The Presbyterian Church USA, America's largest Presbyterian denomination, has voted 441-30 to support access to transgender surgeries, including for children. The denomination calls it gender-affirming care. Critics call it something else entirely.
Christian author Virgil Walker addressed the vote in Decision Magazine, the official publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His analysis cuts to the heart of what this vote actually represents.
"When a denomination votes to bless what God calls sin, the vote itself is not the real story. The real story is a church that has decided the spirit of the age gets the final word instead of the Word that made the age. That decision was settled long before any ballot was counted."
He continued, "Scripture does not leave us guessing about who we are. Genesis tells us God made us male and female in His own image, and He called His handiwork very good. A church that can no longer say so has stopped listening to the One it claims to serve and begun echoing the culture it was sent to reach."
That is the real question this vote forces every believer to sit with. Not what a denomination decided in a room somewhere. But whether the church they attend would make the same decision if given the chance. And whether the Bible or the culture is getting the final word from the pulpit on Sunday morning.
A vote of 441-30 does not happen overnight. It is the result of decades of drift, of slowly replacing Scripture with cultural consensus until the two are no longer recognizable as being in the same conversation.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27).
Is your church still saying what Scripture plainly says?