The PCA's Transgender Surgery Petition

Petitioning the Magistrate on Transgender Surgery

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. We are live now, and I have a guest with me, Zach Garris. Zach has been on the program before. He serves as the pastor of Bryce Avenue Presbyterian Church in White Rock, New Mexico, and he is the author of Masculine Christianity and Honor Thy Fathers, Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers.

I actually saw Zach, the cover for this today or yesterday on New Christendom Press. It looks pretty good. So when does.

That come out? June sometime. I know the guy said it will be available at the conference in Ogden, Utah. Yeah. But I don't know when it will be available.

Online, but I assume sometime in the month of June. Yeah, the only bone I have to pick is it says endorsements from This Is Foster, Stephen Wolfe, C .R. Wiley, and I'm like, I'm pretty sure that I read it and endorsed this, so we'll see.

Well, yeah, I assume it will be somewhere in the book or online.

They'll use your... I may not have made the cut. It's okay, Zach. So anyway, no, this is really good, and you know, we could talk about so many things, but I saw an article that you put out there recently in American Reformer called Petitioning the Magistrate.

I remember this is kind of an old issue, isn't it? Or like it's not a hot issue right this second. You're responding to something that already happened. Now, of course, David Gordon, I guess, is who you're responding to, and he wrote an article last month.

But correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't this issue like last year? Wasn't this a big deal? Yes, that's correct. Well, actually,.

You've kind of had two years in a row where the PCA has sent up a petition to the civil government. So you had abortion in 2022, and then this petition 2023. So the General Assembly, June of last year, the PCA General Assembly passed the overture to petition the civil government, the magistrate, on transgender surgeries, especially on minors.

So it's not limited to minors, it's broader than that. But they had to write the letter. So the letter was written, I think it came out early this year, in 2024. So initially, January or something.

Wasn't there was someone prominent at Escondido, right, that was objecting to this and saying that this is a conflation of the kingdoms or something?

Yeah, so back when this was an issue at the Assembly, R. Scott Clark, who's a professor of church history at Westminster Seminary, California, in Escondido, he was critical of the Assembly's move. And his argument was that it violates, or part of his argument, it violates Westminster Confession 31 .4, which deals with petitioning the magistrate.

And the languages is like cases extraordinary. So we can get into that. But yeah, yeah, well, and then that ties into this protest here by T. David Gordon, who.

Just set the stage, because I probably did a poor job of that in the beginning here. We're talking about this is the first issue, we're gonna get into some more PCA issues since you're PC Pastor Zach, but we were talking about the PCA decided to take a public stand and not just take a public stand, but urge the civil magistrate, essentially, to, what's the best way to put it to not say sanction or to not approve of transgender surgeries for minors?

That's basically the gist of it.

Yeah, I mean, the language is the the Assembly petitioned the civil government to stop transgender surgery, so to outlaw them, to put an end to them. So it's, it's calling the government to do something.

I mean, so it's condemning the very practice of transgender surgeries.

And all of God's people said, why is this controversial? But with certain people in the PCA, it is. And, and some of these guys, I would say they're probably the radical two kingdoms guys, right? They really just see us.

And they, and so let's, let's talk about maybe give the concrete examples first. So you can go through what you talked about in your article, and then maybe explain like, what, what drives them? What makes them tick?

Because this is such an odd, I think, to the average Christian way of approaching the topic that the church can never, ever speak prophetically, and the two kingdoms shall never, there's the waters don't ever mix.

So yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

To be clear, these guys are not necessarily political leftists. Right? I'm not saying they're paleo conservatives. They might be neoconservatives. But politically, they're not usually leftists. They're in separation of church and state.

And it gets into what's known as the spirituality of the church, which we can get into. But, but just to be clear, that's, that's what they're arguing is not nobody here is arguing that transgender surgeries are a good thing.

They are so to be fair to them, they're saying that the church should not speak to the state on this matter, formally, and particularly T. David Gordon's argument, as part of his protest, is that it's the General Assembly, that should not be doing this, or he would say church courts.

So he would, he would allow even even allowed in his article, he allows for pastors to preach against these things. So he, I mean, that's another issue, but he's, he's not even saying it has to stay out of the pulpit per se.

He's just saying that when we come together in church courts, which would be elders gathering as a session, or presbytery meetings, or the highest we have in the PCA is the General Assembly. He's saying that we should not make political rulings.

That's what he's saying. He's saying it's a political ruling. I don't I don't think it's, I would argue it's not purely political. So that's, that's where I.

