Female Ordination and the PCA

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Female Ordination and the PCA

The CBMW Podcast
Episode Date: May 13, 2026
Host: Denny Burke (CBMW President)
Guests: Melton Duncan (Ruling Elder, Second Pres. Church, Clerk for Calvary Presbytery, PCA), Ligon Duncan (Chancellor & CEO, Reformed Theological Seminary; Former PCA Moderator; Board member, CBMW)

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Main Theme

This episode explores the ongoing debate within the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) regarding complementarianism and specifically the issue of female ordination to the office of deacon. The discussion contextualizes recent overtures (motions) before the PCA General Assembly, especially a proposal to formally affirm the Danvers Statement as biblically faithful, and contrasts them with more progressive motions advocating for female deacons. The episode also examines relevant historical, scriptural, and denominational factors shaping the debate, and notes parallels with similar conversations in other evangelical denominations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Role of Overtures in the PCA (02:15)

• Definition of Overture: Similar to a motion in a business meeting, it’s a formal request from a local church or presbytery for the General Assembly to take action.
• The overture under discussion proposes that the PCA declare the Danvers Statement a biblically faithful declaration, effectively reaffirming complementarianism as a guiding principle.

2. The Danvers Statement and Its Significance (03:36)

• Melton Duncan explains the rationale for re-adopting Danvers:
  • Celebrates the legacy of complementarianism in forming the PCA, which originally stood for “male only leadership.”
  • Responds to ongoing pressures in the broader evangelical church for egalitarian changes, especially regarding the office of deacon.
  • "Before we get into this discussion of changing the meaning of deacon... maybe we should revisit our first principles." (06:28)
  • The overture aims to clarify as the denomination debates whether to broaden the role of women.

3. How the PCA Has Practiced Complementarianism (08:01)

• Ligon Duncan recounts that the question of ordaining women was pivotal in founding the PCA, as a reaction to more liberal trends in mainline Presbyterianism.
• "All of our founders would have been committed to only qualified men serving in the office of pastor and elder. And almost all of them... would have varied on deacons." (09:16)
• The PCA, by conviction, has always restricted all ordained offices (pastor, elder, deacon) to qualified men.
• Mainline denominations that adopted female ordination losing vitality, with the exception of some charismatic and Pentecostal bodies.

4. Presbyterian vs. Baptist/Independent Church Practice (12:20)

• Denny Burke observes that some Baptist/independent churches have female deacons, seeing the role as service-only, without authority, thus not contradicting their reading of Scripture.
• Ligon and Melton Duncan clarify that, for the PCA, ordination inherently includes authority—“ordination inherently carries with it the vesting of authority for the exercise of a function” (13:13)—making the question more significant.

5. Authority and Gender in the Deaconate (18:04)

• Discussing Overture 37 (which proposes allowing women to serve as deacons), Burke points out its inconsistencies, such as the removal of masculine pronouns or ambiguities in expectations of “family management.”
• Melton Duncan notes, “the language of our Book of Church Order implies a masculine office... it’s going to have a necessary literary train wreck quality throughout the book” (18:04).
• Ligon Duncan explains that:
  • Authority is inherent in all PCA church offices, tracing even the language of “office” back to terms meaning “work” in Greek/Latin.
  • Historical usage of "diakonissa" referred to female assistants, not women in ordained office.
  • “There is just no history of women serving in the diaconate in the Christian tradition.” (19:13)

6. Key Biblical Texts: Phoebe and 1 Timothy 3 (22:28)

• Ligon Duncan addresses egalitarian arguments drawing from references to Phoebe (Romans 16:1) and “women” in 1 Timothy 3.
  • “The majority of the church in all ages has not been persuaded by that exegesis...” (22:48)
  • Most uses of ‘diakonos’ simply mean “servant,” and do not refer to an office.
  • Regarding 1 Timothy 3, the reference is more likely to deacons’ wives or women assisting, rather than female deacons.

