Tim Keller Prodigy, Scott Sauls Leaves PCA Becomes Egalitarian

The legacy of Tim Keller has been an ongoing debate since his death in 2023. And one such aspect of Keller’s legacy that has drawn a lot of scrutiny is the theology of his most ardent disciples. While his namesake Keller Center is packed with liberals, many bad teachers take direct inspiration from Keller. One such bad actor is Scott Sauls. Scott Sauls is the Tim Keller of Nashville, a fact made more on the nose by his time as a pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC.

Scott Sauls went viral in 2022 when he had this to say about marriage:

Is your heterosexual marriage as committed as some some gay marriages? Some gay marriages are deeply committed, as out of step with scripture as they are. Your marriage commitment needs to be at least on the same level…to have some sort of credibility.

This woke preacher clip was exacerbated by his famous support for Revoice, as additional context makes matters worse. In the last update on Sauls, he was placed on indefinite leave from Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville for abusive leadership practices where he later resigned six months later.

Yahoo News notes that part of Scott Sauls’s departure from the Presbyterian Church in America is that he supports female pastors. Yahoo reported:

The controversial and high-profile nature of Sauls’ departure from Christ Presbyterian left him with limited prospects for future ministry in the PCA locally, though that’s not his stated reason for leaving the denomination.

Rather, Sauls said in his recent letter to the Nashville Presbytery that he now holds to an egalitarian view, referring to a belief that men and women are equally capable of serving in church leadership. As a conservative evangelical denomination, the PCA holds to the more traditional complementarian view, referring to a belief that men and women have certain assigned roles.

Sauls previously came under fire for his views on women in church leadership during his tenure at Christ Presbyterian when the church began appointing deaconesses, an attempt by some PCA churches to elevate women to leadership roles without violating PCA ordination standards.

Presbycast which is not exactly known for discernment calls out why Sauls’s departure from the PCA which occurred subsequently after resigning was a detail omitted from By Fraith, the PCA’s official magazine. Presbycast writes:

WHERE DID HE GO? Sauls (as we understand it) intends to affiliate with ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, a loose denomination formed in 2012 by refugees from the liberal, homosexual-affirming PCUSA. Those who formed ECO were a sort of “last straw club.” The last last straw was the ordination of open, practicing homosexual ministers and gay marriage in the mainline church. ECO now positions (markets?) itself as “the Presbyterian denomination built for the 21st Century.” Assumedly, the PCA was built for previous centuries.

This development for Scott Sauls is bad news for the legacy of Tim Keller as a pastor whose prominence was attributed to yoked himself to has erudite coattails has further apostatized.