How prominent is David Gordon in the PCA? I mean, you know, he was a professor at Gordon, or a college in there in Pennsylvania. Grove City, Grove City, Gordon, Grove City. And then of course, he's a minister in the PCA.

Is he, is he pretty prominent, I suppose, prominent enough for you to write against his.

Position?

Yes, he's retired now. I think he's fairly well known in, like reformed circles. Most people probably know him for his book, Why Johnny Can't Preach.

Oh, yes. Okay. I do know.

That's, that's where I had first heard of him is, you know, he's, he's critical of kind of modern evangelicalism. And, you know, that book's like lack of education and the like. So yeah, I mean, I remember liking that book.

It's been a.

While since I've read it.

But walk us through his argument, then why you disagree with his position on.

This.

Yeah, so Gordon, basically, he has kind of three, three arguments in there. That's how I summarize his, his article. Let me, let me actually maybe backtrack. So his presbytery, the Ascension Presbytery in Pennsylvania, they, they sent up the petition to the local government.

Okay, so to the state. That's how he filed his protest in his presbytery. And so that's why it's a recent issue is the presbyteries can, if they choose, send up the petition, the letter to civil government, they can send it to more local government instead of the PCA only sent it to, I believe, the federal government, different people within federal government.

So, so anyway, so Gordon protested, and he has some arguments in here that are like, hey, this just isn't a good use of time and resources, which I think that's hard to say at this point, it's kind of what I say at the beginning of the article.

But it because to be fair, so he, he advocates that, well, individuals can send up these letters, he's not saying we can't send up letters to government on these issues as individual pastors or church members or whatever.

So, again, though, I don't think that's really a strong argument, because I do think when the assembly does this takes a stand, it's saying, hey, this is a serious thing. And it's actually encouraging other people to do those individual petitions and letters.

That's, that's fine. I wouldn't put them against each other. And I just think transgender surgeries, it's such a massive, I mean, problem, but but just so awful. And it's something that I think the church should clearly speak against.

And, and so it's good that we have a statement like this. So I don't, I'm not with him on his, his argument that it's not a good use of time or resources. It's not, it's obviously not the only thing we should be doing as a church, but I don't think we spent that much time on it.

Frankly, um, go ahead.

Yeah, okay. So that's argument one, then. And that's more of a prudential, just there's other priorities and stuff. That's not a deeply theological argument. What are the other two?

Right. So, so he's getting at a more theological issue, which I'm going to look at the wording here, just so I can be clear with what he said. So, so he's, he's affirming the spirituality of the church, which I which I would affirm, but but there is disagreement as to how this plays out and kind of its details.

And some of this, I should say, just as a note, goes back to some debates in the 19th century between Presbyterians like Charles Hodge, there was James Henley Thornwell, but I really think that the most radical guy was Stuart Robinson, Kentucky Presbyterian.

So, so, so this gets into some of, and we can talk about this, some of the difference between like Hodge and Robinson. So Gordon, Gordon says that the spirituality of the church, that is its spiritual, non-political nature, forbids a joint church assembly from speaking to the civil magistrate.

That's kind of his general principle is that the church should not in its courts and its joint assemblies, which as I said, session, Presbyterian, general assembly, should not make rulings that involve politics.

And he seems to say that even when they're touching on moral issues, so that therein lies part of the problem is that's, I would agree with him if we're talking about something that's purely political.

And there we see part of the problem. But so then tied with this, he does make an exception to that general principle, which is that the church can speak to the civil government if the magistrate makes a request.

So if the government says, Hey, church, can you speak to us on this issue? And then the church is then allowed to do so because they're requested to do so. Or the other exceptions, that's one. The second exception is that the church can make humble petitions in cases extraordinary.

And so this gets into Westminster Confession 31 .4. And so I realized some of this is, you know, gets tedious. But essentially, he's arguing that cases extraordinary, and he's citing A. A. Hodge, which is Charles Hodge's son.

Hodge says, quote, where the interests of the church are immediately concerned. And so Gordon is using A. A. Hodge's short comment, by the way, it's pretty brief, to, in support of his position, that it needs to basically directly interfere with the church.

So he's not saying that the church can never petition the state. He's saying it just should be only when the state directly affects the church. And I think he gives the example of like some of the COVID shutdowns.

So he would allow for something there, like where it interferes with the church, and then the church can petition the state. But he's saying that the transgender stuff doesn't directly affect the church.

And so basically, we just need to stay out of it.

