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Note #7983 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Rift redux
03449
October 22, 2003

Rift redux

Task force finds comfort in the hard lessons of church history

by John Filiatreau

FORT WORTH, TX - The Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity last
week reviewed the whole history of Presbyterians in the United States, from
the establishment of the first U.S. presbytery in 1706 to the 1983 reunion
that created the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Gradually, a "big picture" emerged - of an ever-Reforming group of
contrarian, hard-headed Christians who began quarreling over polity and
doctrine a century before the United States came into being and never really
stopped.

American Presbyterians have been torn asunder along virtually every
imaginable "bifurcation" of faith and practice:
Congregationalist/Presbyterian; Scots-Irish/English-Welsh; North/South;
Subscriptionist/Anti-subscriptionist; Psalm singer/Revivalist; New School/Old
School; Modernist/Fundamentalist; Conservative/Liberal.

Less filling/Tastes great.

Presbyterian history is an adventure in schism at home, schism in the mission
field, threats of schism, warnings against schism, campaigns for schism, and
reunions after schism.

The task force members took it all in and found it ... heartening.

"The history presentations have been tremendously helpful to me," said
Frances Taylor Gench, a seminary professor from Virginia. "I've felt an
enormous sense of relief. Now I know that it's wrong to think we're never
been in such a serious crisis before."

Mark Achtemeier, a seminary professor from Iowa, said he also found the
survey "extremely comforting," partly because it showed that Presbyterians
have long been "people who live with ambiguities."

One clear lesson, he said, is that "a kind of premature press toward absolute
certainty about things ... has done great damage to the church." He added
that he and his fellow task force members must resist "the temptation to
search for the one right approach to the Bible."

"I have this sense that we've been here before," said Jack Haberer, a pastor
from Houston. "It almost as if you can just jump in, at 1873, or 1910, or ...
"

Mary Ellen Lawson, an elder and presbytery stated clerk from Pennsylvania,
reminded her colleagues that the mere realization that Presbyterians have
trod this path before "doesn't get us off the hook."

The history discussion began with a look at the 1789 Constitution of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

The first provision of this first church constitution is the familiar,
problematic claim that "God alone is Lord of the conscience."

The document also includes name of the task force, in a question to be put to
candidates for ministry: "Do you promise to study the peace, unity and purity
of the church?" ("Study" meaning "applying oneself diligently," as in "study
war no more.")

The old constitution, consisting of fewer than 50 pages of large type, could
serve as the vest-pocket Book of Order craved by Stated Clerk Clifford
Kirkpatrick.

John Wilkinson, a pastor from New York, traced the history of the northern
and southern "streams" of Presbyterianism, which he called institutions of
"very long reach" with "long lifespans." They persist to some extent in the
church of today.

The Northern church, the United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPCNA),
came into being in 1858 with the union of two previous denominations, the
Associate Presbyterian Church and the Associate Reformed Church. The Southern
church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), grew out of an
"Old School" faction that split from the UPCNA in 1861.

Wilkinson said the churches disagreed not only about slavery but also about
styles of governance and worship.

In the northern church, ecclesial authority was top-down; the General
Assembly ("the Great Presbytery") was the seat of ultimate power. In the
southern church, the presbytery was the locus of power; there was no
effective central government. Both granted "original jurisdiction" in matters
of ordination to the presbyteries.

The northern church promoted a piety of plain living and style of worship
"free of ostentation," even shunning hymns not based entirely on scripture.
Southern worship was more free-form and revivalist in spirit.

The northern church was quicker to resort to discipline and structure; it
held that anything not prohibited in scripture was permitted. The southern
church, suspicious of corporate bodies, held that any authority not conferred
in the Bible was not to be imposed.

The PCUS held to the Westminster Confession, with virtually no amendments.
The UPCNA was more open to "additional attainments in truth ... made under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit," and thought it was appropriate for "a
living church" to "restate its faith from time to time."

