Two things, two sects jumped recently out of the Protestant Reformed Churches. The main reason for the jump was a perceived compromise by the PRC of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Even a cursory examination of the alleged compromise, including the many protests brought to the broader ecclesiastical assemblies and the decisions made by these assemblies reveals that the perception was and is mistaken. The PRC have not compromised the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The sectarians having been making much ado, much clever, even ingenious, strident ado about… nothing.
At first the two things, the two sects jumped as one—The Reformed Protestant Churches. Now they have become two. They have divided. They still remain one in their main protest against the PRC. But, as sects do, they have, since their initial split from the PRC, divided among themselves along lines of their own making, and as each leader sectarian chooses to lead.. The sects have become sectier. There is now the Reformed Protestants and another, the Remnant Reformed. Thing One and Thing Two.
As is common among such sects the leaders have sought to assure themselves and their following of the legitimacy of their leaving an established and true church. This effort to confirm their very raison d’etre is understandable, given that most of the members of these sects, in leaving the PRC, have left their mother. Who was their mother’s mother. And their mother’s mother’s mother. And since it is always important either to please your mother, or to show that the mother you have left is just not what and who she used to be, the daughter-sects have gone on and on to prove that the mother, the PRC, is not what she used to be. She is now, they allege, a whore.
Many and lengthy have been the articles, speeches and sermons of the sectarians seeking to prove and to clarify the alleged, compromised PRC position on justification, conditions, the experience of salvation, the sovereignty of God in salvation, and the responsibility of the one who is sovereignly saved.
In addition, the leaders of these sects knowing, as the first sectarian Jeroboam did, the importance of keeping the people from Judah and Jerusalem, (the mother of most of them all), have twisted and tweaked, as did Jeroboam, the laws of God himself to further their cause, indoctrinate their followers, and ensure there are enough coins in their coffers.
One significant way the leaders of both sects have added to the laws of God to prevent the subtraction of their followers is by making it a law, even a demand of the covenant of God and of grace, that all parents use the same schools in the education of their children. God is the covenant God of Israel. Therefore, all the Israelites together are called to establish and to educate their children together in good Christian schools. This means that all in covenant with God must use those schools. This means home schooling is not an option—for office bearers or for anyone. Home schooling is transgression of the covenant and of the togetherness that is essential for the schooling of the covenant community. As Andy Lanning writes (in Sword and Shield, Vol. 2 No. 7, October 1, 2021): “The covenant of God with believers and their seed requires that those believers work together to establish, maintain, and use a Christian school for the rearing of their seed. A Christian school is not merely an option for a believer but is an obligation for him” (p.9).
Togetherness is key. Strange. For these things, these sects have shown themselves all too willing to sacrifice “together” in the name of their truth. But since they need the schools and everyone using them in order that they might stay together apart from the churches and schools they have left and apart from anyone else–togetherness must be the essence of the good Christian school, and our using them together must be divinely mandated. And damn those independent, anti-covenantal home schoolers.
Come ye children. Come together right now. Come drink the Kool-Aid.
-Rev. Fish
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