Even From Their Own Confessions

The companion page, Did the Church Get It Wrong for 1,800 Years?, asks the long question: how far has the modern church drifted from the faith of the first centuries. This one asks a nearer, sharper question, and an easier one to check. You do not have to reach all the way back to Nicaea. Take a church that still names a confession on its website, the 1689 Baptist Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Three Forms of Unity, and simply compare what that document says to what is preached and practiced there in 2026. Often the gap is wide. Many have wandered not only from the early church, but from their own standards.

A word on tone before we start. This is offered in respect, not contempt. The men who wrote these confessions were serious, careful, and devoted, and many churches still hold them faithfully. The point here is not that the 1689 or Westminster is the final standard (this site's measure stays Scripture, read with the earliest church). The point is narrower and fairer: a church that claims a confession should be able to stand by it.

A nearer test

The "old paths" test on the companion page can feel abstract; reasonable people argue about what the second century believed. But a confession is a fixed, public, dated document with the denomination's own name on it. So the test becomes concrete. Does this congregation actually teach what its confession teaches about Scripture, about conversion, about the church, about worship? When the answer is no, the drift is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of record.

The Baptist line: the 1689 and John Gill

The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 is the great confession of the Particular (that is, Calvinistic) Baptists. It borrowed most of its language from the Westminster Confession and the Congregationalists' Savoy Declaration, departing chiefly on baptism and the church. It holds a high view of Scripture, the doctrines of grace, a believing and baptized church membership, and the certain perseverance of the saved. On who may be baptized, it is exact:

So baptism, for the 1689, is for those who personally and credibly profess Christ, and it is by immersion. Behind it stands a whole vision of the church: a gathered company of professing, regenerate believers, not a crowd assumed to be Christian by birth or by a single emotional moment. And on the security of the saved, the confession is just as careful. It does not teach that anyone who once prayed a prayer is safe forever; it teaches that those God has truly accepted and sanctified will, by His keeping, actually persevere:

The man whose verse-by-verse commentary appears in the pop-ups all over this site, John Gill (1697-1771), was the embodiment of this confession: a Particular Baptist pastor (of the very congregation Charles Spurgeon would later lead), who held the doctrines of grace, believer's baptism, and the perseverance of the saints, and read the whole Bible as one covenant of grace. When a modern Baptist church cites Gill or the 1689 as its heritage, this is the heritage it is citing.

The drift in much of the modern SBC

The Southern Baptist Convention did not begin as a revivalist, decisional movement. Its founders were largely confessional Calvinists, James P. Boyce, John L. Dagg, Basil Manly Jr., and the founding confession of its first seminary, the Abstract of Principles (1858), teaches election, effectual calling, and perseverance in the same key as the 1689. That is the SBC's own root.

What reshaped much of the convention came later and from elsewhere: the revival "new measures" of Charles Finney in the 1800s, the anxious bench, the altar call, the assumption that a decision made in a meeting is itself the new birth. From that stream came the modern "sinner's prayer," the walk-the-aisle invitation, and, in many pulpits, an "once saved, always saved" that has quietly become its opposite, an assurance resting on a past moment rather than, as the 1689 said, on God's keeping power evidenced by a persevering life. The careful, regenerate-church vision of the confession gives way to large rolls of baptized members who were counted on the strength of a single prayer.

Honesty requires the other side of this. The SBC has its own current confession, the Baptist Faith and Message (1925, 1963, 2000), which is more careful than much that is preached under it, and there is a real confessional renewal within the convention, Founders Ministries has spent forty years calling Southern Baptists back to the doctrines of grace and the Abstract of Principles. Many SBC churches are sober and faithful. The drift is not universal. But where it has happened, it is a drift the convention's own founders and confession would not recognize.

The Reformed line: Westminster and the Three Forms

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) is the standard of the Presbyterian churches; the continental Reformed (including the Christian Reformed Church) hold the Three Forms of Unity, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. These are rigorous, God-centered documents. On the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, Westminster will not allow even the Spirit or the church to add to the written Word:

And on worship, Westminster holds the "regulative principle," that God determines how He is approached, and we may not improvise:

This is a tradition that took Scripture as the final court of appeal, worship as a matter of obedience rather than preference, the covenant as one unbroken story, and the church's discipline as real. Whatever one makes of every point, no one can call it casual.

