It was our first elder ordination. I knew the man being ordained. His little girl. And his wife. I don’t want to gush too much because I might embarrass her (she reads here occasionally), but she is the “salt of the Earth” kind of person. The kind of friend you hope to find in a new church. I’ve only known her for a few months, but I’m really thankful for her. She’s a gem.

So I felt invested in this ordination. I listened closer. And the pastor explained:

The elders are here to protect you from me.

Excuse me? Did he just say that himself or was I thinking it that loudly?

I mean, I know that in my head. But I’ve never heard any pastor admit it plainly and from the pulpit.

There are no more tired people than the regular lay people in independent fundamental Baptist(ic) churches. Tired of the sham leadership, tired of not being heard, tired of the flat-out abuse. It’s a total mess. It’s intended to be congregational polity — that’s the heart of the American Baptist tradition — but it’s developed into a rank feudalism. American Baptists used to be the stinkers who challenged corruption, but that’s pretty rare today. So that instead of hearing about an ecclesiastical checks and balances, all Baptists might hear from the pulpit, “Submit to your pastor! He’s your authority!”

Then I read about Presbyterian polity. That it’s not congregational or episcopal. It’s not a group of people leading like a democracy or a single leader like a monarchy or patriarchy. It’s a representative democracy.

Yeah, you read that right. Our founders modeled the American government after the Scottish Presbyterians.

Now I know enough about the American representative democracy to know that it’s pretty resilient. Randy Balmer argues that the first amendment’s “separation” clause puts James Madison’s “faction” fears to rest by containing zealotry within the (private) religious sphere. Now, if that’s true, could the same be argued for the Presbies? Is their ecclesiology more robust because it contains enthusiasm in another sphere? The political sphere perhaps? Do we end up with a dueling spheres? Both strong, both weathered, both fairly resistant to change?

Maybe. I don’t know. But I like being in a church body that’s built with some seismic resistance. It’s good for the laypeople. It’s good for the elders. It’s good for the Faith.

Maybe you know the story of Scotland’s most famous hero of the Faith, John Knox. I didn’t. All I know about Scotland came from Lucy Ricardo’s visit in 1956 and our West Highland Terrier.

The guy was a stinker! He was a Catholic priest, a lawyer, a teacher, and George Wishart‘s body guard who led Knox to convert to Protestantism. He spoke out against all things Catholic — Mass, Purgatory, Mary. You name it, he ranted against it. He got into such trouble that he was exiled to the galley of a French ship, hopped to Frankfurt, and eventually fled to Geneva with Calvin himself.

Mind you — Knox made Calvin look like a diplomat. Knox’s pamphlet against female sovereigns — The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women — was too extreme for Calvin’s taste and was, in the end, even according to sympathetic historians, a “tactical error.” He was too bifurcated in his thinking, aligning all things Catholic with all things feminine and all things Protestant with all things masculine. He got too caught up in his own argumentation.

Knox ended up being one of the few countryman who wasn’t charmed by Mary Queen of Scots’ feminine wiles. When he spoke out against her betrothal to Don Carlos, she called him to Holyrood to essentially ask him: “Who do you think you are?” His response, in sum, was: “Nobody but a guy who must warn about dangers ahead.” Some contend that modern democracy was born right then and there when an ordinary stinker stood up to the seductive Sovereign! When she started to cry, he responded: “Madam, in God’s presence I speak: I never delighted in the weeping of any of God’s creatures; yea I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majesty’s weeping.”

He was a plain-spoken dissident. A bigger rabblerouser than Calvin, and the grandfather to all of Machen’s Warrior Children. And while fundamentalism might claim this Scottish stinker as its own, in reality it replicates more Samuel Rutherford and his intolerance than Knox and his fire. Being a stinker without tolerating opposing stinkers ends up being nothing more than narcissism.

So these Presbyterians don’t fear disagreement. When we were taking the “New Members Class,” for instance, the pastoral staff member explained:

You don’t have to agree with Calvinism here. Not at all. But you should know what our perspective is and what you’ll hear from the pulpit and in the Sunday School classes.