7. Parallels to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the Law Amendment (26:00)

• Denny Burke asks about similarities between the debates in the PCA and the SBC over female ordination issues.
• Ligon Duncan parallels the overture process in the PCA with SBC’s own debates, emphasizing the value of clarity:
  • “Clarity is the friend of unity. And when you hide behind vagaries, you actually create dissension in a body.” (27:17)

8. Lessons from the Nashville Statement Overture (2019) (28:01)

• Past overtures, like the one affirming the Nashville Statement (regarding sexuality), were responses to internal challenges (e.g., the Revoice controversy and so-called “side B gay Christianity”).
• The Danvers overture is positioned as a proactive measure for the current conversation—“We are having a conversation that is infused with egalitarian tendencies... I think Danvers would help helpfully reset this discussion.” (31:44)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the PCA’s Origins

• “The ordination of women to church office was one of the animating reasons for the formation of the PCA... that was tangible evidence of a departure from the authority of Scripture.” — Ligon Duncan (08:13)

On Theological Clarity

• “Clarity is the friend of unity. And when you hide behind vagaries, you actually create dissension in a body.” — Ligon Duncan (27:17)

On Women’s Ministry

• “No one who does ministry... understands that women have to be at the very heart of church ministry. But in the context of ordained church ministry within the life of the PCA. This is a debate going on, and we believe Danvers speaks to that debate.” — Melton Duncan (14:13)

On Historical Perspective

• “There is just no history of women serving in the diaconate in the Christian tradition.” — Ligon Duncan (19:13)

On Scripture and Tradition

• “All of us as Christians know that service is at the very heart of what we are... But the majority of the church does not believe that those terms are technical designations of the office of the deacon.” — Ligon Duncan (23:57)

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Key Timestamps

• [03:36] Introduction to the Danvers Statement and reasoning behind the overture
• [08:01] Traditional PCA practice of complementarianism and origins
• [12:20] Distinctiveness of Presbyterian view on ordination and authority vs. other traditions
• [15:13] Details and critique of Overture 37 (allowing female deacons)
• [18:04] Theological and practical implications of changing language in the BCO for deacons
• [22:28] Responding to egalitarian readings of Phoebe and 1 Timothy 3
• [26:00] Parallels to the SBC and discussions of clarity versus latitude
• [28:01] Lessons from the Nashville Statement overture and the Revoice controversy
• [31:44] Rationale for reaffirming first principles with the Danvers Statement

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Conclusion

This episode is a candid, informative deep-dive into the theological and denominational dynamics at play in current PCA debates over female ordination, particularly to the office of deacon. By weaving together Scripture, church history, and denominational polity, Denny Burke, Melton Duncan, and Ligon Duncan outline both the continuity of complementarian conviction within the PCA and the perceived need to restate and reaffirm those convictions in the face of contemporary egalitarian pressures. The conversation is peppered with practical considerations, historical anecdote, and an emphasis on the importance of theological clarity for sustaining unity and faithfulness in the denomination.

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Transcript

[Melton Duncan]

Foreign.

[Jonathan Swan]

Inoculation against progressive self expressionism helping to keep your biblical immune system ready to wage war against every ideological virus. I'm Jonathan Swan, Executive editor of icon, a journal for Biblical anthropology. We have a special episode today, a full biblical worldview booster for you here. In just a minute, I'm going to turn the podcast over to CBW's president, Denny Burke. He'll be interviewing two special guests, Melton and Lincoln Duncan. Let me give you a quick introduction to those guys. Melton Duncan is Ruling Elder at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina where he serves as Clerk for the Calvary Presbytery in the pca, the Presbyterian Church in America. His brother, Ligon Duncan is a teaching elder in the Mississippi Valley Presbytery. He served as Moderator of the 32nd General assembly of the PCA, their annual business meeting, and is the Chancellor and CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary. Luke's also a longtime supporter of CBMW and he currently serves on our Board of Directors. Now we're having these brothers on the podcast to talk about some important matters going on in the PCA related to complementarianism and specifically the question of female ordination to the office of deacon. You'll Hear also about CBMW's Nashville Danvers statements, how they're making an impact playing a role in PCA discussions. Also, Denny tries to usurp the authority of the PCA to become the moderator, so you're not going to want to miss that. We hope you enjoy the interview. Without any further delay, I'm going to pass it off to to Denny Burke,

[Denny Burke]

Mel and Lig, welcome to the CBMW podcast. I am so very grateful for both of you and for y' all taking time to educate our listeners on what is going on in the Presbyterian Church in America with regard to complementarianism. I just want to say personally I am very thankful for the pca. Little known thing, don't tell anybody I'm a Baptist, but I used to go to a PCA church for a time in Dallas, Texas. Park City's Presbyterian Church.

