Gordon Clark: Public Statement Against the Auburn Affirmationists (Christianity Today)

1934. Public Statement Against the Auburn Affirmationists. Christianity Today. Vol. 5, No. 6. pg. 143. Oct 15

In a letter mailed today to Presbyterians throughout the United States, the Reformation Fellowship whose Certificate of Incorporation states that its purpose is to reform the churches so that they 'may be purified of unbelief and controlled only by those who recognize and believe the system of doctrine of the historic standards of the Reformed faith,' pledged financial and moral support to the effort to remove Auburn Affirmationists. 

The letter stated, 'Auburn Affirmationists deny that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. They say that Christ's death to satisfy divine justice, and His bodily resurrection are mere theories unessential to the Christian message. Such people, we believe, have no rightful place in the Presbyterian ministry.' 

It would be a shameful procedure, the Reformation Fellowship told the press today, if the men accused attempt 'to barricade themselves behind a smoke screen of inapplicable technicalities,' when they call the historic facts basic to all Christianity unessential. If the modernists resort to subterfuge, the conservatives will be placed at a great disadvantage because they know more Bible than politics. 

The newspapers report that one of the men accused calls the charges 'bunk.' This gentleman, the Rev. J. B. C. Mackie, was the defeated modernist candidate for the office of Moderator of the Philadelphia presbytery at the last election, and so may be regarded as the unofficial spokesman of the modernists. If the reports are correct, many true but humble Christians will be shocked to learn that charges involving the Atonement and the Resurrection can be classed as 'bunk.' 

Heresy trials, the Reformation Fellowship admits, are to be deplored; but in the present situation where two antagonistic religions are engaged in a death struggle so far as the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. is concerned, there is one thing worse than a heresy trial, and that is no heresy trial. 

The Reformation Fellowship stands unflinchingly for the truth of the Bible and the purity of the faith, and urges all sincere Christians to support this noble effort to purge the Church of modernists.