Overture 7: Declare Kinism Teaching as Heresy
Note: The following overture was adopted by both Classis California South
and Classis Hackensack.
I. Introduction
Kinism is a recent, though historically familiar, grassroots theological movement within some Reformed theological circles and churches. Like
other grassroots movements, Kinism claims no single organization or leader. It has no well-known or published works. It lives on the Internet through various blogs and a now-defunct scholarly journal. While no one leader or organization dogmatically defines Kinism, a list of commonly held beliefs can be found at tribaltheocrat.com/2013/08/what-is-kinism/ and in the appendix to this overture.
Kinism blends tenets of orthodox Reformed theology (e.g., imago Dei of humankind, total depravity, divine special revelation in Scripture, the centrality of the church as the body of Christ to God’s mission and purpose in the world) with an ethnocentric hermeneutic. As a result, Kinism, as defined through Kinist websites and preachers, is antithetical to a lived gospel in God’s diverse world. In fact, we believe this teaching is heretical based on
the testimony of Scripture as reflected through our confessions, contemporary testimonies, and previous acts of synod.
Various Christians will object to various points in Kinist theology. In this overture, we refrain from debating the existence or absence of a New World Order, the likelihood of one world government, or other items in the Kinist agenda. As the church, we judge all theological claims in light of Scripture
and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, while there may be much to object to within Kinism, this overture is concerned with addressing the following claims of Kinist theology:
1. Interracial marriage is contrary to God’s plan.
2. God has ordained separation in a religio-ethnostate that necessitates racial
separation in all areas of life.
II. Why should synod address Kinism?
Given that Kinism is a minority view within Reformed theology, some
may wonder why synod should address the problem. There are at least five
reasons synod should address this issue rather than let it pass as a minor
disturbance existing elsewhere in the broader Reformed community.
1. A pastor within the Christian Reformed Church has propagated Kinism
in his teaching, preaching, and online writings. For years, he was able to
teach Kinism as a pastor of the CRCNA. This pastor continued in error in
spite of the efforts of his classis to respond. The pastor ultimately left the
CRCNA and took his congregation with him.
2. Given the former presence of an officebearer in our denomination who
was teaching Kinism, synod should declare loudly for all officebearers to
hear that we will not tolerate Kinism in our church!
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 4893. The CRCNA laid a thorough theological foundation in the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s to refute the heresy of apartheid in South Africa, but many cur-
rent CRCNA officebearers and members are unfamiliar with that work.
4. 5. Given the current political climate in North America surrounding race,
the CRCNA would be wise to unequivocally reiterate our biblically and
confessionally informed denunciation of apartheid. The church must pro-
claim to the world our love of neighbor without regard to race.
We hope this overture will give officebearers and classes the appropriate
theological knowledge to refute Kinism and confront any officebearer
who may propagate Kinist theology.
III. Kinist claims—familial relations
Kinists claim the following:
1. “That the God of the Old Testament, who forbade interracial, interreli-
gious marriages to his covenant nation, is the same as the God of the New
Testament. That marriage between parties who are not naturally conge-
nial is unequal yoking. That unequal yoking in marriage or in society at
large is destructive of Christian harmony, association, and growth.”
2. “That Christians should work to limit human error by seeking those
conditions which are inherently productive of harmony of interests, both
in marriage and in society at large. That a harmony of interests naturally
exists between people who are similar.”1
IV. Scriptural problems—familial relations
Paul wrote to the Colossians about division within the body of Christ. He
addressed them as those who “have been raised with Christ” (Col. 3:1) and
went on to admonish them against sin that would harm their interpersonal
relations.
You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must
rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy
language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your
old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in
knowledge in the image of its Creator.
(Col. 3:7-10)
The church in Colossae was raised with Christ. They had put off the old
self with its practices and had put on a new self. Paul then draws the logical
conclusion of this real spiritual change in the church.
Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian,
Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen
people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience.
(Col. 3:11-12)
God removed the wall of division between Jew and Gentile. All people
within the church constitute a people. God’s chosen people is no longer merely
a rough sketch of ethnic Israel, but all people who have been raised in Christ
and who have put off the old self with its practices.
1 tribaltheocrat.com/2013/08/what-is-kinism/ (accessed 1/12/19).
490 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019Peter concurs with Paul:
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special pos-
session, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness
into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the
people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received
mercy.
(1 Pet. 2:9-10)
Peter, formerly a zealous Jew, could not be more explicit: God’s people
are one nation. The church, which constitutes a single people, is then free to
operate as one people. There isn’t the slightest hint of maintaining old ethnic
differences between people in God’s one nation. Kinists downplay the real
change that God has effected through his saving grace, insisting that while
we may constitute one church, we are in fact a separate people.
Marriage is the most intimate of relationships and mirrors the church’s
relationship with God. Paul told the ethnically diverse church in Ephesus:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through
the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain
or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way,
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife
loves himself.
