I began a defense of Sword and Shield and Reformed Believers Publishing (RBP) in the October issue because the appearance of Sword and Shield has occasioned a storm of unjust criticism that casts doubt on the righteousness of the endeavor. This criticism has been public and private. Publicly it appeared in letters from consistories to their congregations in which elders charged Sword and Shield and RBP with schism. I have answered these critics regarding their wrong understanding of article 31 of the Church Order and of the Formula of Subscription. The understanding of article 31 promoted by these consistories is essentially the same understanding the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) used to cast out Herman Hoeksema and others during the common grace controversy in the denomination in 1924. The understanding of the Formula of Subscription by some of these consistories—according to which they suppose that the vow of subscription binds every officebearer to every synodical decision and to the Church Order—is simply mystifying. Their interpretation stands against the plain meaning of the words of the Formula, by which the officebearer subscribes not to the Church Order but to the three forms of unity.

I turn now to criticisms regarding the origins of RBP and its magazine Sword and Shield.

One consistory told its congregation,

We object to the content of the editorial appearing in this magazine. We find that it lacks candor and transparency in stating the reasons for the publishing of another magazine in our denomination. No mention is made of the criticism and dissatisfaction with the Standard Bearer out of which this magazine arose. Rather, the editorial leaves the impression of a cordial relationship existing between these two magazines. This is misleading.

How the consistory came upon this information, I do not know. The elders do not disclose the source of their information. The documents on which they could have based their assessment were not sent to them and are not their property.

The article in Sword and Shield that they so criticize is not misleading. It did not seek to leave an impression. It was not the intention of the founders of RBP and of Sword and Shield to make the issue with their magazine the problems that they had with the Standard Bearer. Sword and Shield came out of a spirit that sought to promote the truth in every area of life and to condemn the lie that militates against the truth. Sword and Shield arose out of a desire to have a magazine to do this that met the founders’ expectations. But since this consistory has now made public what the founders of RBP sought to keep private, I will explain the origins of RBP and its Sword and Shield.

In May 2019 a group of men, members of the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA) and subscribers to the Standard Bearer (SB), gathered to address a letter of concern to the RFPA board about issues that the men had with the RFPA and its Standard Bearer. The letter to the board stated the men’s convictions that the SB is deficient in polemics; that the freedom of the magazine is in jeopardy as a forum for debate on the current doctrinal issues; that there has been censorship of articles and letters; that the relationship between the RFPA and the SB has changed from its historic position; that the current relationship is that the RFPA is a mere printer and mailer of the SB, whose content is under the sovereign control of the writers; that the SB has not instructed its subscribers regarding the recent doctrinal controversy in the PRC and has not provided leadership in that controversy; and that the SB has instigated criticism of Herman Hoeksema’s understanding of faith and the call of the gospel in his sermon regarding the Philippian jailor, which criticism on the pages of the SB these men found objectionable. The group of men did not merely assert these things but provided to the RFPA board lengthy documentation of every complaint. The intention of the group of concerned men was that the board would acknowledge and address these issues, and if the board did not, the men were prepared to call for a special association meeting to treat these matters.

This action the men believed was not only their right but also their calling. The RFPA constitution, under which the organization operates, states in article 5.D: “Other meetings may be called by the Board on its own motion, or upon written request from any fifteen Regular Members” (emphasis added). The letter of concern sent by the group of men constituted the beginning of their grounds for calling a special association meeting. Membership in the RFPA obligated them not merely blindly to support the organization and its paper regardless of their convictions, but also if they had concerns to address them to the board. The men’s membership in the RFPA obligated the board to take these concerns seriously, to address them, and according to the constitution to honor the request for a special meeting. The men of the RFPA can and may judge the content of their magazine. This group of men was not satisfied with their magazine. Some may disagree, but that does not take away the right of these men to criticize their magazine and, if necessary, to call for a change to it. This is what membership in the RFPA means. All members have a say-so in the organization and in its magazine, which one supports by his membership.

The men are members of the RFPA and / or ardent supporters of the organization and readers and subscribers of its SB. The men have given of their blood, sweat, and tears for the organization and its magazine. They have supported faithfully and financially the organization and its SB. The men came together because of their mutual concern for the tone, content, and direction of the SB. When their concerns were dismissed and even evilly characterized, and the request for a special association meeting was denied—based on the evil characterization of the concerns and contrary to the RFPA’s own constitution—only then did a new organization and the plans for the publication of a new magazine that met the men’s expectations begin to take concrete form.

This action of forming a group of RFPA members to address a letter to the board has been characterized as schism and raising discord, sects, and mutiny in the church. The group of men has been called a secret society, a schismatic group, and any number of other false and scandalous names. Some of the men have been formally charged at the consistory level with schism for even forming and participating in such a group.

