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For the past year, a pastor at a Boca Raton church has been serving up the good word from the pulpit while higher-ups in the faith look into allegations that he was sexually involved with a teenager in the 1980s. Kirk A. McCormick has been a pastor for the past 18 years at Grace Community Church, a Presbyterian congregation on West Camino Real. But in early June, the pastor abruptly "renounced the jurisdiction" of the congregation's parent body, the Presbyterian Church (USA). McCormick's decision came just as testimony was to begin in an inner-church trial over the accusations. By bailing...

Pardon me, please, if you’re familiar with this terrific story, but I never knew it: Former astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the moon 44 years ago, on July 20. Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church near Houston. According to London’s Daily Mail, a Presbyterian General Assembly gave Aldrin permission to administer communion to himself on the moon, using a small plastic container of wine and some bread.

Question:What would a baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic need to do in order to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church?Answer: Allow me to answer you question with a brief autobiographical anecdote. I was born, baptized, raised, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic system. In fact, it was while I was at a Roman Catholic college (of all places) that I was converted by the grace of God. After realizing how different the teachings of the RCC are from Scripture, I joined with a Baptist church. And that church required that I be rebaptized as an adult. So, I went through...

Sunday, June 21, marked the 90th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial decision. The questions surrounding evolution—meaning, in particular, the origins of humans—still raise large and important questions for how we understand human nature and the doctrine of original sin. But Jason Stellman thinks that the obsession with our physical origins, though understandable, is perhaps theologically off-kilter. Where we've come from biologically is not as important as where we're heading. It's not the beginning of the journey, man—it's the destination. Stellman's The Destiny of the Species (Wipf and Stock, 2013) is a brief, rollicking, and readable apologetic, notable not...

Though primarily a theologian, the famous Reformation figure John Calvin had much to say about the application of biblical principles to politics. His focus on the sovereignty of God in all aspects of Creation led Calvin to believe in God’s ordinance not only in the spiritual realm, but also in civil government. Citing Scriptural passages such as Proverbs 8:15-16 – “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth” – Calvin demonstrated that all governments are ordained by God. In Calvin’s mind, therefore, the rule of civil authority...

Editor's note: On Sunday morning, officials with the fire department confirmed that the sanctuary was actually spared.The bells at Trinity Presbyterian Church will not toll this morning as flames engulfed the historic church Saturday night after a fire spread from the attic and brought the roof down. Capt. Scott McBurney of the Opelika Fire Department said he believed the church was struck by lightning. McBurney, who lives near Trinity, said he heard thunder and then a pop an hour before the station received a call at approximately 6:46 p.m. "We were on the scene in three minutes," McBurney said. "Smoke...

Just under two years ago, the Rev. Marion Haynes-Weller of Kreutz Creek Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania was struggling to connect with the Hellam Township community. When she took her dog Obi to church one day in the summer of 2011 however, everything began to change. "We knew we had children in the neighborhood and we would see them and wave to them but most of them are unchurched and they were a little uncomfortable approaching me," Haynes-Weller told The Christian Post in a recent interview about the wary relationship she once had with the small community. "They would be here...

Four Presbyterian churches in New Jersey will be holding a lecture series about how the United States has become the "hardest mission field." The Delaware Valley Summer Institute will sponsor the four-night event, titled "America After Christendom: The Hardest Mission Field", from August 11-14. Dr. Darrell Guder, professor of missional and ecumenical theology at Princeton Seminary, will lead the events' presentations. The churches organizing the event are Lambertville Presbyterian, Titusville Presbyterian, Stockton Presbyterian, and Mt. Airy Presbyterian. Rev. Kenneth Good, pastor at Stockton Presbyterian, told The Christian Post that the event was the fourth time the churches have come together...

The doomsday sayers are crowding in the streets They say it’s over it’s too late Our land is crying We’ve sown, and now we reap But there’s a difference we can make As helpless as it seems our Lord can still redeem So don’t lose hope and don’t lose faith [Chorus] Stake your claim and reclaim America Stand your ground Stand up for the Lord Stake your claim and reclaim America I still feel it’s worth fighting for We all can see it the lights are dimming fast Our troubles just won’t seem to leave Our God in Heaven loves...

God created government. So preached Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in the days leading up to the presidential election. Hibbs has joined with nearly 1,600 pastors across the country and about 140 in California in the Pulpit Initiative, a legal effort aimed at protecting the free-speech rights of pastors in the pulpit. Hibbs' sermons in a series called "Politics and Faith" may have been enough to let the church know which candidate he supported. Or at least who he didn't. He preached about politics and Israel. And politics and defending the pre-born. Hibbs was emphatic during an...

