PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH
The Reading Room - History
Presbyterianism in America - The 20th Century
By: Dr. John A. Battle (Professor of New Testament and Theology - WRS)
Introduction • Works Cited
The Presbyterian Church moves to a new gospel (1900-1934)
The Presbyterian Church divides and adjusts (1934-1967)
The Presbyterian Church realigns itself (1967-2006)
The Challenge of the Future
The Presbyterian Church moves to a new gospel (1900-1934)
At the beginning of the century
When the twentieth century opened, the Presbyterians in America were largely contained in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA, the Northern church) and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS, the Southern church). There were a few smaller Presbyterian denominations, such as the pro-Arminian Cumberland Presbyterian Church and several Scottish Presbyterian bodies, including the United Presbyterian Church of North America and various other branches of the older Associate and Reformed Presbyteries and Synods. While there were significant differences among these bodies, and while liberalism or modernism was infecting some of them, they by and large agreed in their strong biblical and Reformed teachings.
However, under the surface there were changes going on in most of these churches. This certainly was the case in the PCUSA, by far the largest Presbyterian denomination in America. During the 1880s and 1890s there had been efforts to amend the Westminster Standards, as held by the PCUSA. Some said they were too dated, and needed to be made relevant for modern society; others wanted to soften their robust Calvinism. One of the leaders of this effort had been Charles Augustus Briggs of Union Theological Seminary in New York. However, the constitutional changes did not gain enough votes from the presbyteries, and in 1893 Briggs himself was suspended from the Presbyterian ministry on heresy charges. Union Seminary removed itself from Presbyterian supervision, but continued to produce graduates that were received into the church.
So, at least on the surface, the PCUSA appeared to be strongly conservative and Calvinistic as the new century began. But underneath, these doctrines were not held firmly by many in the church. Briggs himself had stated this back in 1889:
The Westminster System has been virtually displaced by the teaching of the dogmatic divines. It is no longer practically the standard of faith of the Presbyterian Church. The Catechisms are not taught in our churches, the Confession is not expounded in our theological seminaries. The Presbyterian Church is not orthodox by its own Standards. It has neither the old orthodoxy nor the new orthodoxy. It is in perplexity. It is drifting toward an unknown and a mysterious future.1
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The Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Amendments of 1903
For several decades there had been efforts to court the Cumberland Presbyterian Church to reunite with the PCUSA. Nearly a hundred years earlier they had divided over the issue of Calvinism. The Cumberland churches favored an Arminian perspective, along with active and emotional evangelism. They desired to emphasize the love of God for all people, and were offended by those who limited that love to the elect. Many in the PCUSA shared that theological slant, and desired to accommodate the Cumberland emphasis. In addition, many others believed that strict Calvinism was unattractive to people in general, who preferred the idea that God loves all equally, and wishes the salvation of all.
The 1900 General Assembly received many overtures to revise the Confession of Faith or to make a newer, shorter confession. The Assembly started to work and appointed a committee to study the matter. After a year of inquiry and labor, another committee was appointed to draw up the proposed amendments, which were overwhelmingly adopted by the presbyteries in 1903.
There were three categories of changes:
- The actual text of the Confession was amended in three places: the clause saying that “it is sinful to refuse lawful oaths” was removed; the statements identifying the pope as the antichrist were removed; and the statement that the good deeds of men are “sinful” was reworded to say they “fall short of what God requires.”2
- Two additional chapters were appended to the Confession: Ch. 34, “Of the Holy Spirit”; and Ch. 35, “Of the Love of God and Missions.”
- A “Declaratory Statement” was added to the Confession giving the church’s “authoritative” interpretation of the Confession at two points: (1) the eternal decree of God is consistent with his “love to all mankind” and his “desire” that all be saved; and (2) all infants dying in infancy are elect, regenerated, and saved.3
All these amendments, and the accompanying “declaratory statement,” had the total effect of softening the perceived harshness of some Calvinistic doctrines. When the changes were first proposed in 1900, B. B. Warfield of Princeton Seminary opposed any changes to the Confession.4 A typical conservative objection to the changes by Edward B. Hodge of Philadelphia was published in the Princeton Theological Review in 1903.5 That same year Geerhardus Vos of Princeton published a lengthy article distinguishing the Pauline doctrine of forensic justification of the elect based on his fulfillment of the covenant of works from the more Arminian approach that saw the love of God as the basis of justification.6
But after their adoption was completed, Warfield put the best face on it, maintaining that the doctrines of the church were not materially affected by the amendments. He was seeking to show that the robust Calvinism of the original Confession remained still, and was opposing the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and those seeking union with it—people who used the revisions as evidence favoring a looser interpretation of the Confession.7
While conservative Presbyterians in the PCUSA opposed union with the Cumberland church and its Arminianism,8 the pressure built, and most of the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination was received into the PCUSA in 1906. Since that time the consistent Calvinism of the original PCUSA has been held by a continually shrinking portion of the church. Conservatives in the church found less unity around the whole Calvinistic and Reformed system of doctrine, and had to shrink their common area of defense to the “fundamentals” of the faith.
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Modernism and fundamentalism
During the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century the “modernist” ideas were spreading throughout the universities, seminaries, and churches in Europe and America. These ideas sprang from the Enlightenment. Basically, truth was reduced to that which could be observed or derived from human reason, and trust in any kind of divine revelation was rejected. People were very confident that this approach to knowledge would eliminate ignorance and bigotry and would bring a new golden age to this enlightened society.9
As modernism impacted the churches, many Christian truths were changed or dropped altogether. Biblical “higher criticism” rejected the inspiration and even the authenticity of much of the Bible. Darwinian evolution provided a model for the development of plants, animals, and humanity without invoking miraculous creation. Marxist political and economic theory provided a new eschatological goal of a perfect socialist society in this world. Modernist theology adapted classical Christian doctrines to the currently popular idea of “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”
In 1908 the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America was formed, with significant participation by the PCUSA. Leadership in this council was decidedly pro-modernist in theology and liberal in politics and economics. Many conservatives were alarmed by the pronouncements and actions of the Federal Council.
Conservatives in all branches of the Christian church found their core beliefs under attack. Two Presbyterian laymen, Los Angeles businessmen Lyman and Milton Stewart, sponsored the publication in 1910 of The Fundamentals, several volumes of scholarly, timely articles by conservative Christian scholars; they had copies sent free to all the ministers in the country. This publication was a major reason for the conservatives being given the name “fundamentalists.”10
Within the PCUSA the modernist influence, openly taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and at least tolerated in the more moderate seminaries in the rest of the country, especially McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, continued growing. Princeton Seminary was the most important seminary in the denomination seeking to stem the tide.11
In 1910 the General Assembly of the PCUSA, alarmed by modernist candidates to the ministry being licensed by some presbyteries, passed a resolution stating that certain “essential and necessary doctrines” must be believed by all officers of the PCUSA.
Five doctrines were chosen — doctrines under particular attack by modernists:
- The inspiration and consequent infallibility of the Bible
- The virgin birth of Christ
- The substitutionary atonement of Christ
- The physical resurrection of Christ
- The miracles of Christ
These central Christian doctrines came to be known as the “five fundamentals.” Unfortunately for the conservatives, General Assembly resolutions were not binding on the presbyteries; more modernist ministers were ordained in spite of the resolution. The five fundamentals were reasserted by the General Assemblies of 1916 and 1923 (with shrinking majority votes). Yet the tide toward modernism continued. In 1924 the last fundamentalist moderator was elected by the General Assembly, Clarence Macartney. That same assembly, however, failed to incorporate the five fundamentals into the requirements for ordination, and it rejected the effort to impose them on other church administrative or agency officials. At that point, the coalition of modernists and “inclusivists” (as J. Gresham Machen called them) controlled the majority. Fundamentalist Christianity never again prevailed in the PCUSA.
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Modernism wins in the PCUSA
During the first third of the twentieth century the most prominent fundamentalist leader in the PCUSA was J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament at Princeton.12 Recognized already in academic circles for his scholarly defense of the doctrines of the virgin birth of Christ and the origin of Paul’s theology in Christ’s teachings and atonement, his academic credentials made his more popular works carry much weight in the church at large. In 1923 Machen published the book that catapulted him into the midst of the controversy, Christianity and Liberalism. In this book he contrasted classic Christianity with the new doctrines in the basic areas of divinity (God, man, salvation, etc.). He demonstrated that they really are two different religions, not just two varieties of one religion.
In 1924, 1,274 Presbyterian ministers appended their names to the so-called Auburn Affirmation. This statement objected to making the five fundamentals required for ordination into the PCUSA ministry. In the view of the signers, the opinion of the General Assembly concerning these five “facts and doctrines” was only one “theory,” and that other “theories” of these “facts and doctrines” were equally allowable in the PCUSA. Surprisingly, the 1924 General Assembly did nothing to address this affirmation. In 1927 the General Assembly officially determined that it could not determine “essential and necessary” doctrines to be believed to be ordained in the PCUSA, but could only rule on individual appeals. Thus the Auburn Affirmation position became the official policy of the church.
After the “inclusivists” had consolidated their position in the PCUSA, they tightened their control over the church at large by administrative means. By 1929 they amended the church constitution so that all local church properties became the property of the denomination. From that time on, the PCUSA could use financial pressure to enforce submission and conformity to its decisions. Ministers could lose their pensions; congregations could lose their properties. Loetscher described the situation well:
The Presbyterian Church was forced, in order to preserve its unity, to decentralize control over the theological beliefs of its ministers and candidates for the ministry. The problem of power and freedom has thus been solved to date by simultaneously increasing administrative centralization and decreasing theological centralization; increasing physical power while at the same time anxiously seeking to prevent its trespassing on the realm of the spirit. This was also a concession to the pluralistic character of modern culture. . . . Increasingly prominent through at least the first third of the twentieth century was a pragmatic conception of the Church which, in the interests of avoiding divisions that would injure the Church’s work, has substituted broad church inclusion of opposing theological views for theological answers to them.13
In that same year the General Assembly changed the board structure of Princeton Theological Seminary so that it would be controlled by the inclusivist party. Machen and a few others left Princeton and established Westminster Theological Seminary in the outskirts of Philadelphia.
