Not to fight more, but a Reformed credo-baptist (Mark Driscoll) has agreed that many denominational distinctives have gone away, not only with Baptists but many others. I don't agree that all denominations will weaken in influence (this has happened, but I don't know that it will continue necessarily). Many of his comments are true about Liberal Denominations (PCUSA, ECUSA, United Methodist, etc). Anyway, just interesting!
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Interestingly,
Paul Settle makes the point in his history of the first 25 years of the PCA that the PCA ruled at the fourteenth General Assembly (1988) that, while higher courts have the power to discipline elders, sessions, and local churches, they can never override the rule of a congregation to the point of assuming ownership of its property. The reason they made this decision was to protect the denomination from the sort of hijacking to which Driscoll refers, hijacking that has occurred and is occurring in some liberal denoms.
Settle writes:
"A higher court may act on an issue, which requires the lower court to (a) accept the lawful injunction of the higher court and act thereon, or (b) withdraw from the fellowship, or (c) do nothing. Further, "in the event the lower court does nothing," the higher court may (a) ignore the failure to act, or (b) . . . exhort . . . the lower court to comply, or (c) reprimand or rebuke the lower court, or (d) suspend one or all of the ecclesiastical privileges of the lower court, or (e) "as a last resort, act against the lower court by dismissing it from fellowship." All this legalese was to say that a higher court in the PCA may under no circumstances take any action against a church or church session that would jeopardize its ownership of its property or preclude its withdrawing from the PCA for any reason it deems suitable."
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