Houses have doors that can open wide or be locked tight, windows that let in light or air or keep out rain. To the officers of the church have been given the keys to a kingdom whose subjects, for now, reside in the house of and family of God on earth. No one has keys to a tent—it can’t be locked. A flap is not a gate. A house may shudder or fall, but a tent will simply blow away.

This post is two years old. Since it was written, a few tent pegs have been driven deeper, and—arguably—some rips have been sewn up, but the sheer number of overtures submitted to the upcoming 52nd PCA General Assembly underscores the general state of unease within the denomination. Lots of presbyters want to see lots of things added, changed, spoken to, or studied.

EVERY APPROACHING GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the Presbyterian Church in America provokes posturing, positioning, and even reflection. To history appeals are made. To the founders we look. On the examples and words of great men we lean. The 2023 general assembly is no normal one—it is the 50th, of which much will be made. This middle-aged denomination looks to its Memphis meeting, not in crisis but in a state of unease, somewhat rattled after five years of controversy and the recent loss of two significant figures.

As in the late 60s and early 70s, violent cultural winds are buffeting the church. Those winds helped blow the PCA into existence in 1973. Theological liberalism and Neo-orthodoxy in the old southern Presbyterian Church in the U.S. were not the only factors that caused the fathers of the PCA to flee and found. The PCA’s mainline Southern mother had capitulated to culture on ethics, worship, and doctrinal fidelity—her maternal home’s once-solid confessional foundation was undermined, failing for lack of maintenance and attention. The PCUS gold, per Morton Smith’s book title, had become dim. And the late additions to the old southern home were built on sandy soil, not up to confessional code. The house came to have the solidity and wind resistance of a tent. Ironically, the old PCUS tabernacle’s stakes were pulled up for the last time only 10 years later in 1983 (a decade after the PCA’s founding) when Northern and Southern mainline churches joined to form the Presbyterian Church (USA), which now slouches toward oblivion after four decades of steep decline.

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