[Ligon Duncan]

Wow.

[Denny Burke]

And so PCA has had a legacy in my own life. It's had a legacy in American evangelical life. We are so grateful for it. The 53rd General assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America is scheduled to meet right here where I am, not where you are, but where I am in Louisville, Kentucky next month. And I wanted to spend some time talking to you in particular about an overture that Mel has moved through the Calvary Presbytery in South Carolina. And for all of our non PCA Listeners, an overture is like a motion in a business meeting. It's how a presbytery or a session asks the entire PCA General assembly to take some kind of a specific action. Now, if I didn't say that right, you can correct me here in a second, but I want to give everybody we're going to start using the word overture over and over. But what we mean by that is it's like a motion. And so lig here, we're so grateful for you to be here. Mel, you're here. And Mel and his presbytery have moved that the PCA General assembly declared declare the Danvers statement as a biblically faithful declaration. Now, Mel, most of our listeners know what the Danvers statement is, but some of them maybe don't. Maybe this is the first time they're listening in. So tell us briefly about what the Danvers statement is and why your session is presenting this overture to the pca.

[Melton Duncan]

Well, Danny, first of all, thank you. It's so good to be with you. We're so appreciative of the ministry of cb and wow, we're so excited as a PCA church and as a PCA General assembly to be in Louisville with our Southern Baptist friends. We love our friends at Southern Seminary and of course our friends at cbmw. And I hope you and I get to renew the ties that bind this summer as well in Kentucky. Yes, I'm a ruling elder in a faithful PCA church, a Bible believing, gospel loving PCA church in Greenville, South Carolina. And, and we love complementarianism. And that was one of the parts of the story that brought the PCA together some five decades ago. We believed in male only leadership as part of our commitment to many other things that brought the PCA together. And one of the tension points in the life of our church, and I think we've seen it across evangelical churches, is this tension point between egalitarian and complementarian conversations, discussions, debates. And it's happened in the Southern Baptist Convention and it's happening within the PCA around the conversation around the diaconate. And so for about a generation, the PCA has had a conversation about the role of women within the life of the church. And so in the last 10 years particularly there have been formal overtures and you've already done a very good job for your listeners to explain the process of how our Book of Church Order and maybe I should just go back and start with that a little bit. We have a binding Book of Church order. I always keep mine very near me, being a Clerk of a presbytery. I live in this, this little book. It's called the Book of Church Order. And this is the rule book that kind of unites our church together. All of our local sessions and our presbyteries agree to follow the rules in this book. And so a lot of our general assemblies are spent talking about what are the rules that govern our churches. And so one of the things that we're going to talk about this year and that we've been talking about intentionally the last decade is should we change, modify, adjust, broaden our rules so that we could allow a greater role for women within the office of the diaconate? And as part of that discussion, there's even been recommendations from some presbyteries and some individual sessions to change the nature of the office of deacon. And so that's why our session thought, before we get into this discussion of changing the meaning of deacon as the PCA understand it, maybe we should revisit our first principles. And CBMW a generation ago with the Danvers statement did such a good job of defining complementarianism for the churches. We thought it would be a good idea to put this in front of the PCA and remind us the pca, like many churches, have used the word complementarian to define ourselves. And we thought it would be good for the PCA to be reminded of this. And so we overtured our Presbyterian. Our Presbyterian had a robust discussion about whether we need to do this. Being Presbyterians, Denny, we're always quite confident that our Westminster Standards are sufficient to handle every theological discussion, and I'm quite confident to say it is. But in this instance, we felt like it would be helpful to remind the church that we should commend this document as part of this discussion. And maybe I could pitch it over to Ligon to talk about why and the depth of this. But the idea is simply this. If we're going to spend essentially disassembly talking about whether we should or shouldn't have women deacons, let's have a discussion ahead of time about what PCA complementarianism looks like.

