Editor’s note: Three hundred years ago this year, the first presbytery was organized in what became the United States of America. This article is the second in a series exploring the historical overview of the Presbyterian presence in our country. The first installment ran in the Outlook issue of Feb. 20, 2006. (Click here to read the first installment).
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Americans moved on after the Civil War, and so did Presbyterians, to face the challenges and changes of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. We were heavy hitters in dealing with these challenges. After Lincoln, several other Presbyterian Presidents helped shape these years. Grover Cleveland, for example, presided over the Spanish-American War, and we extended our presence to places around the globe, for example, in Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines. He was a Democrat. Benjamin Harrison was a Republican, while Woodrow Wilson was another Democrat. William Jennings Bryan, an “also ran,” was known as the “Great Commoner” with a “golden tongue.”
Associate Justice John Harlan of Kentucky helped shape the country from the Supreme Court and supported Plessy-vs-Ferguson (1896), which recognized the full humanity of African-Americans but still kept them separate but equal. Laymen, such as Andrew Carnegie of Pittsburgh, wrote The Gospel of Wealth (1889) in which he celebrated the booming financial times, but also argued that those who gained wealth should also do good with it. He built libraries. Andrew Mellon, also of Pittsburgh, served as Secretary of the Treasury under Warren Harding. Cyrus McCormick and his reapers of Chicago shaped a seminary. Robert Dollar’s steamships plied the Pacific. John J. Eagan of Atlanta, John Wanamaker of Philadelphia, Thomas Watson of New York along with Margaret Olivia Sage and Nettie Fowler McCormick joins these others not only as business leaders, but generous philanthropists. Norman Thomas, grandson, son of ministers and a minister himself, gave balance to the era in the organization of the Socialist Party of America. Author-reformer, Charles Stelzle, who grew up in the Bowery, wrote about The Gospel of Labor (1912), and helped the church organize a Department of Church and Labor to deal with issues in this area.
Because of the widespread concern over problems of this era, Christians reached out to one another. As early as 1846, they organized the World Evangelical Alliance, the World’s Parliament of Religions (1893), under John Henry Barrows, and later, the Federal Council of Churches in 1908. Presbyterian scholar Philip Schaff published the Creeds of Christendom (1877), in which he collected the confessional statements of various denominations, thus promoting greater interdenominational understanding. Biblical scholar Charles Briggs promoted biblical criticism. Another entrepreneur, Missouri Presbyterian Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, dubbed the period The Gilded Age (1873), which did not go over with the well-to-do. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were more friendly.
We should not neglect to mention Elizabeth Cady Stanton who championed the feminist cause by publishing The Woman’s Bible (1895-1898). Lucy Laney, African-American daughter of slaves, began in 1886 the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute for black students.
These times called for bureaucratic change. To handle such, Presbyterians in the north built the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia, a skyscraper that became the church’s headquarters. The times also called for liturgical change. Under the leadership of clergy-professor Henry Van Dyke–he gave us “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” The Gospel for an Age of Doubt (1897) as well as The Other Wise Man (1895) — the church adopted a Book of Common Worship (1905) to supplement the Directory of Worship. Some critics smelled “high-churchism” in the “canned” prayers, as they were called. The denomination approved the volume “for voluntary use.” Some members in the PCUSA wanted a fresh expression of their faith, but succeeded only in obtaining statements about the “Holy Spirit” and “Of the Love of God and Missions,” adopted by the denomination.
Meanwhile, a Southern Presbyterian minister’s son, layman Woodrow Wilson, born in Staunton, Va., made a name for himself as an educator and more. He was called to be president of Princeton, which blossomed into a university. Then he was elected president of the United States. He championed “New Freedoms” and he tried to deal with the economic problems of a capitalist society. With the outbreak of World War I in Europe, he called upon citizens to join in an effort to “make the world safe for democracy.” This author’s father, Theodore S. Smylie, served as a chaplain in France during the conflict. Wilson advocated a League of Nations to help deal with international affairs after the war. He could not persuade the country to implement his vision. During his last years he did sign the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, finally acknowledging a woman’s right to vote.
Intellectual ferment during this period, for example, the furor over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution exploited by Bryan, who insisted he was not a descendant of monkeys, stirred up a “Fundamentalist-Modernist” division. Presbyterians in the North, led by such theologians as B. B. Warfield, adopted a statement on the “essential and necessary” articles of faith. These included belief in the “inerrancy” of the Bible in its original autograph, the virgin birth of Christ, a substitutionary theory of the atonement, Christ’s physical resurrection, and belief in Christ’s second coming. We also reaffirmed the Westminster Standards of the 17th century. Conservative Presbyterians left the PCUSA to form an Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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After World War I, Presbyterians had to meet the challenges and changes of a Depression in the 1930s, a Second World War, and the dawn of the Nuclear Age, events in which we were deeply involved as we headed into our “One World,” as it was called.