The drift in the mainline

The clearest case is the largest Presbyterian body, the PCUSA and the mainline it represents. The drift was already visible a century ago: the Auburn Affirmation (1924) moved to make the Bible's inerrancy and the historic miracles optional rather than essential, and when J. Gresham Machen resisted, arguing in Christianity and Liberalism (1923) that a faith without those things is simply a different religion, he was put out of the church (1936) and founded what became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The trajectory continued: the ordination of openly partnered gay and lesbian clergy (2011) and the redefinition of marriage (2014-2015), changes that cannot be reconciled with the confession the denomination still formally holds. A church whose own standard makes "the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture" the supreme judge had, in practice, seated a different judge.

Fairness requires care with the rest. The Christian Reformed Church is a genuinely contested case rather than a simple decline: its 2022 Synod actually reaffirmed the historic view of marriage as confessional, binding on its members, and congregations have left in both directions over it. So the CRC is at least as much a church wrestling to hold its confessions as one abandoning them. And across the Reformed and Presbyterian world, large confessional bodies plainly do hold the line, the PCA, the OPC, the URCNA, and others, who subscribe their confessions seriously and discipline accordingly. The drift is real, but it is not the whole picture, and the confessional remnant is large.

What this is not saying

This is not a verdict on anyone's salvation, and it is not hostility toward Baptists or the Reformed, who are brothers and sisters in Christ, often more biblically literate and devoted than their critics. It is not a claim that every SBC, CRC, or Presbyterian congregation has drifted; many have not. And it is emphatically not a claim that the 1689 or Westminster is the final word, this site's own convictions differ from theirs at points, and the true measure remains Scripture read with the early church. It is one narrow, fair observation: by their own documents, many of their modern descendants have wandered.

The frog and the slow boil

A drift from a confession is rarely one obvious break. It is the frog in the slowly heating pot: the water warms a degree at a time, no single step alarming enough to leap from, until the church is being boiled and never felt the heat. The Reformed confessions held eternal security with rigor, the elect persevere, they do not coast; the grace that saves also keeps and sanctifies. Loosen that by a degree, keep the guarantee but quietly drop the perseverance, and you have a warmer doctrine that still sounds confessional. Loosen it again and "once saved, always saved" asks nothing of the saved. A few degrees more and you arrive at a gospel that wants a decision and promises a feeling, repentance optional, your best life now. No preacher in that line looks radical to the one just before him. That is exactly how the water rises without anyone jumping out, slowly, toward a destruction no one notices.

And here is the tell that the boil is nearly done: the original starts to look like the extreme. Call people back to what the confessions actually taught, that grace transforms, that perseverance is real, that a branch in the vine can be cut off, and you will be named the legalist, the radical, the one making it too hard. You have not moved. The water did. The man standing where the church always stood now looks like the one who wandered, because everyone else floated downstream so gently that downstream became the new shore. This is not said to condemn the swimmers; most were born in the warm water and never told it used to be cold. It is said because a frog that knows the pot is heating can still climb out.

Where this lands

The two drifts point the same direction. The long drift from the early church and the nearer drift from the Reformation's confessions both lead back to the same place: Scripture, read in the company of the church that first received it. And on that, the confessions themselves agree. Westminster says the final judge of every controversy is "the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture," examining even "the decrees of councils" and "opinions of ancient writers." The confessors would be the first to say their documents are servants of the Word, not rivals to it. A church that has drifted from its confession has usually first drifted from the Book the confession was trying to guard. The way back is the same for everyone: the old paths, the once-delivered faith, the Scriptures heard afresh.

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

• Jude 1:3 — the faith once delivered
• 2 Timothy 3:16-17 — all Scripture God-breathed, sufficient
• Acts 17:11 — the Bereans searched the Scriptures to test the preaching
• Matthew 15:9 — teaching as doctrines the commandments of men
• Jeremiah 6:16 — ask for the old paths

Confession text quoted verbatim from public-domain editions: the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Second London Baptist Confession (1689). Historical references: the Abstract of Principles (1858), the Baptist Faith and Message (1925/1963/2000), J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism (1923) and the Auburn Affirmation (1924). Offered in respect toward the Baptist and Reformed traditions, as a question about consistency, not a judgment of persons. Related: The 1,800 Years, TULIP, The Security of Salvation. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub.