Welcome to Mortification of Spin, a casual conversation about things that count.

With Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt, and Amy Bird, Mortification of Spin is a weekly podcast from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Let's join this week's conversation. Well, thanks for joining us today on Mortification of Spin.

My name is Todd Pruitt.

I'm joined as always by Amy Bird and Carl Truman.

And today we want to wade into some waters that, unsurprisingly for us, can get a little dicey at times and maybe even controversial.

And that is, to what extent is a Christian's personal views, so to speak, a matter for public concern?

Specifically, what I'm talking about is when a member of one of our churches, a church that practices church discipline, a church that is that is

biblically constituted, when a member of one of our churches holds to a view that our church would consider deeply problematic.

And what I want to do, Carl and Amy, is present the problem of what if one of our church members, and we could even ratchet it up a bit, saying what if one of our elders held to views, and let's take two different examples, one being racist views, racial supremacist views on the one hand, or let's say that it was someone who was pro-choice or pro-abortion, at what point would a church members holding to one of those positions become problematic to the extent that it would be a matter

for church discipline. Obviously, I'm asking this in light of kind of the recent kerfuffle down in

Houston where a ruling elder of a PCA church is running for the governor of Texas,

and he stated in a couple of different interviews, some troubling views in terms of policy.

He's pro-gay marriage.

He is pro-choice, and his views in terms of abortion even put him on the extreme end of the Democratic

Party, meaning he doesn't believe there should be any limits at all on abortion.

And, you know, there are other liberal Democrats that believe there should be some limits,

but not this man.

He pledged that as governor of Texas, he would veto any

legislation that would in any way infringe upon, quote, a woman's right to choose. So you have that

or an example, and I can't think of an example of this, although I'm sure they exist, of someone

in our church who holds very strongly to views that would be racist or racially supremacist.

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