Division a common theme of Presbyterian history

“It’s sobering,” said Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary in New York. “Anyone who thinks dividing churches can be a painless and bloodless matter should read the minutes” of a meeting, which “ends in a kind of wholesale bloodletting. I had tears in my eyes.”

Presbyterian history. Faith. Fervor. Conscience. Conviction. Division, followed almost immediately in some cases by the hope of reunion. Thanksgiving.

Then sometimes division again.

At the Presbyterian Coalition national gathering in Portland in early October, some life-long Presbyterians made it clear they’re willing to walk — they’ve had enough and think, in conscience, that no more should be tolerated. A few weeks later, when the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) met in Dallas, gathering for the seventh time, it turned away for a while from thinking about what it should do — what lies ahead — to pay attention to what’s come before.

For much of one day, the task force considered what Milton “Joe” Coalter, who has written extensively on church history, described as four significant “points of balance” in the system of government of the Presbyterian church in the United States. These are areas around which Presbyterians have worked out their tensions, their convictions and their compromises over centuries.

And while descriptions of these events could fill textbook after textbook, these are not the dry stories of the long-dead past, but of passion and fervor and devotion to God brought to life. During the New School-Old School controversies, small towns might have two Presbyterian churches, with the local families divided between them, and whose pastors — sometimes graduates of the same seminary — would intentionally cross the street and avert their eyes to avoid passing on the sidewalk and having to say hello.

In the Presbyterian Church in the United States — the old Southern branch of the Presbyterian church — decisions often were made on the front porches at the Montreat conference center in the hills of North Carolina, decisions made by white men, whose families had known each other through the generations, who were suspicious of centralized decision-making and who were linked by outlook and a web of family connections. Somehow that has translated into the church of today — where women are ordained, where immigrant churches are taking root and now face second and third-generation challenges, where the PC(USA) wants at least 10 percent of its members to be people of color by 2010.

In New England, in the 1700s, some fought over doctrine — over whether “subscription” to the Westminster Confession should be required. Some thought that was essential — that imposing the truth on someone’s conscience shouldn’t be considered an imposition at all. But others had caught the fire of the First Great Awakening — where revival swept the countryside, leaving people jumping and wailing and barking for the Lord, and where doctrine mattered but so did being singed straight to the heart by a flaming encounter with God.

In putting together these puzzles of history, Coalter, Wheeler and Wilkinson talked of patterns — of how Presbyterians have continually struggled with these balances; of how schism has not brought peace; of how those who separated bitterly often found, in the coming years, the need to draw back together; of how there has almost never been a time when Presbyterians in this country were not throttling each other, either intellectually or physically, over what they should believe and why.

This is the balance, too, of doctrine and Scripture — things that are written down — versus experience; of requiring some essentials in belief, but not spelling them out. It is the Presbyterian story of always trying to understand and follow God. It is the recognition that no task force yet has answered all the questions or solved all the problems. It’s the story of how Presbyterian missionaries from the U.S. went to Korea — and brought with them both the good news and their history of theological infighting. It’s the fresh air of the bigger picture.

Wilkinson spoke of the idea of ligaments and connection — of Presbyterians being connected to the Scriptures, to the confessional history and to one another, but still having room to move. “We’ve been there before, but it’s also a frontier moment,” Wilkinson said. ‘Our history suggests that God is with us when we go into those frontier moments . . . I’m grateful.”

And Jenny Stoner, the task force’s co-moderator, said, “I found the history extremely comforting. We are people who live in ambiguity” — so unrest and doctrinal battles that go on for decades are, for Presbyterians, really nothing new.

Colonial Presbyterians

Theological debate goes back right to the beginning days of Presbyterianism in the U.S., Coalter told the task force.

In the early colonial church, power flowed up — there was no church constitution, no creed that people had to agree with, and if any association of churches suggested an idea, local congregations were free to accept or ignore it. But churches did join together for mission “by not declaring in some very important areas what they disagreed on,” Coalter said.

