Category Archives: History

A Shared History And Blogging Presbyterians

There are times when I start talking about the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, that people’s eyes glaze over and sometimes complain that “he was a Catholic theologian” (usually not in as many words though).

Well, besides the fact that John Calvin incorporated a lot of Augustine’s thinking in his own work, many in the Reformed Tradition seem to forget the fact that in the roughly 2000 years of the Christian Church, the present Reformed Church has only been around for one-quarter of that time. (And I say “present Reformed Church” because the object of the Reformation, and of our “always being reformed” is to more closely follow the pattern of the early New Testament church. But that is a topic for another time…)

In the same manner many in the mainline American Presbyterian Church think that all those other Presbyterian branches running around are just groups that “broke off from us.” They forget that the mainline has split and merged three times itself and that at the time of the American Civil War there were four parts to the mainline church (if it can be thought of as mainline at that time) and the present PC(USA) has, as a merged body, only been in existence for less than 10% of the history of American Presbyterianism.

(As an interesting aside, with the controversy in the Church of Scotland this past week I have been correlating their history with the American Presbyterian history. The major Scottish split, “The Disruption of 1843” is about the same time as the American Old School/New School split of 1837. I’ll be looking into that further to see about connections.)

All of this to say that there is a whole bunch of American Presbyterian history that the majority of modern Presbyterian branches share. With that in mind the following three blogs may be of interest to others who share an interest in Presbyterian history, or at least what got us to the point we are now at polity-wise. Don’t expect these blogs to always be “mainline friendly,” but they provide great historical insights into where we are now.

Old Life Theological Society – The moment I heard that Darryl Hart was a contributor to this blog I was hooked. The material is a mix of current events and historical information, but even the posts about current topics come with a good dose of historical perspective.

The PCA Historical Center has just started two new blogs as well. (Remember that shared history? If you want the historical background on the PC(USA) Book of Order that came from the PCUS branch they have all of that online.) Thanks to Mr. Wayne Sparkman, the director of the PCA Historical Center for overseeing these two new blogs.

The first one is the PCA History Blog and the description says that this is a place for people to share their stories about the PCA.

The second one is The Continuing Story and the purpose says that it “. . . is to provide a convenient place to share some of the wealth of
treasure to be found in the archives at the PCA Historical Center.” Among the information posted so far are pictures of the oldest item in the collection, a 1641 Calvin medal struck for the centennial celebration of Calvin’s return to Geneva.

So here is more information to keep us GA Junkies educated. Thanks for the blogs and happy reading.

Loss Of Identity In The PC(USA)?

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Yesterday Pittsburgh Presbytery hosted a Presbyterian Convocation on Our Freedom of Religion At Risk: A Presbyterian Crisis. I tried to structure my day so that I could hear as much of the webcast as possible. It was interesting at times but I’m not sure if it lived up to the title and a lot of the material I had heard before. I might make some more comments specifically on the Convocation in a future post.

But two of the speakers made comments that, combined with some other things I have read or heard recently, got me thinking about the loss of identity for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Has the PC(USA) drifted so that it is no longer, well… Presbyterian?

The first speaker at the Convocation, after the welcome and introduction, was Dr. Joseph Small, Director of the PC(USA) Office of Theology, Worship and Education Ministries. The announced title of his remarks was The Westminster Assembly, but he spent a significant part of his remarks talking about the basis of Presbyterian connectionalism being rooted in the biblical concept of koinonia, translated as communion or fellowship. He made the point that this koinonia between entities in the PC(USA) has severely deteriorated and said something like “it is almost entirely gone between presbyteries.” This struck a chord with me since back in October I had asked “Is The PCUSA Too Big?” with this issue in mind. It seemed to me that one of Dr. Small’s points was that our Presbyterian connectionalism has broken down to the point where we are almost congregational because of the loss of scripturally and Spirit-filled communion between groups in the denomination. He reminded us that the church is not a human endeavor but a community called together by God.

Two speakers later was Dr. Beau Weston on The Adopting Act of 1729, which he talked about in detail. The Adopting Act was necessary as a tool to settle differences between those presbyteries advocating subscription to the Westminster Standards and those desiring a less-enforced orthodoxy. He then jumped to the last 50 years and pointed out that with the Confession of 1967 the Presbyterian Church moved from adopting the Westminster Standards to agreeing to be guided by the new Book of Confessions. As he said yesterday, and has said elsewhere, including his book Leading from the Center, this was a turning point in the mainline Presbyterian church and the beginning of the loss of institutional identity. He makes the point as well in his recent document “Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.”

Central to the assault on authority in the Sixties was the overthrow of the confession of the church. When two northern Presbyterian bodies merged to produce the UPCUSA, a new confession was called for. The new confession, The Confession of 1967, was indeed produced. Instead of adopting the new confession as the constitutional standard of the church, though, the denomination took the revolutionary step of adopting a whole library of confessional documents. The Book of Confessions included the Westminster Standards, the Confession of ’67, and a slew of others. It was as if the country amended the U.S. Constitution, but, instead of incorporating new text into the venerable old document, adopted the entire constitutions of a dozen other countries, too.

In theory, the one constitutional confession was supplemented by many others. In practice, officers of the church were no longer expected to be bound by any confessional statement at all. Dropping the confession out of the binding part of the church’s constitution undermined authority in two ways. First, leaders no longer had any authoritative faith to develop or lead from; second, the body of the church no longer had a clear public standard to hold its putative leaders to. Instead of an establishment that kept one another humble by trying to live within the confession, the church was afflicted with a host of self-appointed prophets who expected the church to follow them, pay for their pet projects, and the like.

The consequence, he said yesterday, was that we stopped arguing over the confessions and started arguing over the Book of Order.

While Dr. Weston talked about this published theory of his, he mentioned a related item that I don’t recognize from his circulating work. He mentioned that he had done a survey of some members of the PC(USA) and asked which, if any, of the documents in the Book of Confessions should be there. Keeping in mind that the standard for adding a document to the Book is endorsement by 2/3 of the presbyteries, only the ancient creeds, Apostles and Nicene, even broke a simple majority. The Westminster Standards and Declaration of Barmen were next and the rest were further back.

Two thoughts crossed my mind. First, that this is a terrible indication of our theological identity and history. Second, if the confessions mean so little why is the PC(USA) embarking on the expense of time and money to consider the revision of one catechism and the inclusion of another confession.

I would also point out that the idea of the loss of identity with the diminution and abandonment of the Westminster Standards is not unique to Dr. Weston; this is a primary thesis of D. G. Hart and J. R. Muether in their book Seeking A Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism.

That is all I have to say about yesterday’s Convocation at this time, but two other items also crossed my path recently.

The first comes from Michael McCarty over at his blog Around the Scuttlebutt. I am sure some of you are following his series serving as a case study in church leadership titled “The Adventures of Graying Presbyterian Church.” Yesterday’s installment was called “To recall from whence we came.” He compares the church with the U.S. Marine Corps and how every marine learns the history and traditions of the corps. He then says of the church:

In the same way, when elders have a basic understanding of the history
of the Church in general and the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in
particular, they are better able to perform the really important duties
of their office.

The real irony here is that the expansion of the Book of Confessions was to allow for greater understanding and recognition of our tradition. I guess the problem is that we agree to be guided by it, and then set it on the shelf.

Finally, the other day a friend made the profound comment that churches that have a strong sense of identity with the PC(USA) are ones with older, well established facilities. Likewise, churches interested in leaving the PC(USA) with their property are more likely churches that have newer facilities. The idea is that the newer buildings are viewed as “we built this church, we should be able to keep it” as opposed to older facilities where the attitude is “our predecessors built this church and we are the beneficiaries of their faithfulness.” Again, do we have a long-term denominational identity or a short-term local identity?

This got me thinking and so I did a quick, semi-scientific study over lunch today. I took the last, that is the most recent, 20 churches on the Layman’s list of departing churches and tried to figure out the age of their facilities. For the sake of this survey I divided the “new” from the “established” at 50 years old. Many of the churches had their church histories on their web site making it easy to find out the age of the buildings. For a few I had to depend on the pictures on their web site. In a few other cases I could get a good idea from the Google satellite (actually aerial) image or the street view. And in two cases I could not be certain enough to make a call.

Of those 20 churches, 12 had new sanctuaries or worship spaces built or acquired in the last 50 years. One more was 52 years old. There were five that, as far as I could tell, worshiped in buildings substantially unchanged in outline in the last 52 years. At least in this quick survey the concept holds.

I do need to acknowledge the caveats here. The first is that I am painting with a very broad brush using easily attained data. The second, is that I have not even touched the negative evidence, the congregations with new buildings that are not even considering leaving. Or to put it another way, I don’t have a control group. And finally, I realize that it is probably easier and safer to say that churches with older buildings have more denominational identity and loyalty than to say that churches with newer buildings have less identity and loyalty. Anyway, it was a thought provoking comment that appears to have some evidence supporting it.

And in closing… Speaking of denominational loyalty, you probably saw the news this week that protestants these days have more loyalty to their toothpaste than their denomination. Yes, from USA Today, it turns out that 16% of protestants have single brand denominational loyalty, but 22% have one brand of toothpaste. The good news is that 67% of protestants have some denominational preference. Comment in the blogosphere is rampant but I’ll point to the Rev. Mark D. Roberts who is turning his comments into a series on this. And for the record — while I may be a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, my family has attended the church God calls us to. And one time, when God called us to another denomination’s New Church Development, I think some of the denominational hierarchy were glad to see this Presbyterian move on after questioning the episcopacy too many times. But that is a story for another time…

The 400th Anniversary of the Birth Of John Milton

Reformaion Day 2008

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A little over twenty years ago my wife and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel on a church “study tour” to Germany and Switzerland. It was great to see several of the architectural landmarks of the Reformation. But a more important observation was how history is read, or presented, through various lenses. The examples were numerous, both on my part and on the part of the places we visited and people we talked to. A couple of examples:

At the time we visited Germany was still a divided country and visiting Erfort and Eisenach required crossing into East Germany, the DDR. It was very interesting visiting the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach and seeing and hearing the official presentations about the castle under “godless communism.” If you are not familiar with the Wartburg, it is the castle in which Martin Luther hid out and finished his translation of the Bible into German. It is an impressive structure with a long history and wonderful architecture. But when we visited, the information on Dr. Luther was almost devoid of religious significance. It acknowledged the historical facts and the context of the Reformation, but the official view was that his pastoral and professorial duties were just his occupation. The great achievement of translating the Bible into German was not getting Holy Scripture into the common tongue for all to read, but rather by translating an important work into German he established a linguistic and grammatical standard for the German language. Oficially, what was translated was not important in itself, just that there was now a recognized and widely distributed book that would set the standard for the written language. If you don’t need God, you don’t need God’s Word for its own sake.

On the other end of the spectrum was visiting with local pastors from both East and West Germany. In West Germany, the Evangelish (Lutheran) Church was effectively a national church and we saw school children, as part of their classes, coming to church. A parish did not need to directly support their pastor since support came through their taxes. The church was a pivotal point in the community. In the East, we were told it was a rare exception to be the pastor of a single church. The general trend was to minister to three congregations: “To serve less would be an offense to the people and to serve more would be an offense to God.” But you could tell that the pastor we spent the evening talking to was dedicated to his work serving God and he loved the people.

A friend of mine had a similar experience when he visited the communist bloc with a church youth group a few years before our visit. At one stop a local came up to him and quietly introduced himself as another Christian. My friend expressed concern for the man because it must be hard to be a Christian in that country. The man reversed the comment to my friend, expressing his concern for the Americans because being a Christian was too easy, before slipping away into the crowd.

A lot is being said right now about how we have entered a Post-Christendom era (for example the recent Trinity University Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities) and people are concerned about the decline of the U.S.A. as a “Christian nation.” Elsewhere, the British Parliment is considering the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland is discussing if it should be a national church. And from many sides people are suggesting that we may be in the midst of a “New Reformation.”

I am not convinced that this is a totally negative turn of events. As products of Christendom how do we live our lives? Do we remember that one of the earliest names for the Covenant Community was “The People of The Way?” Our faith is not just an hour and some coffee on Sunday morning but a lifestyle choice. Are we too embarresed by our churches to invite our friends and neighbors to join us on Sunday morning? Do we take our faith too lightly? Do we recognize and give thanks for the freedom we have to practice our religion? Maybe, like Christians throughout history, including those I met in the communist bloc, some challange, rejection, or even oppression would help to focus our faith on living according to “The Way.” Is there a cost of discipleship? In the face of conflict do we need to stand up and announce what we believe? Sometimes we do need to declare “Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me. Amen!”

Happy Reformation Day!

Modern Echos of the Adopting Act of 1729

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The past couple of weeks I have been vacationing with extended family
and doing more reading and thinking than writing here. I finally had
time to concentrate on the book Seeking a better country: 300 years of
American Presbyterianism by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether (2007,
P&R Publishing). As a GA Junkie, I have found it a fascinating read
that fills in a bunch of details about events that I’m generally
familiar with. It provides an expanded version of Hart and Muether’s
great series of articles in New Horizons, a publication of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (I was not the only one reading this on vacation this summer.)