Such an outrageous charge of schism against the group and its actions originates in a deep misunderstanding about what the RFPA and the SB are. Many in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), and this includes many officebearers and church members, have the understanding that the RFPA and its SB are quasi-ecclesiastical arms of the PRC. Editorship at the SB is viewed as something akin to an office in the churches. Many do not understand that the SB is not a denominational magazine and that editorship of the magazine is just that, editorship of an independent paper. The RFPA, which owns and publishes the magazine, is not an ecclesiastical organization. The letter F in the acronym of the name RFPA stands for free. Free indicates that the publisher and its magazine do not belong to and are not under the control of any ecclesiastical organization.

Hoeksema explained his understanding of the word free:

Of this truth the Standard Bearer means to be a witness. I use this term to distinguish the nature of its testimony from the official preaching of the Word of God through the instituted Church, whether in the ministry of the Word within the Church, or in its missionary work to the ends of the earth. Our publication has sometimes been called a missionary. Strictly speaking, however, this is not correct. Christ has committed the task of preaching the gospel, not to individuals, nor to an association or to a Bible Institute, but very definitely to His chosen and called apostles, and in them to the Church. And for this purpose He also gave unto His Church in the world pastors and teachers, that through them the Church might fulfill its calling and mission to preach the Word. But the Standard Bearer, and the association that sponsors its publication, are not a part of the Church as an institute; they belong to the Church as an organism, and they function in virtue, not of the specially instituted offices, but in virtue of the office of believers. It is with this distinction in mind that we speak of our publication as a Witness.

It is also with this distinction before our consciousness that we say that the Standard Bearer is free, and that the society that sponsors it calls itself the Reformed Free Publishing Association. The freedom we thus denote is not akin to doctrinal licentiousness. We do not intend to separate ourselves from the institute of the Church. The very fact that we adopted the name Reformed Free Publishing Association, and that, therefore, we place ourselves on the basis of the Reformed Confessions, indicates the very opposite. But free we are in the same sense in which our Christian Schools are free schools. The Standard Bearer is not an official church organ. It is not sponsored by the church as institute. And this freedom implies that we are not hampered by purely institutional bonds, and are not motivated by mere, formal, institutional considerations or prepossessions. In 1923 the institute of the Christian Reformed Church meant to silence our testimony. They closed the official organs to us. They tried to put the yoke of the Three Points upon us. They cast us out of their fellowship. Much of this action was motivated by personal opposition, and the desire to maintain so-called “rest” in the churches, the rest of corruption and death. But the Standard Bearer remained free. No institution controlled it. Its voice could not be silenced. And free it should remain. Unhampered by considerations that are foreign to the love of Reformed truth, our publication purposes to continue to maintain and develop the truth as our God delivered it to us! (“The Standard Bearer As A Witness,” Standard Bearer 22, no. 6 [December 15, 1945]: 129)

The fact that the organization is not ecclesiastical means that actions by the members of the organization are not done within the church institute but only within the organization and membership of the RFPA. Such actions cannot be schismatic for the very reason that schism is the sin of dividing in the church. The RFPA is not the church but a free association. Letters by a group of members to the board cannot be schismatic any more than a letter from a group of members of some insurance association to its board would be schismatic. Besides, the actions of the men were in harmony with the constitution of the RFPA.

In this regard I quote from Rev. Hoeksema’s speech to a gathering of the RFPA in 1945:

This also implies that the Standard Bearer is yours. It is not an organ of any consistory, classis, or synod. Nor is it under the sovereign control of the editors that fill its pages. It is yours. Even as our free Christian Schools are not ultimately controlled by the teachers, but by the parents; so the Standard Bearer, though its contents are the care of its editors, is your paper. (“The Standard Bearer As A Witness,” 129)

Because the SB is not the organ of any consistory, classis, or synod, is not the editors’ or the writing staff’s, but is the instrument of the association that owns and publishes it, it is also the obligation and calling of the members of that association to judge whether its magazine and organization are living up to their history and purpose. If association members believe that the magazine and organization are not living up to their history and purpose, the members have the right to address these matters with the board and finally with the association.

This erosion of the understanding of the word free also explains why publishing a new magazine is viewed as semi-, if not de facto, schismatic. Such an attitude must also, then, condemn Hoeksema and the men who supported him for the publication of the SB. From the minutes of the original meeting of the organization that would eventually become the RFPA, we read:

1. The first meeting was held at the home of Rev. H. Hoeksema, Eastern Avenue, Grand Rapids, April 8, 1924. (Notice that this was about five months before The Standard Bearer was actually begun and nearly nine months before the Protestant Reformed Churches came into existence. H.H.)