The Church, the Magistrate, and Moral Issues

Okay. All right. So that's well summarized there. It's not an extraordinary case. It doesn't directly affect the church. Well, if it is, it doesn't directly affect the church. And your disagreement is?

Yeah, so well, I have several disagreements. As I mentioned, I think this issue is not purely political. So if we were talking about, I don't know, some, I always like to say, like, tariff rates or something, you know, then the church probably shouldn't get involved.

It's something that is purely political and should be decided as a political matter and not, it's not a spiritual religious issue. And so the church should just stay out of it. It causes, it causes problems.

And it's just not the church's duty. But I think the church and its joint courts can and should at times speak to the magistrate regarding moral issues. And this is a moral issue, though it touches somewhat on the duties of the state.

And so, yeah, I think Gordon has a problem, basically, where he's, and this gets into the language of Chapter 31 .4 of the Confession, it speaks of ecclesiastical affairs and then civil affairs. The problem is that something like transgender surgeries, well, what does that fall under?

It's not purely a civil affair because it's a moral issue. And so, in that sense, it can relate to the church. I mean, we should, we can apply the Bible to these things. So that's part of it. The scriptures do speak to these issues.

And therefore, if the scriptures speak to them, the church can speak to them. And in some ways, the church has a duty to speak to them, right, when they're a problem in society. We have a duty to apply the word of God.

And so he's basically, I think Gordon's tying the church's hands behind its back, saying we can't address these things publicly, or at least not in church courts. I think it's kind of arbitrary, where he says, you could do it from a pulpit, but not from a church court.

I don't see a distinction because if I can do it from the pulpit, then the church courts can do it. And if I can't do it from the pulpit, or should, yeah, if I can't, then church courts can't. I think we should see some consistency there.

I'm not sure exactly his basis. He doesn't seem to explain that. So that's part of my objection is just this is a moral issue that the church can, and in this case, should speak to. It's permissible. And I mean, also, you know, if you see my opening argument in that article, it's basically I say this is absurd.

It's actually an absurd position to say the church and it's as the church cannot speak to condemn transgender surgeries, and call the state to do something about it. I mean, if we can't do it, who's going to speak to it?

Nobody else. And so we're just going to, you know, let evil take place in the open, and the church is just going to be silent. I think that's entirely unacceptable.

How the Church Should Speak on Public Moral Questions

Yeah. Why don't we do the third one? And then I want to come back, the third argument he makes in your objection. And then I want to talk a little bit about church state relationships, which you talked about quite a bit on this podcast, but fine tuning kind of where, how we should think about the both the difference between these institutions, and yet the where the waters meet, so to speak.

So what's the third argument that he brings?

Which one are you referencing?

Oh, did we already do that? Okay, I thought you said he had three arguments.

Well, well, he does. But the two are, I separate them just for simplicity, which is, he cites the spirituality of church, but then he, he gets into the exception. And he argues that this case doesn't meet the exception, because it doesn't directly affect the church.

So, so those two kind of go go hand in hand. I mean, there's, there's more I could say about his, his, his position here.

Well, yeah, that's fine. If you have something to say, but I thought it would be helpful also to just get into. Principally, what?

Sure.

Because there's a lot of pastors listening, I'm sure, and laymen in PCA churches who, they don't know, they're confused. We'll put it that way. Or they're, if they're not confused, they're, they're wondering where to lean, because that in the one hand, we have, and maybe I should just say it, I can say it on my podcast, you have ministries, they're not, you know, Moscow isn't in the PCA, but the Moscow kind of model, if you want to call it that, of, you know, starting all these different institutions, publishing companies, and media, and all these things, and then addressing tons of political issues, right.

And, and so there's a lot of involvement in civil affairs, or at least in commenting on them, and encouraging people to run for office. And I don't know what all, you know, they're doing, but that's kind of like one model I see.

And that affects a lot of PCA churches, because I think you and I talked about it at breakfast a few weeks ago, that they're, they're, you know, they have the Canon Press app and stuff like they may go to a PCA church, but like, what kind of material are they consuming at home, the material that's available, and they're not going on PCA sermon websites, as much as they are the convenience of the Canon Press app with its kids programming and all the rest.

So that's like one model, that's kind of rising in popularity, I'd say in the PCA. And then you have kind of this Westminster Escondido, radical two kingdoms, like, very much a separation, which is what you're critiquing, in a sense, aspects of it, between the government and the church in such a way that the waters just never seem to meet.

And it strikes, so there seems, I hate to be that guy that sounds like a typical evangelical who's trying to say there's there's truth in both, right? I don't really, I don't know that I buy that. But there, I do see that you can go off in either direction, right?

You can have a church that's electioneering, that's way too involved in cultural things to the point that they've lost their distinction as a church, which is more of a, an outpost in the temporal world to point towards heavenly realities and prepare the soul for these transcendent heavenly things.

And you're just so stuck in the temporal world and the political fights that are going on around you, I can see that as a problem. And churches that start putting things in their faith statements on, you know, not political or moral issues, but like political strategies, you know, like this is the right political strategy to end, you know, homosexuality or abortion or all these other things, like they get sucked into a very political mold, or at least a danger is there, perhaps.

And then you have the churches that just, you know, 2020 happened, and there's a riot outside the window. And the church says, we're not even going to address that. And we're not going to write any vaccination, you know, religious conviction statements for your job or with like, we're going to pretend like none of that is happening.

So give us some guidance as a pastor on how you navigate these two models and where you see the ditches and that kind of thing.

Yeah, this is kind of a tough question. Um, look, I'll say I affirm the spirituality of the church. So I, in one sense, it kind of is like a middle ground, though, I think it's, it's the proper biblical teaching.

And basically, it's the idea that the church is a non secular, non political institution. Okay, it is a spiritual institution with a spiritual mission. So we shouldn't be seeking to get involved in purely political issues.

So there, like I said, there are things we shouldn't be getting into, I don't think we should be as a church, you know, officially endorsing candidates and things like that. It, I mean, there's also practical problems with that, obviously causes unnecessary division.

But then, obviously, we don't want to, we don't want to act like the Bible has nothing to say to these issues. Because, you know, especially today, a lot of these so called political issues are not purely political, right?

They're moral, they involve all sorts of moral issues. And the Bible does speak to them. And where the Bible speaks, so must the church speak. And that's, that's part of the issue. Now, I realize sometimes things aren't entirely explicit from Scripture.

And so sometimes there's, you know, things that are implicit. And sometimes we have to apply Scripture. So let me maybe give an example is, I mean, obviously, the Bible very clearly condemns homosexuality.

And so it, it doesn't take much to get to the to the conclusion that same sex marriage is immoral, and the church should oppose it. And, and even can condemn the state and call the state to repentance when it enables such.

Yeah, I guess you could say abortion requires a little more to get there. It's not as explicit, though, I think it's, you know, good and necessary consequence of Scripture, to use the language of the Westminster Confession 1 .6.

You know, most Christians are in agreement on, you know, that abortion is immoral. Of course, you could get some who are soft on it politically. You know, I don't think the church needs to say what the punishment should be.

I think that can be left to the state. I mean, I'm not saying again, though, I'm not saying pastors can't, or shouldn't write on these things. But some of those issues, it's best that the church courts don't, don't address.

And then, but we can say abortion is immoral, and the church, the church should call magistrates to repentance to outlaw it. I mean, so I mean, and those are kind of like maybe two of the easier issues, but you do have things like transgenderism, and transgender surgeries that, you know, Scripture still speaks to as far as Genesis 1, and male and female, and these kind of things.

So again, I think, let me maybe say this about T. David Gordon's article. I think he's right that we should be cautious in how we approach political issues in our assemblies, and we don't want to be doing these things all the time.

So he's right on that, in that regard. He's just, I think he's wrong in this specific application here, and his exceptions are not broad enough. He's taking too narrow of exceptions, and unjustifiably limiting the church in its prophetic witness.

That's part of the issue, the church does have a prophetic witness against moral evil.

The Church’s Prophetic Witness Against Moral Evil

Yeah, you say in the conclusion to the article, Gordon's argument against the PCA's petition to the civil magistrate to end transgender surgeries does not properly account for the church's duty to correct the magistrate when it does not fulfill its duty.

Gordon rightly holds that the church should correct the magistrate when it does not protect the church, but that is not the magistrate's only duty. The magistrate is also to maintain piety, and as superior in the commonwealth, the magistrate is to protect and provide for those under his authority and all things necessary for the soul and body.

And then when the magistrate does not fulfill his duty, the church may inter meddle with civil affairs by the way of humble petitions. So you talked about that already.

And a lot of that's quoting, a lot of those are quotations, partial quotations from the Westminster standard. So people may want to go read that themselves. I do think this is the case where some reformed people or even non-reformed Christians might say, whoa, whoa, caring for the body, not just the soul or body and soul for the magistrate.

And then the other thing I said there is about maintain piety. The magistrate should maintain piety. All of that stuff is still in the American version of the Westminster standard. So I'm quoting the American version, not the original, which had some stronger powers, I guess, of the state in regard to religious things.