(Eph. 5:25-28)
Paul draws a parallel between the relationship of Christ to his church
(relatively unknown and unfamiliar to the early believers) and the familiar
relationship of a husband and wife in marriage. Christ is analogous to the
husband in the marriage relationship. Christ loved the church to the point of
dying for the church, which includes people from every nation. Christ does
not marry many wives, each one constituting a separate nation. Rather, he
marries one wife, the church, whose defining characteristic is her holy and
blameless nature, not her skin color. Kinists claim to want to maintain God-
given distinctions, yet they ignore the fact that Christ has done away with
ethnic distinctions in the church through his marriage to a single bride.
Kinism claims that God forbade interracial marriages in the Old Testa-
ment and the New. We agree that God forbade marriages between the nation
of Israel and other nations in the Old Testament. However, God did not
prohibit marriage between the nations upon the basis of race. Scripture clearly
testifies that God’s primary concern in forbidding marriages in the Old Tes-
tament to the nations was not their ethnic background or skin color. Instead,
the Lord wanted to keep his people free of the detestable practices of the nations.
His concern was that they remain faithful to their covenant partner and not
forsake him for the gods of the nations.
Deuteronomy warns that intermarriage among the nations (or those out-
side God’s covenant) would cause God’s people to turn away from God to
serve other gods.
When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess
and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites,
Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger
than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and
you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty
with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give
your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 491turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger
will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
(Deut. 7:1-4)
Scripture reiterates this warning in Ezra. The prophet’s concern is that
intermarriage with unbelievers will cause God’s people to adopt their detest-
able practices.
The leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests
and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples
with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Je-
busites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some
of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled
the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have
led the way in this unfaithfulness.”
When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and
beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the
God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles.
And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.
(Ezra 9:1-4)
Between the Old Testament and New, we find a striking thematic unity. In
the Old Testament, God warned his people to avoid intermarriage between
the nations based upon their detestable practices. In the New Testament, God
reminds us that we are no longer a people with detestable practices. Those
old people are dead. We, the church, are a new people. Continuing in Ezra
we read,
But now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the com-
mands you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: “The land
you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By
their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other.”
(Ezra 9:10–11)
Scripture also provides concrete examples of these principles in the lives
of Rahab and Ruth. Rahab, an Amorite and a prostitute, did not follow the
detestable practices of her kinfolk. Instead she acknowledged the Lord as
“God in heaven above and on the earth below” (Josh. 2:11). Driven by her
faith in the God of Israel, Rahab aided God’s people as they conquered
Jericho. As a result of her efforts, “Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with
her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had
sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day” (Josh.
6:25). Rahab is listed among the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11:31 and as one
of the righteous in James 2:25. Rahab not only lived among the Israelites but
also married an Israelite. Rahab, an Amorite who became a nonethnic Israel-
ite, is listed in the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 1:5.
Ruth, a Moabite, is another example of marriage outside of ethnic Israel.
She, like Rahab, did not adopt the detestable practices of the Moabites. Instead,
she left her people and country out of love for her Israelite mother-in-law,
Naomi, and out of dedication to the God of Israel. She told Naomi, as she
was preparing to leave Moab to live as a widow in Israel, “Where you go I
will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your
God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Ruth, the Moabite, joined Boaz, an Israelite and son
of Rahab, in marriage. Ruth and Boaz also appear in the genealogy of our
Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 1:5.
492 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019Rahab and Ruth became members of the nation of Israel through faith
and were not excluded from the covenant community by their ancestry. As
members of the covenant nation by virtue of their faith and righteousness,
they were free to marry within ethnic Israel.
Scripture is clear—there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any par-
ticular race. The line of demarcation between Israel and the nations was
not their lineage but their covenant status with God. Israel was a covenant
partner with God. The Lord was their God, and they were his people. The
Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians,
and Amorites had no such relationship with God. Marriage between Israel
and the nations caused God’s people to abandon their covenant with God.
Therefore, Israel should not marry people from the nations. God’s plan for
his people was that they should marry others who are in covenant with God.
Scripture echoes in the New Testament God’s warning from the Old Testa-
ment about marrying people who are not in the covenant. Paul, writing to the
ethnically diverse church in Corinth, did not mention national distinctions as
he warned against unequal yoking. Rather, unequal yoking is a function of
righteousness versus wickedness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial.
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and
wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with dark-
ness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer
have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the
temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has
said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they will be my people.” Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says
the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Fa-
ther to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
(2 Cor. 6:14-18)
Paul calls the church to be separate from people in darkness who wor-
ship other gods. Paul does not call the church to be separate from people of a
different color or national origin. We, the church, are the temple of the living
God, not separate temples, one for each nation, as Kinism would imply.
Kinism portrays God’s blessing of marriage between Christians of dif-
ferent races or ethnicities as sin. Given the scriptural evidence provided
above, we can unequivocally declare that such marriages are clean, lawful,
and good. Officebearers who preach Kinism bind the conscience of believers
to an unscriptural standard. In fact, the CRCNA has recognized the biblical
evidence that Christians are free to marry, without regard for race, in our
confessions, which are detailed below.
