A Brief History of the PCW

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be  among those who come after. –(Ecclesiastes 1:9–11 ESV)

Nobody knew it at the time, but the beginnings of the Presbyterian Church of the World (PCW) date from the early 2000s when one of our predecessors, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), took two steps toward maintaining the authority of Scripture while avoiding a rigid and archaic concept of inerrancy.

The first step was the report of the Creation Study Committee in 2000. The committee was initiated largely by fundamentalists at the PCA’s 1998 General Assembly who believed that it would return a report opposing any view other than a 24-hour day creation narrative. Instead, the report’s focus on peace and unity over dogma opened the way for widespread adoption of the framework interpretation. This solved the supposed conflict of Genesis 1 and 2 read into Scripture by biblical literalists who believed those chapters to be historical and allowed Scripture to comport with the settled science of an earth that is billions of years old:

The Committee has been unable to come to unanimity over the nature and duration of the creation days. Nevertheless, our goal has been to enhance the unity, integrity, faithfulness and proclamation of the Church. Therefore we are presenting a unanimous report with the understanding that the members hold to different exegetical viewpoints.

From that point forward, the framework interpretation grew in popularity in PCA feeder seminaries until it became the majority interpretation in the PCA. This opened the way for a more reasonable application of the Westminster Standards that in 2025 brought to an end the practice of requiring PCA elders to take “exceptions” to that extra-biblical document when they disagreed with some of its misreadings of Scripture.

The second step came in 2004 when the PCA’s General Assembly approved the Pastoral Letter on Racism recommended by the Committee on Mission to North America. In the letter, the committee clearly identified the PCA’s racist heritage:

Since we are a product of this expressed intention to be the continuing Presbyterian Church, it is crucial that we repent of those [racist] teachings and actions in our history that are sinful, make a clear break from them and establish a new beginning in obedience, by God’s grace.

This may seem like a small step viewed from more than 30 years in the future, but it its day it was nothing short of miraculous–given where the PCA had come from:

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) was more than merely complicit in racism. The PCA exists only because of its founders’ defense of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. … The narrative most commonly heard in PCA churches is that it formed to protect and keep the faith and avoid the slide into liberalism. But this is akin to the belief that the south seceded because of states’ rights.

Even more important than this declaration, however, was the willingness of the PCA to adapt Scriptural language about peoples and nations to our day by interpreting them through the lens of the modern understanding of racism. This eventually opened the way in the 2020s for the contextual interpretation of Scripture by applying the concept that the words in the Bible describe the revelation of God that actually occurred prior to its being recorded in Scripture, rather than being the direct revelation of God themselves.

Even with these milestones, the PCA did not break the stronghold of fundamentalism overnight. Yet the roots were in place and took hold over time. And did so primarily through the application of the new perspectives on Scripture to four different issues in four different geographic centers:

• The Role of Women in the Church – New York City
• Gay Christianity – St. Louis
• Two Kingdoms Theology – Southern California
• A Woman’s Right to Choose – Tennessee

We’ll examine each of these briefly.

The Role of Women in the Church – New York City

Today the misogynic practice of ordaining only men is confined to a few, largely irrelevant denominations like the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, the Christian Presbyterian Church (formerly known as Vanguard Presbytery, which merged with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 2026), the Evangel Presbytery, and the Southwestern Baptist Church (which split off from the Southern Baptists in 2029). But when the PCA was formed in the early 1970s, the male patriarchy still had a firm hold on a number of denominations.

In the PCA, this began to change at Redeemer New York under Tim Keller. It started with giving women more prominent roles in worship services such as reading Scripture and leading prayers (at first with their husbands) and serving communion. Next was organizing “deaconesses” to support the work of deacons. Then came the practice of ordaining deaconesses. When the accidental ordaining of a deaconess at Redeemer with the same language used for male deacons met with little objection, the practice really took off in the denomination, aided by the PCA’s 2017 report on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church (“God’s first and primary example of a united, loving community imaging Him was male and female together”).