As they trace American Presbyterian history and get closer to the
modern day their OPC perspective becomes a bit more significant in both
an obvious protagonist as well as one basic thesis of the work. They
do a good job of developing this thesis and (spoiler alert) I’ll
mention it in my discussion below. (Don’t read on if you want it
developed their way.)

So, in tracing our history they show how we
Presbyterians are still involved in the same types of dysfunctional
behavior, if not necessarily arguing over the same issues, that have been part of our collective history for over 300 years now. For them, the root problem can be summed up as “Presbyterian Identity” and if we have any now, and maybe whether we every really had it.

Part I of the book deals with American Presbyterian History from 1706
to 1789. If those years don’t immediately register with you, 1706 is
the establishment of the first presbytery, and 1789 the first meeting
of the General Assembly. But Presbyterian history in this time period
is dominated by the Adopting Act of 1729, a document which still casts
a long shadow even today.

If the Adopting Act does not ring a bell, it may surprise you that the
PC(USA)’s current controversies have a direct lineage back to the
Adopting Act. It is the originating document for the concept of
“scrupling” which was recommended by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity and which the PC(USA) has been trying to
figure out the last few years.

The Adopting Act of 1729 dealt with the need for doctrinal unity
through subscription to the Westminster Standards at a time when the Presbyterian church was looking for something to unite them. Throughout the book it is Hart and Muether’s argument, at least as I read it, that the Westminster Standards are central to our “Presbyterian Identity” so that departing from them is to confuse or blur, if not abandon, our identity. It is interesting
to note that within American Presbyterianism today I think that almost all the other
American Presbyterian branches, other than the PC(USA), still has subscription to the Standards, or one of the American revisions (that is another topic).

So where does “scrupling” fit in? The Adopting Act says:

All the Ministers of this Synod now present, except one, [list of ministers deleted] after proposing all the scruples that
any of them had to make against any articles and expressions in the Confession
of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines
at Westminster, have unanimously agreed in the solution of those scruples,
and in declaring the said Confession and Catechisms to be the confession
of their faith, excepting only some clauses in the twentieth and twenty-third
chapters, concerning which clauses the Synod do unanimously declare, that
they do not received those articles in any such sense as to suppose the
civil magistrate hath a controlling power over Synods with respect to
the exercise of their ministerial authority; or power to persecute any
for their religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession
to the throne of Great Britain.

The Synod observing that unanimity, peace, and unity, which appeared
in all their consultations and determinations relating to the affair of
the Confession, did unanimously agree in giving thanks to God in solemn
prayer and praises.

While the Task Force report mentions this as the origin of scrupling, it does not point out that what was scrupled were not sections dealing with what we usually think of as central Christian doctrine, but were clauses dealing with the civil magistrate and church and state relationships, something that was more attuned to the state church environment the Westminster Standards were written in than colonial America. But the book also makes clear that ever since the church has been arguing over what is “essential.”

It is important to note that the content of these passages was pointed out at the time of the release of the Task Force report by, among others, Toby Brown on Classical Presbyterian.

Another interesting note is that the very next year the Synod (at that time the highest governing body) was overtured for clarification of what could be exceptions, and their response was that they understood the clauses that were open to exception “in the same manner, and as fully as the members of Synod did, that were then present.” In other words they pointed to their exceptions from the year before.

Now I am nowhere close to being an expert on the Adopting Act, but Hart and Muether, while acknowledging disagreements and ambiguity in strict subscription, seem to hold up these limited points of departure as what was acceptable to the original 1729 Synod and reaffirmed by the 1730 Synod.

But the outward unity of the American Presbyterian church only lasted another decade until 1741 when there was the Old Side/New Side split over “experiential” requirements for ordination in some New Side presbyteries. These presbyteries were looking for “spiritual zeal” demonstrated in, among other things, having a conversion experience. This was brought to a head by the arrival of George Whitefield and the “Great Awakening.” (Note: Don’t confuse this with the much more serious and prolonged Old School/New School division of the next century.)

But one of the issues that was heavily debated was the role of Synod in ordaining candidates. While New Side leaders passionately argued for presbytery sovereignty, Old Side members wanted some assurance of doctrinal consistency in the process. (Sound familiar?)

