Presbyterian history lesson: dissension, schism, reunion
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 21, 2003
DALLAS – For nearly 300 years, Presbyterians in America have weathered schisms, bitter debates and joyful reunions, members of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity were told during their October meeting in Dallas.
Using Power Point presentations, three members of the task force provided their colleagues a sketch of the ways that American Presbyterians in the past have wrestled with issues of diversity and unity.
The presentations were made by Joe Coalter, librarian at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary; Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary; and John Wilkinson, pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y.
The sum of their presentations was that Presbyterians have long disagreed over “essential tenets” – sometimes to the point of schism – but that they also have had many reunions that have brought them back together.
The historical sketch did not include some of the latest separations, including the Presbyterian Church in America in 1972 and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in 1983. Both the PCA and the EPC, which are conservative denominations, have grown steadily since parting company with the PCUSA. In contrast, the PCUSA and its predecessor Presbyterian denominations have incurred enormous losses – totaling 1.4 million since 1966.
Wilkinson said the 1972 separation will be examined at the February meeting of the task force.
There were no conclusions as to how the task force might use the historical material in its final report to the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). However, there seemed to be consensus that one theme marked the discussions: Presbyterians on both sides have bent over backwards to try to undo schisms and maintain peace.
The centerpiece of the reconciliation effort has been a series of General Assembly statements that have softened language in polity and confessional statements so that both sides of the ongoing debate between standards and unity have found points of concurrence.
Coalter had a two-part presentation, one titled “Points of Balance in Presbyterian Governance” and the other “Two Significant Streams of Influence.”
Terming “polity the ligament by which we work together,” Coalter described in his first presentation how Presbyterians worked out their differences from Colonial days through the birth of the Book of Confessions in 1958.
The first Presbytery in America was organized in 1706 in Philadelphia without a formal constitution or a confessional statement. Its members came from diverse church backgrounds, Coalter said, and problems arose quickly from “contrary congregational or hierarchial leanings.”
In 1716, the Synod of Philadelphia was organized and soon began trying to compel ministers to submit to its rules. Led by Jonathon Dickinson, a number of the clergy objected.
Dickinson considered the synod’s rules nothing “more than bold invasions of Christ’s Royal power.” But by 1724, New Castle Presbytery in the Synod of Philadelphia began requiring its ministers to subscribe to its standards, based on the Westminster Confession and its catechisms. In 1729, the Synod of Philadelphia approved what is known as the “Adopting Act,” which required all ministers to subscribe to Westminster.
Coalter contrasted some of the opposing views: The anti-subscriptionists did not think subscription “would protect against the unscrupulous” and that it only caused division; the subscriptionists said the confessions were always imperfect in “form” but sometimes perfect in “matter” and that “imposing the truth is no imposition at all.”
The Adopting Act of 1729 did allow candidates for ordination the right to declare “scruples,” but only about articles “not Essential and necessary in Doctrine, Worship or Government.”
Later, the Tennent family, which was deeply involved in the First Great Awakening, led a third-party movement. They were concerned that subscription would exclude the “experimental” religion that highlighted religious experience in the revivals.
In 1741, the Tennent Party was expelled from the Philadelphia Synod, and Dickinson’s sympathizers joined the Tennents in forming a separate Synod of New York.
The two synods were reunited in 1758. One of the stipulations, which is often quoted today by Presbyterians, was: “That when any Matter is determined by a Major vote, every Member Shall either actively concur with, or passively Submit to Such Determination; or, if his Conscience permit him to do neither, he Shall, after Sufficient Liberty modestly to reason and remonstrate, peaceably withdraw from our Communion …”
But the 1758 reunion agreement made no mention of subscription. Instead, candidates for ordination were called not to subscribe to but to “receive” the Westminster standards and “preach and teach according to the Form of Sound words in Said Confession & Catechisms.”
Thus, subscriptionism lived a brief life – from the 1729 Adopting Act until the 1758 reunion.
Coalter used the models of the UPCNA and the United Presbyterian Church (USA) to demonstrate that some of the same issues continued to be debated.
The UPCNA existed until it merged with the United Presbyterian Church (USA).
“Both denominations allowed ‘original jurisdiction’ to presbyteries for the examination and ordination of candidates for the ministry,” Coalter said. “But the UPCNA allowed its General Assembly more latitude not only to answer appeals and references from lower governing bodies, but also to provide instruction and direction in all matters to the whole church.”
He provided a chart of the “similarities and contrasts” of the two denominations, including:
Similarities ContrastsPresbytery locale of “original jurisdiction” for ordination UPCNA General Assembly not only receives appeals but instructs and interprets law for whole church; PCUSA GA avoided ‘in thesi’ deliverances and even when it spoke, its deliverances were “considered ‘didactic, advisory and monitoring’ – not requiring judicial prosecution expressly.” Two-thirds of Presbyteries required to approve constitutional amendment The PCUS held to the Westminster standards with only minor amendment until 1942. The UPCNA was willing to replace the Westminster with a new confession, known as the “Confessional Statement,” which was based on “additional attainments in truth it may have made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” Both permitted cooperation in mission, but “largely within the circumscribed Reformed/Presbyterian family” – excluding ecumenical cooperation. Power tended to flow from the top of the UPCNA and from the congregation in the PCUS. Acts of lower courts always subject to review by higher courts. Protest and appeal to majority determinations were open to members of both communions. But divisive, schismatic behavior in the face of decisions by the majority were considered beyond the pale.
Wheeler traced the division in American Presbyterianism that became known as “Old School” and “New School.”
She began by focusing on what was known as the “Military Tract,” two million acres in northwestern New York. The land was essentially Colonial frontier before the Revolutionary War.
In the early 1800s, with an influx of settlers attracted by land grants, the Military Tract began developing – and missionaries came to build churches. Wheeler said there was a “wildfire revival” led by Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists.