And Grant and I did another double-take. What? We can disagree? In fundamentalism when dissent is even suggested, the passive-aggressive  and dysfunctional answer is “Why would you want to be here if you don’t agree with us?” Or “Sure you can disagree, but just don’t mention it.” Some covert fundies even insist that all members agree with bylaws and doctrinal statements before joining and label dissidents as “sinning through questioning.” But outside fundamentalism, it’s a big tent with dispensationalists and postmills and amills all worshipping together. There are Democrats and Republicans. Pedobaptists and credobaptists. Homeschoolers and public schoolers and private schoolers. American-born and foreign-born. Upper- and working-class. We’re all there.

So with John Knox as the founder of our polity, dissent isn’t just patriotic. It’s positively Presbyterian!

Let kings fear, let them tremble, because there is judgment coming if they do not do what is right.

John Knox

The Gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race’s perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man’s well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won’t be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now. . . .

The Reformation was a time when men were blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late Medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace — bottle after bottle of pure distillate Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel — after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps — suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. . . . Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

Robert Capon as quoted in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel

I’ve never actually celebrated Reformation Day before. Not formally or corporately, at least. Hearing the pipes this past Sunday actually made more sense than it has in years. Up until now, there’s been very little from the British Isles that is recognized in our home. Oh sure, we have a Westie. And somewhere in the world there’s a bolt of tartan with my (married) name on it (literally!). But I’ve never heard my own heritage in that drone. Now I get it. Now, as a Presbyterian.

I got called a “Neo” the other day. No, no, it’s not a super-cool Matrix reference (I wish!). It’s short for “Neo-Evangelical.” Evangelicals never actually call themselves “Neo-Evangelicals” anymore. Now it’s always a devil-term lobbed from a Fundy toward an Evangelical.

It’s an old term too. Like calling a Hillary Clinton a “libber.” At the very root, “Neos” are people who support Billy Graham. ::gasp::

I’ve never understood the Fundy fear and trepidation for Graham. My grandma listened to him back in the day. He does preach the Gospel — albeit a very Moody-esque, Keswickish, revivalistic Gospel which is identical to BJU’s, so that’s not the problem. As I read primary documents from his early days, it’s interesting to watch the falling out. I mean, my alma mater sent students to sing at his Hour of Power! But all of a sudden after 1952 (after he integrated his crusades maybe?), Graham is persona non grata.

Strange.

And because my current church supported Graham back in his 1966 Greenville Crusade — two years before I was born — it, too, is a persona non grata to my previous employer. So that now makes me a “Neo” too, I guess.

The practical difference between Fundies and Neos, according to the Fundies, is preferred Bible translation. Or a strict insistence that women wear modest clothes. Or music. For BJU fundamentalists, music is the big boundary marker that includes a continuous and mysterious harangue about how things over here are drastically different and superior to things over there.

So in my now-Neo church a scandalous NIV translation is the pew Bible. I wear “immodest” pants to worship. ::shudder::

But the music? It. is. exactly. the. same. In fact, some of the very same musicians accompany the congregational singing. And my darling hubby hums along with all the choir numbers. I love hearing the tenor part perfectly and quietly in my ear.

Well now, there are a couple of musical differences. Their corporate singing of “And Can It Be” sounds more like a dance than a march. And in all my years of singing “Amazing Grace,” neither my Masters-in-Church-Music husband nor I have ever learned this verse:

The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.

Where has that been? That promise of God’s goodness? Why was it missing? I, like all my fellow Fundies, know very well how to change the words in Newton’s last verse. But why was this verse so easily dropped? We messed up Old Hundreth too!

The differences between my previous worship life and my current one really struck me Sunday as we celebrated the Reformation. For all the talk about Machen’s Warrior Children, these people don’t seem as jingoistic. Maybe their fight is older. Maybe they’ve moved on. Maybe I just can’t perceive it yet.

Maybe there’s a robust enough culture that the more irenic themes are still organic:

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

John Knox

Either way, I’m going to have to get some Lewis plaid ties for my little Reformers for next year.