All judicial matters that come before the General Assembly are committed to the Standing Judicial Commission of the assembly (SJC). The SJC reported that it had received nineteen cases since the last General Assembly, twelve of which had been handled by the time of the meeting of the assembly with seven still in process.

In an historic and solemn occurrence, the SJC reported that it had conducted a trial on March 6, 2008 against Louisiana Presbytery (Case 2007-14)² having indicted the Presbytery for failure to find a strong presumption of guilt in the theological views of one of its ministers TE J. Stephen Wilkins.³ The Presbytery pled guilty to that charge, and the SJC imposed the censure of admonition to the Presbytery. In the presence of the assembly, the Moderator, Paul Kooistra, formally administered the admonition with Dr. James Jones representing the Presbytery.

¹Excerpt from the report of L. Roy Taylor, Stated Clerk of the PCA, on the 36th GA found at http://byfaithonline.com/page/pca-news/stated-clerk-issues-report-on-general-assembly

²BCO 40-6 provides that a Session or Presbytery as a body may be tried in a manner similar to that of an individual. That has not been done in American Presbyterianism since the 1830s, however.

³The issue of so-called "Federal Vision Theology" a.k.a. "Auburn Avenue Theology" has been before the assembly in five instances in the last two years, A Memorial from Central Carolina Presbytery (Case 2006-2), an overture from Suncoast Presbytery (Overture 22, 2006), a Complaint (Case 2007-8, TE James Jones et. altera v. Louisiana Presbytery), an ad interim study committee on Federal Vision Theology and New Perspectives on Paul appointed by the 34th General Assembly and reported to the 35th General Assembly, and finally, Case 2007-14, the PCA v. Louisiana Presbytery. Mr. Wilkins left the PCA for the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches before proceedings against him could begin.

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