That structure didn’t last long: the first presbytery was formed in 1706 and in 1716 the Synod of Philadelphia was created. But a key issue for those early churches continued to be subscriptionism — what should Presbyterians be required to believe? And how much room should there be for “experimental religion” — an up-close, transforming encounter with God?

The early settlers were very aware of religious pluralism (meaning, in that time, multiple Christian denominations, Coalter said) and knew that many members of the clergy came to America “because they had to leave Europe in a hurry,” not because they were necessarily good or faithful. So they wanted to be careful about what ministers they got — although the anti-subscriptionists argued that anyone could lie about their beliefs and that, when subscription to a particular statement was required, it had led to great division.

The Adopting Act of 1729, and its official reinterpretation seven years later, tried to strike one of those balances Coalter described. Candidates for ordination were allowed to declare “scruples” (to question any system of government’s faithfulness to Scripture) as long as the scruple didn’t involve anything “essential and necessary.” But “essential and necessary” wasn’t defined. And the Adopting Act was reinterpreted in 1736 as not including the preamble, which was where the language involving declaring scruples was found.

To some, subscription to particular doctrinal beliefs was important, because it helped straddle the divide between religion of the heart and religion of the head. Some looked at other believers and thought: “They can’t determine whether their hearts are strangely warmed. But they can determine if they speak the truth,” Coalter said.

But those favoring “experimental religion,” led by the Tennent family and their followers, argued that “it isn’t enough to speak the truth,” Coalter explained. “You have to have an experience of new birth” through a personal encounter with Jesus. “And no new birth is an experience of new birth if you don’t have the practice of piety,” if actual fruits of faithful living don’t follow the conversion experience.

In 1741, the subscriptionists in the synod expelled the Tennent party. But in 1758 there was a reunion — and the agreement for that included language still significant in the denomination today, about the degree to which protest is permitted. In the Presbyterian system, one can protest. But if the protest fails, a person must choose what to do — to actively concur, passively submit or withdraw, “but not cause schism,” Coalter said.

The last sentence in the 1758 agreement also is significant, and harkens back to the Adopting Act, by saying that it’s the body’s job to decide in each case what’s essential in Presbyterian government — presenting the idea that what’s essential is known to the body that’s making decisions about an individual’s membership or ordination, Coalter said. The point of friction, he said, is “which is the body” making that determination — which level of governance in the Presbyterian structure?

In 1788, the Presbyterian church adopted its first constitution (the task force read it as part of its homework) — a much simpler and smaller document than the PC(USA) uses today, but one which also tried to strike balances along the four points that Coalter presented. Presbyteries were given original jurisdiction for examining candidates for ordination; candidates had to produce testimony of their good moral character, but subscription was not required; there was a call for mutual forbearance, but not in undefined essentials. (Frances Taylor Gench, a New Testament professor, pointed out the document also calls for the “reformation of manners,” adding, “I think that’s worth reclaiming” in the church today.)

New School-Old School

Wheeler then traced the New School-Old School split and reunion in the 1800s, a dramatic time of religious revival and expansionism on the American frontier. In the early 1800s, Presbyterians and Congregationalists cooperated in New York, calling for mutual forbearance and no competition, in part because “the mission challenge was enormous,” Wheeler said. “This territory was full of unchurched people,” not to mention all the territory beyond.

In time, though, two groups started to form, the New School and Old School, with different visions of how much order and structure was required and to what extent religion should be spontaneous and adaptable. Slavery played a role in the split, as did religious revival sweeping the country.

Along came evangelist Charles Finney, “the Old School’s nightmare,” as Wheeler described him. He preached at revivals before he was ordained, where people fainted and shouted and cried. (“They might have clapped,” joked Vicky Curtiss, a pastor from Iowa.) Those in the New School were willing to relax precise details of doctrine to make room for fervor and change of heart, for the possibility that someone might come to know Jesus.

But the Old School crowd “didn’t want any touching, hugging, waving of hands,” Wheeler said — they were strict traditionalists in worship.