Interestingly, after the division the New Side instituted creedal subscription and presbytery adherence to synod decisions. The Old Side and New Side were really not too far apart and for much of the 17 year division were in correspondence about reunion. While not exactly the same, there may be a modern echo here in some of the renewal groups calls for “parallel” churches, or as the PFR statement says “remaining engaged but distinct.”

One of the interesting results of reunion was that in places the two Sides did remain engaged but distinct with the perpetuation of Old Side and New Side presbyteries. In particular there was the New Side Philadelphia Presbytery and the Old Side Second Presbytery of Philadelphia. To anyone following the last two PC(USA) General Assemblies it is interesting to note that there is a precedent for the affinity presbyteries for which there have been overtures. And it is also interesting to note that Second of Philadelphia continued almost right up to the Old School/New School split of 1838.

Finally, there are multiple echoes of the theological education controversy of that time period. There was an on-going discussion and dispute over the “Log College” in Pennsylvania. While it is an indirect predecessor of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), the Log College itself was a small theological training institution tied to the New Side and revivalism. The discussions held then about the educational depth of ministers trained at the Log College versus the larger institutions like Harvard, Yale or European Universities sounds almost exactly like the discussions currently happening in the Church of Scotland over whether ministers can be trained at the Highland Theological College or whether they must get their education at the larger established universities like Edinburgh or Glasgow.

But the subscription question related to theological education that was present in the controversy around the Log College is also present today in the controversy related to Prof. Peter Enns departure from Westminster Theological Seminary. In a current article on the WTS web site, Carl Trueman, Vice-president for Academic Affairs discusses the idea that academic freedom does not trump confessional standards and the need for a seminary to adhere to denominational norms. (H/T: Heidelblog)

Now, I have been intentionally brief in summarizing these controversies because my focus here was simply to note that in my reading the book it struck me that “there is nothing new under the sun.” In any one of these controversies there is a lot more depth and complexity that I did not touch upon. Further investigation of those is left as an exercise for the reader.

But across different Presbyterian branches today we are sill engaged in discussions about theological, doctrinal, and polity tensions that have been with us since the founding of American Presbyterianism. “Reformed and Always Reforming According to the Word of God”

Decently and in Order: We Presbyterians can be an interesting lot

Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences

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Tradition has it that on this day, October 31, in 1517, Martin Luther posted on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany his “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” This invitation to scholarly debate is now commonly known as the “95 Theses” and is considered a pivotal moment in the Protestant Reformation. (More information on the 95 Theses from Wikipedia)

This was an academic and scholarly document, no question about that. Luther was a theology professor and wanted to debate theology. And this was not mainstream theology. Luther was directly challenging the church doctrine of the day, a doctrine that had economic implications for the church. But while he was challenging the church doctrine and theology, at this point he was not challenging the existence of the church itself. In an effort to preserve the status quo the “powers that be” realized the threat this posed to them, their authority, and their way of life. As events unfolded the stakes were raised and a renegade branch of the Roman church split off to form what is today the Lutheran Church. It is interesting to note that probably the only reason that Martin Luther did not meet a swift and sudden end was that in God’s providence there was a political structure in place that chose to, and was able to, protect him.

Fast forward to today: Yes, I have structured this commentary to have direct parallels to the current crisis, and yes I deliberately use that word, in the PC(USA). When the 217th GA passed the PUP report and the new Authoritative Interpretation, I had hoped that the polity and theological issues would play themselves out decently and in order. I had hoped and prayed that members, churches and presbyteries would take a step back and make it happen that “nothing had changed.” Instead, as we have seen, the AI has raised a significant level of distrust in the “powers that be.” (Yes I know, we are Presbyterians and the “powers that be” are supposed to be us as presbyters.) And the gang in Louisville isn’t doing us any favors by having file cabinets full of legal memos and actively helping synods and presbyteries pursue civil litigation against congregations. In the last two weeks I have had several conversations with people, sessions, executives, and other officers and much of what I have been hearing makes the PC(USA) sound like an inverted triangle with the mission and the program on the overloaded top coming down to the “people in the pews” rather than the church being founded on a base guiding and doing mission. The PC(USA) may win the battle but lose the war.

In this press for invoking the trust clause to protect property and per capita I close with G-3.0400 from the PC(USA) Book of Order:

The Church is called to undertake [its] mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.

Happy Reformation Day

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism