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.