Powerful Presbyterian tackles Confessing Church in court
The Layman Online, February 19, 2002
John Coventry Smith Jr., whose father once was described as one of the four most powerful men in the Presbyterian Church (USA), is a member of the committee of counsel that will present its case against a Sebastian, Fla., session that is accused of wrongly adopting a Confessing Church resolution.
A hearing on the case will be held at 10 a.m. on Feb. 20 before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Central Florida.
Smith represents Sebastian elder Norman F. Blessing, who says that the sessions’ Confessing Church resolution violates his “freedom of conscience.” The Permanent Judicial Commission requested that the session recant key provisions of the resolution, but the session declined to comply.
Smith was one of 18 members of a committee who recently reviewed the work of the General Assembly.
The elder Smith was moderator (1968-69) of the United Presbyterian Church (USA) before that body reunited in 1983 with the Presbyterian Church U.S. to form the current Presbyterian Church (USA), and served as president of the World Council of Churches from 1968-72.
He was mentioned in a 1997 article by the denomination as being involved in the early movement to combat racism and expand racial/ethnic representation in the denomination.
The article noted that the United Presbyterian Church (USA) created a Commission on Religion and Race “with unusual power to act on behalf of the denomination.” It said approval of the commission “could not have been done without the agreement and strong support of Eugene Carson Blake, Ken Neigh, Bill Morrison, and John Coventry Smith, the most powerful men in the church.”
The assembly appropriated $500,000 for the commission. Renamed the Council on Church and Race, it gave birth to most of the racial justice programs now existing in the PCUSA.
Smith, who was once a missionary to Japan, had a keen interest in Asia and was an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He was quoted in a denominational journal article titled “Presbyterians, the United States, and Central America: Background of the 1980s Debate” as describing North Vietnam’s communist leader Ho Chi Minh as “”the George Washington of Vietnam.”