The bottom line is that evaluating candidates and judging differences is not an empirical question, but a theological one. Each court has the right to declare the terms of admission into its membership (Preliminary Principle #2). Simply because a stated difference is commonly granted as an exception does not mean the same difference must be granted an exception in every presbytery. Conversely, simply because a stated difference is uncommon does not necessarily require that the exception may not be granted. It is also appropriate at this point to consider how helpful it may be – not only to the purity and unity of the church, but particularly for the candidate being examined – for presbytery not to grant an exception on a first examination, and instead to ask the man to consider further study. 

Good Faith Subscription (GFS), the practice of allowing a man to assent to most of the Westminster Standards in “good faith” while allowing him to state minor differences in parts, has been practiced in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) for almost 20 years.

The practice was officially amended into the PCA’s Book of Church Order when Overture 10 passed at the 31^st General Assembly (see 2003 GA minutes, pp. 50-51, 54-56). This amendment required each candidate for the gospel ministry in the PCA to state in his own words any differences with the Westminster Standards (the Confession of Faith, together with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, as adopted by the PCA). Presbyteries are permitted to grant differences as “exceptions” to the Standards if the court determined that the difference “is neither hostile to the system nor strikes at the vitals of religion.”

Overture 10 from the 31^st GA and overtures since adopted (see 2011 GA minutes, p. 25; 2012 GA minutes, pp. 63, 75, 105-107; 2013 GA minutes, p. 17) are unequivocally concerned with GA’s oversight of the peace, purity, and unity of the Church. However, to my knowledge, no one has systematically attempted to document how widespread the practice of “being granted exceptions” is or which Standards the practice touches, information that should be critical to GA’s oversight.

As a glorified bean counter, I turned to a basic skill on which I often rely to help make sense of a situation: counting. The purpose of this exercise is not for me to express an opinion on the merits and demerits of GFS, but rather to provide empirical insights to inform the conversation on so-called Good Faith and Full Subscription. Some may read these findings with great encouragement that GFS is working well and that clear distinctions are drawn between exceptions that do or do not strike at the vitals. Others may be concerned with the extent to which teaching elders in the PCA hold differences with the denomination’s constitutional standards. Hopefully, there will be helpful insights for those on both sides of the issue.

Methodology

In the absence of a census of stated differences, the only denomination-wide data on exceptions are in the reports to GA of the Committee on Review of Presbytery Records (RPR). According to the PCA’s Rules of Assembly Operations 16-3, whenever presbytery examines a candidate, presbytery must record any stated differences the candidate may have in his own words, as well as presbytery’s judgment of those differences. If a clerk fails to record any of these details, presbytery’s minutes may be flagged by RPR as an exception of substance. For example, RPR may note that the record of a teaching elder’s transfer exam was incomplete. During the subsequent year, presbytery may respond to RPR’s exception of substance by providing the missing elements of the transfer exam, including the teaching elder’s stated differences (if any) and the specific Standards with which he stated a difference. This process makes it possible to gain a generalizable sense of exceptions in the PCA, even if the RPR reports are a “fuzzy proxy” for stated differences across the PCA.

I want to make explicitly clear that I intend no judgment against presbytery clerks through this exercise. Indeed, exchanges between presbyteries and RPR have proven healthful for clarifying BCO language (see Overture 2 for the 51^stGA) or for clarifying whether these differences can be taught (as in the cases of Calvary, Northwest Georgia, and Ohio Valley, see 2021 GA minutes, pp. 529-534, 592-594, 594-596). The kinds of mistakes that could lead to RPR flagging an item are the kinds of mistakes I likely make on a weekly basis, if not more frequently. Because they are such easy mistakes to make, it can be believed that this method approaches plausibly representative estimates for the denomination.

For this analysis to be generalizable, it must be believed that such a mistake is essentially random. Clerks are not picky about how they make mistakes. Rather, a mistake could be made just as easily for recording a Second Commandment exception as for a Fourth Commandment exception, or for a man stating no differences as for a man stating several. Random events in large enough samples should produce roughly representative data (e.g., 100 coin flips should yield roughly 50 heads and 50 tails).

The RPR reports from 2003 (the first year affected by the GFS overture) to 2023 provide a large enough sample that I believe we can accept them as reasonably representative. If anything, exceptions may be undercounted in my analysis. For example, Korean Language Presbyteries had twice as many flagged items as other presbyteries, but were three times as likely to have a man stating no differences. If KLPs are overrepresented in this sample, men who state no differences may be overrepresented as well.

Furthermore, it is likely that the Sabbath exception is undercounted. Pacific Northwest Presbytery, for example, mentioned that it was its practice not to record “the typical exception to the Standards’ definition of Sabbath sanctification” (see 2013 GA minutes, p. 465). If it is the case in some presbyteries not to record this exception, the relative prevalence of differences on the Fourth Commandment will be conservatively estimated by this method.

Findings

What did I find after reading these RPR reports? First, approximately 4 exceptions are granted (to other candidates) for each man who states no differences with the Standards. Second, the most common differences are related to the Westminster Standards’ teachings on the Fourth Commandment, the Second Commandment, and Creation. Third, exceptions to the Standards’ teaching regarding the Fourth Commandment touch the Standards in more places than do other exceptions.

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