V. Confessional problems—familial relations
Our confessions and contemporary testimonies recognize the radical
unity we have in Christ. Beginning in Our World Belongs to God (para. 35)
we read, “The church is the fellowship of those who confess Jesus as Lord.
She is the bride of Christ, his chosen partner, loved by Jesus and loving him:
delighting in his presence, seeking him in prayer—silent before the mystery
of his love.”
The natural result of one church being the bride of Christ is this:
We are the family of God, serving Christ together in Christian community.
Single for a time or a life, devoted to the work of God, we offer our love and
service to the building of the kingdom. Married, in relationships of lifelong
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 493loyalty , we offer our lives to the same work: building the kingdom, teaching
and modeling the ways of the Lord so our children may know Jesus as Lord
and learn to use their gifts in lives of joyful service. In friendship and family
life, singleness and marriage, as parents and children, we reflect the covenant
love of God. . . .
(Our World Belongs to God, para. 46)
The Heidelberg Catechism declares that our baptism incorporates us into
God’s covenant people just as circumcision incorporated people into God’s
Old Testament nation.
Q. Should infants also be baptized?
A. Yes. Infants as well as adults are included in God’s covenant and people, and
they, no less than adults, are promised deliverance from sin through Christ’s
blood and the Holy Spirit who produces faith. Therefore, by baptism, the sign
of the covenant, they too should be incorporated into the Christian church and
distinguished from the children of unbelievers. This was done in the Old Testa-
ment by circumcision, which was replaced in the New Testament by baptism.
(Heidelberg Catechism, Q. and A. 74)
The Belgic Confession tells us that by our baptism we are set apart from
all other nations as God’s children.
Having abolished circumcision, which was done with blood, Christ established
in its place the sacrament of baptism. By it we are received into God’s church and
set apart from all other people and alien religions, that we may wholly belong to
him whose mark and sign we bear. Baptism also witnesses to us that God, being
our gracious Father, will be our God forever. . . . Just as water washes away the
dirt of the body . . . , so too the blood of Christ does the same thing internally, in
the soul, by the Holy Spirit. It washes and cleanses it from its sins and transforms
us from being the children of wrath into the children of God.
(Belgic Confession, Art. 34)
Baptism gives us a sign and seal of our new, central, Christian identity. We
are no longer united by common citizenship, language, ancestry, or ethnic-
ity, as Kinists would claim. We are united to Christ, in whom we are united
with one another, across all other bounds of identity or ethnicity. In this, “we
reflect the covenant love of God” (Our World Belongs to God, para. 46).
VI. Synodical problems—familial relations
During the culmination of the civil rights struggle in the United States,
synod declared concerning interracial marriage,
Holy Scripture does not give a judgment about racially mixed marriages;
contracting a marriage is primarily a personal and family concern. Church and
state should refrain from prohibiting racially mixed marriages, because they
have no right to limit the free choice of a marriage partner.2
Synod recognized that Christ’s redemptive work made the church one,
without distinctions that require separation.
For a true understanding of the rights, equality, and dignity of man, we should
see all men not only as creatures of God, made in His image, but also as those
who have sinned, and need redemption. Therefore in our relation to fellow
believers we should recognize the new unity which all Christians, regardless of
race, have by virtue of being redeemed by Christ.3
2 Acts of Synod 1969, p. 51.
3 Acts of Synod 1969, pp. 50-51.
494 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019VII. Kinist claims—societal segregation
Kinists advocate separation of people from different ethnic backgrounds
when it comes to marriage. Unfortunately, they also extend the supposed
requirement of racial separation to every sphere of life, including church and
state. In doing so, Kinists regularly refer to and quote theologians central to
our own Reformed identity, history, and culture, including—but not limited
to—John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Louis Berkhof.4
Kinists would use the force of the civil government to establish racial bound-
aries as was done in the American South during segregation and in South
Africa during their policy of apartheid. The following statements from Kinists
supporting segregation run contrary to the stated positions of the CRCNA:
That man, as a creature, is necessarily limited. That because he is limited, his
responsibility to others is also limited. That human responsibility is biblically
regulated by relationship, such that we have a greater responsibility to our own
family, race, town, state, region, and country, than we do to “the other.” That
Christians should favor the native and the normal over the alien and the novel.5
We affirm the multinational multiracial makeup of Christ’s church. We further
affirm that the nations and races are themselves individual expressions of
Providence, separated and cultivated by God to check the spread of evil and
add to His glory, to be preserved kind after kind in this world and eternally
in the world to come. We affirm that all attempts to amalgamate humans into
one mixed mass are in open rebellion against God’s law and His sovereignly
created boundaries.6
Our grandfathers called those advocating for diversity and integration “infi-
dels” who had abandoned the Bible for “modernism” and were leading the
Christian flock astray.7
God is the author of segregation and racial separation. Our grandfathers rightly
believed that those who rebelled against racial separation rebelled against God
Himself, the Author of those boundaries.8
That the ideal Christian social order is an extension of the family concept,
considered at a larger scale. That biblically, a nation is a large group of people
of common patrilineal descent, living in a common geographical location, and
having a shared religion, history, language, and civil government (a religio-
ethnostate).9
VIII. Scriptural problems—societal segregation
Kinism routinely underestimates the importance of the church. They
state, “Responsibility is biblically regulated by relationship, such that we
have a greater responsibility to our own family, race, town, state, region, and
country, than we do to ‘the other.’”10 Completely missing from this state-
ment is the church. Family, as defined by blood relation, takes priority over
the family as defined by the Spirit of God, who makes all Christians brothers
and sisters.
