A HISTORICAL STUDY DR. MIKE LOUDON- Theological Task Force

A HISTORICAL STUDY DR. MIKE LOUDON- Theological Task Force I d like to think with you for awhile about the Presbyterian Church and our interesting history which is a balance between local decision making and decision making by the higher governing body. Our reformed roots go back to Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, and Hungary. But for the sake of this discussion, I d like to look with you at our roots that go back to both Scotland and England. In England, local decision making was favored over pronouncements by the higher judicatory. In Scotland, decision making by the higher governing body was favored. Our Presbyterian Church reflects both streams of polity. The first presbytery in America was organized in 1705 in Philadelphia. There were seven ministers and certain elders present for this meeting. Interestingly enough, there was no formal constitution, no book of order, and no book of confession to guide the church. Sounds like the new Wineskins movement to me. In 1729, 24 years later, the Westminster Confession of Faith, which had been adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1645 as the basis for their constitution, was adopted as the constitution for the Presbyterian churches in America. All elders and ministers were asked to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. However, Jonathan Dickinson of New York was unable to agree with every jot and tittle of the Westminster standards. A solution was proposed which made a distinction between essential and non-essential tenants in the theological standards. A candidate could claim that he had (and they were all he in those days) a scruple concerning what he believed was a non-essential tenant of the confession. The presbytery could then determine whether an individual s scruple was indeed on an essential or non-essential article. The new interpretation became known as the Adopting Act and gave leeway in this whole area of ordination. For a time there was peace in the church. Tension erupted 10 years later, however, during the Great Awakening when presbyteries dominated by the Revival Party ordained graduates of William

Tenant s Log College (later to become Princeton University) who were less interested in rigid adherence to Westminster theology than to an experience of grace. For their part, the new side leaders charged the more orthodox group, which became known as the old side, with being more interested in theological orthodoxy than in either Christian experiences or personal morality. In 1741, the old side forced William Tenant and the leaders of the new side and New Brunswick Presbytery out of the synod. Its action was protested by the Presbytery of New York and eventually the Presbytery of New York also left the denomination and, together with New Brunswick, formed a new synod called the Synod of New York in 1744. Thus, in Colonial America there were two Presbyterian denominations one centered in Philadelphia and one centered in New York. The old side (Philadelphia) held strongly to the Westminster standards. The new side (New York) was influenced by the Great Awakening and the preaching of Calvinist, George Whitfield, and Methodist, John Wesley. In worship, the old side wanted order. The new side wanted ardor. In government, the old side followed the Scottish model of central control. The new side followed the English model of more localized decision making. In 1758, these two groups reunited. The reunion was essentially a compromise between the stricter Scots and Scots-Irish and the more ardent English. The reunion was accomplished using the then 29 year old Adopting Act of 1729. After the Revolutionary War, the General Synod gave way to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). We had a new national constitution, a new federal government, and a new denominational government as well. But again, tension arose in creating the church constitution. A balance was created between former old side and new side leaders. Our preliminary principles in the Book of Order grew out of this compromise. For example, the principle of church state separation was very new in 1788 and opposed by some. One presbytery, Suffolk, separated from the synod over this issue, but was later reconciled. Soon the nation was being swept into another spiritual revival, often called the Second Great Awakening. The spearhead of this awakening was a Presbyterian evangelist by the name of Charles Finney, who in the 1830 s 2

held crusades in New York, Philadelphia, and the cities all along the Erie Canal, such as Rochester and Syracuse. His revivalism caused great concern among traditionalists. He was, for example, the one who instituted the alter call, which he called the anxious bench. There was such consternation over Finney that he eventually gave up on the Presbyterian Church and became a Congregationalist and ultimately ended up in Oberlin, Ohio, as president of the college in that community. This was only part of the tension in the church in the early and mid 1800 s. In addition to the division over Finney and his modern evangelistic methods, a union with the Congregationalist Churches and Presbyterian Churches was not going well. Presbyterians had joined together to do mission work and new church development with the Congregationalists. The old school Presbyterians in Philadelphia who held strictly to the Westminster Confession viewed the Congregationalists as not truly Calvinists. You always have to watch those independently minded New Englanders. The union began to fall apart. At its heart, this controversy was again the Scots vs. the English in their views of polity and strict adherence to Westminster theology. There was a third element problems on the frontier of Kentucky and Tennessee where great revivals were sweeping through the Appalachian Mountains, and new churches were being founded and pastors were needed. The traditionalist leaders of the church back in Philadelphia said wait for ordained men to graduate from Princeton or other established schools, but the churches on the frontier would not wait for ordained pastors and many left to become Methodists or Baptists, or to form the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1837, the Presbyterian denomination therefore again split into two divisions. The old school followed the Westminster Confession of Faith, were rigid conservatives, sang the Psalms, and upheld the decorum in worship. No contemporary worship and praise choruses for these people. They followed the Scottish Presbyterian model of central control. The new school folks, on the other hand, were revivalists who stressed that one needed to know Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. They were not so concerned with strict adherence to the Westminster Confession as with 3

getting one s life right with God and getting God s work done. In church government, they followed the English model of local control. Interestingly enough, Princeton Theological Seminary, which had been at the center of the new side old side division in the mid-1700 s, when it was the Log College and was a new side school, was now the standard bearer for the old school group in the early 1800 s. Professors of Princeton had developed a very conservative adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith under theologians Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and Archibald Alexander. This became known as Old Princeton Theology and would come into play very significantly 100 years later in the next major battle of the Presbyterian Church. The seminaries developed by the new school group in the early to mid 1800 s were Union Seminary in New York and Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is now part of McCormick Seminary in Chicago. Meanwhile, down in the southern states the most prominent Presbyterian theologians were Robert Dabney of Union Seminary in Virginia and James Thornwell of Columbia Seminary, which in those days was actually in Columbia, South Carolina. Thornwell developed a theology called The Spirituality of the Church. He believed it was wrong for the church to get involved in non-ecclesiastical issues and taught that the church should address only spiritual issues. Of course, Dr. Thornwell was an apologist for slavery and at that time many of the new school Presbyterians in the north were calling for the abolition of slavery, which only made Presbyterians in the south more and more committed to the old school views. When the American Civil War occurred, the Presbyterian Church split north and south in 1861. There was the new school north and the new school south and the old school north and the old school south, although as I mentioned, the south was predominantly old school. For awhile, there were four major Presbyterian denominations in our divided nation, in addition to some smaller groups such as the Cumberland Presbyterians, the Reformed Presbyterians, the Associate Reformed Presbyterians, and a denomination formed in 1858 called the United Presbyterian Church of North America, which is where my family s roots are found. 4

Following the Civil War, the old side and the new side in the north merged in 1869 into the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. The two sides of the church in the south came together during the Civil War and continued as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.) until 1983, when it merged with the northern church. Our church battles were far from over in many respects they were just starting. The most famous was the Presbyterian controversy of the 1920 s, also known as the Fundamentalist Modernist Debate. This conflict erupted in May of 1922 when Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick of the First Presbyterian Church of New York City preached his famous sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Actually, Dr. Fosdick was an American Baptist and not a Presbyterian. He was serving as supply pastor. Fosdick s sermon was quickly answered by an equally powerful sermon by conservative Dr. Clarence Edward McCartney, pastor in those days of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. His sermon was entitled Shall Unbelief Win? This controversy is spelled out in detail in Dr. Bradley Longfield s outstanding book, The Presbyterian Controversy. I commend it to your reading. In many respects, it was the old side/new side, and old school/new school revisited, but with a different twist. This time the issues were not revivalism or new styles of doing ministry, but rather the use of higher critical methods of interpreting scripture and the theory of evolution. Still, it was new thinking vs. traditional thinking, the same dynamics as found in previous controversies and, frankly, the same dynamics we deal with today. The General Assemblies of 1910, 1916, and 1923 officially declared as central five fundamentals to which all Presbyterian ministers were asked to subscribe. These were belief in the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the inerrancy of scripture, and the miracles of Jesus. Many, like Fosdick, chafed under these directives which they viewed as new subscription acts. This battle was waged, not only at the General Assembly, but between a couple of seminaries Princeton Seminary, flying the flag of the conservatives, and Union Seminary New York, flying the flag of those who 5

were more liberal. By this time Union Seminary New York had pulled out of the denomination because the General Assembly in 1891 had refused to approve Dr. Charles Briggs as the new chair of the Biblical Studies Department because of his higher critical views on scripture. That s an interesting story in and of itself, but I won t go there today. Throughout the early 1920 s, the election for moderator of General Assembly was a major battle year after year. Key figures in this debate were Harry Emerson Fosdick, William Sloan Coffin, Robert E. Spear, Charles Erdmann, Clarence Edward McCartney, J. Gresham Machen, Mark Allison Mathews, and the silver-tongued orator from Lincoln, Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan. In 1924, 1274 ministers signed a document called the Auburn Affirmation which called for more tolerance than was manifest in the five fundamentals. Also in that same year, Harry Emerson Fosdick was asked by the General Assembly to join the Presbyterian Church or surrender his right to preach at First Church in New York. He was not removed from the pulpit by the conservatives, but his ministerial fate was left in his own hands and he chose to resign that pulpit. Soon thereafter one of his wealthy parishioners, John D. Rockefeller, built a beautiful new cathedral church in which Fosdick could preach The Riverside Church of New York. Things were so hot in the denomination that in 1925 a special commission was appointed to investigate the present spiritual condition of the church and report back as to why there was so much unrest in the denomination. This commission was made up of 15 people. These men were liberals, conservatives and moderates, and became known as the Swearingen Commission, named after the chairman Dr. Henry Swearingen. They initially reported to the Assembly in 1926 and then brought a final report in 1927. Their report calmed the denomination and brought peace to the troubled church. In essence, what the Swearingen Commission did was to make non binding the five fundamentals of the faith that had been outlined by the 1910 General Assembly and allowed the church to return to the Adopting Act of 1729, which permitted each presbytery to decide who should be ordained. If someone had a scruple against a non-essential, that was to be seriously taken into consideration by that presbytery. Although remember, the essentials were then never spelled out. 6

