I read with some interest John Mahaffy’s recent article in Ordained Servant entitled “The Church’s [Not So] New Fundamentalism,”[1] especially as I recalled the events of the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC, 2022) and my own public writing on the topic of patriarchy. In this article Mahaffy articulates his concern with a growing “new fundamentalism” in the OPC, marked by an apparent toleration of abuse, fondness for the term patriarch, and ignorance of OPC history. I do not think I see things in quite the same way, and I am writing to explain why.

About Fundamentalism

In the OPC, to bestow the moniker fundamentalist is a reliable shortcut to identify someone out of line with our history.[2] Mahaffy raises Machen’s concerns with the term and warns against the dispensational fundamentalism of Carl McIntire. In this Mahaffy and I wholeheartedly agree; I too would echo Machen when he stated,

When a man has come into sympathetic contact with [the] noble tradition of the Reformed faith . . . he will always strive to stand in the great central current of the church’s life that has come down to us through Augustine and Calvin and the Standards of the Reformed faith.[3]

Fundamentalism fails this standard. Perhaps a personal note might be helpful here. I grew up in the Reformed tradition, and my family has stood in this tradition (by the grace of God) for centuries. In my childhood I walked out of church through a cloud of tobacco smoke and our pantry was occupied by a wide variety of adult beverages. I was raised on the Heidelberg Catechism, memorized the Compendium, and listened to fine (amillennial) sermons on the Belgic Confession. I have never been a fundamentalist.

But perhaps I need to consider that I might be a new fundamentalist, which appears to be a creature that holds to historic Reformed orthodoxy in the tradition of Augustine, Calvin, and the Reformed symbols but also voices concerns about progressive modernism and its subtle influence on the church under the guise of caring for abuse victims, its embarrassment over the biblical word patriarch, and its aim to unsettle the basic Christian conviction that the life and worship of the church and her families ought to reflect the creation order as interpreted by Scripture.

About the Abuse Overture, and the Toleration of Abuse

Mahaffy and I have different evaluations of the abuse discussions of the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly. The precipitating overture was obviously controversial; it referred to “many forms of abuse that manifest themselves in the church,” and it described these as “sexual, domestic, ecclesiastical, verbal, emotional, psychological, etc.”[4] Such language could be used to label any confrontational communication “abusive,” moving the definition of abuse from an objective violation of God’s law to the subjective experience of the complainant. This move will destroy due process and thus biblical justice.

The attached grounds did not help, stating that the “misuse of power of various kinds” was “commonly termed ‘abuse’.”[5] This loose definition permits the neo-Marxist idea that abuse is fundamentally an imbalance of power.[6] Marxism, of note, was regularly opposed by the patriarchs of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.[7] Jesus Christ has all authority, and he uses it to punish evil and protect his people. The church ought not be ashamed of righteous power differentials (Presbyterian officers take vows to defend the categories of inferiors and superiors), and the church must exercise power wisely and graciously.

But back to the pertinent events at the Assembly, which Mahaffy describes as follows:

The advisory committee to which the overture was assigned recommended the adoption of the overture, but a minority strongly opposed doing so, partly on the grounds of the misuse of the term by the world. Although the Assembly did set up a committee, its mandate was amended to remove reference to abuse. The committee was to “collect, study, and develop resources to equip the officers of the church to protect her members from sexual predators and domestic violence.”[8]

The language of a “minority strongly opposed [to] doing so” obscures the fact that the Eighty-Eighth Assembly (the majority) did not much like the overture and instead adopted a substitute motion that did not include the word “abuse.”[9] My own concern. at least, had nothing at all to do with “the misuse of the term by the world” but the use of the term in the overture, in and by the church. But something yet needs to be examined. Mahaffy, based on these events, holds a suspicion: “A portion of the church seems reluctant to recognize that abuse can be multi-faceted and can occur within the church and her families.”[10] I cannot think of a single pastor or elder in the OPC who cannot recognize “that abuse can be multi-faceted and can occur within the church and her families.” Why entertain this conclusion about those who argued in favor of a motion which aimed to protect the members of the church from sexual predators and domestic violence?