4 faithandheritage.com/2015/11/what-does-this-have-to-do-with-calvinism-calvinism-is-
kinism/ (accessed 1/23/2019).
5 faithandheritage.com/2013/08/what-is-kinism/ (accessed 12/5/18).
6 faithandheritage.com/about/ (accessed 12/5/18).
7 faithandheritage.com/2013/08/is-segregation-scriptural/ (accessed 12/5/18).
8 Ibid.
9 faithandheritage.com/2013/08/what-is-kinism/ (accessed 12/5/18).
10 Ibid.
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 495The CRCNA rightly views the role of the church in evangelism through
the lens of the Great Commission:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
(Matt. 28:18-20)
After his death and resurrection, our Lord told his disciples, “You will
receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my wit-
nesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth” (Acts 1:8).
Jesus sent his ethnically Jewish disciples into the broad Gentile world
with the good news. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the church dispersed
throughout the world to minister to all nations. While this text does not say
that all nations are to become one nation, this text, along with other Holy
Spirit inspired texts noted above, makes clear that, in Christ, Christians are
one people with a loyalty that transcends nation, race, or ethnicity. As such,
Christians are empowered by the Holy Spirit to minister to all nations.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation
under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewil-
derment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly
amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how
is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and
Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors
from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear
them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
(Acts 2:5-11)
The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples and sent them to fulfill Jesus’
prophecy that they would be his witnesses in Judea and Samaria. “On that
day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all
except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1).
The Lord pushed Philip directly into cross-cultural ministry:
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert
road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his
way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the trea-
sury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had
gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot
reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that
chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man
reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip
asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited
Philip to come up and sit with him.
(Acts 8:26-31)
Philip, a Jew, taught the Ethiopian how to read the Scriptures. Philip shared
the good news with the Ethiopian and then baptized him.
Nowhere in Scripture do we find teaching—explicit or implicit—that
people from one ethnic group should be wary of evangelizing people in
another ethnic group. Even more importantly, we find nothing in Scripture
to support the command—explicit or implicit—that Christians should set up
separate ethno-states.
496 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019What we do find in Scripture is Jesus’ explicit command to engage in
missions to the entire world, the Holy Spirit empowering missionaries and
changing the hearts of people through the preaching of the gospel, without
regard for ethnic heritage. While wisdom dictates that evangelism should be
done in culturally appropriate ways that maintain cultural practices that do
not conflict with Christ’s teaching, the Scripture strongly rejects the idea that
missions should only be done intraculturally.
IX. Confessional problems—societal segregation
Kinist statements run contrary to Scripture, our Reformed confessions,
and our contemporary testimonies—the Belhar Confession and Our World
Belongs to God—which stress the unity of all believers. Paragraph 30 of Our
World Belongs to God states:
The Spirit gathers people from every tongue, tribe, and nation into the unity of the
body of Christ. Anointed and sent by the Spirit, the church is thrust into the world,
ambassadors of God’s peace, announcing forgiveness and reconciliation, proclaim-
ing the good news of grace. Going before them and with them, the Spirit convinces
the world of sin and pleads the cause of Christ. Men and women, impelled by the
Spirit, go next door and far away into science and art, media and marketplace—
every area of life, pointing to the reign of God with what they do and say.
Article 36 of the Belgic Confession describes the role of the civil govern-
ment, saying,
We believe that because of the depravity of the human race, our good God has
ordained kings, princes, and civil officers. God wants the world to be governed
by laws and policies so that human lawlessness may be restrained and that
everything may be conducted in good order among human beings. For that
purpose God has placed the sword in the hands of the government, to punish
evil people and protect the good. And being called in this manner to contribute
to the advancement of a society that is pleasing to God, the civil rulers have
the task, subject to God’s law, of removing every obstacle to the preaching of
the gospel and to every aspect of divine worship. They should do this while
completely refraining from every tendency toward exercising absolute author-
ity, and while functioning in the sphere entrusted to them, with the means
belonging to them. They should do it in order that the Word of God may have
free course; the kingdom of Jesus Christ may make progress; and every anti-
Christian power may be resisted.
Classis California South and Classis Hackensack submit that the role of
the church is to support political action that allows the free association of
those within the church in accordance with our confessions. The role of the
civil government is to protect our freedom to share the gospel with the entire
world. Kinism would deny the church this freedom through the establish-
ment of a religio-ethnostate resembling apartheid.
The Belhar Confession reminds us that “Christ’s work of reconciliation is
made manifest in the church as the community of believers who have been
reconciled with God and with one another.”
