Published October 27, 2022
In the days after the Nashville Statement was launched in 2017, several friends contacted me to ask why I had not signed it. I had a number of reasons for not doing so, none of which had anything to do with having changed my position on the issues the statement addressed.
As a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I subscribe by vow to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. I have yet to come across a contemporary moral issue that cannot be addressed using the positive teaching contained therein. Thus, some years earlier I declined to sign a statement against child abuse, not on the grounds that I am actually in favor of such abuse, of course, but simply because I already affirm via the Westminster Standards an ethical position that by implication makes my position on the matter clear.
That reason for me not signing Nashville still holds, though that should not be read as a criticism of anyone whose conscience led them to do so. I am also a believer in Christian freedom on such issues.
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Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