At that time, Wheeler said, Presbyterians and Congregationalists had some things in common. The Congregationalists tended to organize in presbytery-like assemblies and the Presbyterians in New England shared the congregationalists’ “improved theology” that drew from revival experiences. “The Presbyterians and Congregationalists looked a lot like each other,” Wheeler said.
The Presbyterians and Congregations hammered out an agreement “to promote mutual forbearance and a spirit of accommodation;” to allow newly formed congregations to associate with either denomination or both; to allow their ministers to serve either churches of either denomination; and to exercise discipline by either denomination or by both jointly.”
In the wake of that union, two wings of Presbyterianism – known as Old School and New School – emerged. The Old school leaned toward subscriptionism and the New School sought to accommodate burgeoning experiential religion.
The New School gained its strength in the Northeast and the Old School in the South, although both were influential in the other regions.
One of the New School figures was Charles Finney, a 19th-century revivalist and Presbyterian lawyer. Finney’s revivals were dramatic and emotional – Wheeler compared them to contemporary worship services. Finney, she declared, was a “nightmare” for the Old School.
Finney left the Presbyterian church and developed his own theology, which denied the necessity of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ for one’s salvation.
The division between Old School and New School became sharper.
Wheeler, noting that the denomination had become “an unnatural mixture of Presbyterianism and congregationalism,” said there were a number of issues promoted by the New School advocates and opposed by the Old School, including:
- Ministers accepting the “substance” of church doctrine but not the “system” of governance.
- A “multitude and variety of creeds … which even if true are needless.”
- The disuse of the office of ruling elder.
- The inability to obtain from church courts convictions of ministers who committed “gross errors.”
- “The overuse of evangelists, contributing to ‘the multiplication of spurious excitements and the consequent spread of heresy and fanaticism.'”
- “Disorderly and unseasonable meetings,” including “females often leading in prayer in promiscuous assemblies.”
In 1837, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (predominantly Old School) ousted four New School Synods and broke relations with ecumenical mission bodies. The New School advocates responded with a declaration in which “true doctrine” was described as: “While all such as reject the Gospel of Christ do it, not by coercion but freely – and all who embrace it do it, not by coercion but freely – the reason why some differ from others is, that God has made them to differ.” A similar argument is made today by homosexual activists – that God made them that way and, therefore, their sexual behavior is not sinful.
The split begun in 1837 lasted until 1852, when the two Presbyterian denominations – both bearing the same name – were reunited. But the Southern church, strongly influenced by the Old School, withdrew in 1861 to form a separate body, later to become the Presbyterian Church U.S.
Wheeler highlighted the “reunion spirit” – saying it included the mutual exchange “of guarantees for orthodoxy … and Christian liberty.” That same theme was echoed in the pronouncements of leaders of the 1983 reunion that brought back together the Southern and Northern mainline streams of Presbyterianism into what is now the PCUSA.
Wilkinson’s sketch focused on 20th-century events that were part of what he called the “fundamentalist-modernist controversy.”
Much of the foment in the PCUSA “is an outgrowth of what happened before. I find that kind of heartening, not distressing,” he said. The late 19th century was a kind of “cyclone” socially and politically, he said, with advances in the economy, science, technology and “higher criticism” of Scripture.
Dissent in the Presbyterian Church reached a boiling point in 1891 when Charles A. Briggs was in line to become president of Union Theological Seminary. But Briggs had incited protests from the Biblical conservatives who believed in the infallibility of Scripture, and the 1891 General Assembly voted against letting Briggs assume the presidency.
Briggs, who had studied higher criticism under German scholars, lost the presidency partly because of his statement about Scripture: “There is nothing divine in the text – in its letters, words, or clauses.”
“Briggs, started out sympathetic to Old School,” Wilkinson said. “He talked about his mediating theology, which not considered provocative. … He spoke about barriers, inerrancy and infallibility.”
Briggs’ allegiance to higher criticism spawned a backlash. Sixty-three overtures opposing his appointment at Union were presented to the 1891 General Assembly. Briggs’ appointment was turned down and the commissioners approved a statement expressing their belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. In addition, in 1892, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission suspended Briggs from the ministry. He became the pastor of a Protestant Episcopal Church.
The next great battle began brewing in the early 1900s, Wilkinson said, culminating in the 1910 General Assembly’s adoption of five fundamental tenets: 1) the inerrancy of Scripture, 2) the virgin birth, 3) the substitutionary atonement, 4) the literal bodily resurrection, and 3) the factuality of the miracles worked by Jesus Christ.
One of the key Old School players in the early 1900s was J. Gresham Machen, a Princeton Seminary professor who threw down his gauntlet in words that still have a rippling effect. “Liberalism is not Christianity,” he said. “It is a different religion.”
The left flank responded to the five tenets in a highly publicized and widely circulated sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Fosdick, a Baptist, was the preaching minister but not installed as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New York City.
His attack of the five fundamental tenets sparked a backlash from liberals. In 1923, the General Assembly voted to require that require that Fosdick be examined in accordance with the five tenets. He resigned rather than face the inquisition.
But, with financial help from the Rockefeller family, the liberals responded with an appeal to the General Assembly called the “Auburn Affirmation.” That affirmation declared that the church “does not require [ministers to] … to assent to the very words of the Confession, or to all of its teachings, or to interpretations of the Confession by individuals or church courts. The Confession of Faith itself disclaims infallibility.”
It blamed conservatives for stirring up discord and disunity. The Auburn Affirmation was never approved, but in 1925, the General Assembly did veto the fundamental tenets as a requirement for ministers.
Next, Wilkinson highlighted the 1958 General Assembly, after which, for the first time, the denomination created a “book of confessions” by