From that point on, fundamentalists in the PCUSA fought a rear-guard defensive battle against modernism in the church. The modernists were making strides; for example, in 1930 the church voted to allow women elders.14 While fundamentalists were welcome to stay in the church, it was clear that they would have to “behave,” and allow modernists and Auburn Affirmationists to minister alongside them.
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Separation for the gospel
While modernism was being promoted actively at Union Theological Seminary in New York and by other bodies outside the control of the PCUSA, in general the pastors and seminaries within the PCUSA were basically orthodox in teaching, although many were tolerant of other views and favored an inclusive church. However, Machen and others soon discovered that there was more active modernist teaching going on directly by PCUSA ministers and teachers on the foreign mission field. This was apparent by the work and writings of missionary to China Pearl Buck, who believed all religions led to God. Machen was also informed about other missionaries under the Board of Foreign Missions who taught modernism, and even favored communism. By indirect pressure, Pearl Buck was forced to resign from the PCUSA work; but other modernists remained.
Machen became directly involved in this matter when he proposed to the Presbytery of New Brunswick in 1933 that an overture be sent to the General Assembly that the Board of Foreign Missions personnel, both on and off the field, assert their agreement to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity passed earlier by the assembly. At that time Machen published a 110page booklet with documentation showing modernism in the PCUSA mission organization and teaching.15 The presbytery also invited Robert E. Speer, the senior secretary of the board. After a very brief debate, the presbytery rejected the overture and asserted its confidence in its board. However, other presbyteries did send parallel overtures to the General Assembly, which considered them in its May 1933 meeting. The General Assembly took no action on those overtures, and once again approved of the work of its mission board—thereby approving the teaching of a false gospel.
Since support for the official mission board would mean supporting the teaching of the false modernist gospel in some places, Machen and other conservative churchmen could not in good conscience support it. In order to provide an alternative for people to support Bible-believing missionaries, he led in the formation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions (IBPFM) in June, 1933. This announcement was made by H. McAllister Griffiths immediately after the assembly’s refusal to remove heresy from the official board:
In view of the action of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. resisting the movement for reform of the Board of Foreign Missions, a new Board will be organized by Bible-believing Christians to promote truly Biblical and truly Presbyterian work.16
While the denominational leaders had tolerated Machen’s starting an independent seminary in 1929, they quickly acted to crush the new mission board. Obviously, the mission board would divert much more money away from the denomination than the seminary had. Immediately after the assembly of 1933 and the formation of the IBPFM, the General Council of the PCUSA developed a document called “Studies of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.”17 It came to be called “the Mandate of 1934.” It was approved and put into action by the denomination.
The Mandate reviewed the historical background of authority within the PCUSA, especially regarding mission work. It concluded that the General Assembly had ultimate control over the mission works of the church, and that all Presbyterians, especially officers, were obligated by their membership and vows to support the officially approved mission works, and no others:
Through years of experience, the General Assembly has finally decided that it can best administer the missionary work of the Presbyterian Church under its own ecclesiastical authority through Boards of its own appointment. The synods, presbyteries and churches of the denomination can sustain and countenance only such missionary agencies within their respective areas as the General Assembly authorizes and designates under the Constitution of the Church.18
This obligation was constitutionally no weaker than the obligation to partake of the Lord’s Supper.19 Every Presbyterian was obligated to use his offerings according to the rulings of the General Assembly “with the same fidelity and care as he is bound to believe in Christ and to keep His commandments.”20 Of course, Machen and those with him rejected such a blasphemous and idolatrous interpretation of the church’s constitution, and the totalitarian church that would spring from it.
The Mandate of 1934 not only provided the theoretical basis for not allowing the IBPFM to exist among members of the PCUSA, it also set forth a plan of action: the IBPFM must “desist forthwith”; all members must immediately sever their connections with the IBPFM; and all presbyteries must enforce these policies through church discipline.21 The report of the General Council was adopted by the General Assembly.
After the Mandate was adopted, some of the members of the IBPFM resigned; but Machen and others refused to comply with the order. Machen issued his statement, “I cannot obey the order,”
based on three principles:
- Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would involve support of a propaganda that is contrary to the gospel of Christ.
- Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would involve substitution of a human authority for the authority of the Word of God.
- Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would mean acquiescence in the principle that support of the benevolences of the Church is not a matter of free-will but the payment of a tax enforced by penalties.
He concluded that “all three of the above mentioned courses of conduct are forbidden by the Bible, and therefore I cannot engage in any of them.” At the same time, he insisted that he was “in accord with the Constitution of that Church and can appeal from the General Assembly to the Constitution.”22
The stage was set for a division in the Presbyterian Church. Machen and others still prayed that the church could be reformed. But if not, in order to be true to the gospel, it was necessary for the Bible-believers to separate from the PCUSA. To fail to separate would mean that they would by necessity be supporting the false gospel of modernism.
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