Let s fast forward to the year 1974. A young man named Walter Wynn Kenyon graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, first in his class, I believe. His father, The Rev. Walter Kenyon, was the pastor of the Deer Creek Presbyterian Church in Western Pennsylvania. When Wynn Kenyon was a student at Pittsburgh Seminary, he became part of a group of students who felt especially loyal to Professor John Gerstner, one of the few remaining faculty members of the Old Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, which had been part of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. This denomination merged with the PCUSA in 1958 to form the UPCUSA. Gerstner taught a form of Calvinism indebted to Jonathan Edwards and B. B. Warfield. Kenyon and others supported this position. During his examination on theology and polity by the Candidates and Credentials Committee of Pittsburgh Presbytery, Kenyon explained to the committee that he felt the Bible did not allow the ordination of women. He could work with women elders, he just personally could not ordain them. The Candidates and Credentials Committee of Pittsburgh Presbytery recommended against ordaining Kenyon on the grounds that he could not answer affirmatively question 5 of the eight questions asked of those who are ordained in the church, namely Do you endorse our church s government, and will you honor its discipline? and Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them subject to the ordering of God s Word and Spirit? Kenyon felt that he could answer all 8 questions affirmatively because the ordination of women to which he objected was not an essential of Presbyterian government. The Presbytery of Pittsburgh then took the unusual action of reversing the recommendation of its Candidates and Credentials Committee and voted 147 133 to ordain Kenyon. A formal complaint was duly filed by a member of the Candidates Committee, The Rev. Jack Maxwell, on February 15, 1974. He tried to make clear that he bore no animosity toward Kenyon, but saw the issue as one of the polity of the church. On March 6, 1975, a stay of execution was filed with the Stated Clerk of Pittsburgh Presbytery. Its effect was to postpone Kenyon s ordination until a final decision was reached in the case. Dr. Maxwell s complaint against Pittsburgh Presbytery was heard by the Judicial Commission of the old Synod of Pennsylvania/West Virginia. By a 7

close vote, the synod s Judicial Commission upheld Maxwell s complaint. On April 19, 1974, the commission entered its judgment that the action of Pittsburgh Presbytery was irregular and declared the same is hereby rescinded. Pittsburgh Presbytery immediately appealed to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly. Again, Dr. Maxwell and the Committee on Representation argued their respective cases before the highest court in the Presbyterian system. On November 18, 1974, in St. Louis, Missouri, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly rendered its landmark decision. The Judicial Commission sustained the synod s decision and also overruled the presbytery. What they said was, The Presbytery s power is not absolute. It must be exercised in conformity with the constitution. In other words, our polity is a government of law, rather than of man The question of the importance of our belief in the equality of all people before God is thus essential to the disposition in this case It is evident from our church s confessional standards that the church believes the Spirit of God has led us into a new understanding of this equality before God. Thus, the action of the General Assembly s Permanent Judicial Commission shifted the balance of power in ordination issues from the presbytery to the General Assembly. In March of 1975, the Presbytery of Shenango, of which I was a member at the time, overtured the General Assembly to overturn the Kenyon decision and to reaffirm the principle of liberty of conscious as set forth in the constitution, and the constitutional right of presbyteries to examine individual cases of descent and to permit exemption from conformity to particular church laws for ministers and members who are persuaded by conscious that they cannot comply that who give assurance that they will not obstruct the application of those laws by their fellow presbyters or within their congregations. That overture was defeated at the General Assembly of 1975. What Shenango Presbytery was asking for was a balance of essential tenants/denominational standards, balanced with the belief that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and respect for freedom in non-essentials. In other words, national standards and local application, which is what Task Force Recommendation #5 is all about. 8

That brings us then to 1976 when the Presbytery of New York brought to the General Assembly a question concerning the ordination of what we then termed an avowed practicing homosexual. In 1978, the General Assembly dealt with that question and passed what is now known as Definitive Guidance. This was subsequently supplemented by adding to the Book of Order G6.106b, the Fidelity and Chastity Amendment. In 2001, after battles to overturn Definitive Guidance and two or three attempts to remove G6.0106b from the constitution, the General Assembly formed the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. We are the first such Task Force since the Swearingen Commission of 1925. The report that we are presenting to the denomination, like the report of the Swearingen Commission of 1927, and like the basis of reunion of both the old school and new school and old side and new side, harkens back to the Adopting Act of 1729. It supports national standards and local application. I hope this background, historical and polity information has been helpful to you as you consider our report. Reference Material: Leading From the Center- William J. Weston. Geneva Press, 2003 The Presbyterian Controversy- Bradley J. Longfield. Oxford Press, 1991 Charles G. Finny- Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe Eerdmans, 1996 American Presbyterians- James H. Smylie Presby Historical Society, 1985 A Brief History of the Presbyterians- James H. Smylie Geneva Press, 1996 A Brief History of the Presbyterians- Lefferts A. Loetscher Westminster 1978 History and Polity presentations to the Theological Task Force by Dr. Joe Coalter, and Dr. John Wilkinson. 9