Presbyterians, along with the rest of the nation, were hit hard by the severe economic “Depression” of 1929 and which lasted throughout the 1930s. The PCUSA called on the nation to end unemployment and to supply jobs, homes, and social insurance for all Americans against illnesses, injuries, and infirmities, especially in old age. Such pressures finally led to the “Social Security” legislation on which we continue to depend. What we wanted was a social order based on larger motives than just “money-making and self-interest.”
Presbyterians in the South, who tended to emphasize the “spirituality of the church,” could not avoid the bite and bitterness of the economic downturn. Under persons like Ernest Trice Thompson, clergy-professor of Union Seminary in Richmond, Va., the PCUS began to urge social change, and the denomination’s responsibility for public life. Pearl Buck, daughter of PCUS Chinese missionaries and a missionary herself, underscored the problem of poverty, worldwide as well as in America. She did so in her novel The Good Earth (1931). Americans as well as Chinese could respond to her message, along with other works, for which she won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1931. The great missionary statesman, layman Robert E. Speer, gave the church a global vision during these years. Presbyterians had missions in Appalachia, Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon, among other places; among Native Americans, Latin Americans, Chinese Americans, as well as in the inner city. We also spread the Gospel throughout the world in Africa, Latin America, China, Japan, and India. For example, Sam and Jane Higginbottom took “the gospel of the plow” to Allahabad, India, in order to deal with hunger so prevalent in the land, and taught princes and untouchables about Christ. It should be noted that Presbyterian James (“Jimmy”) Stewart made a hit and took social concerns to our nation’s capital in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
The rise of Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and Communism in the Soviet Union, caused tensions that led to a Second World War. John Foster Dulles, a Presbyterian clergyman’s son and lawyer, helped the Federal Council of Churches of Christian America, write and promote a “Just and Durable Peace” and affirm “Six Pillars of Peace,” to help guide us during this period without hypocrisy, hate, or a desire for vengeance. The war was, indeed, a “world” war. Henry Stimson, a Presbyterian elder, was Secretary of War during this period. And Arthur Holly Compton, an elder from a Wooster College (Ohio) Presbyterian family, and a Nobel Prize winner for physics, helped to direct the Manhattan Project. This led eventually to the dropping of atom bombs on Japan to bring an awesome end to the war. Stimson helped make the decision to drop the bombs and introduce our Atomic Age. After the war, Compton served as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and awarded this author his BA degree in 1945.
Both World Wars and the Depression stimulated a theological revival. It produced great European theologians in the Reformed tradition, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, both of whom lectured in America, and Reinhold Niebuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr, of the German Reformed Church, also part of our Calvinist heritage. Reinhold, a prolific author, stimulating lecturer and preacher, offered us The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941) as the Gifford lectures in Scotland. He, in a word, restated Witherspoon’s and Madison’s concerns for our age: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” The Nazi Holocaust and the Holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscored Niebuhr’s point in this postmodern age, as it is called. In order to deal with these and other problems, we Presbyterians helped to organize the World Council of Churches with offices in Geneva in 1948. This led to the study of “Man’s Disorder and God’s Design” at its 1948 meeting, and “Christ the Hope of the World” at the 1954 meeting in Evanston, Illinois.
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Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s and the dawn of the Atomic Age, Presbyterians continued to face new challenges and changes in the world. We should recall that in 1946, just after the war, Winston Churchill, Britain’s Prime Minister, traveled to Fulton, Mo., and gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College. This author’s father, Theodore S. Smylie, was present for the occasion. We began to see matters through the lenses of a number of leading Presbyterians. Elder Dewitt Wallace, we should remember, kept giving us glimpses of issues in the Reader’s Digest (1922) in the world. Elder Henry Luce, son of Presbyterian missionaries to China, educated us through Time (1923), Life, Fortune, and later Sports Illustrated (1940). General Dwight David Eisenhower came home from the war, joined the National Church in Washington, D.C., and became president of the United States, influenced by his spouse, Mamie. Ike succeeded in having “under God” inserted into the “Pledge of Allegiance.” He, with Elder John Foster Dulles as secretary of state, helped steer the nation through a “Cold War” — sometimes a hot one — with a containment policy. We did have bloody conflicts in Korea and Vietnam during these years. With his “Letter to Presbyterians” (1953), Scotsman John A. Mackay of Princeton Seminary, helped undermine “McCarthyism” stirred by Senator Joseph McCarthy who sought Communists under every bed. Mackay’s “Letter” was printed in full on a page of the New York Times. In it he challenged hysteria and championed the “majesty of truth” as America assumed worldwide responsibilities. Mackay awarded me and my brothers, John and Robert, our degrees.
During this period, Eugene Carson Blake served as stated clerk of the PCUSA, as well as secretary of the National Council of Churches in New York, and general secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. He also joined in Martin Luther King’s crusade for racial equality, and was arrested with other protesters in an attempt to integrate an amusement park. He supported the “March on Washington” in the campaign for civil rights. During these years, African-Americans Edler Hawkins and Lawrence Bottoms served as the first Black moderators of the General Assemblies. In these years, the churches ordained their first women ministers, Margaret Towner of the PCUSA (1956) and Rachel Henderlite in the PCUS (1965). Claire Randall presided over the NCC. Margaret Kuhn organized the “Gray Panthers” to call attention to our aging population. Fred Rogers, another Presbyterian minister, presided over “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He invited us all to be his neighbor and neighbors to one another. Sam Walton of Bentonville, Ark., jump started Walmart, while Helen Walton presided over the Presbyterian Foundation for a time. Businessman John Templeton awarded his Templeton Prize for Religion to Mother Teresa for her work among India’s poor. All of this indicates the important role we have played as Presbyterians in the nation and the world as “partners in obedience” and “fraternal workers” with Christians and others. In 1967, the Presbyterian Historical Society (1852) moved into a new building dedicated by Supreme Court Justice Tom Clarke.
In 1967, the UPCUSA decided to revisit its confessional state and stance. The PCUSA had modified its stance in 1903. The UPCNA and the PCUS wrote brief statements of faith in 1925 and 1962. The UPCUSA adopted a Book of Confessions under the leadership of Edward Dowey, Princeton Theological Seminary, containing the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creeds of the early church, the Scots Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Second Helvetic Confession, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and the Theological Declaration of Barmen (1937) of the Confessing Church in Germany, affirming that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The church also adopted the “Confession of 1967,” based on 2 Corinthians 5:19. It emphasized God’s continuing presence reconciling the world and calling all Christians to be ministers of reconciliation. While some opposed the new doctrinal approach, 82 percent of all Presbyterians approved it. In the PCUS, Albert Winn headed a committee that produced a new “Declaration of Faith” as a confessional standard along with the older documents. Southerners failed to adopt it. Then in 1983, the two nominations finally reunited, thus ending a division my ancestor helped to make in 1865. Randolph Taylor, a PCUS ecumenist, presided over the General Assembly meeting in Atlanta, Ga., where the reunion took place. The author was present in Atlanta where the division his ancestor helped to make was healed.
During these recent years women have gained a larger voice in the affairs of the church, Lois Stair serving as moderator in 1972 and Sara B. Moseley in 1978. Presbyterians have continued to make the news. John Glenn had the “right stuff” for space travel. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, members of the Bel Air Church (Los Angeles, Calif.), served in the White House in Washington. Warren Burger, another Presbyterian, served as chief justice of the Supreme Court, and Everett Koop served as the nation’s chief physician. Presbyterian women put out another Woman’s Bible Commentary (1992) to focus attention on contemporary feminine challenges.
John M. Mulder, Louis B. Weeks, and Milton J. Coalter produced a seven-volume study of The Presbyterian Presence: The Twentieth Century Experience (1992). The editors stressed that Presbyterians have problems but still make a difference. They challenged us still to renew our theological vision, revitalize our nurturing spirit, and resume our evangelical and ethical responsibilities in our communities, the nation and the world. In 1985, the church mounted a “New Day Dawning” adventure to suggest that after all these three hundred years we Presbyterians are still finding our way in God’s big, booming, buzzing world with its new challenges. We have a memorable past and we are surrounded still by a cloud of witnesses, (only a few mentioned here), as we move on to the celebration of our 300th year in America in 2006 and to meet new changes and challenges in the future.
Francis Makemie who founded our first Presbytery as well as my Smylie ancestors will be watching.
James H. Smylie, A Brief History of Presbyterians, (Geneva Press: Louisville, Ky., 1996), 160 pp.
James H. Smylie, “American Presbyterians: A Pictorial History” in Journal of Presbyterian History, pp. 269. Vol. 63, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 1985.
James H. Smylie is professor emeritus of church history, Union Theological Seminary-PSCE in Richmond, Va.
