The Reading Room - History

Historical Backgrounds of The Bible Presbyterian Church

Introduction • Early Tensions • Growing Pains • Reunion of Estranged Brothers
A Succession • Another Thread • Conclusion & Sources

By: Christopher K. Lensch (Associate Professor of OT - WRS)

Reunion of Estranged Brothers

Other denominations also were unraveling in this era, primarily over the issue of slavery that would rend the nation. After the Civil War there was a general spirit of healing. Every American denomination had been fractured by the political turmoil, and many were swift to reunite after the war. While Southern Presbyterians were not ready to be received back into the national assembly, the new school divorcee sought rapprochement with her former denomination. After all, there was the precedent of the Old Side–New Side reunion of 90 years earlier.

While some, like Charles Hodge, cautioned against the reunion, the Old School–New School re-marriage became official in 1870. Both sides had always held to the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and the chastened New School had begun to guard its gates of entry into the ministry when it was spurned in 1837.

The PCUSA was invigorated by the reunion. Growth accelerated through the end of the 1800s. The denomination was militant against the rationalism of higher criticism as manifested in the heresy trial of Union Seminary professor, Charles Briggs, for his denial of the inspiration of the Scriptures. On the moral issue of the liquor trade, the Old School had passed an 1865 resolution recommending that ministers “…enjoin total abstinence upon the youth of the Church;”¹ the reunited body in 1877 passed an earlier New School statement promoting “…total abstinence from everything that may intoxicate [as] ‘the only principle of temperance.’”²

In 1903 some of Charles Hodge’s earlier fears for the future began to surface as a few New School chickens came home to roost. That year the national assembly approved changes to the Westminster Confession that softened its Calvinism. The church was broadening, as evidenced three years later by the admittance of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, historically sympathetic to Arminianism. Biblical truth was diluted to accommodate diverse perspectives.

Sadly, by 1910 the national assembly found itself defining “five fundamentals,”³ beliefs essential for ordination into the Presbyterian ministry. What never before had been an issue was suddenly the burning issue that would determine whether the PCUSA would police itself to thwart the growing threat of modernism. Twice more the assembly would ratify the “five fundamentals.” However, in 1927 the national assembly effectively jettisoned the fundamentals by concluding that it could not set minimal standards for admission to the various presbyteries. The 1924 Auburn Affirmation, a protest statement subscribed by more than 1,200 modernist presbyters that labeled the “five fundamentals” as mere theories, was allowed to stand. The PCUSA was broadening beyond historic Christianity to the point of no return.

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