Once an idea is unleashed upon the world, there's no telling where it will lead. That is one lesson to be drawn from studying the astonishing influence of John Calvin's theology on the subsequent history of the world. Born five hundred years ago today, Calvin deepened the Protestant Reformation by building on Martin Luther's break from Rome, formulating a sternly ascetic version of Christian piety that, as Max Weber powerfully argued more than a century ago, inadvertently laid the psychological groundwork for the development of capitalism. Others have noted the surprising ways that Calvinist ideas helped to legitimize representative political...

After the Revolution, Thomas Jones, an embittered loyalist exile, identified the culprits he deemed responsible for the rebellion in New York: the Whig "triumvirate" of Presbyterians--William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. Jones averred that in the Independent Reflector (1752-53) and Watch Tower (1754-55), which they authored, "the established Church was abused, Monarchy derided, Episcopacy reprobated, and republicanism held up, as the best existing form of government." The three wrote "with a rancor, a malevolence, and an acrimony, not to be equaled but by the descendants of those presbyterian and republican fanatics, whose ancestors had in the preceding century...

When the American Revolution broke out, at least in the Scotch-Irish version of the story, the Ulster natives leaped at the opportunity to attack the British crown. "Call this war by whatever name you may. . . ," observed one Hessian officer, "it is nothing more or less than a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion." King George allegedly called the conflict "a Presbyterian war," and another official stated that cousin "America has run off with the Presbyterian parson." The more I read on the history of America and the Scottish/English reformations, the more I am convinced that American liberty has...

Coming predominantly from former homes in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, the first permanent European settlers began arriving in the area west of the Catawba River during the 1750s. These settlers were overwhelmingly Scots-Irish Presbyterians who traveled here by way of the "Great Wagon Road." Allied by both blood and religious affiliations, the Scots-Irish pioneers moved through the Shenandoah Valley and the present-day towns of Winchester, Lexington, and Roanoke in Virginia, and eventually pushed south to Salisbury, North Carolina. From here they drifted southward along the Catawba into South Carolina. In order to set the stage for the 1780 Presbyterian Rebellion,...

The commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Geneva Protestant Reformer, John Calvin, took place this past July 10, 2009. Without question, Calvin was a giant among men used by God to rediscover and expound on biblical truth that long had been forgotten and rejected by Rome. His influence on all spheres of life is immeasurable, and today, his understanding of theology is making a huge comeback within certain quarters of the Christian community. However, what Americans do not realize immediately is that the birth of the American republic is steeped in Calvinist presuppositions, and perhaps...

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), a “faith-based” group that claims that Jesus would support abortion and has manipulated many in the church to follow suit and promote abortion as a God-given right that allows women to be in control over their own lives.Recently we’ve written extensively about the connection of the United Methodist Church to this abhorrent group. My disgust at this group is less about them promoting abortion, as it is about promoting abortion as if they are doing the work of Jesus. As I have been reading some...

Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University, until God used her desire to write a book on the religious right, and the friendship of a biblically orthodox pastor, to draw her to Christ. She became a voracious Bible reader, gradually saw that her new beliefs required her to upend her former life, and has now described what happened in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. I interviewed her on Jan. 11 in front of students at Patrick Henry College. By Feb. 20 about 30,000 people had viewed the interview on YouTube. Here are edited excerpts.  Let’s start...

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church is set to have the record number for their 33rd General Assembly, which will be held at Cherry Hills Community Church in Colorado.Dana Cadman, director of communications and information services with the growing conservative Presbyterian denomination, told The Christian Post that 1,180 people, more than 620 of whom are voting commissioners, will be attending."This year's attendance is 50 percent greater than last year's; we have 35 percent more voting commissioners than last year," said Cadman. "I think that it is wonderful to have so many people worshiping and serving together."The 33rd General Assembly will be a...

With his new book, “American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America” (Ignatius Press), mild-mannered Russell Shaw has become the bull in the china shop of U.S. Catholic history, knocking heroes off pedestals and overturning conventional story-lines—all in aid of trying to understand why the Church in America is in precarious position today vis-à-vis the ambient public culture and the government. Shaw’s answer: we’re in deep trouble because of a longstanding U.S. Catholic determination to be more-American-than-thou—to disprove ancient charges of Catholicism’s incompatibility with American democracy by assimilating so dramatically that there’s no discernible...

Mistakenly thinking the great Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen had written a book on Catholicism and wanting to give it as an example of Protestant apologetics in yesterday’s item, I googled the subject and found that he didn’t, but he did say this in his book Christianity and Liberalism: Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to...