Three southeast Pennsylvania churches vote to immediately disaffiliate from the PCUSA
By Patrick Jean, Staff Writer, June 29, 2007
Three southeastern Pennsylvania churches that are older than the United States of America voted overwhelmingly June 24 to immediately disaffiliate from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The congregations – Forks of the Brandywine Presbyterian Church in Glenmoore, Great Valley Presbyterian Church in Malvern and Upper Octorara Presbyterian Church in Parkesburg – also have filed lawsuits against Donegal Presbytery, seeking to be declared owner of their properties.
The churches’ lawyer, Michael R. “Mac” McCarty of Philadelphia, said he has had preliminary discussions with the presbytery’s legal team. They could do one of three things, he said:
- File preliminary objections.
- File answers to the churches’ complaints.
- Seek an extension while they decide how to respond.
They’re supposed to respond within 20 days of when they were served with copies of the lawsuits. The lawsuits were filed June 11 in Chester County Common Pleas Court, meaning a response would be due by next week.
The three churches plan to join the New Wineskins-EPC Presbytery of the smaller, more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. They are members of the New Wineskins Association of Churches, a conservative organization that successfully petitioned the EPC for the establishment of a transitional, non-geographic presbytery to receive groups of churches into membership in that denomination. The 27th EPC General Assembly overwhelmingly voted June 22 for a plan to create non-geographic, transitional presbyteries to receive congregations seeking to join the denomination.
How churches got here
At Forks of the Brandywine Church, there had been discussion of the 272-year-old church’s relationship with the denomination for years, said the Rev. Andy Curtis, pastor. But serious talk of leaving began within the past year, he said.
“I think the PUP Report and what that has done was really the precipitating event for us,” he said, referring to the 217th General Assembly’s approval last June of the report by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity that keeps the current ordination standards in the PCUSA’s Constitution, but allows those who choose not to obey them to declare them to be non-essential.
Around September, Curtis said, church leaders began to more fully educate the congregation on issues and the “sense of disconnect that was going on.” He felt that the denomination was walking away from them, rather than the other way around.
Informational meetings began in October and continued into 2007. Newsletters and other handouts also helped inform congregants, Curtis said.
Concerns expressed in the meetings touched on the possibility of long-term litigation and the role of the church’s property in that, the pastor said. Corporate meetings were held to address the property issue as it relates to church bylaws and state code, he said.
Last month, the session recommended a congregational vote on immediate disaffiliation. Donegal Presbytery’s unsuccessful legal action against two departing churches in the 1980s played a significant role in making that recommendation, Curtis said.
“This was as much to do with corporate law in the state of Pennsylvania and case law here in Chester County, and in commonwealth courts, the relationship between previous congregations in the PCUSA that had disaffiliated back in the early ’80s and how the courts handled that,” he said. “And because the courts responded in favor of the local congregations and their disaffiliating and what that meant, we believed that that was the best route for us to go as well.”
For some at Upper Octorara Church, actions taken by the 2006 General Assembly were the last straw, said the Rev. Bill Kelly Jr., pastor. For others, he said, it was a growing awareness that strife within the PCUSA would continue and would drain energy and resources away from the true mission of the denomination.
Further studying and prayer, he said, showed that by emphasizing diversity and inclusiveness, the PCUSA “has gotten away from Biblical boundaries and essentials of the faith. … The various issues that are being argued about are really symptoms of mutually exclusive essentials trying to live in the same church together.”
Representatives of Upper Octorara Church attended the New Wineskins convocations in Tulsa, Okla., last summer and Orlando, Fla., in February and shared information from those meetings with the rest of the church. Congregational meetings showed the 287-year-old church wanted to follow the New Wineskins’ strategy report presented in Orlando, Kelly said.
“We understand that churches can be faithful and stay within the PCUSA, but we just felt that, for us, it was time to seek to affiliate elsewhere,” he said. After a series of informational meetings, the church session called for a congregational vote on immediate disaffiliation.
Immediate disaffiliation was favored over requesting dismissal, Kelly said, because the congregation:
- 1. Felt like it had the authority to do so.
- 2. Would have more control over the process, as opposed to facing obstacles thrown up by the presbytery or the PCUSA if a dismissal request was made.
“Like one of our elders says, ‘When the Lord leads you to do something, you want to go ahead and do it,'” he said.
Great Valley Church’s pastor, the Rev. Daniel Stewart, was on vacation and not available for comment on his 301-year-old church’s path to the disaffiliation vote.
Lawsuits are filed, votes are in
The lawsuits were filed two weeks before the church’s votes. McCarty said that, in light of “The Louisville Papers” and the presbytery’s lawsuit against two other churches that were seeking to leave some 20-25 years ago, “We felt that we had to file suit in order to protect the interests of the corporation.” Each church is a nonprofit religious corporation under Pennsylvania law.
McCarty, who is a member of Forks of the Brandywine Church and an ordained elder, helped write the New Wineskins strategy report presented at the group’s Orlando convocation. He has his own issues with the PCUSA.
“I’ve been disturbed with where the denomination is since the ReImagining faith fiasco in ’93, the ‘ReImagining God’ conference,” he said. “The single largest sponsor of that was the PCUSA.”
The 1993 conference, which espoused a radical revision of Christian doctrine that refuted the maleness of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ, ignited a backlash in the PCUSA – causing the denomination to lose millions of dollars and leading the 1994 General Assembly to declare that the movement was beyond the bounds of the Christian faith.
“That was my first introduction, when I first really started to become conscious of problems in the denomination,” McCarty said.
He said he also was upset by the Rev. Dirk Ficca’s “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” sermon. In 2000, the Presbyterian minister from Chicago told the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference that Jesus Christ is just one of many paths to salvation.
