Also featured in the Outlook forum this issue: Deep problems by Barry Ensign-George
More than fifty years ago, historian Lefferts Loetscher in his classic The Broadening Church (1954) argued that American Presbyterianism contained two elements: one stressing “precise theological formulation” and “orderly and authoritarian church government,” the other placing “more emphasis upon spontaneity, vital impulse, and adaptability.” “It has been the good fortune and the hardship of the Presbyterian Church,” Loetscher noted wryly, “to have had … these two elements in dialectical tension within itself from the beginning.”
The tension was apparent as American Presbyterians cobbled themselves together first in a presbytery (1706) and then a synod (1716). Initially these bodies had no official creed, but by the 1720s, some were calling for mandatory subscription to the Westminster Confession. “Now a church without a confession, what is it like?” asked one proponent of subscription, and he replied that such a church was “in a very defenseless condition, as a city without walls” liable to infiltration by heresy and error. By contrast, opponents feared that required subscription was “a bold invasion of Christ’s royal power” and noted the “glaring contradiction” of requiring ministers to adhere to a document which itself declared: “God alone is the Lord of the conscience.”
In 1729 the Synod’s so-called Adopting Act did require ministers to subscribe to the Westminster standards but made concessions to those who had opposed the policy. On the one hand, its preamble disclaiming “any authority of imposing our faith upon other men’s consciences” echoed the anti-subscriptionists’ line against churchly authority, but on the other, the act also insisted that church courts did have the responsibility to defend “the faith once delivered to the saints.”
The careful balancing was also apparent in the kind of subscription that the synod mandated. Ordinands and ministers did not need to affirm every jot and tittle of Westminster, only its “essential and necessary articles.” A minister who could not accept part of the standards was to declare the nature of his reservations, but he was still to be accepted into “ministerial communion if the synod or presbytery shall judge his scruple or mistake to be only about articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship, or government.” What were the articles so basic or essential that everyone had to give assent? The Adopting Act did not say. The determination of the matter was left for church courts to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Already in 1729 one sees principles to which Presbyterianism would repeatedly return over the next several centuries. These included the right of the whole church to set standards of acceptable theology and practice, the necessity of enforcing these standards flexibly on a case-by-case basis, and a commitment to respect both individual conscience and the authority of church courts to establish norms of doctrine and polity. Keeping these commitments in a common orbit rather than on a collision course with one another has not always been easy. But after periods of controversy and recrimination, these principles have been ones to which the church returned when it wished to recover its peace, unity, and purity.
When the Synods of Philadelphia and New York came back together in 1758 after battles sparked in part by the Great Awakening, the terms of agreement carefully balanced the powers of church courts against the conscience of minorities. While the majorities could make binding decisions, minorities might legitimately protest these decisions. If conscience did not permit them to concur or even to submit passively, they should “peaceably withdraw … without attempting to make any schism.” Yet church courts were warned that they should press minorities to this extremity only on matters “the body shall judge indispensable in doctrine or Presbyterian government.” The right of both the majority to rule and the right of the minority to register conscientious dissent were to be exercised with restraint so that, if at all possible, neither side would push the other to the wall.
The pattern repeated itself in the following century. In 1837, the Presbyterian Church again tore itself into rival denominations, Old and New Schools; but in 1869-70, the rift was healed, at least for the northern segments of the two bodies. (The southern portions of the two separate churches created in 1837 had broken off from their northern counterparts in 1857 and 1861.) The reunion was accomplished on the basis, as it was popularly said at the time, of the Westminster standards “pure and simple”–that is, without effort to define in minute terms what this action meant.
In the 1920s, the northern church managed to find a way of defusing a conflict before it produced a major division. (There was a few years later a minor split when in 1936 a group of dissidents, less than one percent of the total membership of the denomination, withdrew to form a separate church.) By the 1920s, the denomination was engaged in the so-called fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Some conservatives, believing that there was widespread departure from the faith, wished the Assembly to take vigorous action to purge modernists.
The 1925 General Assembly appointed a special commission “to study the present spiritual condition of our church and the causes making for unrest.” The commission’s report, presented in 1926 and 1927, was adopted by the Assembly. It rejected the claim that there was widespread departure from the historic faith of the denomination, and it insisted that the General Assembly had no power to define a priori essential articles of the Confession. Original jurisdiction in this matter resided with each presbytery as it, on a case-by-case basis, examined ordinands or received ministers. The report also affirmed the GA’s authority, on an appellate basis, to review such decisions. Although the controversy sputtered on for nearly another decade, the policies adopted in 1926 and 1927 began the process of healing within the denomination.
The 217th General Assembly will again face the issue of resolving conflict within the church when it takes up the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. The Task Force’s efforts to balance the claims of individual conscience and the power of the whole church to set standards, its desire to affirm the primary responsibility of the presbytery in the ordination of clergy while simultaneously recognizing the General Assembly’s role as overseer–these are approaches very much in the mainstream tradition of American Presbyterianism. To be sure, the specific issues that the Task Force confronts are not identical to those of the 1750s, the 1860s, or the 1920s, but neither are they totally dissimilar. As Mark Twain is alleged to have said, history may not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.
James H. Moorhead is professor of American Church History, Princeton Theological Seminary, and senior editor of The Journal of Presbyterian History.
