Joshua Settlemoir

This is very well put by @colinsmo. Whenever a Baptist feels the pull toward Presbyterian polity as the remedy for the chaos and “tomfoolery” of SBC life and/or corporate worship styles, I am quick to note—with genuine respect for the polity and convictions of my brothers in the PCA and OPC—that those very denominations exist precisely because Presbyterianism is no silver bullet. The PCA and OPC were born out of earlier Presbyterian bodies that had already failed to protect confessional integrity, and their General Assemblies today frequently function as mirror images of the SBC annual meeting: prolonged floor fights, contested interpretations of confessional standards, competing cultural and ecclesiastical visions, and the same underlying reality of popular sovereignty working its way through the system. What makes either polity structure "healthy" is the spiritual vitality of the people inhabiting them. It is congregationalism all the way down. Every realignment, every departure over Side B, Keller-influenced megachurch methods, Christian nationalism, or some other contested question, re-proves the point. Polity can constrain and channel disagreement, but it cannot abolish the fact that churches and denominations remain associations of free people who retain the capacity to dissent, exit, or reorganize.⁠ The difference is largely one of venue and procedural form, not of substance. Popular sovereignty, as Althusius and the broader Reformed tradition understood it, is not an accidental feature of congregationalism; it is a natural law of human association that reappears under every form of church government.