So that gets into the whole Christian nationalism issues and related to R2K, Reformed Two Kingdoms, or probably Radical Two Kingdoms. But again, I'm just saying that the magistrate has a duty here, and when it doesn't do that duty, the church can.

It's permitted to.

Call the state to repentance. Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, I don't see anything in the Westminster Confession that would prohibit this kind of thing. And the people who want to draw those lines, I don't know where exactly they're coming from as far as what cultural milieu they were involved in that made them scared about this kind of involvement.

Well, I have one example. Go ahead. You tell me, and then I'll tell you what Gordon thinks.

Well, I was just going to say the Baptist world, you kind of understand it to some extent because their whole story is like, oh, we were always persecuted, and that's why we really want some kind of religious pluralism.

And that kind of motivates some of them to argue that the magistrate should be so separate from the church that the two waters shall never meet. And I get it for them. For the Presbyterians, not quite as much.

I don't know if it's the same motivation or if it's.

Something else. But go ahead. You had an illustration. Well, I mean, for some of these guys, the radical two kingdoms guys, I mean, it's hard to know individual motives, but there seems to be a fear of offending unbelievers on some of these matters.

So they'd rather the church just talk about the death and resurrection of Christ, justification by faith, all great things. Obviously, the church would be preaching those, but they don't want to get into some of these more controversial things that might touch on the political or cultural issues that are, the problem is their moral issues.

And so they deal with the law of God. God's law speaks to these things, and so should the church. So I think there is a fear from some of these guys. But again, I can't always know when that's the case.

At least their arguments tend to be, you know, they're going to Westminster Confession 31 .4. I think they're wrong on that. But here's where I was going is Gordon has a fear, and he states this in the article, that when the church gets too political, it becomes liberal.

So that's his fear, and he's appealing to the 20th century. But I think he makes an error here, right? Or I'll at least say I disagree with him. He is correct that both the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches in the 20th century were making lots of political statements, and they were going liberal.

The Northern church before the Southern church, but the Southern Presbyterian church was going liberal, started really heavily in the 1930s. And then the PCA was formed in 1973. The PCA came out of the Southern church, background of the PCA.

So Gordon thinks that these political statements that the mainline churches were making were leading it liberal. But here's the problem. I think he's conflating the issues and assuming causation. The fact of the matter is that the mainline churches were already going liberal.

They were abandoning the inheritance of scripture. They were abandoning God's prohibitions on divorce, which are pretty strict. They were loosening things like that. They were starting to ordain women.

So this isn't just political. There's all sorts of other issues at play. Yes, they were entertaining, some of the liberals were entertaining communism and other evils. But this was more symptomatic, I think, of their liberalism.

The problem wasn't that they were making political statements. That wasn't the cause of their liberalism, in other words. Now here's another argument, and I make this point in the article, is that in the 19th century, the Presbyterian church actually made lots of political statements, but they weren't liberal.

I mean, there were disagreements between the old school and new school and debates over slavery and abolitionism. But the fact of the matter is, and I point out three cases or three examples, is that the Presbyterian church, they petitioned the government over mail on Sunday, so the Sabbath mails controversy.

And while you could argue that that directly affects the church, that's not the only place they went. They actually, as I quoted in there, they were saying, this was like 1810 and then 1814. That's before any splits.

So this is a united Presbyterian church, American Presbyterian church. And they're saying that the mail being delivered on Sunday is bad for society. That's one of their arguments. So it's not limited to, oh, this is harming the church.

They're just saying, actually, Sabbath breaking is really bad for everyone. And so the magistrate needs to stop it. So that's one example. There's also, the other example I give is slavery. There's the 1818 statement on slavery.

Now, this wasn't a petition of the civil government, but the Bible does speak to the issue of slavery. So they were, it was kind of a moderate position where they rejected abolitionism, but they were also calling for an end to slavery.

And then they instructed the church regarding duties of masters and slaves and even called for discipline if Christian masters were splitting up families and things like that. So it's a pretty interesting statement.

But you see that, they're addressing what was definitely in one sense, a civil affair for sure, but it was also moral. So basically the church was saying, well, we need to address these things, but we can't go as far as to tell the state what they should do here.

And then the other issue I give is temperance, which that one's kind of complicated, and I don't really like that the church was getting involved in that one, because it ended up leading eventually the prohibition movement.

