What changed was not that a brand new theology suddenly appeared. What changed was that many elders and churches who had long held these convictions, but had less cultural influence in the Assembly, the committees, and the nominating process, finally came forward in greater force. Their views were not new. They were simply no longer willing to remain quiet while the denomination drifted toward the brink of Side B accommodation.

To summarize the recent podcast interaction between Derek Radney and David Richter, the exchange is essentially David Richter and Derek Radney framing The Alliance for Mission & Renewal’s (A4MR) recent statement as a call for “renewal” in the PCA. They argue that, after a year of listening across the denomination, the real issues are declining trust, worsening tone, suspicion, and a narrowing of the PCA beyond what they believe the Constitution or the founders intended. They present A4MR as trying to recover a “confessional-missional center,” not by changing doctrine, but by promoting theological seriousness, humility, institutional trust, broader cooperation, and a less reactive denominational culture. The recurring themes are “center weight,” “ballast,” resisting “tent-tightening,” and seeking a better denominational song than fear, tribalism, and reaction.

I understand the appeal to tone, trust, ballast, and a “confessional-missional center.” Fine. But any serious attempt to talk about the “mood” of the PCA over the last few years has to reckon honestly with what those years actually were.

For a long time, the general direction of many now associated with A4MR was not marginal in the PCA. It was ascendant. Up until Revoice blew open the Side B controversy in 2019, many of these same voices were the ones minimizing, obscuring, or deflecting the real consequences of Side B Christianity. Some applauded Greg Johnson. Some treated concerns about “gay Christian” identity, the supposed neutrality of same-sex attraction, and related categories as if they were overblown reactions from the right. Time passes, memories fade, and narratives get rewritten, but many in the PCA remember exactly what happened.

What changed was not that a brand new theology suddenly appeared. What changed was that many elders and churches who had long held these convictions, but had less cultural influence in the Assembly, the committees, and the nominating process, finally came forward in greater force. Their views were not new. They were simply no longer willing to remain quiet while the denomination drifted toward the brink of Side B accommodation.

And it is worth remembering how power worked during those years. The center of influence at GA allowed A4MR-inclined elders to speak as though presbyteries should be cited or investigated for refusing to allow teaching outside our system of doctrine, because “the GA had spoken.” That happened. At the same time, some of these very men were unwilling to follow our own polity when it came to ordaining qualified men to the diaconate, despite a study process that encouraged churches to heed the BCO rather than act as if our polity were optional when inconvenient.

So when we are told the “mood” has changed, perhaps the question is whether some men are simply struggling with the fact that they assumed they would keep winning. Then 2021 came, and in a single Assembly it became clear that they were suddenly in the minority, and have largely remained there. If that experience is not interpreted with any self-examination, then every subsequent development will look like an irrational narrowing of the tent rather than a justified correction by a denomination that believed it had been taken in a dangerous direction.

That is the real problem with a lot of this rhetoric about “big tent,” “doxological diversity,” and “missional” breadth. Those phrases did not exist in a vacuum. In practice, they were often used to create conceptual space for positions and instincts that pushed the PCA toward doctrinal and moral confusion. If there is no reckoning with that, then calls for renewal will sound less like clarity and more like an attempt to recover lost influence through better tone.

In other words, if A4MR wants to persuade anyone beyond those already inclined to agree with them, they need more than appeals to atmosphere. They need to admit that the last several years were not merely a failure of tone from others. They were also the fruit of their own theological instincts and strategic judgments. Until there is some clear acknowledgment, and frankly some public repentance, for how those instincts helped bring the PCA to the edge of Side B confusion, their case will mostly amount to this: “please change the tone,” while never really addressing why so many elders concluded that the denomination had to change course in the first place.

Rich Leino is a ruling elder in Hope of Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Stafford, VA