Reconciliation means the bringing together of different groups into unity.
The Belhar continues:
This unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation,
enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already
conquered, and accordingly . . . anything which threatens this unity may have
no place in the church and must be resisted.
(Belhar Confession, Art. 2)
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 497A necessary result of unity in the church means a rejection of any doctrine that
. . . absolutizes either natural diversity or the sinful separation of people in such
a way that this absolutization hinders or breaks the visible and active unity of
the church, or even leads to the establishment of a separate church formation;
. . . professes that this spiritual unity is truly being maintained in the bond of
peace while believers of the same confession are in effect alienated from one
another for the sake of diversity and in despair of reconciliation;
. . . denies that a refusal earnestly to pursue this visible unity as a priceless gift
is sin.
(Belhar Confession, Art. 2)
God’s work of reconciliation transcends our individual relationships with
God. One fruit of reconciliation with God is reconciliation with our fellow
human beings, including those of different races. Kinism proposes an ethno-
state that would forcibly prohibit Christ’s work of reconciliation between
people of different races.
X. Synodical problems—societal segregation
The CRCNA has a well-documented history of dealing theologically with
segregation. As a church founded by Dutch immigrants and connected to
Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa during the state’s policy of apart-
heid, the CRCNA strongly rejected the forced segregation of people based on
their ethnic background. We are deeply indebted to the work of the CRCNA
as they formulated a response to apartheid, which is what Kinism looks like
in politically sanctioned, widespread societal practice.
Kinism and apartheid are, at their core, an effort to divide the church of
Jesus Christ. The CRCNA delineated how the church is to be both diverse
and unified in “God’s Diverse and Unified Family,” a report recommended
to the churches by Synod 1996, which states:
The church, Christ’s gathered body in the world, is the means by which God in-
tends to reveal himself, to proclaim the good news, and to unite all things in Christ.
In John 17, Jesus is more precise as to how the church reveals God. Jesus prays
that all the people who believe in him “may be one, Father, just as you are in me
and I am in you” (John 17:20–21). Why does he want them to be one? “May they
also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. . . May they
be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have
loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:21, 23). When the church is one,
people see God. The power of the church’s witness lies precisely in its new one-
ness in Christ, a oneness of believers that transcends external differences.
The church will be effective in the mission God has given it only when it un-
derstands and lives out of a vision that appreciates both its unity and diversity
in Christ. The church is one in Christ (1 Cor. 1:10-17; 12:12-13). Christ is the one
foundation of the church (1 Cor. 3:11) and the one head of the body (Eph. 1:22-23).
“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you
were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who
is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6). The church, however, is also
marvelously diverse. Just as the body has feet and hands and eyes and ears and
is incomplete without all those parts, so the body of Christ is made up of many
parts. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul teaches that each part of the body is necessary
to make the body function with complete effectiveness, and all parts have equal
dignity, regardless of size or function. The gifts of the Spirit to the church are
marvelously diverse (1 Cor. 12:27-31; Eph. 4:11-13; Rom. 12:3-8).
498 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019This teaching on the unity and diversity of the church is extremely important as
we think about matters of racial and ethnic diversity in the church. On the one
hand, Scripture calls us to be one in Christ. This is not just some theoretical one-
ness. It is a visible, actual unity of people with one another because they share
in the common source of life—Jesus Christ. This unity is so real that the world
comes to know God through it (John 17:23). This scriptural call to unity judges
the church in its lack of unity.
Nevertheless, unity does not obliterate differences. To be whole, the body needs
each part. In terms of racial and ethnic differences, the goal in the church is
not to rub out those differences and try to make everyone the same. Each of us
has a particular race, ethnicity, and culture. We do not cease to be Korean or
Kenyan or American when we become part of the body. Rather, each particular
person (and community) plays a part in making the body whole. Each person
and community brings unique gifts and makes unique contributions. In the
Spirit, diversity is no longer threatening; it is enriching. Unity and diversity
together confirm that indeed the church is the Lord’s work, not our own.11
The report continues to describe what working out unity through diver-
sity looks like. It calls the church
1. To pray and work for the increased enfolding of ethnic-minority persons
into the CRCNA in order to reflect more fully the racial and ethnic diversity of
Canada and the United States.
2. To ensure the equitable representation and meaningful participation of
ethnic-minority persons in leadership and other roles of influence at all levels
of denominational life.12
Working out unity through diversity is antithetical to Kinism, which sees
the only possibility for unity in an abstract, spiritual sense. We submit that
where there is no physical unity, there can be no meaningful spiritual unity.
