The Rio Grande Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America has indefinitely suspended Zachary Garris, pastor of Bryce Avenue Presbyterian Church in White Rock, New Mexico, after finding him guilty of "unwholesome speech" for a handful of pointed tweets directed at a religion professor in 2023. The presbytery acquitted Garris of a separate charge but stripped him of his ministry over what one fellow PCA minister described as "a few 'mildly harsh tweets' at best."

The decision has drawn sharp criticism from pastors and church leaders across denominational lines, with multiple voices calling the proceeding procedurally deficient and the punishment wildly disproportionate. The Rio Grande Presbytery, for its part, has not publicly responded.

Two charges, one conviction

PCA minister Sean McGowan broke the news on X, reporting that the presbytery tried Garris on two charges. Charge 1 involved comments Garris made about slavery in June 2024. The presbytery found him not guilty on that count.

Charge 2 was different. McGowan reported that the presbytery convicted Garris of "unwholesome speech" under Ephesians 4:29, based on a 2023 interaction on X with Anthony Bradley, a religion professor who serves as a distinguished research fellow at The Acton Institute and research professor at Kuyper College.

McGowan wrote on X:

"At trial, the Rio Grande Presbytery (PCA) found Rev. Zachary Garris NOT GUILTY of Charge 1 regarding his comments on slavery from June 2024. However, Garris was found GUILTY of Charge 2 for 'unwholesome speech' per Ephesians 4:29, based on a 2023 interaction on X with Anthony Bradley. The Presbytery has indefinitely suspended him."

Screenshots shared in McGowan's thread show what Garris allegedly posted on or about October 9, 2023. In one exchange directed at Bradley, Garris wrote: "Even here you only speak of 'some' situations. Sometimes things are more complex than a PhD can handle." A day earlier, he allegedly wrote: "You started by misusing a Bible verse and then calling others 'biblically illiterate.' But arrogance can't tolerate banter."

That is the speech the Rio Grande Presbytery deemed serious enough to indefinitely suspend a pastor from ministry. Not profanity. Not threats. Not doctrinal heresy. Banter about PhDs and Bible verses.

No evidence, no witnesses, and no defense

McGowan did not stop at reporting the outcome. On Friday, he posted a longer statement alleging serious procedural problems with the trial itself.

"What happened to my friend @ZacharyGarris was a travesty of justice. Not only did they convict and suspend him from ministry for what can only be described as a few 'mildly harsh tweets' at best, but at trial they did not even admit any evidence for the second charge, nor did they have any witnesses testify, thus taking away the right of Garris to defend himself."

McGowan added: "This whole thing comes across as pure malicious lawfare. It must been [sic] made right."

If McGowan's account is accurate, and neither the presbytery nor any other party has publicly disputed it, the governing body convicted a minister on a speech charge without admitting evidence and without calling witnesses. That would deny Garris the basic procedural protections that even secular courts guarantee. The presbytery did not immediately respond to calls from The Christian Post on Friday.

Garris himself has not made any public statements on his suspension, though he did retweet McGowan's report. He is a trained attorney with a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary, married with two sons. His silence may reflect legal caution or pastoral restraint, but his allies have been anything but quiet.

The man behind the complaint

Anthony Bradley's original tweets, the ones that apparently sparked the exchange, have been deleted. That detail matters. The presbytery convicted Garris for his side of a conversation while the other half of the exchange has vanished from public view. Readers cannot evaluate whether Garris's replies were proportionate, because Bradley's provocations are gone.

Tom Ascol, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, and president of Founders Ministries, responded to the suspension with what The Christian Post described as "a bit of sarcasm of his own." Ascol wrote on X: "I'm old enough to remember when Anthony Bradley said, 'Evangelicals have never had the gospel. Ever.'"

He then quoted the very verse the presbytery used against Garris: "'Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up,...', Ephesians 4:29."

The implication was plain. If the standard for "unwholesome speech" is sharp theological disagreement on social media, Bradley's own public record would seem to invite the same scrutiny. Yet it was Garris, not Bradley, who faced a church trial. The pattern of pastors facing formal consequences for their public speech is not limited to American denominations, but the selective application here raises its own questions.

A broader pattern in church leadership

Garris was also accused of making racial comments in a separate X exchange with Lamont English, an assistant director at the PCA's mission agency Mission to the World. The presbytery cleared him of that charge entirely. The acquittal on Charge 1 suggests the presbytery itself did not find Garris's broader social media conduct to be systematically offensive, only the specific tweets aimed at Bradley.

David D. Edgington, a certified biblical counselor, founder of Compassionate Counselors, Inc., and preaching pastor at Christ's Community Church, said he was not surprised by the outcome. Edgington wrote on X:

"I don't know why everyone is shocked at what happened to my friend @ZacharyGarris. This is not a PCA problem. This is a church-wide problem with White Knights just acting according to their cowardly, anti-biblical natures."

Edgington went further, writing: "The effeminate church ladies of both genders rule the day & displace & attempt to destroy good men every chance they get. God will not be mocked. He will throw out these pseudo shepherds when His wrath is kindled."

His language was harsher than anything Garris posted. But Edgington's frustration reflects a growing sentiment among theologically conservative Christians: that denominational bureaucracies have adopted the same speech-policing instincts as secular institutions, punishing candor while tolerating far more provocative rhetoric from those on the other side of internal debates.

The PCA is hardly the only denomination grappling with leadership crises. Recent years have seen pastoral resignations over admitted misconduct and far graver scandals involving actual harm to congregants. Against that backdrop, the indefinite suspension of a pastor for pointed but non-profane social media replies looks like a denomination with misaligned priorities.

What 'indefinitely suspended' means, and what it doesn't

The procedural meaning and duration standard for "indefinitely suspended" within the PCA or the Rio Grande Presbytery is not clear from available reporting. The term could mean anything from a temporary removal pending appeal to a de facto permanent ban from ministry. The presbytery has not clarified.

What is clear is the chilling effect. If a PCA pastor can lose his pulpit for telling a professor that "sometimes things are more complex than a PhD can handle," the message to every other minister in the denomination is unmistakable: keep your head down, avoid controversy, and do not challenge credentialed voices, even when those voices are mishandling Scripture in a public forum.

That is not church discipline. That is institutional self-protection dressed in biblical language.

The case also raises questions about due process within Presbyterian polity. McGowan's claim that no evidence was admitted and no witnesses testified on the second charge, if true, would represent a serious departure from the procedural safeguards that Presbyterian governance is supposed to provide. The PCA's Book of Church Order exists precisely to prevent arbitrary punishment. A conviction without evidence and without the right of cross-examination makes a mockery of that system.

Church discipline scandals are not new, and they are not always this mild in substance. Some involve genuine criminal conduct by church leaders that demands accountability. Others involve pastors penalized for doing nothing more than preaching in public. The Garris case falls into a third category: a denominational body using its disciplinary machinery to silence a voice it found inconvenient.

The real question

The Rio Grande Presbytery owes its members, and the broader PCA, a public explanation. Was evidence admitted on Charge 2? Were witnesses called? Was Garris given the opportunity to defend himself? If the answer to any of those questions is no, the suspension should be reversed on procedural grounds alone, before anyone even reaches the merits.

And on the merits, the case is thin. The tweets in question were blunt. They were not vulgar, threatening, or doctrinally aberrant. They were the kind of sharp exchange that happens thousands of times a day on social media, including among professors, pastors, and denominational officials who never face a church trial for it.

Garris told a professor his PhD didn't make him right. For that, he lost his ministry.

When a denomination punishes candor more severely than it guards its own procedural integrity, it has stopped disciplining for holiness and started disciplining for compliance. The people in the pews can tell the difference.