But anyway, the point is that the Presbyterian church had a precedent, has a precedent for speaking to issues that are political, but they're not purely political. And so the PCA here was following basically American Presbyterian precedent.

Revolutionary Moments and Counter-Revolutionary Moments

Zach, a thought came to my mind,.

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear your thought on this, but there is a posture that is suited for perhaps a revolutionary moment that is not suited for a counter-revolutionary moment. And what I mean by that is you see the reform movements of the 19th century, you mentioned abolitionism and the prohibition issue, but of course you also had anti-masonry and you had the whole feminism issue coming up and there were other things that, there was just a whole kind of enthusiasm during the latter half of that century for these different reform efforts that culminated in the social gospel.

And the Presbyterians were certainly involved in these things. I mean, even Finney came out of a Presbyterian background and was very enthusiastic about much of this.

He did not hold the Presbyterian doctrine though, let's be clear. Actually, you don't want to take credit for him, that's fine. Well, there's a funny story where he's asked about the confession and he said he had never read it.

I mean, I don't know how he got ordained,.

But he left in 1835. But he did come out of a... He did, yeah. Presbyterians,.

There's all sorts of bad figures that have come out of our way.

Okay. So anyway, my point is though, in that moment, what you had, I think with a lot of that, with that whole kind of, I don't know what to call it, a broad movement. It was really like the first woke movement.

You could draw a lot of parallels. That woke movement, if you want to call it that, with all its broad kind of issues that it took, kind of had this revolutionary impulse. And it was the attempt to remake society along more egalitarian lines for the most part.

That's really the common thread that runs through a lot of this, that there's these associations and institutions and things that are holding society back from progress. And that progress is going to eventually end up in some kind of a social equality.

And so, of course, the social gospel is where this culminates and we see that as compromised. And I think we could probably take these issues and talk about, hey, what was the biblical instinct they should have had and that they didn't and that kind of thing.

But that was a revolutionary moment. We're in a moment now where conservatives and Christians, in particular, who actually believe the Bible and make up the base of conservatism in this country, their job is more or their impulse and their posture is more counter-revolutionary.

They're looking at all the damage that's been done and they're trying to undo it somehow. And that's what you have here. It's an example of, hey, the government should be condemning and making illegal these transgender operations.

This is a counter-revolutionary move. And so my theory, perhaps, that I'm coming up with on the spot is that maybe some of these PCA guys are looking back at moments, more conservative ones, and saying, hey, we really went off track during that revolutionary moment when we overrode scripture, we overrode even some of the things that were prudentially perhaps better for society, or if they weren't better, we basically adopted cures that were worse than their diseases and that kind of thing.

And we did all of this in the name of this impulse that really isn't biblical. You don't find this in scripture. And we're doing the same thing now. They're paralleling these things, perhaps, in their minds, or there's a fear that we're going to go.

And it's a different moment, though. And that's part of it. You're just applying biblical orthodoxy and moral standards in scripture to a range of issues that have been brought to us by the revolution.

So anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that as I'm.

Talking, but I wonder what that's at play. I have one thought, which is who's behind the overture, the petition to the civil government, in this case, against transgender surgeries. It's mostly the conservatives in the PCA, or who people would call the confessionalists, or whatever you want to call us.

Those opposing, by and large, seem to be more progressive. And they say they're against transgender surgeries and all these things, but they're kind of citing the spirituality of the church. Again, there seems to be a fear.

Some of those guys are not in the same vein, though, as T. David Gordon. Gordon is not a progressive. So that's where there's a weird mix here. Gordon does seem to follow more of a radical Two Kingdoms position.

And this is, I guess, a problem to raise, is the R2K guys, though they may be more politically conservative, they're giving arguments to more progressive people who are just afraid of speaking on these issues.

So these things get mixed. And I'm saying, so R2K is a problem. It really is.

But you're saying, to my little theory that I came up with, you're saying it's actually not so much conservatives who are concerned about this involvement. It's a mix of progressives and conservatives.

That line doesn't seem to be the, I guess, it doesn't define where you're.

Going to land. Some conservatives think that way. That's Gordon's thought, is that this is going to lead to the liberalization of the church. And I think it's exactly the opposite. It's, no, the church is actually trying to do its job, and it's the conservatives who are pushing this.

There's no risk of the PCA going liberal because, I mean, the PCA has problems, but it's not because we're trying to petition the government on transgender surgeries.

It seems like something not to be as concerned with. So I do have some comments coming in before we get to the David French stuff, which we're going to do. So I'll just go, I guess, in order and see. Oh, this is, I probably read the French stuff.