The two go hand-in-hand. Synod stated in 1983,
Synod is deeply grieved and disturbed over the unbiblical ideology and persis-
tent practice of apartheid/separate development in the society of South Africa
and within white Reformed churches and the consequences these have, such as
is evidenced by the fact that there are separate churches for believers of differ-
ent races so that even at the table of the Lord racial separation is maintained.13
Synod 1984 laid the groundwork for the “God’s Diverse and Unified
Family,” saying,
It is the judgment of the synod that
—where citizenship (with the full rights and privileges of membership) in
a territorial state is allowed or disallowed on the basis of race or nationality
(ethnic identity);
—where membership (with the full rights and privileges of membership) in a
congregation of the church of Jesus Christ is allowed or disallowed on the basis
of race or nationality;
—where participation in the Lord’s Supper is allowed or disallowed on the
basis of race or nationality;
—where free and untrammeled participation in the economic life of a commu-
nity is allowed or disallowed on the basis of race or nationality;
—where unrestricted participation in the public educational system of a society
(or political entity) is allowed or disallowed on the basis of race or nationality;
11
“God’s Diverse and Unified Family,” pp. 22-23.
12
“God’s Diverse and Unified Family,” p. 29.
13 Acts of Synod 1983, p. 712.
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 499—where unrestricted participation in social units (marriage/family, political par-
ties, service or cultural associations, labor organizations, athletic organizations,
etc.) or social functions (weddings, funerals, recreational or cultural gatherings,
etc.) or public facilities (medical, travel, entertainment, athletic, recreational,
service, etc.) is allowed or disallowed on the basis of race or nationality;
—or where [for any human being the granting of official status as] . . . a person
with full dignity, rights, and privileges is conditional upon his/her having been as-
signed by authority a specific racial or national identity:
there race and/or national identity have been made an absolute that funda-
mentally conditions and qualifies the common humanity of all human persons
(as absolute, if not more so, than the created distinction of male and female). As
a result, the state, which under God is appointed the guardian of the rights and
privileges of every human being and the defender of justice, becomes a power
structure enforcing a false ideology and administering systematic injustice. As a
result, also, the church, which in Christ has been made and called to be the one,
new reconciled humanity, denies its confession of unity in Christ (one, holy,
catholic church) and repudiates its calling to live together as the one body of
Christ that acknowledges only the distinctions of spiritual gifts.
Where such an ideology is the guiding principle for the systematic policies of
the state and where the evil of such an ideology, with all its sinful consequenc-
es, has been clearly and persistently exposed from within the church itself and
where the church(es) nevertheless continue to support and/or do not oppose
such an ideology and its resultant injustices, and where they reflect that same
ideology in their own life and structure, a status confessionis concerning this
matter must surely (though humbly and with anguish) be acknowledged.
Any church that supports or warrants such an ideology in the name of the
Word of God is untrue to the Word of God, and the teachings it propounds in
support or defense of such ideology must be judged heretical. And any church
that does not vigorously oppose such an ideology must be judged guilty of
disobedience to God’s Word and to Christ its Lord.14
We, as a denomination, understood that we could not be associated with
such an evil practice, given the theological and ethnic similarities between
South African supporters of apartheid and the CRCNA. Likewise, we should
be equally forceful in our denunciation of Kinism as it is rooted in the Re-
formed tradition.
The CRCNA has recognized that the church and state’s role in race rela-
tions is not to facilitate segregation but to allow Christians to freely associate
with other Christians in love regardless of race.
Believers should be equipped by the church through teaching and discipline to
serve God, in all spheres of society, individually, and where possible, corporately.
Believers must also proclaim the commandment of love in race relations and make
it applicable to the affairs of civil government and the structures of society.15
Kinists’ desire to establish an ethno-state runs contrary to the CRCNA’s
stated goal of proclaiming the commandment of love in race relations in civil
government.
Synod clearly expressed that interracial worship is a starting point for liv-
ing lives with people of different ethnic backgrounds when possible.
The unity of the Body of Christ should come to expression in common worship,
including Holy Communion, among Christians regardless of race. It may be
that linguistic or cultural differences make the formation of separate congrega-
tions, often with their own type of preaching and worship, advisable: in these
14 Acts of Synod 1984, pp. 603-604.
15 Acts of Synod 1969, p. 51.
500 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019cases it is wise not to force an outward and therefore artificial form of unity but
to recognize the differentiation within the circle of God’s people. However, the
worshipping together of people of different races is a sign of the deepest unity
of the church, and can be an example for the life of society as a whole.16
XI. Overture
Classis California South and Classis Hackensack overture Synod 2019 to
do the following:
A. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy:
the Kinist teaching that interracial marriage is sinful, and the theological
reasoning supporting this teaching.
Grounds:
1. Kinist teaching on interracial marriage is demonstrably false accord-
ing to Scripture, the confessions, contemporary testimonies, and past
synodical statements and decisions of the CRCNA.
2. The CRCNA has declared both apartheid and the theological reasoning
that supports apartheid to be heresy.
3. Kinism’s teaching on interracial marriage is a grievous deviation from
orthodoxy for the following reasons:
a. It compromises essential elements of the gospel according to Scrip-
ture: the unity of God’s people in Christ, reconciliation between God
and his one people as a mirror of the bond shared between a hus-
band and a wife, and our reconciliation with God and one another
through our salvation in Christ.
b. It violates our confessional standards, which emphasize the church’s
unity in a marriage-like relationship to Christ, signified by baptism,
which makes us part of the one covenant community.
c. It runs contrary to past synodical decisions that allow for Christian
liberty in choosing a spouse from a different race.
B. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy:
the Kinist teaching that God has ordained separation in a religio-ethnostate,
and the theological reasoning supporting this teaching.
Grounds:
1. Kinist teaching on the establishment of a religio-ethnostate that would
forcibly separate Christians according to race is demonstrably false
according to Scripture, the confessions, contemporary testimonies, and
past synodical statements and decisions of the CRCNA.
2. The CRCNA has declared both apartheid and the theological reasoning
that supports apartheid to be heresy.
3. Kinism’s teaching on the establishment of a religio-ethnostate is a
grievous deviation from orthodoxy for the following reasons:
a. It elevates the status of family, race, city, state, and nation above that
of the church.
b. It inhibits the efforts of Christians to propagate the gospel to all na-
tions in obedience to the Great Commission.
c. It contradicts our confessional standard on the role of civil govern-
ment, which is to protect the church’s freedom to share the gospel with
16 Ibid.
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 501the entire world. Kinism would deny the church this freedom through
the establishment of a religio-ethnostate resembling apartheid.
d. It opposes past synodical decisions and statements that declare
apartheid, and the theological arguments for apartheid, a heresy.
C. Declare that any officebearer who teaches or promotes Kinist theology is
worthy of special discipline in accordance with Church Order Article 83.
Grounds:
1. Church Order Article 83 states, “Special discipline shall be applied to
officebearers if they violate the Covenant for Officebearers, are guilty of
neglect or abuse of office, or in any way seriously deviate from sound
doctrine and godly conduct.”
2. A heresy is a serious deviation from sound doctrine. Therefore, any
officebearer who teaches Kinism is seriously deviating from sound
doctrine and should be subject to discipline.
D. Instruct the executive director to create, through the appropriate agen-
cies, opportunities for education, instruction, and discussion so that church
leaders and lay members can recognize and refute the heresy of Kinism in
various social contexts where they may encounter it.
Grounds:
1. Kinism in the CRCNA is contrary to our stated vision to be “a diverse
family of healthy congregations, assemblies, and ministries expressing
the good news of God’s kingdom that transforms lives and communi-
ties worldwide.”
2. 3. We believe God has called the CRCNA to minister to the entire world.
Toleration of Kinist theology and its worldview in the policy, clergy,
or officebearers of the CRCNA communicates loudly that the CRCNA
does not welcome people from ethnically diverse backgrounds in our
community.
E. Acknowledge, with lament, the historic and present use of our beloved
Reformed theological tradition to perpetuate hateful racial prejudice and the
theological error of Kinism.
Grounds:
1. Even as we work to line up our behaviors with Scripture and doctri-
nal standards, we uphold the importance of naming the harm of past
behavior. In worship, a guide to grateful living is insufficient without
a prayer of confession. As this overture is offered as an act of worship,
it is right that we confess as we also move toward amendment of our
lives accordingly.
2. Given the Reformed theological heritage that the CRCNA shares with
both apartheid in South Africa and Kinism in North America, it is
incumbent upon us to be the harshest critics and the loudest voices
calling upon the church to repent of racism in all its forms.
Classis California South Classis Hackensack
Cornelius Pool, stated clerk Sheila E. Holmes, stated clerk
502 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019Appendix
Commonly Held Beliefs of Kinists
Kinists believe the following:
•
That a basic harmony exists between the mind and the body, the spirit
and the flesh.
•
That conversion often happens, but that the ordinary means by which
the Church militant extends itself is through covenantal succession from
Christian parents to covenant children.
•
That men are not born blank slates, but inherit physical and mental char-
acteristics, predilections, weaknesses, and strengths from their biological
parents. That neither nature nor nurture is deterministic of behavior, but
that both are highly influential.
• That race is biblically defined as common patrilineal descent. That, in
consequence, race is the sum total of all the attributes a man inherits from
his ancestors that he holds in common with his relatives, both near and
distant.
•
That culture is the external expression of religious belief in union with
race and place.
•
That the ideal Christian social order is an extension of the family concept,
considered at a larger scale. That biblically, a nation is a large group of
people of common patrilineal descent, living in a common geographical
location, and having a shared religion, history, language, and civil govern-
ment (a religio-ethnostate).
•
That sin is a universal deformity in human nature, and that no perfect so-
ciety is possible this side of heaven. That Christians should work to limit
human error by seeking those conditions which are inherently productive
of a harmony of interests, both in marriage and in society at large. That a
harmony of interests naturally exists between people who are similar.
•
That the God of the Old Testament, who forbade interracial, interreligious
marriages to his covenant nation, is the same as the God of the New Testa-
ment. That marriage between parties who are not naturally congenial is
unequal yoking. That unequal yoking in marriage or in society at large is
destructive of Christian harmony, association, and growth.
•
That those who are not Christian in outlook reject the transcendent unity
of creation in God our Creator, and in its place seek to substitute an im-
manent unity that ultimately destroys all distinctions.