Still, as late as 2023, PCA elders who wanted to follow the affirming practice of ordaining women elders had to go to other denominations, such as another PCW predecessor the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). But in 2024, the General Assembly responded affirmatively to Overture 16 from the Metropolitan New York Presbytery that resolved

we will not disagree on the basic essentials of the Christian faith, but on anything that is not essential—such as the issue of ordaining women as officers—we will give each other liberty.

Even prior to this, though, progress had been made in elevating the role of women in society when it came to the institution of marriage. Many PCA pastors had stopped preaching about male headship in marriage ceremonies, while sessions had started taking a hard line toward men who ruled their families through fear, intimidation, and abuse.

Gay Christianity – St. Louis

It is hard to imagine a time when all of God’s children were not accepted by the Presbyterian church as God had made them, but this was certainly the case in the PCA, along with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Gay Christians, even those who chose to be celibate, were openly shunned by those who identified as “evangelical” Christians.

Change began in earnest, however, when the third PCW predecessor, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), changed the definition of marriage in its constitution to include a “commitment between two people.” In doing this in 2015, it formally recognized gay marriage as Christian and allowed same-sex weddings in every congregation.

This effort gained traction in the PCA and SBC with the advent of the Revoice movement. Revoice held its first conference in St. Louis at Memorial Presbyterian (PCA) in 2018 for the purpose of “supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.” While “observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality” would be offensive today, such language was a necessary place to start given the existing bigotry in the PCA against the Christian LGBT community at that time.

Despite the fact that many families in the Reformed community headed by LGBT couples had been waiting for decades to enter a welcoming space for their families within their church communities, Revoice was not warmly received by fundamentalists in the PCA. In 2019, the PCA’s General Assembly adopted the now discredited Nashville Statement, which stated,

WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture.

WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

Yet even in that vote, the seeds of success could be seen. As Greg Johnson, Memorial Presbyterian’s senior pastor and the PCA’s first openly gay pastor noted at the time:

Last night [the] Nashville Statement won, but they will lose the war.

1. We had a seat at the table. That’s new.

2. Notice the average age of the proponents and opponents. Big shift.

3. About 40% of PCA leaders rejected [the] Nashville Statement

4. We’ve got a study committee whose report will supersede [the] Nashville Statement in [the] PCA.

Johnson was prescient. The morning after the Nashville State was adopted, fundamentalist Pastor Steven Warhurst was censured by the General Assembly for his unloving language on the floor the night before. Then the following year, the report from the PCA Ad Interim Study Committee on Sexuality sidestepped most of the issues that fundamentalists had hoped to use to stop the Revoice movement. Instead, like previous GA committee reports, it focused on maintaining “the Scriptural solidarity and relational unity we experienced as a Committee [so that it] may also prove helpful for the unity, witness, and mission of our church and her people.”

Perhaps even more importantly, the 2020 General Assembly in Birmingham (the heart of the PCA’s fundamentalist wing) was cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 General Assembly, however, was held in St. Louis, the home of the Revoice movement, Memorial Presbyterian, and Covenant Theological Seminary–one of the earliest and most supportive influences on Revoice. Not only did the 2021 GA approve the committee’s report–with changes that greatly improved it, but it answered in the affirmative an overture from the Missouri Presbytery overturning the adoption of the Nashville Statement just two years before. With this reversal, the Christian LGBT community was well on its way to full membership in the PCA.

Two Kingdoms Theology – Southern California

Two of the major drivers of the rebirth of the right-wing political movement in the late 20th century were Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Ralph Reeds’ Christian Coalition. These groups became the core constituency of the Republican Party, and this eventually led to the election of Donald Trump.

However, out in Southern California reformed circles a movement known as Two Kingdoms theology began to fight back against the idea that Christians ought to use government to impose their morality on others.

Perhaps the most prominent spokesman for Two Kingdoms theology at the time was David VanDrunen, an associate professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido, California. VanDrunen wrote his book on the topic “out of a growing conviction that contemporary conversations about Christianity and culture are on the wrong track.” Particularly concerning to him was the idea that “Christians are … called to transform [cultural institutions and activities] and to build the kingdom of God through this work.”

