The Seven-Ledger Map: Nine Years of Public Theological Statements in American Evangelicalism

Four essays into this series, the reader knows the parts. The Nashville Statement of 2017 put 296 congregations on the record about biblical sexuality. The Dallas Statement of 2018 added 166 congregations to the record on critical theory inside the church — 72 of which overlapped with Nashville, the dual-witness pattern that first showed up there. The Warhurst Protest of 2020 added 78 PCA-concentrated congregations to a different register entirely, the soft-progressive denominational protest cohort, with eleven of them paradoxically also on the Nashville list. The PCA-Progressive Coalition essay collapsed four small ledgers into a fourteen-church composite that turned out to be 93% PCA, nine of its members already on the Warhurst list, and one of its members (Kindred Hope Atlanta) carrying signatures across five separate ledgers.

This is the synthesis essay. It draws all seven ledgers as one map, plots them against the same 13,900-church directory we have been building all year, and tells the story the individual essays can only gesture at. The map covers nine years of public-confessional history — from the 2017 Nashville drafting to the 2026 AMR Leadership launch — and 462 churches that signed at least one line in the sand during that period. It tells us where confessional American evangelicalism's institutional carriers are concentrated, where they have held, where they have drifted, where they have contradicted themselves, and where the documentary residue points to coordinated movement rather than scattered individual conviction.

This is the longest essay in the series and, in some ways, the most important. The directory we have been building exists, in the end, to make this kind of synthesis possible. If you have not read the four prior essays — Nashville, Dallas, Warhurst, PCA-Progressive Coalition — you do not need to. This one stands on its own. But each individual map has data the synthesis cannot show, and reading the parts after the whole is just as good as reading the whole after the parts.

The Seven Ledgers in Chronological Order

The seven public-theological statements we cross-reference span the period from August 2017 to early 2026. Their direction — whether a signature signals a conservative or soft-progressive posture in our rubric — is labeled inline.

Two of the seven ledgers point in the conservative ("green") direction in our rubric — Nashville on sexuality, Dallas on critical theory. Five point in the soft-progressive ("red") direction — Warhurst against PCA discipline, Revoice on Side-B sexuality, Letter of Lament on PCA "schismatic culture," AMR on PCA-progressive institutional advocacy, CBE on egalitarian leadership. The 462 churches in the synthesis are not evenly distributed across these two camps; the conservative ledgers carry the overwhelming majority of total signatures (475 of the 491 if you count entries rather than churches). That asymmetry is the first finding of the synthesis.

The Composite Map: 462 Churches

Of the 13,900 churches in the working directory, 462 — about 3.3% — have at least one publicly-identified signer across the seven ledgers. The composite distribution, viewed as a whole, looks like this:

The composite reproduces the Nashville map's regional pattern with high fidelity: Texas dominant, the Old South heavily weighted, California a surprising third-place strand, Virginia punching above population, Pennsylvania and Colorado as mid-sized but real Northern Atlantic and Mountain West outposts. The map's center of gravity is the South-and-South-Central evangelical corridor, with the largest single-state cluster in the DFW metroplex and a secondary cluster around Lynchburg + Northern Virginia.

Three denominational blocs carry the overwhelming weight of the map: the Southern Baptist Convention (163 — 35% of the total), the Presbyterian Church in America (99 combined — 21%), and the Non-Denominational / Reformed Baptist / SGC / Acts 29 cluster (127 combined — 27%). Together these three blocs account for 83% of the synthesis map. The remaining 17% is scattered across smaller bodies — Presbyterian-Reformed (URCNA, OPC, EPC, ARP), LCMS, Anglican (ACNA / AMiA), CREC, Free Will Baptist, Mennonite, and assorted others.

What is conspicuously absent at the synthesis level? The mainline Protestant denominations. There are essentially zero PCUSA, UMC, TEC, ELCA, UCC, or DOC congregations on any of the seven ledgers — a finding that maps cleanly onto the directory's broader rubric assessment that those bodies have institutionally drifted in a direction the public statements of the conservative-confessional cohort explicitly named.