• That those seeking a New World Order find the boundless diversity in
God’s creation an intolerable hindrance to earthly unity. That they seek a
one-world government, a one-world religion, and a one-world man. That
multiculturalism, miscegenation, and transracial adoption are all means to
their ends.
•
That Cultural Marxists seek a revolutionary regeneration of society by
destroying all the institutions of Christendom. That multiculturalism
and politically correct newspeak, as well as their control of the news
media, entertainment, and education, are all a means to that end. That all
of Christendom’s history is continually subjected to critical assessment
designed to undermine it.
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019 Overtures 503•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
That under the Abrahamic covenant, God’s covenant nation consisted
principally of a subset of Abraham’s physical descendants. That in the
New Covenant era, the elect come from all nations. That, nevertheless,
God graciously made Europe the historic seat of Christendom. That
because of this, the white Christian male is especially under attack by the
forces of the New World Order.
That atomistic individualism and centralized totalitarianism are not in
tension, but are necessary corollaries. That the rise of rationalism has led
to the simultaneous rise of an impersonal and rootless man and a unitary,
technocratic state. That man inherently desires association and a sense
of belonging, and that, in the absence of human-scale associations, will
substitute the sense of belonging offered by the total state. That the cure
for collectivism is not individualism, but rather to increase human-scale
associations, principally in the primal community of the family, but also in
multitudinous local social institutions, such as the church, civic organiza-
tions, and trade associations.
That multiculturalism is destructive of community and leads to isolation,
alienation or loss of identity, and a prevailing sense of loneliness. That a
man who no longer identifies with his community will not expend his
labor or capital in its maintenance, improvement, or in service of its future
existence.
That the forces of the New World Order have a vested interest in destroy-
ing community, as a means of atomizing man so that he willingly embrac-
es the total state.
That all men are equal only in the sense that we have a common origin
and federal head in Adam. That we are equal before God’s Law in the
sense that it applies to all men; recognizing that in points it applies un-
equal treatment to the sexes, to believers than to unbelievers, to the native
than to the alien. That men are unequal in almost every other way, wheth-
er it be in talents, intelligence, character, strength, appearance, etc. That
these inequalities are inherent in man, and not the result of differences in
their environment or upbringing. That Christians, the native born, and
property owners have a greater claim to wielding power, whether that be
holding a position of leadership, voting, land ownership, or freedom of
movement. That hierarchy is the natural and proper structure of human
society.
That inequality has developed both along individual and racial lines,
and that every race has its areas of superiority. That we should not be
ashamed of those gifts God saw fit to bestow upon us, but enjoy them.
That envy is a desire for equality taking the form of hatred of the superior.
That the envious man begrudges others of their advantages, and rather
than seeking to acquire those advantages for himself, instead seeks to
destroy them so that all will be equal in their poverty of advantages. That
envy motivates many minorities, and that separation is the only effective
way to deal with it.
That man, as a creature, is necessarily limited. That because he is limited,
his responsibility to others is also limited. That human responsibility is
biblically regulated by relationship, such that we have a greater respon-
sibility to our own family, race, town, state, region, and country, than we
504 Overtures
AGENDA FOR SYNOD 2019•
•
•
•
•
do to “the other.” That Christians should favor the native and the normal
over the alien and the novel.
That placing burdens on people they cannot bear inevitably induces guilt.
That a guilty man is an easily controlled man. That a man with impossible
burdens will seek a more powerful entity to bear those burdens for him.
That the most powerful earthly entity is the state. That the agents of the
New World Order have a vested interest in inducing guilt as a means of
control.
That atonement is an inescapable category for man. That if the true
atonement of Christ is rejected, a substitute atonement will be sought
elsewhere. That masochistic activity is often a false substitute means of
self-atonement. That burden-bearing is one such masochistic activity.
That transracial adoption is one common form of burden-bearing in the
post-Christian church. That sacrificing one’s family to become a foreign
missionary is another common form.
That adoption should be a rare event, and that orphans should always
be cared for by the relationally nearest family member willing to do so.
That if no natural family is willing to care for the orphan, only then may a
foster family be sought. That a foster family should only care for another’s
child as a means of making the best of a bad situation, after the woman is
beyond her childbearing years and all natural children have left the home.
That transracial or international adoptions should not occur.
That besides treating all men in accordance to God’s law, our only uni-
versal responsibility to others is to share the gospel with them. That this
responsibility is not borne by every individual, but collectively by the
church. That the social gospel is not the gospel, and that relief efforts, as
well as educational and medical missions, are often destructive of the
spread of Christianity to foreign cultures. That our responsibility consists
only of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. That the most effective
missionaries are native missionaries, and that foreign missionaries should
only be considered if no natives are available. That a foreign missionary
should be single, or married but childless.
That dispossession, barrenness, population decline, wealth transfer, men-
tal blindness, and widespread self-destructive behavior are clear external
signs of God’s judgment. That the proper response to this is not to bare
our necks to his chosen instruments of castigation, but to reassert the
crown rights of King Jesus, and our lawful claims under his kingship.17
Gen3fifteen 