The Presbyterian Church (USA) is gutting its mission agency and laying off missionaries. They’re calling it a shift, but the reality is that it is a retreat from the gospel that started a century ago. The coroner was finally called in, but it had been moving this direction for a long time.
Around 100 years ago, J. Gresham Machen called them out on it.
J. Greshem Machen got into hot water with the PCUSA when he began a mission agency. His reason for creating it was that the Presbyterian missionaries were not preaching the gospel. The shuttering of the agency feels like a giant “I told you so” from the grave.
Machen’s Stand
Born in 1881, Machen was a scholar’s scholar, a New Testament professor at Princeton who could’ve coasted like so many professors do. But when he saw the PCUSA sliding into theological mush, he didn’t sit quiet. In 1923 he wrote a book that got him in some hot water called Christianity and Liberalism. I’ve read it three times and am considering doing so again. It seems like the right thing to do right now considering what has happened.
In it Machen plainly stated that liberalism wasn’t just a watered-down version of Christianity. It was a different religion altogether. And he was and continues to be exactly right. He saw the church swapping the inerrant Word, the virgin birth, and the cross for a gospel of human progress and cultural niceties.
Machen’s fight climaxed in the 1930s over missions. The PCUSA’s mission board had drunk the liberal Kool-Aid, pushing the 1932 Re-Thinking Missions report that treated evangelism like an optional side dish.
Instead of preaching Christ, they wanted missionaries to build schools and hospitals while soft-pedaling the Gospel. They would call what they were doing missions and never declare the gospel. Machen wouldn’t have it.
He started the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1933 to keep the Gospel front and center. The PCUSA leadership was angered. They slapped him down, suspending his ordination for “divisiveness.” By 1936, Machen founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) to hold the line.
Machen’s warning is one that we should heed today. If you lose the Bible’s authority, then you’ll lose the church’s purpose. Missions was the first casualty. But today, if you go to a PCUSA church, you’ll realize that the problem may have arisen first in missions. But it spread to everything else that those churches do. The PCUSA lost the plot altogether.
Imagine that. The rainbow flag waving church lost the plot. Since Machen’s stand, the PCUSA has been suffering a slow death. The loss of the mission’s agency looks like an amputation to stop gangrene. The problem is that the whole body is gangrenous.
The PCUSA’s Mission Fiasco
For years the PCUSA has been bleeding members faster than a sinking ship loses rats. And now they’ve decided to amputate the mission agency. The denomination’s lost a third of its members in ten years and can no longer afford the agency. So, instead of doubling down on the Gospel, they’re slashing the very program that’s supposed to take Christ to the nations.
All of this is astounding. In the early 1900’s this denomination was probably the most influential in all the country. Presidents came from there. Mister Rogers was a PCUSA minister. The PCUSA had the great Christian seminary, Princeton. Thinkers such as Charles Hodge and BB Warfield came from there.
I am a Southern Baptist and am proud of that. But the Presbyterian influence over American life, especially in the 1800’s and 1900’s is quite impressive. And this makes the over 100 year illness even harder to swallow.
The leadership says this is about “equity” and “mutual partnerships.” That’s similar to what Machen heard in the 1930’s. Preach less. Don’t talk about what divides. Build some schools, etc. Don’t talk about Jesus. Go out there and do good, but don’t try to snatch people out of the flames.
And the shuttering of the agency just proves Machen was right.
The slide of the PCUSA has been deep. The heritage was strong, but today ministries associated with the PCUSA will create things like “Queering the Bible”. They will be the churches that lead the Gay Pride Parades. They’ve abandoned God’s Word, the gospel, and most everything that would have been understood as Christian over the past 2,000 years. Machen tried to warn them. Today they cut off the arm, but the gangrene is all over.
Machen’s Warning Comes True
Machen’s foes called him a troublemaker, a splitter who wouldn’t play nice. He wasn’t causing division; he was trying to save the church. His Independent Board was a lifeline for faithful missions, and the OPC he founded still holds fast to the Gospel.
Machen wasn’t just right about missions. He was right about the PCUSA. If you trade God’s truth for the approval of the world then you end up being non-Christian in the end.
The PCUSA’s slide is sad. But it’s also a horrifying warning to other denominations. I would say that it is a warning to my own denomination, the SBC.
What Now?
The PCUSA’s mess ought to be a wake-up call for every Christian who loves the Gospel. Machen’s legacy isn’t just a history lesson, it’s a challenge. He stood for truth when it cost him everything, and we’ve got to do the same.
For the PCUSA, that means repenting of its liberal drift and getting back to the Bible. It means putting missionaries in the field, not pink slips in their hands. And yeah, maybe it’s time to issue Machen that posthumous apology some folks on X are talking about.
For the rest of us, it’s a reminder to support churches and agencies that haven’t forgotten the Great Commission. I’m a Southern Baptist pastor and advocate for the support of missions in the SBC. Among Presbyterians, groups like the OPC, the PCA, or independent mission boards continue to be faithful to carry the gospel to the nations.
J. Gresham Machen saw right through liberalism. It is something, but it’s not Christianity. Liberalism doesn’t have the truth, it doesn’t have the gospel, and it doesn’t save. It doesn’t carry the message of good news to those that desperately need to hear it.
Machen’s warnings and the collapse of PCUSA missions stand as a warning to Christians that we should heed.
R. Dwain Minor
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