The Single-, Dual-, and Multi-Witness Cohorts

Among the 462 signature churches, the distribution by number of ledgers signed reveals a critical pattern:

The single-witness 375 are the majority. Most pastors who signed any ledger signed exactly one. Three-quarters of these are Nashville-only signers (the largest single ledger); the rest are scattered across Dallas-only, Warhurst-only, and the very small AMR / Letter of Lament / CBE-only cohorts. A single-witness signature is meaningful — the pastor was willing to be on the record once — but it is the weakest signal in the synthesis dataset.

The dual-witness 83 are the institutional anchors. The vast majority (72 of 83) signed both Nashville and Dallas — pastors willing to draw both the sexuality line in 2017 and the social-justice / critical-theory line in 2018. The remaining 11 dual-witness churches are the contradictory eleven, the cohort that signed Nashville and Warhurst together — a doctrinal combination that on its face points in opposite directions but, in the hands of the pastors who hold it, represents a coherent third position (affirm the sexual ethic, contest the specific disciplinary application). The dual-witness cohort is the cleanest single proxy for "confessional evangelical pastor with a public theological record" — they show up across the directory rated overwhelmingly green or yellow, almost never red, and almost never black.

The Triple- and Penta-Witnesses

Four churches in the entire 462-church dataset signed three or more ledgers. They are the institutional super-carriers — the congregations whose pastoral leadership has been willing to put its name on multiple public theological commitments across multiple years. Three of the four are PCA. One is a Reformed Baptist congregation. All four currently rate yellow in our directory — the editorial signal is that these are churches with rich institutional involvement but enough cross-cutting positions that a clean green or red call is not justified.

Kindred Hope Church, the lone penta-witness, is worth lingering on. It is a young PCA plant in Atlanta whose leadership has, in the brief time the church has existed, put its name on five distinct public theological statements — three pointing in conservative directions (Nashville 2017, Dallas 2018, and Warhurst 2020 in its original protest framing) and two pointing in soft-progressive directions (Letter of Lament 2025 and AMR 2026). That is not a stable doctrinal posture; it is a record of institutional involvement across an unusually broad coalition of pastors and elders. Reading its 8-signature record cold, you would say either that the church is theologically incoherent or that it is uniquely well-connected. The directory's current yellow rating reflects neither judgment definitively — the church is genuinely interesting and genuinely difficult to categorize.

Four churches across nine years of public theological statements signed three or more ledgers. They are the institutional supercarriers. Three of the four are PCA. The lone PCA plant among them carries five signatures across opposing directions. The map's most interesting story is what happens at the intersections.

The Drift Pattern Across All Seven Ledgers

Of the 462 signature churches, 22 are currently rated red or black in our directory — congregations whose leadership signed one or more public statements but whose current doctrinal posture, leadership structure, or denominational alignment has moved in ways that no longer match what the original signatures predicted. That's 4.8% of the synthesis dataset.

The drift breaks down further by which direction of ledger they signed. Of the 16 red and 6 black drifters, the largest single subset is the Nashville-signers-at-drifted-churches cohort — 17 churches profiled in detail in the Nashville essay. A subset of those (the +N drifters in the Dallas essay) signed both Nashville and Dallas and have drifted anyway — the strongest possible "this is genuine institutional drift" call in the entire dataset, since it represents two distinct 2017-2018 signatures followed by a current red or black rating.

The smaller drifter subsets are the still-green churches with red-direction signers — five of them on the Warhurst essay's "still-green stragglers" list, two more on the PCA-Progressive Coalition essay's non-PCA outliers. These are the stale-rating candidates rather than the drifters proper — records where the editorial signals are in tension and a fresh evaluation pass is warranted. They are surfaced on the drift watchlist for exactly that reason.

What the Synthesis Tells Us

Five findings emerge from the synthesis that none of the individual ledger essays could establish alone.

First, the institutional carriers of American confessional evangelicalism are concentrated. Three denominational blocs (SBC, PCA, and Non-Denominational + Reformed Baptist + SGC + Acts 29) carry 83% of the synthesis map. The mainline Protestant bodies are essentially absent. The Pentecostal-charismatic mainstream is essentially absent. The Catholic and Orthodox bodies are categorically absent (different confessional framework). What this tells us is that "American evangelicalism" as a public-statement-signing institutional category is a much narrower object than the cultural-political category that goes by the same name in journalism. The synthesis map describes a confessional minority, not a cultural majority.

