and professor at Kuiper College during an unrelated exchange from almost a year earlier from the initial charges, October 2023.

And the charge was that in that conversation that Garris had insinuated that Bradley was arrogant and ignorant despite possessing a Ph .D. So Zack said, quote, sometimes things are more complex than a Ph .D. can handle.

Now, this is interesting. This was supposed the charge was essentially that he was in violation of the kind of speech a Christian should have. Corrupt speech really is the charge, unwholesome activity with his mouth.

Yet they did not have a formal charge from governing documents of the PCA. So it's just this is what scripture says we're going to charge him. And unfortunately for them, they charged a minister who is known for saying things more provocative than Zack said online.

One example that's been floating around recently is how Anthony Bradley talked to Megan Bashan, talking about that she's very low IQ, that kind of stuff. So this is a prominent person in the PCA, Anthony Bradley.

And somehow he is not charged with the offenses that Zack Garris is charged with. Even though he's guilty of them. And it just reeks of favoritism. This is really what it comes down to is this particular thing.

Why are these people treated one way and these people treated another? How come if you're more theologically or politically on the left in the PCA, it seems like it's easier for you than someone like Zack, who's more on the right?

What's up with that? Even one of Garris's critics said that Garris is basically a folk hero now because of the fact that they so badly fumbled this. By adding this charge, while the punishment imposed on Garris is censure, meaning he cannot preach, he can't do his pastoral duties.

If Zack appeals it, which he has, then that censure is temporarily lifted until the Standing Judicial Commission for the PCA makes a ruling. So in other words, this is getting kicked up. The Standing Judicial Commission for the entire denomination is going to rule on whether or not this charge will stick.

And they've overruled presbyteries before on these kinds of things. If that happens, it will be a major embarrassment for the Rio Grande Presbytery. Yet this presbytery is also facing other problems. The Rio Grande Presbytery leaked information regarding the trial.

Like I said before, this is going to cause them a problem. They also convicted Garris on an offense many believe they failed to establish from the denomination's own constitutional standards. And in addition to that, the presbytery is expected to appear before the review of the Presbytery Records Committee for irregularities or possible violations in actions or records.

In other words, there's already a problem with them that the Presbyterian Church is looking into because of their sloppiness, their irregularities in their own record keeping. Now, in addition to all this, during this trial, they allowed a minister to be transferred into their presbytery who believes in and advocates for paedo-communion.

Now, this is despite the fact that the Presbyterian Church, the PCA, is against paedo-communion, that it is administered to those who can make a confession in affirming the true religion, which children cannot.

So they allow someone like this to come in who is against the theological standards of the denomination, yet they're going after Zach Garris because he said a PhD wasn't able to handle an argument. Now, whether Zach should or should not have done that, you would think that would be something for a rebuke, not something for a censure, not something to say, well, this guy can't even be a pastor, especially when the person that he said it to says worse things.

And this is going to be a commodity, a hot item when it goes before the Standing Judicial Commission, which will probably be fairly soon. So you'll probably find out within the next, I would say, two or three months, we'll see what's going to happen to Zach Garris in relation to this.

But if he wins this case, as he is presumed to be, if he wins this appeal, I should say, then it will be a massive embarrassment for the Rio Grande Presbytery and Zach will be very vindicated. So that is, in a nutshell, the Zach Garris situation in the Presbyterian Church in America, so you can understand it.

The reason it's getting wider appeal and people who aren't Presbyterians are talking about it, even people, I was going to say like myself, but I've been friends with Zach, people who aren't friends with Zach, who aren't Presbyterian, they're looking at this because I think this is something that a lot of people have sensed for a long time in various organizations, institutions and denominations, that it seems like the processes are weaponized against those who are more conservative and there's a blind eye for those who aren't.

And this is just a classic case of it. So keep your eye on this. Pray for Zach, pray for repentance among those who were part of this in the Rio Grande Presbytery. And let's hope for better days and pray for better days in the Presbyterian Church in America.

So hopefully that helps clarify anyone who was in confusion about this and shows why this is important. God bless.