[Denny Burke]

So, Lig, how has the PCA traditionally practiced complementarianism? What does that look like with respect to who the PCA recognizes as office holders or who they ordained?

[Ligon Duncan]

Great question, Denny. Number one, as Mel has already hinted at, the ordination of women to church office was one of the animating reasons for the formation of the pca About a decade before the PCA existed, what was then called colloquially the Old Southern Church, the pcus, which merged with The Northern Presbyterian Church to become the PCUSA in 1983, had started ordaining women to the office of pastor and elder. And that was one of the things that the founders of the PCA saw as tangible evidence of departure from the authority of Scripture. Because the. The amount of gymnastics that you have to do to get from. I do not permit a woman to teach or hold authority to. I do allow a woman to teach and hold authority is it just eviscerates the authority of Scripture, that kind of exegesis. And so all of our founders would have been committed to. To only qualified men serving in the office of pastor and elder. And almost all of them, I don't know any of them who would have varied on deacons. Now, you and I know a lot of wonderful complementarians that hold to deacons, to women being able to serve in the office of deacon. But in the pca, we have always had all offices, all ordained offices. And ordination's another question. But all ordained offices have been all male. And it's been a matter of scriptural conviction. And I think that if you look back at the beginnings of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, there were a number of PCA folks that were involved in CBMW at the very beginning because of scriptural convictions about what came to be known as. And we could talk about George Knight, and we could talk about Peter Jones and many, many other PCA folks that were involved in CBMW from the beginning, because this was an animating principle for what brought the PCA into existence. And I think, just like. And I'm probably jumping the gun on this, but just like the Nashville statement signaled to the PCA that the PCA did not want to be involved in a departure from the traditional Christian understanding of gender roles in marriage, gender sexuality. So also, Danvers signaled that the PCA wanted to hold what almost the whole of Christendom had held for 1850 years. I mean, you have to get into the middle of the 19th century before anybody ordains a woman to the pastoral

[Denny Burke]

office, which is probably why it's not explicitly in Westminster.

[Ligon Duncan]

Right. And of course, that really doesn't catch speed in American mainline Protestantism until the mid 20th century. And so it's really in the 1950s and 60s that you see mainline Protestant denominations making these moves. Interestingly, all of those denominations are dying right now. Absolutely. The only place where you see growth and women ordained to pastoral ministry and to the other offices is in the charismatic and Pentecostal movement. And I think there are actually reasons why that is. But the PCA has always, like our brethren in the Southern Baptist Convention have always. Because we're committed to inerrancy, because we're committed to inspiration and the authority of scripture. We're committed to qualified men serving in the offices of a pastor and elder. And in this case that we're talking about in the PCA right now, Deacon.

[Denny Burke]

So let me come in here and from the perspective of somebody who's not in the pca, and you know, I'm a Baptist, you got a lot of people who may be listening to this who are, you know, some kind of independent church that's Baptiste or Baptistic. And they'll have, you know, there are a number of churches in the, in both of those contexts where you'll find some, you'll find churches that have female deacons. And in those churches, what they'll argue is I say those churches because we actually don't have female deacons in my church, in my Baptist church. But there are a lot of churches that would say it's just fine because it's just an office of service. But there seems to be something in particular within the, within Presbyterianism having to do with ordination that makes this different. Is that correct?

[Ligon Duncan]

Yes, I think that's true because ordination, and Mel can elaborate on this. From the standpoint both of the book of church order and Presbyterian history, ordination inherently carries with it the vesting of authority for the exercise of a function.

[Melton Duncan]

Yeah, yeah. And the PCA from day one has said, and there are variations of this and there are tendencies within the pca, but we're committed to being a two office church. And that means we believe that in the PCA's view, and we understand that brethren watching and listening may differ, but we believe that there are two offices. There are elders and there are deacons. And because of that we believe there is within the DOC and an authority. And because of that we ordain. And because of that, there shall not be women as deacons within the pca. Now, that doesn't believe that. That does not mean that the PCA doesn't believe there isn't a vital role for women.

