With mild apologies for the alliteration in the title, I wanted to take a look at a couple of patterns I have seen as I looked at Presbyterian history.

One of the concepts that I have been studying is the “reorganization” of denominations.  As I have commented before, this is more than just the divisions and schisms that probably first come to mind, but also a couple merger-related reorganizations that formed whole new denominations as well as reorganizations that merged multiple branches together.  I find it instructive that the “family trees” for American Presbyterianism and Scottish Presbyterianism are equally convoluted and the Presbyterian branch of the United Church of Canada is almost as full. (And the Canada chart does not even include the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada.)

But as I have been studying the partitioning a couple of patterns have jumped out at me:

The first are splits that are about two-to-one.  There are a few famous ones that are described as 30% or one-third (33%).  Maybe the most famous is the Scottish Disruption of 1843 where 450 ministers walked out of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and formed the Free Church of Scotland.  As with most of these splits the number in the minority are easy to find, but the number remaining is more difficult.  The departing group is widely described as one-third of the ministers, but thanks to Iain Campbell we know that 752 ministers remained, so the departing minority was close to, but slightly more than, one-third at 37.4%.

In that same ball park are the proportion of Presbyterian churches that chose not to join the United Church of Canada or the Uniting Church in Australia.  In both cases these are reported as about 30% for Canada and one-third for Australia.  (Canada, Australia)

Finally, while this is a single data point for a whole category, and it does represent a fairly unusual occurrence, it did catch my attention that last week’s vote on a pastor in a high-profile call ended up 69%-31%, a repeat of the 2:1 general proportions.

In American Presbyterianism the pattern seems to be either about 1:1 or a very small minority.

The two most famous breaks, the Old Side/New Side and Old School/New School, were closer to even breaks but when you dissect the numbers they are very complicated and some numbers are uncertain.  In addition, they were not so much departures as expulsions.

The date for the Old Side/New Side break is set at 1741, although the following year is interesting as well.  Charles Hodge gives us a very detailed account of the events leading up to the Synod (first GA was in 1786) and the commotion at the meeting.  For 1741 Hodge names the 25 clergy present from five of the six presbyteries (p. 176).  Hodge also lists those who met later to reform their excluded presbytery (p. 195) giving the names of the 11 clergy who were at the meeting, of which one was not on the Synod list.  If you use the 10-15 split of the Synod it would be a 40% minority or 2:3 split.  But the overall situation is more complicated.

One of the interesting aspects of this rupture is the dynamics related to the missing New York ministers.  While absent in 1741 they represented seven of the 25 clergy present at the 1742 Synod (28%).  Over the next several years, and throughout the 17 years of separation, several of the New York ministers were integral in healing the division.  While theologically with the Old Side, they felt that justice was not done to their New Side brethren and so in 1745 they left the Old Side to help form the New Side Synod of New York.

In all, Hodge tells us (p. 253) that there were a total of 40-45 ministers before the schism of which nine (20.0-22.5%) were excluded in 1741 and 11 or 12 more withdrew in 1745 ( about 50% total).

The 18th Century split can be viewed as a 50-50 division looking at the totals, but let me take the analysis a step further.  (And this is preliminary, based mainly on Hodge, so a true church historian may have better information.)  I find it interesting that at the 1742 Synod the ratio of Old School to moderate (previously absent) New York ministers was not quite, but approached, 2-to-1.

I am not going to do a detailed analysis of the Old School/New School split of 1837 and 1838 at this time except to note a few things:  1) It was an exclusion more than a parting of ways, 2) The NY Times reported that the original expulsion of Western Reserve was by a vote of 138-107 (56.3-43.7%) 3) But in the end the division was close to a 50-50 split based not on the Assembly vote but on the wider church that followed Western Reserve in the division.

The final pattern that I see is the very small minority.  I mentioned before the vote for a pastor that was about a 70-30 split.  In my experience working with several congregations there are always 1-2% of the members of the congregation that dissent on any vote to call a pastor.  Denomination-wide dynamics seem similar.  For example:

In 1846 when the Scottish Relief Churches merged with the Seceder Churches 14% did not agree.  (This is an exception since it is more than the “small minority.”)

In 1875 when four streams of Canadian Presbyterians merged 21 of 623 ministers (3.3%) did not agree and withdrew from the new denomination.

In 1936 there were 34 ministers out of almost 10,000 that left the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to form what would become the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

In 1973 260 churches, out of 4230 churches, (6.1%) left the Presbyterian Church in the United States to form the Presbyterian Church in America.

In 1981 67 churches formed the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, out of almost 9000 churches in the United Presbyterian Church.

One thing that happens when many groups split off is that there is a small group that initially forms but others may later join them when they see how things are working out.  One example of this is the Seceders in Scotland in 1733.  While they began small the Associate Presbyterians grew in number over the next few decades, and suffered their own divisions until by 1820 they had split into four groups giving a total of seven Presbyterian branches in Scotland.  By 1875 the membership breakdown in Scotland is recorded as:

Church of Scotland – 460,464
Free Church of Scotland – 256,554
United Presbyterian Church – 187,761

I find it interesting that the ration of the Established Church to the other two major branches is almost 50-50.&nb
sp; I would like to make the case that the membership pattern is fractal at 2:1, but with ratios of 1.79 and 1.37 there is a suggestion of semi-fractal nature in the 1.5 area.  (Or maybe I’m just making the data fit my theory.)

For the five branches coming off the mainline of American Presbyterianism in the 20th century the membership and congregation numbers are:

PC(USA) – 2,140,165 in 10751 congregations
PCA – 340,852 in 1693 congregations
EPC – 82,884 in 247 congregations
OPC – 27,990 in 255 congregations
BPC – 3000 est. in <30 congregations

This gives ratios of:

PC(USA)/PCA – 6.28 members, 6.35 churches
PCA/EPC – 4.11 members, 6.85 churches
EPC/OPC – 2.96 members, 0.96 churches
OPC/BPC – 9.33 members, 8.5 churches

Numbers are suggestive but not really close enough to declare it as fractal. (But I am interested by those ratios a bit over 6.)  And for a set of Presbyterian churches in major flux at the moment (although looking at history are Presbyterian churches ever not in flux?) ratios are changing so this may not be a good comparison of “stable” population.

So, all this comes with the usual disclaimers:  I put this together with a variety of data with varying quality.  It is intended to be an overview and summary and present areas for future exploration.  This discussion is by no means comprehensive of all the events that could be considered.  And finally, there is no statistical control on any of this so I could just be finding patterns in what is actually random numbers, a common human behavior.

None the less, I do wonder if there is something to certain of these patterns.  If these numbers are real does it represent something about the Presbyterian system of government?  Does it represent something about human nature in general?  Does it reflect something about how humans structure or organize themselves?

Questions to ponder.