The Use of the Word Patriarch(y)

While Mahaffy does not cite my Reformation21 article entitled “In Defense of Patriarchy,”[11] he does appear to interact with it. He begins by stating he is “concerned to find some, even in Reformed circles, embracing the term patriarchy.” I clearly have done this, and I think I might be the only OPC minister to have written an article defending patriarchy, and Mahaffy’s piece is about patriarchal fundamentalism in the OPC.

In this article I described the Holy Spirit’s regular, repeated, positive, and exemplary use of the word patriarch: “First, the Bible honors fathers. God instituted fatherhood when he made Adam (first), then Eve, then marriage and then gave the command to be fruitful and multiply. Paul honored Israel’s patriarchs.”[12]

A key passage follows:

Peter preached about the patriarch David, and Stephen said the p-word, twice, just before going to heaven as a martyr. The writer to the Hebrews thought Abraham a fine patriarch.[13]

Compare the indented paragraph above with Mahaffy:

Peter uses the term to describe David, and Hebrews attaches it to Abraham. But when Stephen uses the term twice in his sermon in Acts 7, it refers to Joseph’s siblings selling him as a slave.[14]

Mahaffy continues: “I fear that much of the support for patriarchy grows out of a less than faithful following of Scripture.”[15]

This is a weighty charge. And if this was not intended to be such a charge, confusion might have been avoided by citing new fundamentalists in our church who “embrace the term patriarchy,” followed by compelling analysis that demonstrates a “less than faithful following of Scripture.” The method utilized so far seems shaky.

Ignorance of OPC History

We move on to consider Mahaffy’s conversation with an anonymous “father in the church”[16] (a patriarch?) concerning the Eighty-Eighth Assembly’s ignorance of OPC study reports entitled “Women in Church Office”[17] and “Unordained Persons in the Regular Worship Services of the Church.”[18] Mahaffy writes that the “Assembly did not reject [the exegesis in the above papers]—it did not even consider it.”[19] This begs a question: Did the actions of our more recent General Assemblies deviate from earlier patterns and convictions?

The report “Women in Church Office” was received by the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly (1988). Advisory Committee 9 expressed concern with the report, noting that it “did not give clear expression to the historic interpretation” of 1 Corinthians 11, 14, and 1 Timothy 2. [20] The same report, however, did contain commendably straightforward language concerning the roles of men and women in church and home:

Women . . . need to repent, where necessary, of the unbiblical desire to usurp authority in the church or the home. Men also need to repent, where necessary, of a failure to encourage women in the use of their gifts, and of making their womanhood more of a yoke than a privilege.

The church under the leadership of its officers needs to be thankful for the faithful women who serve the church in a rich variety of ways at present. We need to protect our women from being overwhelmed or seduced by the lie of secular feminism which promises liberation for disobedience to God's authority structure and demeans the high calling of Christian women as wives and mothers. We need to instruct them as to their dignity as women in Christ (Gal. 3:28) and treat them accordingly.[21]

The Fifty-Fifth Assembly distributed this language to the whole church and then denied a related recommendation to consider opening the office of deacon to women in the church.[22]

The Fifty-Eighth Assembly (1991) considered the “Report of the Committee on Unordained Persons in the Regular Worship Services of the Church.”[23] This report presented three views, including that of the committee’s majority, which admitted that “we are well aware that our advocating a measure of individual involvement by unordained persons in public worship is an innovation.”[24] The proposed innovation would result in men and women leading in public worship. When the motion to send this report to the Committee on Revisions to the Directory for Worship was presented to the Assembly, “it was determined to postpone action on the motion indefinitely.”[25] By postponing indefinitely, the Fifty-Eighth Assembly declined to support the suggested innovations or even the committee’s original mandate to forward the report to a committee of the Assembly tasked with revising the directory for worship.[26]

It is of note that the revised Directory for Worship restricts the leading of worship to pastors (men), “men who have been licensed,” and ruling elders (men), and notes that “exceptions may be made for other men,” and states “no other should take such leadership in overseeing or conducting public worship.”[27] From this I would conclude that later assemblies also considered the “solid exegesis” in the above report not very durable.[28]

One last historical note is pertinent to the Ninetieth Assembly’s (2024) sustaining a complaint against a session’s practice of inviting women to teach men in Sunday School classes: The Fifty-Seventh Assembly (1990) sustained a similar complaint from a church member against a session for permitting women to teach men in home Bible studies. The Assembly then went the extra mile to add an explanation for this decision:

The teaching of the Scriptures in 1 Timothy 2:11–15 clearly prohibits women from a role which involves the authoritative teaching of men. The policy complained against allows a woman to assume such a role and therefore the complaint should be sustained.[29]

The same Assembly commended “the Biblical principle of male headship.”[30] Finally, the Fifty-Ninth Assembly (1992) declared attempts to reconsider the same complaint out of order, affirming the action of the Fifty-Seventh Assembly to be the settled adjudication of the church.[31]

Simply put, our Assemblies have a long history of dealing with questions of gender and worship and the related patterns of patriarchy evident in nature as interpreted by Scripture (and so rightly embedded in the life and worship of the church). These have regularly and reliably decided in favor of historic convictions and patterns that echo earlier generations, even going beyond bare judgments to explicitly affirm historic biblical interpretation and prevent the propagation of innovations.

This brief review seems to indicate that by Mahaffy’s definition of “new fundamentalism” our General Assemblies have been overtly “new fundamentalist” on these topics for at least the last four decades; perhaps “new fundamentalism” is alike to historic Reformed theology and practice.

Conclusion

This brings me to a deeper concern. History bears witness that political pressures have regularly pulled Reformed denominations to the side of progressivism, and that reliably under the banner of resisting fundamentalism. Because of this, I would much prefer engagement with ideas and their consequences over labelling exercises. Debates over gender roles in Christ’s church are critical to the life and future of the church, as these involve profound theological considerations, not the least of which are the perspicuity and authority of both Scripture and the “light of nature.”[32]

There is a profound irony here for the OPC: We’ve come a long way only to decry traditional Reformed interpretations of 1 Corinthians 11, 14 and 1 Timothy 2 as “new fundamentalism” in Ordained Servant, especially when we recall that a signal moment in our formation was the sermon Harry Emerson Fosdick preached entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” After he preached, it was Machen who stood firm, embraced an admittedly ill-fitting mantle of “fundamentalist” and simply said, “Yes, we shall.” And so here we are.

Like Machen, I would not choose to be known as a fundamentalist. By Mahaffy’s definition, however, I think Machen and I might be new fundamentalists. And after reading more of our history, it is now clearer to me that the happy future of the church I so love and enjoy has always depended on “new fundamentalists” getting very important old things right. [33] I, for one, am in favor of celebrating this fine OPC tradition, together.

And in this, indeed, “may the Lord give us humility, grace, and wisdom.”[34]

Endnotes

[1] John W. Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism” Ordained Servant Online, June-July 2025.

[2] This is somewhat ironic as the OPC was born out of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy and on the Fundamentalist side. As Mahaffy noted, it was Machen who both disliked the term “fundamentalist” but also stated, “I have little time to be attacking my brethren who stand with me in defense of the Word of God. I must continue to support an unpopular cause.” Perhaps we need to use the term fundamentalist more carefully. It was not originally legalistic dispensationalism, but an honest but imperfect attempt to state that there is something fundamental at the core of Christianity pertaining to the supernatural character of the person and work of Jesus Christ that must be maintained to maintain that Christianity. In this narrow sense, I am a fundamentalist, together with Machen and Warfield and the fathers of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In the sense of “adding to Scripture,” I stand against fundamentalism, unreservedly.

[3] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Eerdmans, 2009), as quoted in Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[4] Minutes of the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly, 56.

