What's Happening in the Christian Reformed Church?

The Christian Reformed Church and Its Annual Meeting

I'm your host, John Harris, to talk about the CRC, that's right, the CRC, the Christian Reform Church. I know, I've never talked about that on the podcast. Interestingly enough, when I was young, I actually attended a CRC youth group occasionally and went on, I think, two or three youth retreats with them and other CRC churches would come.

My impression was always that they were more to the left of where I was, as far as ordaining women, pastors. I mean, we had at one of the retreats, and you do have adults there, and you also have teenagers who are 18, 19, so legally adults, and they brought in a female speaker who was a feminist.

We'll just put it that way. I mean, she talked about, she shared with everyone how her dream was to ride motorcycles with her girlfriend in retirement, and if her husband didn't like it, he can stay home.

And I guess she thought that was edgy and that the kids would really like that or something. But I remember we played apples to apples one night. She was there at the retreat, and she put down the word dignified, and then I put down the card Rush Limbaugh.

And then when she saw that, she wanted to know who put that card down. And she was upset as much as someone who's Dutch Reform can get upset. I mean, they have their library voice on, and they give you the impression they're listening to NPR sometimes.

But she was, I remember that that really flustered her. And I just, my impression was, I was probably 16 at that time, 15, I don't know, but my impression was they were just more to the left. And I think that was confirmed as I was watching their annual meeting this morning that, yeah, they definitely are.

They're way farther, in my mind, to the left than the SBC is. They just took a stand, though, against sexual perversions, including homosexuality, and they adopted it into their confession. And this is causing a stir because they held their meeting at Calvin College.

Calvin College now, I mean, it's totally left. It's just, that's where Kristen Dumez is. That's where they have, I don't know if they still do, but they had a openly homosexual student body president.

They have a club on campus for homosexuals. It's way to the left. And so that's where they held the meeting. And they had, even they had protesters outside because of this adoption. And it wasn't even, I thought at first, maybe this was the revoiced type stuff, even though they don't have that, was getting into their denomination.

But when I looked at it, it's not that. It's actually, you could be in favor of the revoiced theology, and I think you would probably be okay with this statement. It wouldn't really fluster you too much.

So just really a basic statement against, you know, homosexuality, it's a sin, Bible said, like just, and then you had like, what, a third, something like that of the delegates. I don't know what they call them, but the representatives there voting against it.

So there's definitely a, there's definitely a, they seem, you know what they seem like? They seem like a little bit like a hybrid between like the PCUSA and the PCA in my mind. Like they're on this continuum and they're kind of between those two.

They're not, they're definitely not PCA, but they're definitely, definitely not PCUSA. They're not like, I mean, they're not like, there's still, there's still Christians in the denomination for sure.

And people who love the Lord and are, I think, Orthodox in their theology, but they must have a different stance on ordination of women because they definitely had a number of messengers there. I've seen, I'm using the SBC language.

They had a number of representatives there, whatever they call them in that denomination that were women. And they, they're just the vibe you get. It's the vibe that you would get. So, so there's differences between these three denominations that I've talked about recently.

The SBC is a lot more working class, a lot more boisterous. I think a large part of the people who are there, just because it's a big group are ignorant about what's going on. It tends to be a popularity contest.

People use the microphones to talk about inconsequential issues. Sometimes they, they preach a sermon on what they feel is need, the denomination needs to do. You have the people who are trying to keep order, constantly calling for point of order or calling, calling the assembly back to order.

You have the PCA, they dress a little nicer. They more use maybe a wider range of words in their vernacular. They tend to be, I think, less boisterous. They have mastered the art, the Scottish Presbyterians, of showing passion without showing much emotion somehow.

I don't know how they do that, but that's one of the things they do. In contrast, though, you have the CRC, which is, they're mostly Dutch, I think, and they dress differently. I can't put my finger on it.

Their music is different. It seems almost like it's, like they're a few decades, I don't want to say behind because of the, that sounds like a pejorative, but they're, it sounds like they're doing a lot of like 90s type Christian music style stuff, 80s and 90s.

It just sounds more like that. That's the sound you get. And they're just, it's much more library voice. It's much more, even some of the clips, one of the clips I'll show you, I mean, I showed you probably the most passionate clips, some of them that took place, and you would be like, that's passionate?