Instead, VanDrunen promoted the idea that political and other cultural institutions are part of a “common kingdom,” ruled by God but not being redeemed by Him. Christians share this modern day “Babylon” with non-believers and, therefore, should not seek to transform it but are instead to “live as sojourners and exiles in a land that is not their lasting home.”

One near term result of this approach was that many in the PCA stopped–or never started–looking to Scripture for guidance in shaping their beliefs on the public policy proposals from different parties. This freed a lot of Christians from the guilt of feeling like they had to vote for Republicans claiming to be the “moral party” because of their opposition to gay rights, abortion, welfare, and consumer and environmental protection. Today, 15 years after the 2020 presidential election, this movement is credited with the loss of Donald Trump to Joe Biden because of the significant drop in Evangelical support for Trump. Polling after the election showed that evangelicals felt more free in 2020 than in 2016 to vote based on the morality of the candidates rather than on their public policies.

In the long term, Two Kingdoms theology reduced the influence of political and theological conservatives in the PCA, a key factor in opening the door to the PCA’s reunion with the PC (USA) and the EPC.

A Woman’s Right to Choose – Tennessee

There is no doubt that the most important cultural battle of the last 60 years has been maintaining a woman’s right to choose. While choice is in and of itself a basic human right, its importance was highlighted in the number of women who exercised choice in the early years after Roe.

However, beginning about the turn of the century, state’s began a concerted effort to limit or even abolish a woman’s right to choose through legislative maneuvering attempting to circumvent Roe. Then, upon the election of Trump in 2016, the federal government began its efforts to dismantle Roe. Unfortunately, right in the middle of this were a significant number of PCA elders and members who used this issue to justify their support for Republicans, and later for Trump.

Yet there were signs of movement toward pro-choice support in the PCA as early as when Barak Obama was elected president. Despite the concerns of many fundamentalist PCA members about Obama’s excellent pro-choice credentials, a number of PCA elders openly counseled them that electing the first black president in 2008 was a historic opportunity for racial reconciliation that they should not pass up.

The movement away from supporting harmful anti-choice policies rapidly grew in the PCA after Trump’s election. Tennessee, of all places, became the epicenter of the “Never Trump” movement in the PCA. Though not a PCA elder, David French, a political columnist, came to be the voice for this movement. From a pro-choice perspective, it reached its peak in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election when French openly supported Joe Biden’s election. When asked how he would answer the charge that a vote for Biden is a vote for abortion, French justified his position by saying:

The power of the president over abortion is profoundly limited. American abortion peaked in the 1980s and has gone down since then regardless of whether the president is pro-life or pro-choice. The federal judiciary has time and time again been a source of pain, anguish, and frustration.

Within ten years of Biden’s victory over Trump, opposition to a woman’s right to choose had largely disappeared in the PCA. This was no doubt facilitated by the amazing changes that took place on the U.S. Supreme Court.

We all remember 2022. That is when the coming forth of multiple new witnesses against Justice Kavanagh during the court’s consideration of a case to overturn Roe finally forced him to resign. His replacement by Biden nominee Andrew Cuomo and the further maturing of Chief Justice John Roberts rendered moot Trump’s illegitimate nomination of Amy Coney Barrett during an election year. Then President Harris’ 2028 nomination of Texan Jessica Cisneros (a progressive immigration and human rights attorney who unseated conservative Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar in 2022) to replace Justice Thomas cemented a 6-3 court majority in favor of choice.

Conclusion

By 2030, many elders and lay members in all three of our predecessor denominations saw that the time was right to begin merger conversations. The process took four years. Though there were many elements of the merger that required discussion, there was unanimous support for removing ‘America’ from the name of the church in order to continue in repentance from our racist past and present. Thus the PCW was born in 2034.

On this, our first anniversary, many blessings have flowed from the actions of the early pioneers in our predecessor denominations, particularly the PCA. Looking back over that time, particularly in light of the six years of the Biden administration and nine years (and counting) of the Harris administration, the willingness of evangelicals to turn away from the reactionary politics of the turn of the century has proven to be perhaps the most important factor in ensuring that Christian love and compassion is witnessed to the nations.