[5] Minutes of the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly, 56.

[6] The broadening of the fundamental cause of proletariat suffering from the unequal distribution of capital (classical Marxism) to the unequal possession of power or privilege is characteristic of neo-Marxism.

[7] The early fathers of the OPC dealt plainly with the evil nature of ungodly political ideologies; the Presbyterian Guardian contains numerous anti-Communist articles from authors, including Edward Rian, John P. Clelland, Richard Gaffin Sr., and Ned Stonehouse. Our fathers embraced the spirituality of the church and recognized communism as an ideology contrary to the Scriptures. The same fathers plainly said the same about Naziism. We presently are seeing a rising generation embrace, in troubling numbers, neo-Marxism and neo-fascism. Plain teaching is needed, with warnings, against both evils.

[8] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[9] And if Assembly anecdotes are permissible, after the voting was complete, one ruling elder told me that the overture sounded like something from his corporate HR department, and another ruling elder (who I met for the first time after the debate) sent me a bottle of fine Napa Valley wine, which I later much enjoyed with some friends. I remain very happy with all these results.

[10] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[11] Peter Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy,” Reformation21, February 5, 2024, https://www.reformation21.org/blog/in-defense-of-patriarchy.

[12] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[13] Van Doodewaard, “In Defense of Patriarchy.”

[14] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.” I do not understand the slavery reference, unless it is intended to show that the term patriarch can be used to describe people without power and so no longer means “ruling father.” I would note that Joseph was, in this-world terms, perhaps the most powerful ruling father of all the Old Testament patriarchs, ruling Egypt, providing bread for the world, and saving Israel. In this he is a fitting picture of the fatherly rule of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Is. 9:6).

[15] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[16] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[17] Minutes of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly, 310–373.

[18] Minutes of the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly, 304; Minutes of the Fifty-Eighth General Assembly, 264–328.

[19] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[20] Minutes of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly, Article 158. The Minutes do not contain a record of any explanation for the committee recommendation that contained this language of concern.

[21] Minutes of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly, 352. The report at this point seems more overtly patriarchal than my defense of patriarchy.

[22] Minutes of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly, Article 164.

[23] Minutes of the Fifty-Eighth General Assembly, 264–328. This committee was originally named the “Committee to Study the Involvement of Men and Women in Places of Leadership in Worship Services” (Minutes of the Fifty-Sixth General Assembly, Article 181) and was formed by the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly in response to a complaint against Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois, for permitting women to lead in worship services; the Fifty-Fifth Assembly sustained the complaint (Minutes of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly, Articles 143 and 152).

[24] Minutes of the Fifty-Eighth General Assembly, 279. Italics added.

[25] Minutes of the Fifty-Eighth General Assembly, Article 120.

[26] Minutes of the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly, 304.

[27] The Book of Church Order of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 131–32.

[28] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

[29] Minutes of the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly, Article 134.

[30] Minutes of the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly, Article 124; Minutes of the 57th General Assembly, Article 134.

[31] Minutes of the Fifty-Ninth General Assembly, Articles 13–14.

[32] Westminster Confession of Faith 1.1. General and special revelation are authoritative (cf. Ps. 19:1–4, 1 Cor. 11:14). The folly of our culture lies both in the rejection of the Word (Calvin’s “spectacles”) and also the creation order viewed through the spectacles of the Word (cf. Rom. 1:26–27, note Paul’s use of the phrase “natural use”).

[33] Again, Mahaffy’s article fails to prove that the “new fundamentalists” are fundamentalists at all. It is far more likely that such in the OPC simply represent the Reformed tradition on questions of gender and the life of the church, which in turn are rooted, not in fundamentalism, but historic Reformed interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2.

[34] Mahaffy, “The Church’s [Not So New] Fundamentalism.”

Peter C. Van Doodewaard is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and serves as the pastor of Covenant Community Church (OPC), Greenville, South Carolina. Ordained Servant Online, November, 2025