The PCA Just Did Something Few Evangelical Denominations Have Been Willing to Do
It’s rare that I get to write good news about Christian nationalism.
But this week, there actually is some.
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a conservative evangelical denomination, has become the first major evangelical denomination to formally draw meaningful theological lines against Christian nationalism.
A couple of caveats.
First, this is a provisional statement. It now goes through the PCA’s committee process before a final vote, likely in 2027. Presbyterians, after all, love committees.
Second, the PCA is relatively small—about 400,000 members. That’s tiny compared to something like the Southern Baptist Convention.
But the PCA punches well above its weight intellectually. Influential evangelical leaders like Tim Keller were part of the denomination, as are many of the writers associated with The Gospel Coalition.
And, as a fair warning, I’m not a member of the PCA, never have been, and I know many people have had deeply negative experiences within it. Nothing I’m about to say erases those realities.
Still, I think what happened here is genuinely significant.
At this year’s General Assembly, a study committee released a 35-page report that attempts to draw theological boundaries against Christian nationalism using the denomination’s own confessional standards.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the report is historical.
For conservative Presbyterians, everything eventually leads back to the Westminster Confession of 1646. That confession has often been read as leaving room for monarchy, established religion, and the idea of a Christian magistrate enforcing Christian moral order.
What’s striking is that the PCA isn’t looking only to 1646.
Instead, the report looks back to 1788.
That was the year American Presbyterians revised the Westminster Confession in light of the American founding. At essentially the same historical moment that the U.S. Constitution was being written, Presbyterians revised their own confessional standards to accommodate constitutional democracy and religious liberty rather than requiring a church-state alliance enforcing Christian morality.
In other words, they’re recovering a distinctly American Presbyterian tradition that embraces liberal democracy rather than rejecting it.
As a historical side note, this is especially interesting because John Witherspoon—one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a Presbyterian minister—played an important role in both the American founding and these Presbyterian revisions.
One paragraph from the report captures the heart of the argument:
“We affirm that in God’s providence, liberal political orders of the kind that have shaped America have secured genuine goods, including protections for religious liberty, limitations on arbitrary political power, recognition of human dignity, and the expansion of certain civil and political rights. Christians should not embrace reactionary alternatives that sacrifice justice, liberty, or charity. Indeed, citizens of the United States are bound by Holy Scripture to give thanks to Almighty God for the common grace, liberties, and blessings of civil society, and to work for the preservation and further cultivation of those blessings according to their several callings.”
John Witherspoon couldn’t have said it better himself.
Here is a conservative evangelical denomination looking back to both the American founding and its own theological tradition to argue that liberal democracy is something Christians should preserve—not dismantle.
The report also takes a notably firm stand against ethnonationalism and what it calls “kinism,” a Reformed theological term associated with racial segregation and white supremacy. In other words, it rejects both the racial and political dimensions of Christian nationalism.
That matters.
We’ve seen plenty of statements against Christian nationalism from liberal Protestant denominations. Those statements are easy for Christian nationalists to dismiss because they come from communities that were never particularly sympathetic to Christian nationalism in the first place.
This is different.
Here, conservative evangelicals are making the case using Reformed theology itself. The audience isn’t outsiders. It’s people who might actually find Christian nationalism attractive. That gives this document a kind of credibility that outside criticism often lacks.
This also illustrates one of the great strengths of older traditions.
Traditions create accountability to the past.
When radical political movements emerge—as we’ve seen during the Trump era—it becomes much harder simply to reinvent your theology overnight if you’re accountable to centuries of confessional history.
Compare this with what happened recently in the Southern Baptist Convention.
There, a hardline Reformed faction centered around William Wolfe successfully pushed its preferred candidate into the SBC presidency and continues moving the denomination toward Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy.
The PCA faced a similar challenge.
Stephen Wolfe, the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism (not to be confused with William Wolfe), and several allies attended the General Assembly advocating for the denomination to embrace Christian nationalism.
Instead, the denomination moved in the opposite direction.
The committee’s report passed.
It’s now headed toward final consideration.
Old denominations can sometimes do things that loose evangelical networks cannot.
Catechisms don’t bend quite so easily.
It’s a dynamic similar to what we see in the Catholic Church. Pope Leo can engage new challenges like artificial intelligence by drawing on centuries of accumulated moral reflection rather than inventing an ethic from scratch.
When a major evangelical denomination tells its members that liberal democracy is a gift of God’s common grace and worth protecting, that’s something worth celebrating.
One of my favorite observations about tradition comes from G. K. Chesterton, who famously wrote that tradition is “the democracy of the dead.”
Tradition gives our ancestors a vote.
It allows us to learn from people who endured centuries of political experimentation before arriving—often painfully—at institutions that better protect liberty, human dignity, and justice.
Liberal democracy didn’t emerge because someone had a clever idea fifty years ago.
It emerged through long experience with monarchy, tyranny, religious conflict, and political oppression. Across cultures and nations, societies gradually discovered that constitutional government, religious liberty, and limits on political power produce freer and more just communities.
That, I think, is exactly what the PCA report is recovering.
The radicals aren’t those defending liberal democracy.
The radicals are those seeking to overthrow it.
None of this means the fight is over.
This report still faces another year of denominational review. Stephen Wolfe and his allies will almost certainly return next year to oppose it. The language may change. The proposal could weaken or even fail.
But if the PCA ultimately adopts this report in 2027, it could become a model for other evangelical denominations and networks looking for a theologically serious way to resist Christian nationalism without abandoning conservative theology.
Let’s hope they’re successful.
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