The lawsuits McCarty filed for Forks of the Brandywine, Great Valley and Upper Octorara churches seek:
1. “An order declaring that defendant (including any person, entity, administrative unit, agency, commission, committee or governing body acting on behalf of defendant or in its stead, or claiming by, through or under defendant) is barred from asserting any right, lien, title or any other interest in the real properties at issue on any basis, including but not limited to the PCUSA’s Book of Order.
2. “A judgment ordering the Department of Records (or, in the case of the Great Valley lawsuit, “the officer or officers of Chester County authorized and empowered to do so”) to cancel and relinquish any clouds on title entered on the properties at issue by defendant, and that it grant such further relief as may seem to this honorable court just and equitable.”
3. “An order declaring:
- A. “That all property held by or for the plaintiff Presbyterian congregation … whether real or personal, corporeal or incorporeal, movable or immovable, is held by it without any trust in favor of defendant.
- B. “That all property held by or titled in the name of the local church corporation is held by it in full and exclusive ownership.
- C. “That defendant has neither right, title or interest in said property, nor right to determine the ownership thereof.”
On June 24, the churches held their disaffiliation votes. In each case, the result overwhelmingly favored leaving the PCUSA.
Forks of the Brandywine Church has 207 members, Curtis said. Of those, 139 voted at the June 24 meeting, he said. One hundred and thirty-six voted for immediate disaffiliation and three voted to stay in the PCUSA.
Upper Octorara Church has 268 members, Kelly said. Of those, 124 voted June 24, he said. One hundred and thirteen voted for immediate disaffiliation and 11 voted to stay in the PCUSA.
Great Valley Church had 221 members in 2006, according to the PCUSA’s Web site. Of those, 181 voted June 24, McCarty said in a news release. One hundred and seventy-nine voted for immediate disaffiliation and two voted to stay in the denomination.
McCarty said he and Curtis were at a meeting in Denver six or seven years ago where the seeds for the New Wineskins Association of Churches were sown. “I have expected this day to come for years,” he said. “An elder with whom I served for years, when she walked into our meeting on Sunday night, she had tears in her eyes and she said, ‘Well, Mac, the day that we’ve been praying for is finally here!'”
What’s next?
Curtis and Kelly said their churches are applying to join the EPC, and will seek to join the New Wineskins-EPC presbytery after that. The joint efforts of their churches and Great Valley Church to file property ownership lawsuits and vote on immediate disaffiliation from the PCUSA came through their involvement in the New Wineskins Association of Churches, they said.
“One thing that really attracted us to them was the fact that they said, ‘Here are the essentials of the faith. This is what we believe, and this is how we should we live based on those beliefs,'” Kelly said. “And it struck us that this was a solid Biblical presentation of essentials of the faith that we agreed with, and that the PCUSA did not really have that clearly spelled out.”
Kelly said he has not yet heard from Donegal Presbytery. Before the vote, he said, presbytery officials expressed sadness at the churches’ impending departure; appreciation for their ministry in the presbytery; and a desire for things to be worked out in a pastoral, Christian atmosphere.
“Up to this point, things have been very cordial,” he said.
The presbytery authorized an administrative commission to respond to the three churches, but didn’t give the commission powers such as replacing a church session or pastor, Curtis said.
No information about the administrative commission could be found on the presbytery’s Web site. The presbytery’s associate executive presbyter, the Rev. Charlie Gross, declined an interview request from The Layman Online.
As for the lawsuits, McCarty expects the cases to be consolidated and is prepared to file motions seeking a summary judgment, but he is hopeful for a negotiated settlement. Since the presbytery lost lawsuits against two departing churches in the 1980s and unsuccessfully appealed each case, “We’re hoping that they’re going to say, ‘Why would we want to litigate this again?'” he said.
Also working in the churches’ favor is Pennsylvania’s legal precedent of being a “neutral principles” state. In a 1985 decision, Presbytery of Beaver-Butler of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America v. Middlesex Presbyterian Church, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s courts must “apply the same principles of law as would be applied to non-religious associations” when deciding a church property ownership case involving a local church and a denominational body.
“We are gratified with the presbytery’s pastoral response,” Stewart said in a news release announcing the church vote totals and the lawsuit filings. “We look forward to working to expeditiously resolve the property issues, especially in light of the fact that the presbytery litigated and lost the same issues a quarter of a century ago. We have already told the presbytery that we will cooperate with extensions of time to respond to the complaint if that will hasten our dialogue.”
“To this point, Donegal has been very friendly,” Curtis said. “I’ve not experienced any indication from the presbytery that they intend to take a hard-line stand of any kind. My understanding is that they have no interest in the property. My understanding is that they have every interest in having a peaceful and grace-filled transition.”
The cases have not been assigned to a judge or given a hearing date.
Kelly said his personal reaction to the disaffiliation is mixed. “I believe we are following where the Lord is calling us,” he said. “There are a lot of precious brothers and sisters in the Presbytery of Donegal who are doing wonderful work for the Lord, and this is not a reflection on them or anything personal or negative toward them or the work of the presbytery at all.”
“In a sense, there’s sort of grief at leaving that home and moving in a different direction,” Kelly said. “But at the same time, there’s a sense of knowledge that this is what the Lord is leading us to do and there’s an excitement that I’m following in this new direction where He’s calling us to go.”
For Curtis, the departure is bittersweet and sad. “You spend for some what’s a lifetime preparing for the ministry,” he said. “For me, a second-career person leaving a first career to go into ministry – I left a family business to do this, because God’s call was so clear. And He led me into ministry through the PCUSA. The relationships that I have developed over the year