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Gary North

Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church Hardcover – September 1, 1996

by Gary North (Author)

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Have you ever wondered why the major Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. are liberal and apostate? This book takes a systematic and well-documented look at why and how the enemies of the Gospel captured the majority of conservative Presbyterians in America. The author also explains how the remaining conservative or orthodox Presbyterians in the U.S. can keep from falling prey to liberal theology. (Institute for Christian Economics).

Print length

1096 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Inst for Christian Economics
Publication date

September 1, 1996
Dimensions

6.5 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0930464745
ISBN-13

978-0930464745
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Inst for Christian Economics (September 1, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1096 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0930464745
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0930464745
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 2.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,359,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #536 in Presbyterian Christianity
- #290,676 in History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
11 ratings

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Gary North

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Gary North received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. He served on the Senior Staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and is the president of the Institute for Christian Economics. Dr. North’s essays and reviews have appeared in three dozen magazines and journals, including The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The AmericanSpectator, and others.

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Dennis Gannon

Because it started with faulty foundations

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2019

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Gary has some good points to make but missed the obvious. Many are still married to the defective Westminster Confession. His thesis is many CLAIM to accept it, but don't, hence the infiltration and downfall of the mainline Presbyterian Church denominations. It never occurs to him that the foundations were defective. The Reformers, Luther, Calvin, et al, reformed the Church SOME, but not all the way. How could they, the printing press was just invented and they all had relatively tiny libraries to work with. Since the internet we are undergoing another reformation, everyone now has access to millions of books, something Gary did not have when he published in 1996. What can now be seen, is the gross error of the Trinity. Also, the gross error of endless punishING of the wicked, vs the punishMENT of the wicked with annihilation. Thankfully, the Kingdom of God is growing, like the mustard seed. So eventually, gradually, over the long term, the truth will win out. I agree with Gary's postmillennialism and his Calvinism.

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R. Jankowski

very helpful survey of presbyterian history

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2011

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I thoroughly enjoy Gary North. I suspect most hate him. He's very blunt with his opinions and this book is certainly no exception. Sure, it's 1000 pages, but North is an easy read and the subject is very interesting.

As to the potential popularity of this book - I think North sums it up pretty good at the beginning of the book:

"I wrote this book for Christians who are tired of being milked, bilked, and forced to ride
silently in the back of humanism's bus. If this is you, keep reading. Understand, however,
that you are part of a small remnant: a person who is willing to pick up a book about one
aspect of Presbyterian Church history. The final remnant will be even smaller: those who
finish reading this book. Few are called; even fewer are chosen. But cheer up; there are
words of comfort available: "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife
and a man of contention to the whole earth! . . . . The LORD said, Verily it shall be well
with thy remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil and in
the time of affliction" (Jer. 15:10a-11)."

Albert Jay Nock spoke of a remnant too - but he was certainly no postmillennialist like North. Despite the depressing picture North paints in this history, he remains faithfully committed to a view of things getting better in the end.

PROS:
- a thorough history of presbyterianism with particular emphasis of the battle with liberalism in the 1800-1900s
- North publishes his own books and so he is not at the mercy of editorial approval
- North is fairly repetitive. It's intentional. It helps to retain the idea he is presenting. If you read this book, you will have expressions like, "The crucial issue was sanctions." (repeated 24 times throughout the book) memorized by the time you finish.

CONS:
- the book is heavy, perhaps a less heavy type of paper could have been used.
- the font is an antiquated Times New Roman. I prefer to read in Arial.

You should read this book and allow the insight obtained to provide a much needed starting point for discussion regarding the future of presbyterianism.

9 people found this helpful

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R. M. Williams

an author and a book you might love to hate as well.

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2005

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Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church

Gary North

available online at: [...]

although i found it difficult to read online and purchased a second hand copy.

How do you review a 1000 page book?

Well, i finished it, actually quite an accomplishment. For North is an author i love to hate, i put the book down in disgust and picked it up the next day because i don't want to miss anything. North is a polemic, a fighter, nasty, often name calling, self centered, provocative, interesting, wordy, well i guess you get the picture. What the book is not: it is not strictly history, but rather something a little higher up the food chain, philosophic/theological interpretation of history, conspiracy theory, covenant theory in action, something like all these mixed together. North's extraordinary value as a writer and as a theologian is the confidence and strength his well tuned mental system produces in his works. His confidence in himself and his ideas is oftentimes overwhelming and always alluring. The problem i have is that i always put the book(s) down and have to ask myself "is this really true?" or "is this really Scriptural?" or is he overstating the case to win the debate in his mind. That is the great weakness of this book in particular, it really needed 6 months of careful research and fact checking in 1996 when it was published. You are always aware that he seems to bend the facts, both by omission and by simply being confidently wrong in order to support and prove his theories.

His big ideas are interesting and worth the time it takes to wade through the book. The first is the idea of crossed fingers, that the pastors/teachers/theologians of the Presbyterian church had to cross their fingers when subscribing to the Westminster confession. On the issues of 6 day creation, all children dying in infancy being saved or not, and later the big ones- Calvinism, Reformed theology, the essentials of the Christian faith itself. His major motif is a mixture of covenant theology and conspiracy theory, 1-that God deals with humanity in terms of promises and promised punishments and 2-that the liberals together plotted to grab the wealth and prestige of the Presbyterian church. He ends every chapter with the sentence: "the crucial issue is sanctions." He rightly points out that church discipline is important and if the church is unwilling or unable to fight heresy then it will end up a broad, inclusive social club where theology is replaced by institutional allegience, and the faith is replaced by a palid emotional appeal for money and power.

As far as the details, he is good with Presbyterian history, lousy fact checking when he gets into the Dutch tradition, mostly a result of where he lives intellectually. He is ok with what he includes, which has a little too much of North's pet theorizing at times, but he is lousy with the important things he leaves out, things which contradict his theories. He is good as a nice big picture overview, but each chapter needs another source of detail and historical factual additions to help balance out the way you think. So it is a good book to read if you want to embark on a long term study of Presbyterian history and are willing to unlearn and relearn significant pieces of the puzzle, but wish to gain insight into how his theory and principles bear on the issues. I don't know of another book that attempts what he has accomplished, a general history, so to replace this reading is perhaps a dozen other books, together totally far more than 1000 pages, but such is the cost of understanding and study.

Generally speaking, Crossed Fingers ends up telling me more about Gary North then it does about Presbyterian history, but his general principles are basically Scriptural even if rather steeply overlaid with his conservative economics and politics. And this is the final value, not just in CF but in all of North's books, he really does try to understand and deal with Scripture as authoritative and applicable to the problems of today, and for this he has my respect and my continued readership.

23 people found this helpful

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Stephen Hancock

How the PCUSA Betrayed it's Presbyterianism

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2006

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This is the only book which fully descrbes how a once Calvinist denomination came in the space of a few decades to represent the most liberal Arminianism theolgy ever expressed by a formerly orthodox church and as such, is a warning to every single orthodox church that is in the mainstream. If a church is willing to surrender orthodoxy for numbers, this is the inevitable result. By the way, The PCUSA has been on a steady decline since the 1920's and loses more members every year. The epitath of a once vital church. Resquiat in pace.

12 people found this helpful

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Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church Hardcover – September 1, 1996

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