Second, the carriers are geographically concentrated but not exclusive to any one region. Texas dominates at 81 churches but no state is empty. The South-and-South-Central corridor carries the majority, but California's 35 and the Pacific Northwest's thin-but-present cluster show that confessional pastoral conviction has institutional infrastructure in regions where the cultural-political evangelical brand is unpopular. The geography is national, just unevenly weighted.

Third, the dual-witness pattern is the cleanest available proxy for "confessional evangelical pastor with a public record." Single-witness signatures are weak signals; triple- and penta-witness signatures (the 4 super-carriers) are rare; the 83 dual-witness churches are the cohort that, more than any other in the synthesis dataset, predicts a green rating in the directory's overall scorecard. If a family is looking for a single institutional shortcut to "pastor with a real public record," the dual-witness cohort is the closest thing the data offers.

Fourth, the soft-progressive PCA wing is institutionally coordinated, not just diffusely sympathetic. Read across the four red-direction ledgers in the synthesis (Warhurst + AMR + Letter of Lament + Revoice + CBE), the same congregations recur. Nine of fourteen small-ledger churches also appear on the Warhurst list; the contradictory eleven (Nashville + Warhurst dual signers) are the structural connective tissue between the conservative-confessionalist and soft-progressive PCA wings. The PCA's internal geometry is real, documentable, and visible only when the small ledgers are read in composite.

Fifth, drift is real but uncommon among signature-carrying churches. Only 22 of 462 signature churches (4.8%) rate red or black. The vast majority of signature-carrying congregations remain in the green-yellow band of the rubric. A signature in any of these ledgers, in other words, is a leading indicator (not a guarantee) that a church has stayed in the confessional center. The exceptions — the 22 drifters — are exactly the kind of editorial honesty surface that the drift watchlist exists to publish rather than hide.

Reading the Map Together

The Nashville map alone told us about evangelical pastors willing to draw a line on biblical sexuality. The Dallas map alone added the social-justice/critical-theory dimension. The Warhurst map alone showed us the soft-progressive PCA wing. The PCA-Progressive Coalition essay collapsed four small ledgers into one institutional coalition picture. Read together, the seven-ledger synthesis tells us where the confessional center of American evangelicalism actually sits, how its institutional carriers are concentrated, where the internal tensions are, where the drifters have ended up, and where the small but documentable contradictions reveal coordinated movement rather than scattered individual conviction.

This is the map. There is more data to layer on top of it — the seven Reformed-evangelical networks we cross-reference (Founders, 9Marks, TGC, Acts 29, SGC, Pillar, Trinity Foundation), the notable-attendees cross-reference, the network-membership patterns. Future essays will draw additional layers. What this essay has done is collapse the foundational signature data into one composite picture, with each piece visible, each pattern documented, and each individual church a click away from a profile page with its own scorecard and sources.

The directory exists, in the end, to make this kind of synthesis possible. Each individual record carries five signal layers (pastor name, social presence, rubric rating, network cross-listings, signature cross-references). The synthesis map is what you can build when 462 of those records have their fifth layer populated. The signature-ledger work is, at this point, mature enough to draw conclusions from. The next four years of the directory's editorial life will be spent enriching the other four layers across the remaining 13,438 records.

The map is not a thing to admire. It is a tool. Every church on it has a profile page. Every profile page has a scorecard. Every scorecard has a feedback form. The point of building the map is to let a family make a serious decision about a church near them — informed by signatures, sources, denominational affiliations, and the historical record of which pastors were willing to put their name to public lines when those lines cost something. The map exists so that the decision a family makes is a real decision rather than a convenience decision.

Adam "MOOP" Johns is a Christ-following husband and father, retired US Marine, military aviator, and combat veteran (21 years of service), NASM-certified personal trainer, and men's discipleship coach who has been investing in the formation of men for over 25 years. He holds an M.Div. from Liberty University and founded U.S.M.C. Ministries — Uniting, Serving, Mentoring & Counseling — in Fredericksburg, VA.