2. This meeting was opened with prayer by Rev. H. Hoeksema.

3. Fifteen brethren were present, who unanimously decided to organize as a Publication Committee and to discuss that same evening matters pertaining to the support of the brethren ministers, Rev. H. Danhof, of Kalamazoo, and Rev. H. Hoeksema, of Grand Rapids, in the publishing and sending out, as well as also the bearing of expenses in connection with the publishing of brochures, and, if possible, of a paper.The reasons for this weighty step were the refusal and return by De Wachter of a series of articles written by the aforementioned ministers for our Reformed people. In order to be able to answer all the various writings coming from one side—and sometimes besmudged with personal hatred—this was the only way to offer the aforementioned ministers the opportunity to defend themselves against their attackers in the eyes of the Reformed reading public. (“The Standard Bearer in Retrospect,” Standard Bearer 50, no. 2 [October 15, 1973]: 33)

I remind everyone that this organization was formed while all those men were members of or ministers in the CRC and in the middle of a massive struggle in that church for the truth. In forming this organization were Hoeksema and Danhof and the fifteen men who supported them being schismatic in the CRC? Were they guilty of being members of a secret society in the CRC? Did they seek the approval of the consistories of the CRC before publishing their magazine or mailing it to the various homes of the members of the denomination? They did not. In the climate in which they operated in the CRC, it is unlikely that any consistory would have granted approval, and more likely that many would have moved to crush the organization and its magazine and charge sin for supposedly making inroads on the unity of the church by their magazine, as would later be proved true when the involvement of Hoeksema and Danhof with the SB was the ground for their discipline—and the charge was schism.

Likewise, RBP and its Sword and Shield are not ecclesiastical in any sense. Like the home and school and other societies, RBP and Sword and Shield belong not to the institutional life of the church but to its organic life. Their right to exist rests on the calling of the believer to witness to the truth—a witness that is separate and distinct from the official witness of the church institute. RBP and Sword and Shield are not under the control of consistories, classes, and synods but under the control of a volunteer association of like-minded believers, who operate under a constitution and carry out their purpose by means of a board and a staff of writers.

One consistory wrote to its members,

We believe that something done in the conviction of promoting truth in our denomination would have sought the support of consistories who are the very ones called of God to maintain the truth and watch over the faith and life of their members.

We find this disturbing. If a magazine purports to promote the truths of the Reformed Faith, why would it not give prior knowledge of its publication to consistories called by Christ to maintain the Reformed Faith? If the magazine’s promoters intend to target the members of our church, why would they not seek the concurrence of the elders of our church before doing so?

This act has not produced confidence in the magazine.

Another consistory wrote,

We did not provide the publishers of this magazine with the addresses of our members nor did they seek the consistory’s approval to mail the magazine to the members of our congregation. We believe that the publishing and mailing of a new magazine to our members with the stated purpose of promoting the truth in our denomination would have sought the input and permission of our consistory that is called of God to maintain and proclaim the truth and watch over the faith and life of its members.

The problems these consistories have with the magazine’s promoters targeting a congregation’s membership without the concurrence and permission of the elders betray ignorance of the RFPA’s promotion of its magazine, the Standard Bearer. Many times, probably in these consistories’ own congregations, the RFPA board would notice that many members of a certain congregation did not subscribe to the SB. So the board targeted those members without ever asking the consistory’s permission. The RFPA also belonged to book associations for the purpose, among others, of obtaining mailing lists in order to mail its magazine to households belonging to congregations of other denominations and did so without seeking any consistory’s approval for doing so.

A consistory can be disturbed that RBP did not seek its permission to send a magazine to the home mailboxes of its members only because the elders do not know the origins of the RFPA and its SB, and they reject the very idea of a witness to the truth that is separate and distinct from the witness of the church institute, which idea is at the heart of the existence of the RFPA and its SB and also of the existence of RBP and its Sword and Shield. The position of these consistories is essentially that only the church institute witnesses, and the church institute has control, or at least the say-so, regarding every witness that may come from believers. Such a position is really a rejection of the very origins and right of existence of the RFPA and its SB and now also of RBP and its Sword and Shield. If the church institute gives its permission for the existence of this witness, the church institute can also withhold its permission, and such an organization and such a witness lose their right of existence.

