Statistically speaking, this might be expected. When one is an ultra-minority, a member of only 1 percent of the denomination’s pastors, it is likely—however lamentable—that a sense of alienation will be experienced.4 But statistics only tell part of the story. It is not simply a question of smaller numbers, but of cultural divides. Recent developments in the denomination have brought this division to light. For example, the PCA recently commissioned a study report on race and reconciliation in the denomination, but this report revealed that the denomination was divided on the very need to study the issue at all. According to the report, “Those ages 50+, those living in Southern states and those with less education rated the need [for a study on race] significantly lower than other groups. Caucasians, Latino/Hispanic and Other ethnicities rated the need significantly lower than African Americans and Asian-Americans.”5 In other words, the denomination’s leadership cannot agree on the need to have a conversation about race at all, let alone how to have it well. As a result, African American Teaching Elders in the PCA feel disconnected from the majority because of culture, not simply numbers. For a denomination that declared the church would “welcome fellow believers in Christ regardless of race,” this is lamentable.6 Given the historical roots of the denomination, however, it might not be unexpected. The story of the PCA has never been strictly doctrinal. For Presbyterians in the United States, culture often intersected with doctrine to oppose full racial inclusion.

These leaders attempted to rationalize their decision with an appeal to doctrine. For them, the Gardiner-Spring Resolution overstepped a fundamental doctrine: the “spirituality of the church.” This doctrine stated that the church as institution could only speak to spiritual matters, not political ones.9 To these leaders, an ecclesial decree requiring churches to take sides politically, pledging allegiance to a specific governing authority during a time of national fracturing, clearly transgressed the denomination’s limited authority. So, with their “Address to All the Churches of Jesus Christ Throughout the Earth,” the Confederates birthed their new church, founded upon the doctrine of the spirituality of the church.10 Yet, even within this document, it became clear that while the Confederates utilized doctrine to resist the encroachment of one culture, they equally utilized doctrine to protect the practices of their own culture.

The newly founded denomination wasted no time declaring its stance on slavery. Having declared their grievances with the Northern Church on the first three pages of “Address to All the Churches,” the Southern Presbyterians spend the next four pages detailing their justification for slavery. First, God’s word does not explicitly condemn slavery, and so the church ought not as well: “[The church] has planted itself upon the word of God, and utterly refused to make slaveholding a sin, or non-slave holding a term of communion.”11 Because, in their view, God’s word did not explicitly condemn slavery, it was ...