As the New School-Old School struggle progressed, there began a series of seesaw assemblies, complete with heresy trials, and those in power trying to throw the other side’s ministers out. At the 1837 Assembly, which lasted almost two weeks, it all blew up — as Coalter put it, “you had two systems colliding.”

Some of the language from 1837 sounds familiar today, to those who are veterans of the PC(USA)’s current warfare over whether to ordain gays and lesbians. The Old School accused the New School of ignoring doctrine, or claiming to believe it but not really doing so. They said church courts were unwilling to convict ministers who had committed “gross errors.” They said recent assemblies had favored “false doctrine.” The New School concluded, Wheeler said, that “the church has committed suicide.”

In the end, four synods aligned with the New School were removed, and declared to be “not a part of the Presbyterian Church.” An enormously significant provision was introduced: that presbyteries could begin to conduct examinations of already-ordained pastors moving into their jurisdiction. When it was over, both the Old School and New School claimed the constitutional high ground, Wheeler said; both claimed orthodoxy and both professed to promote the peace, unity and purity of the Presbyterian church.

And the Old School leaders sent what Wheeler described as a “tragic” letter to the churches, proclaiming that the New Schcool other churches follow “a different gospel and worship another God.”

The 1837 Assembly, Wheeler said, was described as violent.

In the aftermath, the seminaries chose up sides and the New School churches issued the Auburn Declaration, in which they declared their orthodoxy, stating that “the reason why some differ from others in regard to their reception of the Gospel is, that they make themselves to differ.”

And within 30 years, propelled by forces including the strains of rapid national expansion and exhaustion from the divisiveness of the Civil War, these bitter enemies formally reconciled.

The spirit of that reunion, following such lacerating schism, was remarkable, Wheeler said. Documents of the time stated that “differences have always existed and been allowed,” and called for an approach that is “precise, yet not exclusive; definite, yet not rigid; specific, yet not inflexible; liberal, without laxity; catholic, without latitudinarianism,” which Wheeler defined as “without letting things seep out of the sides.”

Wheeler described the reunion meeting in Pittsburgh, with the former enemies arranged in Old School and New School lines, the men marching in two by two.

“Are there any women in this reunion?” asked Barbara Everitt Bryant, a research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Business.

“Are you kidding?” Wheeler answered. No women’s names appear at all in the records, she said.

It goes without saying that people of color — already the majority in some places in the United States — were not in the procession that day either.

The 20th Century

The task force already considered in detail, at an earlier meeting, the Swearingen Commission and the fundamentalist-modernist controversies in the early 1900s. Wilkinson whizzed through the history of division and reunion through the rest of the century, resulting in the creation of the PC(USA) in 1983, and the impact of the Confession of 1967. He will return to the subject at the next meeting, in February, to talk more about the split with the Presbyterian Church in America and about a series of church judicial cases and their impact on the denomination.

Pressed for time, Wilkinson blitzed through the history — the theological debates over inerrancy in the 1890s, the revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith in the early 1900s; the emergence of different ways of doing and seeing things in the northern and southern streams of Presbyterian life in the United States. As the denomination fractured and reformed itself, from the 1920s on, after each split there was almost always a committee considering reunion, Wilkinson said. ‘We have been in union or reunion negotiations almost from the minute of breaking up.”

The task force also talked about the balance of power with the structure — how the presbyteries have related to the General Assembly, for example, over time. They talked of the desire for a smaller Book of Order; of the role that trust plays in keeping a balance; about the rise of special interest groups.

Coalter repeatedly expressed frustration with the church’s lack of clarity through the centuries on what are essential tenets. “We keep asking for the answer and we keep dodging the answer,” he said. “Give an answer, for God’s sake!”

But others found comfort in the ministrations of history.

Everything that happens is an outgrowth of what has happened before” — the decisions of the past still resonate, Wilkinson said. “I still find that kind of heartening, not distressing.”