This idea the members of RBP reject. The witness of believers in their office of believer is distinct from the witness of the instituted church. This witness to the truth does not rest on consistorial approval and does not need consistorial approval to carry out that witness. This witness does not rest for its validity upon the endorsement of the church institute and is not made less credible if one, several, or many consistories, even an entire denomination or the whole world, disapprove of it. This witness of believers does not need and will not seek permission from any consistory for the right to speak, write, mail, or email the truth. From Christ directly, by virtue of their anointing, believers have the right to speak. The right of this witness to exist is derived from the believers’ calling in the office of believer to witness to the truth, the fact that the witness is the truth, and the fact that the truth is over all and judges all. The believers’ right to promote that witness in whatever way necessary rests on the right of the truth to be heard and the calling of believers to sound out their witness to the ends of the earth.

It has become plain that these consistories have even lost sight of the principle of article 30 of the Church Order: “In these assemblies ecclesiastical matters only shall be transacted.” It is highly ironic that these same consistories, which declare before the world that RBP and Sword and Shield are schismatics on the basis of article 31 of the Church Order, appear not to have noticed article 30. Ecclesiastical matters have to do with the preaching, the sacraments, and discipline. The consistories complain that RBP has not consulted them and that they did not know that Sword and Shield was going to be sent to the home mailboxes of members of their congregations. Some consistories have been so bold and lordly as to tell their congregations that they are writing to RBP to demand that their members be taken off the mailing list of Sword and Shield. One consistory has informed its congregation, “We also intend to request that the publisher immediately remove the members of ___ from their mailing list.” I wonder if these consistories know of all the magazines that are sent to their members’ home mailboxes. I wonder if any of these magazines are so full of evil as to be condemned out of hand by the consistories. 

These consistories have claimed the right to endorse or not to endorse magazines, to enter into the content of magazines via public letters, and even to demand of publishers that they not send their material to the membership of these consistories’ churches. Is endorsing magazines consistorial work? Has the content of the members’ home mailboxes been the work of the consistory? Does a consistory have the right to tell a publishing organization to whom it may and may not mail its material? Are these consistories now going to enter into the content of the SB or of the Beacon Lights via public and open letters to their congregations? Are consistories going to begin examining what periodicals and blogs the members subscribe to and read, and endorse this or that one and condemn publicly this or that one? If they are, I have a list of popular blogs and periodicals against which these consistories can start warning their congregations and sending letters to the publishers of these magazines and blogs telling them to cease and desist sending them to their members, because some of them contain serious false doctrine and some pretty wild ideas about the Christian life.

This position of a consistory’s right to endorse some magazines and to condemn others leads to another question: what about the office of believer? Do I not have a right to subscribe to some religious magazine I want to read, even if it is heretical, in order to educate myself? Do I not have the ability to try every spirit whether it be of God and to cancel my own subscription if I do not want some magazine? What if a church member subscribes to and reads the now proscribed Sword and Shield after the magazine failed to receive the elders’ imprimatur? Is the consistory going to discipline that member? If members of a church become members of RBP, will they face charges of schism from their consistory?

Many of these consistorial letters warn congregations about schism caused by Sword and Shield. One consistory wrote, “Although the magazine purports the development of the Reformed truth, statements made in the publication give evidence that the content and manner in which this is done will only cause further division, promote discord and will lead to schism.” Not only might the Sword and Shield cause schism, which I suppose is bad enough, but in the eyes of this consistory it will only cause division and promote discord, and will lead to schism. Let this be put to rest! If Sword and Shield writes the truth, it cannot be charged with schism, for schism is never the fault of the truth but always the fault of the lie and those who reject the truth. The truth only ever builds unity.

The purpose of RBP and its Sword and Shield in their origins is wholly edifying and positive. The members of RBP desire to have a magazine that will promote the Reformed truth in every area of life with vigorous and engaging articles that maintain and develop the truth. They desire to have a magazine that is answerable to, is interested in, and responds to the membership of the organization that owns and publishes it. While the content of Sword and Shield is the care of the editors, the magazine is subject to the judgment of the organization that owns it. The members desire to have a paper that is free, so that writers are, in fact, solely responsible for the content of their own articles and can write according to their Spirit-wrought convictions. The members want a paper that invites the reading public, whether friend or foe, to write in. The members want a forum where candid, open, and lengthy debates via letters and guest articles can take place about important doctrinal and practical issues of the day. The members want an organization that stands behind and takes responsibility for the content of the magazine that it owns and publishes and desires with all its resources to promote the truth and to defeat the lie.

What Herman Hoeksema said about the Standard Bearer, the members of RBP say about Sword and Shield: “Sword and Shield remains free. No institution controls it. Its voice cannot be silenced. And free it should remain. Unhampered by considerations that are foreign to the love of Reformed truth, our publication purposes to continue to maintain and develop the truth as our God has delivered it to us!”