[Denny Burke]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Melton Duncan]

As you listen to this, don't hear Ligon and I and the entire PCA saying that to the contrary. No, we, we have a, a vital estimation, as does the cbmw, a vital commitment to, to women in ministry. And no one who does ministry, everyone who does ministry, I should say, understands that women have to be at the very heart of church ministry. But in the context of ordained church ministry within the life of the pca. This is a debate going on, and we believe Danvers speaks to that debate. We actually believe that within the context of the PCA's understanding of the Bible, that the PCA will flourish with a complementary and understanding of the roles within the church.

[Denny Burke]

So there was. I was looking at this other overture. So you're doing an overture, advancing the Danvers statement to frame the larger discussion that you're having over the diaconate.

[Melton Duncan]

Right.

[Denny Burke]

There's this other overture, Overture 37, which is. It's basically. It says here it's a. It's an overture to amend your BCO to allow women to serve as ordained deacons.

[Ligon Duncan]

Right.

[Melton Duncan]

You can call that. If we're door number one, you could call that door number two, Danny. Yeah, it's the exact opposite direction.

[Denny Burke]

So I'm looking at behind door number two. And there was two interesting things here that I would say is different from the way I see the diaconate playing out in churches that I'm familiar with that are complementarian. Because in this. I just want to read two things from it. Okay. And you can help me with this. But this is from the overture to have female deacons. It says that they want to amend the BCO so that in one section it'll say, this person shall be examined in Christian experience, personal character, and family management based on the qualifications set out in 1 Timothy 3:1:7 and Titus 1:6:9, which I thought was interesting because it removed the masculine pronoun from that. But that seems to be dealing with an elder or a man who's. I don't know how to. How do you. Why would you do that? Like, why, on a thing that has to do with deacons? Why are you taking off a masculine pronoun from these elder qualifications in first Timothy 3:1 through 7? And then. And then if you say, well, we meant that to be for deacons.

[Ligon Duncan]

Well,

[Denny Burke]

if you're bringing in a free female deacons, are you saying that they have to be responsible for family management? So that was kind of strange to me. The other one was, there was another section where it says, it's talking about the vow that a person entering into ordained office has to take, and then the members of the church take a vow? Do you members of this church acknowledge and receive this person according to the amended language as a ruling elder or deacon, and do you promise to yield all that honor, encouragement, and obedience in the Lord to which such office is entitled? And I'm just saying. Okay, it seems to Me, the church is saying that they're going to give a certain amount of obedience to this office because it says elder or deacon. Am I reading this wrong? In other words, it seems like even within their own overture, that's an internal tension with any kind of complementarianism because it's conceiving of the office as having some kind of authority vested in it. Now, there may be churches out there, you know, amongst the Baptists and the independent churches like I know of, where that's not the case at all. The way that they practice the office of deacon has no authority in it. But this sounds like it does, even within the year.

[Melton Duncan]

You're pointing out that the language of our book of church order implies a masculine office. And there are, there are implications to when you, when you simply make the, the office gender neutral or sex neutral, it's going to have a necessary literary train wreck quality throughout the book that maybe the author of this overture hasn't thought through. I think that what Ligon touched on that we actually do believe, and this may be different than some Baptist churches on this, we actually do believe that the office of the Daccon, it has some sort of authority in it. And that's why in the vows in the pca, congregations do pledge to the degree that the office of deacon has office of authority, that you do honor deacons with the authority due to them. And that's why, another reason why it would perhaps be unwise to make this office open to women, because it would seemingly be unwise to do that.

[Ligon Duncan]

