This summer (June 15-22, 2006) the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church will hold General Assemblies in Birmingham, Ala., at the same time. This planned event reminds us of a long history of our denominations.
It all began with the organization of the first General Assembly of the PCUSA in 1787-88 and the adoption of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as the doctrinal standards of the denomination with their decided predestinarian flavor, or so some believed. Presbyterians were moving westward and southward, into Kentucky territory with its forests in the western section of the Appalachian Mountains. The territory was very cumbersome for travel and building churches.
Some Presbyterians joined this movement and began to organize congregations and the Cumberland Presbytery, to publish the Cumberland Presbyterian, and to build educational institutions. They also adopted the Westminster Standards with a few reservations. They engaged in what some have labeled “creed softening,” having to do with the church’s views on Election, Predestination or Preforedestination, which, they argued, was a kind of unchristian fatalism they rejected. They concluded that they could not find the doctrine in their book of books, the Bible. When the Bible spoke, they spoke. When the Bible was silent, they were silent. They also wished to revive the New Testament Church, or, rather, to be true “Disciples of Christ,” as some called themselves.
Their denomination, which was organized in 1810, grew and grew, expanding into the South and Southwest especially. Although it is difficult to count its early membership, some estimated that it numbered nearly 18,000 members by 1835.
During the Civil War the CPC tended to avoid the issue of slavery as a political, not a religious matter. Politics belonged to the states not to the ecclesiastical entities. However, some in the South defended slavery as a divine institution, while others forcefully opposed it and favored emancipation.
They also began to assist African-Americans to form their own presbyteries after the Civil War. The Cumberland Presbyterians helped create the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which also grew rapidly. It renamed itself the Second Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1874. The denomination numbered nearly 15,000 toward the end of the century.
It should be noted that the Presbyterian Church suffered a division in the 1840s over theological issues. Out of that division the Old School, more conservative, arose, mainly in the South. A more liberal New School emerged in the North. During the Civil War, when slavery was certainly a major issue, the PCUSA arose in the North while the PCUS emerged in the South to represent their interests.
Those in the Reformed tradition faced serious intellectual problems arising from then-modern, scientific theories, such as Darwinism, and “Biblical Criticism.” This led to the “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy that, over the years, also split the church.
The PCUS in the South tended toward a more conservative direction, checked, to a certain extent, by the opinions of more liberal members such as E. Trice Thompson, founder and former editor of the Outlook. The PCUSA reaffirmed its loyalty to the Westminster Standards. The denomination, after much controversy, adopted two new chapters to the Confession on “Of the Holy Spirit” and “Of the Love of God and Missions,” along with “A Brief Statement of Faith.” The PCUS later adopted variations of these additions.
During these years the Cumberlanders and the PCUSA were drawn together and began an ecumenical dialogue about union. As the CPC had watched carefully the debate in the PCUSA, and celebrated the Old School-New School reunion in 1903, together with the revision of the Standards, it began to think seriously about reunion also. Many in the CPC believed the PCUSA had moved in its doctrinal changes to agree with it about the “fatalism” it found in the 17th century documents. Indeed, just about 100 years after the initial division, the churches reunited.
However, some “true blue Cumberlanders,” as they were called, were not satisfied with this event. One discontented observer wrote:
Great was the revision of nineteen-three,
But not yet revised enough for me;
Until the whole chapter three
Is not, and never more shall be,
They have not revised enough for me.
The illusion referred to the fact that the revisionists had not revised the Westminster Confession. They had just added two new provisions. Some other opponents thought the Confession had been subject to “Cumberlandizing.” These involved systematic theologians such as Professor B. B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary. He considered members of the CPC as Armenian heretics in a kindly but determined manner. Nevertheless, the reunion was sealed and celebrated in 1906, just one hundred years ago.
A considerable number of Cumberlanders in the South did not join the union, concerned for the liberalism of Presbyterians in the North and the “fatalism” of the Standards. It should be underscored that the reunion came at a cost to African-American Presbyteries that were perpetuated as separate entities in the South, thus qualifying the extent to which the “love of God” was applied in this particular case.
The PCUS and the PCUSA did not reunite until the General Assemblies in 1983 meeting in Atlanta. This is a past well worth recalling as the PC(USA) and the CPC meet in Birmingham in the spring on 2006, the anniversary of another reunion in 1906.
Further reading: Ben M. Barrus, Milton L. Baughn, and Thomas H. Campbell, A People Called Cumberland Presbyterians (Frontier Press: Memphis, Tenn.); Confession of Faith and Government, CPC (Frontier Press: Memphis, Tenn.); Book of Common Worship, compiled by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A., Theology and Ministry unit, and The Cumberland Presbyterian Church (WJK Press), 1993.
James H. Smylie is professor emeritus of church history at Union Seminary — PSCE in Richmond, Va.