Both denominations permitted protest and appeal of majority decisions. (In
some periods, said Barbara Wheeler, a seminary president from New York, "Half
of every meeting was devoted to protests and responses to protests. It became
a kind of liturgy.") But neither branch was very tolerant of behavior
considered divisive or schismatic.

Both denominations required officers to conform in matters deemed
"essential." The rule of thumb was, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials,
forbearance and love." But what was essential and what was not was never
really settled in either.

"We've been confused for a long time," Wilkinson said. "Both churches were
very shrewd in not answering the question (of what was essential) head-on."

Joe Coalter, a seminary library administrator from Louisville, made a
presentation on "Points of Balance in Presbyterian Governance," focusing on
four:

* The powers of presbyteries vs. the powers of the General Assembly;

* The authority of confessional statements vs. freedom of conscience in
doctrine.

*The authority of the Presbyterian form of government vs. freedom of action
in practice.

*Distinctive Reformed/Presbyterian identity vs. flexibility for mission.

All four figured in the long denominational "war" between subscriptionists,
who thought candidates for ministry should be required to sign off on the
essentials of the faith and of Presbyterian polity, and
anti-subscriptionists, who considered the practice a violation of freedom of
conscience. (The dispute arose decades before "God alone is Lord of the
conscience" became a settled constitutional principle.)

One faction in the only American synod, in Philadelphia, in 1720 objected to
the church's imposition of rules not specifically and clearly warranted in
scripture. That led to the Adopting Act of 1729, in which the synod said
that, although it did not wish to "claim or pretend to any Authority of
imposing our faith upon other men's Consciences," it was nonetheless
requiring "all the Ministers of this Synod" to "declare their agreement in
and approbation of the Confession of Faith with the larger and shorter
Catechisms of the assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the
essential and necessary Articles, good Forms of sound words and systems of
Christian doctrine."

It went on to say that a candidate who had a "Scruple" about any part of the
confession or catechisms could still be ordained if his reservations were
involved only "extra-essential and not-necessary points of Doctrine," and
promised that such a person would not be "traduced" or described in
"opprobrious Terms."

Opponents said subscription caused division and offered no real protection
from unscrupulous candidates. Subscriptionists said that, while Reformed
tradition held that confessions were imperfect in "form," they were perfect
in substance and truth. "Imposing the truth on a conscience," they reasoned,
"is no imposition at all."

Presbyteries dominated by subscriptionists ignored the "scruples" provision,
claiming that, since it appeared only in the preamble of the Adopting Act, it
didn't apply. In 1736 the Act was officially reinterpreted as not including
its preamble.

Jonathan Dickinson, one of the anti-subscriptionists of 1720, was still
around in 1736, and he protested again. He was joined by five
minister-members of the Tennent family and other sympathizers, all of whom
were promptly expelled from the synod. When their efforts to make peace were
rebuffed, the Tennent-Dickinson faction formed a separate Synod of New York.

The Philadelphia and New York synods weren't reunited until 1858, under a
compromise that stopped short of requiring subscription to the church's
"orthodox and excellent System," merely "strictly enjoining it on all our
members."

According to Wilkinson, the "God alone is Lord of the conscience" provision
was not "a ringing declaration of individual freedom," as often supposed. It
was thought that virtually all God's intentions were made clear in scripture,
 so personal decisions were seldom required.

Wheeler surveyed New School/Old School split and reunion, starting with the
1801 "marriage of convenience" between Presbyterians and Congregationalists
in her home region, the huge Military Tract in northwestern New York, then
largely unchurched and "a magnet for missionaries." Under the Plan of Union,
the churches agreed that their missionaries would work in "a spirit of
accommodation"; churches could associate with either denomination, or both;
ministers could serve congregations in either, or both; and disciplinary
matters could be conducted in either, or both.

The groups split along roughly liberal/conservative lines and evolved into
"two parties of almost equal strength," Wheeler said, and in time found
themselves dealing with a range of "rising tensions" - over ethnic
differences among immigrants, the "new revival" sweeping the country,
competition in missions, slavery, the influence of para-church organizations,
and the use of contemporary music in worship.

In 1837, a disgruntled group of "Old Schoolers" presented a list of
grievances to the General Assembly, claiming that the GA didn't represent
"the majority of the Church and the people of our communion"; that church
courts weren't acting against ministers guilty of "gross errors"; that
non-Presbyterian (ecumenical) organizations had too much influence; and that
presbyteries were ordaining people unfit for ministry, including people who
accepted "only the 'substance'" of Presbyterian belief, rejecting parts of
the "system."

The similarity between these disputes and many of those that afflict the
church today was not lost on the task force members.

"Oh, we are so modern," said Haberer, a leading PC(USA) evangelical.

In the 1830s it was the liberal "New Lighters" who belonged to the
evangelistic wing of the church and embraced the revival. (Conservatives
blamed them for "the multiplication of spurious excitements, and the
consequent spread of heresy and fanaticism," as well as "worship conducted in
a manner shocking to public decency" and the spectacle of "females often
leading in prayer in promiscuous assemblies.")

The conservatives said all the troubles were "the consequences of an
unnatural intermixture" - of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, way back
in 1801.

Commissioners to the 1837 General Assembly voted to "exscind" four New School
synods, declaring them "not a part of the Presbyterian church," and said it
was "imperative" that presbyteries rigorously examine prospective members.

The result was two competing Presbyterian churches, both claiming the
constitutional high ground, both claiming to represent peace, unity and
purity, both claiming to guard true orthodoxy, and both claiming to be the
United Presbyterian Church of North America. Former colleagues became bitter
enemies, stopped speaking to one another, and sometimes refused to use the
same sidewalk.

Reunion of those two didn't come until 1868. Weary from war, having their
fill of disunion, the two churches agreed to recognize each other's
ministers, devised a five-year plan to make "imperfectly organized" churches
"thoroughly Presbyterian," and declared that presbyteries could, but weren't
required to, examine ministers applying for membership.

They agreed that "differences have always existed and been allowed ... as to
modes of explaining and theorizing within the metes and bounds of one
accepted system."

And they promised to keep searching - together - for a "system" that would be
"precise, yet not exclusive; definite, yet not rigid; specific, yet not
inflexible; liberal, without laxity; catholic, without latitudinarianism."

That search goes on today.

Task Force Co-chair Gary Demerest, a retired minister from California, said
he was particularly struck by the persistence of the "constant tension
between the 'essentials' and the 'scruples.'" How to reconcile the two, he
said, "is the heart of what we're doing." He added: "I'm not ready to say we
can never agree on some essentials."

Jong Hyeong Lee said the history of Presbyterianism in Korea, like that of
the U.S. church, is one of "conflict and disruption." American missionaries
"brought their conflicts here with them to Korea," he said, creating
divisions that have been "not really resolved, but reconciled."

"This is where we have our mission as God's people," he said.

Sarah Grace Sanderson-Doughty, a pastor from New York, said the task force is
seeking "a way to honor two apparently very divergent voices" in the PC(USA).
Honoring both, and tolerating the tension between them, is "a paradox that
seems to me incredibly faithful to the gospel," she said.

Haberer said he thought it was useful to see how bygone Presbyterians dealt
with "living with some tensions that we need some help in living with today;
we do need to live in that tension, one way or another."

Barbara Everitt Bryant, an elder from Michigan, said it was good to be
reminded that "conflicting views in the Presbyterian Church are nothing new."

Wheeler said the history shows that Presbyterians always have been "good at
taking sides," adding that events in the church "have been inducing if not
requiring us to do that in the last 20 years." The task force members have
been able to resist that pressure, she said, in part because they have been
"quick to listen."

That was an echo of part of the Letter of James, the focus of the Bible study
that had kicked off the task force's meeting:

"You must understand this, my beloved: Let everyone be quick to listen, slow
to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.
... How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a
fire."

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