If I could underline something, I think it's not just that our vow structure assumes qualified males occupying the office. It assumes authority inherently part of church office. The English word office is just based on the Latin word officio, which translates the Greek word for work. So when the New Testament describes the function of an elder or a deacon, it talks about the work that they are doing. And in the Presbyterian tradition, there is inherent authority in that work. Which is interestingly why when the Greek term diakonisa was first deployed, it was not deployed to mean women deacons, but female assistants to the deacons in the early church. Chuck Hill has shown this very conclusively. And by the way, everybody, if you're trying to think through the history of women in the diaconate, I cannot too highly commend you Bob Cara's article on that subject, which was written for the ARP study committee on this matter. And the ARPs have had women deacons for about a hundred years now, but they're a very strong Compliment. It's in the RTS Faith and Practice Journal, which you can get online for free. So if you go to RTS Faith and Practice and look at Bob Kara's article on the history of the diaconate, one of the things that Bob points out is there is just no history of women serving in the diaconate in the Christian tradition. And so it's really, really well done. And that goes all the way back to the very first usages of the term diaconisa. I had to be corrected on this by Chuck Hill after my debate with Tim Keller because I made sort of this offhand comment that if Paul had wanted to talk about women deacons, he could have used the female version of the noun and talked about diakonisa. And Chuck Hill wrote me a kind note saying, oh, really appreciated your discussion with Tim, but by the way, I wanna make a point that the word that you used actually didn't exist as far as we know it for another two centuries after the Greek New Testament. And when it was used, it wasn't used for women deacons. It was used for women who assisted

[Melton Duncan]

the deacons, which we all agree with.

[Ligon Duncan]

You need godly women working alongside of the deacons to do the ministry of the church. Praise God for those godly women that do that. But they weren't women deacons. They were women who were assisting the deacons. And so I think that our very vows in the PCA not only inherently entail complementarianism, but they inherently entail the idea that to be in church office, to be in charge of a work, is inherently authoritative. And we want to follow the Scriptures on the way that the Bible tells us that that authority is to be exercised.

[Denny Burke]

Luke, since we're on this, how do you answer the arguments coming from the other side? Hey, we've got Phoebe in Romans 16:1, and then in 1 Timothy 3, we've got the women deacons there. Can you give us your quick, you know, biblical response to that?

[Ligon Duncan]

Yeah, my quick answer is the majority of the church in all ages has not been persuaded by that exegesis. You show me B.B. warfield, I'll show you 250 other scholars in the history of Christianity that don't agree with the exegesis. As you know, Denny, because you're a master of Greek New Testament, the Greek word that we translate as deacon most often is used in a generic way in the New Testament for indicating servant, because servant is such an important idea in Christianity. All of us are servants of the Lord. If you become a Christian, as that Great theologian Bob Dylan once said, you may serve the devil or you may serve the Lord, but you all gotta serve somebody. So all of us as Christians know that service is at the very heart of what we are. We are servants of the Lord. And sometimes even stronger language will be used that we're bond slaves of the Lord in the New Testament. And so the majority of the church does not believe that those terms are technical designations of the office of the deacon, but are rather people that are serving the church, which we all do. Men, women, boys and girls. If you've rested and trusted in Christ alone, as he is offered in the Gospel, you are his joyful, willing servant.

[Denny Burke]

Yeah. The vast majority of the uses of Diaconos, which is not an uncommon word, the vast majority of the uses are just talking about a servant in general, not an office. And there are only, what, two or three uses that are clearly referring to an office. So the argument then would be, well, where does Phoebe fall? I think she probably falls in the vast majority. Yeah. Like the other use, it's just some sort of a servant. What about 1 Timothy 3?

[Ligon Duncan]

Well, once again, in that passage, the trick is, you know, is it referring to wives of deacons or is it referring to the women who serve the deacons there? You know, and the parallel again to the immediately preceding passage with regard to elders, I incline to. It's talking about the wives of the deacons there. But there are different ways that you can explain the usage in 1 Timothy 3.

[Denny Burke]

Yeah. And really, I don't know if deacon would occur to anyone unless you were already reading Romans 16:1 into that. Because the word deacon's not there. It's just the word for women. And people are assuming that they're just female deacons, but it doesn't call any woman to be Akanos there. Well, that's really helpful. So I'm happy for both of you to weigh in on this. So either one of you here, but what does this say? I mean, how does this discussion in the pca, how is it similar to what's going on, say, in the SBC with the law amendment and other things? Are there similar currents going on that you feel like you're addressing here?

[Ligon Duncan]

I do think there are similarities. I think that our BCO discussions, Book of Church Order discussions, we've had a number of discussions through the overture process that you so clearly and accurately described at the beginning of this episode over the last number of years.

[Jonathan Swan]

Some.

[Denny Burke]

Can I be the moderator?

[Ligon Duncan]

Have more. You could you do a great job, Denny. Some asking us to have more latitude in this area, some looking for clarity and boundaries. And every time it's come up in the last 10 years, clarity and boundaries have won and latitude has lost. And by the way, my prediction for all of the overtures that are asking for more latitude is that they will lose if they have been like if the General assembly is like it has been for the last 10 years. And especially the one that you just read, I don't think you could find 2% of the PCA that would agree with the articulations that you've just read, especially in the whereases in the justification clauses. That overture that's just that's going. That has not a snowball's chance in the infernal regions, on the floor of General assembly or in overtures that will be roundly defeated. But I think that the overture processes that we have been going through have been the PCA's version of the law amendment discussions in the SBC. And I hope that the SBC will come to clarity is the friend of unity. And when you hide behind vagaries, you actually create dissension in a body. And the more clear we are on this, the more helpful it is to promoting church unity. And I think that's very important for both of our particular ecclesiastical fellowships to realize right now.

[Denny Burke]

Mel, your session overture the Nashville Statement several years ago, back in 2019, I believe.

[Melton Duncan]

Yeah.

[Denny Burke]

Why did you do that and what's been the response and how do you think that relates to this current effort?

[Melton Duncan]

The same reasons we're overturing Danvers. We were concerned about tendencies within the life of the pca. You probably remembered the revoice controversy that originated in what is now blessedly a former PCA church in St. Louis. It was a group of folks who were promoting so called side B gay Christianity. Greg Johnson and the Memorial Presbyterian Church brought together some folks who were promoting this idea and it really shook up PCA people. It took us a long time to understand what they were teaching. We were so grateful for many of the articles Denny that you wrote and CBMW wrote on that. CBMW was very helpful in helping PCA people understand what sodge Christianity was about. And when this discussion hit the mainstream of the pca, our session looked around and realized CBMW has actually, through the Nashville Statement, put together what we called a very Catholic kind of document, meaning a very broad universal consensus statement that would be very helpful in helping the PCA immediately respond to revoice. And so just like we're doing with Danvers, we sent this, the. The Nashville Statement to our presbytery, our Calvary Presbytery, which is a very conservative presbytery. God bless Calvary Presbytery immediately endorsed it and sent it up to the General Assembly. And Ligon and Harry Reeder and my pastor, Rick Phillips and Kevin DeYoung and others spoke in favor of the Nashville Statement. I was privileged to read it on the floor at my daughter Frances's suggestion, rather than make an argument for it, she said, dad, why don't you just read the thing? And. And that, I think, had great effect because I think many people in. In the PCA world had had. That was the first time they had actually been exposed to it. And I think it. It had a great effect. Denny. I. I think there are a lot of Christian. What I like to say about reboys and was with. With respect to revoice, there was not a Sunday school teacher in the PCA that was confused about reavoice. Once they understood the teaching of revoice, people understood that was not good. Now, they might not have understood technically why it was wrong and they needed some help articulating how to teach what was, how to articulate against it, but they knew that was not right. And CBMW and the Nashville Statement was such a great response to that. So, yeah, our session thought that the Nashville Statement was a great way to respond to that. As you may remember, our General assembly put together a Human Sexuality Study committee report. Kevin DeYoung, Kim Keller was a part of that. And that was a deeper response that was uniquely pca. Super helpful. I think CBMW has interacted with that through this podcast and others. Ligon was involved in that as well. And so that was a super helpful way to go deeper on this. My hope is that this Danvers statement. I'm not saying we're having an egalitarian crisis in the pca. That's not what I'm saying. But we are having a conversation that is infused with egalitarian tendencies in the life of the church right now. And I think Danvers would help helpfully reset this discussion. I think it's been a while since Danvers has been in front of the PCA or in the life of the pca. And I think it would be good for us to remember our first principles as we discuss an issue that is teeming with egalitarian tendencies.

[Denny Burke]

Well, that's so helpful. Thank you, Mel. Thank you, Lig, for this. I look forward to seeing you here next month. And we'll be praying for you and praying for the Presbyterian Church in America, as you guys are meeting here in Louisville. Until then, God bless you both and thank you for being on the podcast.