Yeah, that's passionate for that particular denomination, the Christian Reformed Church. There's like 200 ,000 members, a little over that. So a smaller denomination, but important. That's a lot of people in Canada and the United States.

And I just want to share with you kind of what happened because, you know, this is causing a stir. They passed this motion or this, they adopted this language of condemning homosexuality along with other sins in their confession.

And it's just caused a stir. You have people on one side condemning it, and then you have people on the other side praising it. And I don't think it's as, I don't think the denomination is either, it's like, oh, it's going in such a good direction.

Oh, it's going in such a bad direction. It seems to me as I was looking at this and my limited knowledge, admittedly, about this denomination that they're in danger, they're in serious danger. And this was a good move, but they're, man, they weren't, they were a little farther to the left than I thought, than I initially thought.

So I'll show you some of this. So let's play a few clips first, just to show you some of the threats going on. These other denominations are going on in the PCA. And so I'm going to show you a clip on the LGBT issue.

I'm going to show you two clips on the CRT issue, and then I'm not showing you a clip of it, but we might talk about it. They're forming, they're starting the process now of investigating abuse. It's the same thing that the PCA and the SBC are talking about, the same stuff, same exact stuff at the same time.

So here's some clips just so you can see, get a flavor for it. Here's what I would say more progressively minded people in the CRC are pushing. And it's not that far out of the mainstream in my mind, like from what I saw.

I'm Peter Rockhold from Alberta North. This motion is incredibly important. And like what we just heard, part of this is recognizing that this conversation needs to continue, that we need to have a framework of pastoral care.

I am somebody who is attracted to the same sex, committed to celibacy. And my entrance into this denomination was, well, through Louis Burkhoff, of course, but also the 1973 report. Because when I first read that report, I'm like, finally, a church and a denomination where I can fit comfortably in, where I'll be supported and accepted and loved, like that will honor my commitment to celibacy, but will not shame me.

Those sorts of things. I was really naive, because I thought, hey, this report was written in 1973, been around for a while, like I thought things would be in a better situation. And it is not. It's been a really difficult journey for me.

And I had to make a lot of sacrifices for my theological commitments. And I hear a lot of voices, loud voices on this matter without the same sacrifices being made to support those theological commitments.

And so what is part of this motion is to strongly recognize that we all need to sacrifice together to support each other. This is essential. We have failed since 73. And we have to do something. Like we have an opportunity now.

I don't know when this opportunity will come again for us to do something different.

Wayne Coleman, Class of Sac and Sac. I'm in support of the majority motion. Um, you know, today, I was thinking, I didn't want to really be at Senate, but they voted me to be here. I had to be here. But in all that I've heard and sit back and observed through the Senate, the Lord just shared and he placed this on my heart throughout this entire year for our church.

When Jesus said in John 1334, love one another as I have loved you. Think about that. White supremacy is real. It's as real as apple pie. It's real in this denomination. I've been here a long time as a black man.

Somebody asked me what my nationality was when I came. I'm black. I'm not Indian or Mexican. I'm black. And in being in this denomination, if you read the overture, please read it. We had a church that opposed the teaching of justice and racism.

So much so that the pastor had to leave. The problems of political issues and jingoism is really invading our church, has invaded our church so much so it's causing so much division. And I've seen the passion here at Senate with the passion regarding LGBT.

And that's great. And I have a passion for that, too. My brother is gay and I love him. The passion we have for the Canadian brothers and sisters, binationalism. I wish we had this passion for this topic of racial unity.

We should just put the Nike symbol up there. Just do it. We've been talking about it for years. But white supremacy had a time to pray with the people who wrote this overture over Zoom and talk to them about it.

It was more churches that wanted to submit an overture about this. It's a real serious issue. And since I've been here, there's been no prayer about the shooting in Buffalo, New York. Nobody hasn't said anything about it.

And so I'm in support of this motion. And I pray as a denomination. I think this is the blockage that we really don't have a flourishing African-American presence of ministry in this denomination. We do not.

We don't have it. And I believe it's because of racism and white supremacy. Now, I got some brothers and sisters in here that love me and I love them. So I'm not talking about this whole denomination.

But somewhere we have to make these practical steps. And it starts with the pastors. It's not difficult. You can preach this to your congregation and your people. I preach it to mine. Starts with the leaders create culture.

You create your culture in your churches. You do that. And so thank you for recommending that on this committee. God bless you.

Mr. President, William Donovan, Class of BC Northwest. Mr. President, I speak in support of this motion and everything the last brother spoke and my sister. In Canada, we came and we established the Indian Act.

And we decided that we knew what was best for the indigenous peoples of Canada. And we are working on that. But I know that we continue to have the habit of thinking that we can use our voice to settle matters where really what we need to do is listen to their voice and use their language in their context.

And so I would just, we've heard it twice. Now you're hearing it the third time. That we don't try to usurp or just turn this into another way of subtly but very sincerely taking the conversation away from the people who need to be heard.

And so that's it. Thank you.

So that gives you a little bit of the flavor. They're going to definitely, I think the critical race theory stuff and the abuse stuff is definitely going to be coming back to some extent. Let me show you, if I can, and the sexuality stuff is going to be coming back too.

Oh, it doesn't look like I have it pulled up. Let's see if I can pull it up. All right, I can pull it up. We have the technology. So let me get myself out of the way here. And I want to read for you. So I was looking at, like Christianity Today had their own thing about this.

And Protestia actually had an article and they were like polar opposites. Both of them basically said, this is what happened. One side condemning it, one side praising it. And when I was looking at it, I'm like, oh, it's really, it's actually, it's not quite as black and white as I initially even thought.

So I want to read for you from Banner, which is, this is going to the source itself. When I went to the CRC website, this is, these are the links that they had for understanding what's going on in their particular denomination.

And so I think it's best to go to the source. What are they saying about themselves? And that's what I want to read for you. And we'll go through it that way. So here's Banner and we'll start here. The Synod 2022 Upholds Traditional Stance on Same-Sex Relationships.

So it says, on Tuesday, the Synod 2022, it was two weeks ago, recommended the Human Sexuality Report on Christian Reformed Churches as a useful summary of biblical teaching on human sexuality. And I want to stop here.

I went through the report, not with a fine tooth comb, but I just, I looked it over. And I'm going to just say this. It's not as aggressive as I thought it was at first. For instance, it says things like this.

The Christian Reformed Church's 1973 Synodical Report on Homosexuality broke ground by making a distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity. As the report put it, we must distinguish between the person who is homosexual in their sexual orientation and the person who engages in explicit sexual acts with persons of the same sex.

It is also noted that homosexuality is not the result of any conscious choice or decision on the part of the person. In other words, there is no sin in being attracted to the same sex. We only sin if we act on our sexual attractions.

It also says later on in the report, the church has also harmed people who are attracted to the same sex by promoting the false expectations of orientation change. As if believers who are attracted to the same sex can expect to become attracted to the opposite sex as they are sanctified.

The church has pressured some into programs of orientation change that inflicted tremendous psychological, emotional, and social harm upon them. I don't think Greg Johnson would have a problem with that.

Now, maybe he had a problem with other parts of the report, but I don't see how that's much different than the revoice stuff. So they adopted, but it condemns homosexuality. It condemns the sinfulness of it and other deviations.

And so they had 131 in favor, 45 against, and two abstaining after the vote. 16 delegates registered their negative vote. All right, so this will help do ministry, it says. Dozens of delegates waited their turn to speak.

The young people in our denomination are looking at us, and they need this clarity, said one. So it's just reporting what people said about this. Caution expressed. Other delegates were cautious about it.

If we adopt this, we're going to take on a much more difficult task administering to the LGBT community, one person said. The younger generation is watching to see how we handle this. They may walk away if they don't see a grace-filled approach.

So these are our Trojan horses in the denomination. If they can see even a report as, in my mind, as friendly as it is to even the idea of same-sex orientation being legitimate somehow, and they still have a huge problem, those are the people you got to watch out for.

But it passed, and it passed. I mean, that's a pretty good, you know, 131 in favor, 45 against. So anyway, that's on Wednesday, it says, Synod will decide on the more controversial recommendation related to the report to affirm the homosexual sex is unchaste by the definition of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Question and answer went away, and they did affirm. And so I think that might be the next one. Synod declares stance on homosexual sex confessional. That was a 69 majority. 69%. So 31 weren't in favor of this.

That's kind of sizable. And then this is, again, you could be a revoice guy, like PCA revoice guy, and I think you could have voted for this. So that shows you, you got like PC USA type people in this denomination, making up like 31 of it.

Like that's, they're like over there to that side. So that was interesting. And Synod decided by a close vote of 89 to 85, that it would not initiate a process to add a clarifying footnote to the Heidelberg Catechism, which addresses the Seventh Commandment.

The footnote to the word unchastity would have clarified that it includes homosexual sex listed along with adultery, premarital sex, extramarital sex, polyamory, and pornography. I'm not exactly sure what that means.

Various delegates called the proposed footnote unnecessary, unprecedented, and even ugly. Okay. So I don't know why, yeah, it's interesting that they wouldn't vote for that, but they would vote for, 69 would vote to just...

So this is really an affirmation of the Heidelberg Catechism. That's, I mean, this should be like no-brainer stuff, you'd think, but this is, I mean, your Dutch Reformed Heidelberg Catechism, I don't know.

All right. So here's where they're actually putting some teeth in this though, and this is good. There's in May, 2020, Neyland Avenue Church elected a person of the same sex marriage in the office of deacon.

So this is happening in their denomination. It contradicts their position. Since 1973, the position on homosexuality, now they've adopted this position basically into their confession, but they've had this position for a while, and there's going to be action taken on this.

The Synod, I guess, is going to step in and kind of monitor this and advise. It seems like denominations tend to work very slow, but that's what they're doing. It says that this particular individual is seen to be in good standing at the church.

So yeah, this could be difficult. So we'll see what happens there. And then you have outside, here's a picture of it, a crowd of LGBTQ allies outside the session. This is at Calvin University. I mean, this is how to the left Calvin has become.

I mean, I don't know if there's people from the community probably also coming in, but man, I mean, this is what they got to leave and look at when they're leaving. I'm not sure what the relationship between Calvin is and the CRC.

I'm assuming, I thought that Calvin was the CRC's school. There was a strong relationship there, even to the point of governing. But if that's true, man, they got some real work to do at Calvin. But this is what they got to see as they were exiting their synod or their, is it synod, their meeting.

Yeah, it's called Synod 2022. Okay, so they took a few steps to further racial justice work also. And this was not getting reported as much, but I'll just talk about it. Although gender and sexuality took first priority, delegates discussed racial issues more than an hour.

White supremacy is real. It's as real as apple pie. And I played you that quote. You had a number of people, let's see, speaking about this. You have Darlene Silversmith, an ethnic advisor. An ethnic advisor, yeah.

Talking about, as a minority, a woman, a minority, now an elder, I have faced many types of discrimination. So they're having, they're starting this process. I think they're at the beginning, if I'm not mistaken.

So they, I think they still need to go back, do some reports. It's, but I think they did adopt. So it looks like what happened is they did adopt a very, very kind of basic statement here. They asked Calvin Seminary to report on how they teach a reform perspective on race and justice issues.

They encouraged church leaders to question candidates for ministry on their commitment to racial justice. Whoa. Reminded CRC churches that elders should defend biblical justice and deacons should seek justice and work to change.

Exploitive structures are in different systems. Encourage the CRC to continue producing materials to help churches work in this area. Ask the general secretary to report back to Senate 2023 with praise reports of positive progress and prayer requests for challenges and concerns.

So this is, the issue that I saw when I was watching some of these clips is they're not getting specific about hardly anything. And if you're just taking like the general understandings of racial justice, white supremacy, some of these terms they're using, then it sounds like the CRC just went woke.

But they're so, they didn't put hardly any meat on the bone. So we don't really know exactly what this is going to do. It's so basic. But I mean, if you're talking about encouraging church leaders to question candidates for ministry with their commitment to racial justice, you're handing a blank check to woke people in the denomination.

And that, you're just letting cancel culture right in. You've got to be very definitive and very biblical about what it is that is forbidden. What is it? Okay, define partiality biblically, and then what would partiality look like in our context?

And how would we enforce, or what would we recommend to churches to do to uphold a standard against it? That would be the question. They're not doing that though. It's, I think people are probably nervous to really get too definitive on it.

Senate 2022 strengthens abuse response process. So this is something that they're starting, but so there's a review process was initiated by the CRC's Council of Delegates in response to a formal request at Senate 2021.

Senate 22 accepted the work that has been done. So they accepted a report. This is very similar, I guess, to what the PCA did. So that's, I guess, all that happened. They accepted a report, which I have not read.

And it's supposed to give churches more space to build accountability. So I'm not sure exactly what all that entails. They'll, church leaders responding to an alleged abuse will be required to watch a 60-minute safe church training and orientation video.

So they're just taking some measures and hopefully some smart ones. All right. So that's all I had to say about this in the CRC. And I don't know how many of you who listen are part of the CRC, the Christian Reformed Church, but in my area where I live in New York, I mean, it was settled by the Dutch years ago.

There's different waves of Dutch immigrants that have come in. Ours is the earliest. In fact, apparently I have ancestors, my dad was telling me, that trace back to this region that we live in here. Even though we moved, we moved all over the country.

It's been generations since any of us were in upstate New York in the Hudson River Valley. But there are a lot of Dutch, like 15 minutes from me, are stone houses. Actually, those are French Huguenots, I believe.

But that was when this was a Dutch area. Interestingly enough, the Dutch allowed, this is so unrelated, but I just got to say it because I want to and it's my show and I can say it, I guess. The Dutch allowed a lot of ethnic diversity, cultural diversity, I should say, religious pluralism to some extent into their colony.

You specifically see it in New York City. And New York City, I was just reading a book called Island at the Center of the World, which I would recommend to everyone. It's really, really well-written.

And it makes the point in the book that New York City has really been underrepresented in American history, especially after the Civil War. The Puritans of Massachusetts became the new centerfold of American, the basis for what America is and defining what America is.

We're the Puritans. I'd say the same thing has happened in Christianity, that in reformed Christianity, there's this huge emphasis on the Puritans, especially since John Piper really resurrected Jonathan Edwards' influence.

And I've been discovering that, yeah, obviously that's one of the streams, but there's other streams. And so the Dutch Reformed would be a smaller stream and most of that influence came much later on with immigrants coming towards the late 1800s.

But you did, in the area that I live in, in New York, there are still a number of Dutch Reformed churches, mostly older, mostly very progressive, I would say. I mean, a lot more, not all of them, but I'm not saying the ones I went to, but the ones that are in my neck of the woods.

I mean, you'll pass by and you might see like a rainbow flag or something. It's that kind of thing. So there are some of them around this area. I know in some areas of the country, you never heard of this denomination, but they are around.

And it is one of the streams that certainly has a tremendous influence actually today, especially later Dutch Reformed thinking. I'm thinking of Abraham Kuyper's influence. And then you have the influence of other Dutch Reformed thinkers like Cornelius Van Til.

They have a tremendous amount of influence on today's Reformed Christian thinkers. So it is one of the streams, it is important. And it's for one of those, it's for that reason, actually, that I partially that I wanted to talk about what's happening in the CRC because I do view it as it is somewhat important.

So anyway, Island at the Center of the World, though, it's a fascinating story about the founding of New York, which predates the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And a lot of the characteristics, things we think about of New York are actually things from the Dutch era.

There are things that have been holdovers. Even some of the terms we have, like the term for like boss, the term boss, that's a Dutch word. DA, just district attorneys, that's part of the Dutch legal system.

The coleslaw is first originated in the Hudson Valley. It's a Dutch, it's a Dutch food, but it's become Americanized. A lot of this stuff has. Cookies is Dutch, believe it or not. Yes, New York City, cookies.

The, our Christmas celebrations and the whole introduction of Santa Claus and everything. Originally in our country, Dutch. There's a lot of Dutch influences that I didn't even realize that we had in this country.

And that is totally unrelated, except for the fact that we're looking at a Dutch reform group, but just figured I'd mention it if anyone is curious to go in and watch that or listen to that rather, that audio book.

That's all for today. I think I'm going to cut it there, but God bless. I hope that was helpful for many of you.