by William G. McAtee. Martha Gilliss, editor. Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2006. ISBN 1571530657. Pb, 434 pp. $24.95.
Dreams Where Have You Gone? is several things: a survey of Presbyterian history, a chronicle of the Union Presbytery Movement, an oral history of that movement, a memoir of a Presbyterian pastor, and a probing assessment of where the Presbyterian reunion of 1983 came from with questions about where we are going. It is a wonderful book that can be read at several levels and will provide wisdom and insight for all its readers.
As Louis Weeks points out in the foreword, William McAtee follows in a worthwhile tradition of Lewis G. Vander Velde and Ernest Trice Thompson as historians and participants of Presbyterian history. McAtee’s book will stand as an important description and assessment of the events that led to the 1983 reunion of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.
The title asks an important question that is spoken to on page 1: The Dream hoped for in reunion was a dream of strengthening and creating a new Presbyterian identity based on the church’s [denomination’s] shared heritage, shared theology, and shared vision of relationships to the community and world. The Dream also was that as the Presbyterian identity was strengthened by this marriage, we might address the legacy of racism by becoming more inclusive and diverse as a new church.
The events of 1983 did not happen in isolation. They occurred downstream of a failed union effort in the 1950s, the trauma of Civil War and ecclesiastical separation for reasons of ecclesiastical organization, theological convictions, and many other events large and small in the Presbyterian family. In a wonderfully evocative way, McAtee traces the origin of the contemporary circumstance to 1066 when King Harold of England first defeated the Norse at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and then had to turn his troops and march to face William of Normandy at Hastings. Stamford Bridge was the last battle of the medieval period, while Hastings was the precursor to modern warfare with artillery (archers), cavalry, and infantry. The shift in time was so brief, yet so significant.
In a similar way, the precursor events of the 1960s and 1970s were the change of the union movement to the reunion movement for Presbyterians. Stamford Bridge was fought in the PCUS General Assembly in Mobile in 1969, where the idea of union presbyteries was authorized. It was an ecclesiastical battle mobilizing the “best” part of the Presbyterian political, judicial, and familial systems. When it was all over the chief adversaries met in the aisle of the Government Street Church and hugged. It was the way of doing church from another era.
Hastings came in 1983 in Atlanta at the dual assemblies of the Presbyterian Church U.S. and the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as they “reunited” to create the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It was the high water mark of reunion and ushered in a new era of doing church that was an opportunity to build something new yet became consumed increasingly by the mentality of survival.
Between 1969 and 1983 there was an opportunity for creating something different. The Union Presbytery Movement was driven by local conditions — why is it that folks living where the two denominations overlapped could not cooperate and work together in the same body of Christ? Of course, it had been that way since the time of the Old School-New School split, but the Civil War amplified the dynamic of race and region. The anticipation of union in the 1950s was not fulfilled when only two of the three denominations came into the new denomination. That failure drove many people in the PCUS until 1983.
McAtee argues that the leadership of the UPCUSA did not appreciate the emotional, even spiritual, dynamic that drove PCUS proponents of “reunion.” And in fact as a denomination they were surprised, even shocked, by the way things played out after 1983.
The title begs the questions: What has happened to the dream? Where have we gone? Where will we go?
McAtee lived in hope that the Union Presbytery Movement would provide a different way of making decisions in church life. The Union Presbytery Movement birthed the use of consultations and consensus as decision-making models in denominational life. This offered an alternative to the win-lose style of “church courts” (as they were called in the day), where the guiding rules were for order and majority rule.
Those who lived the hope of “union” in presbyteries formed between 1969 and 1983 had a different expectation for what the reunited church would be. But when the opportunity came to create a new way of doing church the institutional imperatives of church existence took command of day-to-day events. Consensus did come into the church vocabulary but not in the way that McAtee and other veterans of the Union Presbytery Movement had hoped.
The idea of the “union” or “re-union” of the Presbyterian denominations was felt most acutely by those who had known about the loss of it. For that reason the tale is one from the 1950s on that is dominated by individuals from the PCUS. The burden of the failed effort of 1955 hung heavy with many “Southerners” and propelled them to action. The reality of racial segregation as contrasted to neo-orthodox theology also cast a long shadow that many sought to escape from in a new denomination. A look at the list of individuals interviewed for the project will affirm this. It does not diminish the reality that individuals from both denominations were critical to the process, but it does locate the emotional touchstone of the process.
Once the Promised Land of reunion had been achieved, McAtee ponders what happened to the dream that sustained so many. The specter of the Birmingham General Assembly of June 2006 haunts the work as if to say: What will be next? Having now crossed through those waters, it is still uncertain what the result will be. Has the storm on the waters calmed as Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee? Or are the waters rising around the ark and all will perish except those who are in the safety of the Confessional ark of the Reformed tradition?
We do not know–yet.
Still, there are lessons to be gleaned from the past. In an effort to attain the end of reunion, leaders of the cause gave up parts of the dream to achieve a political ecclesiastical reality. It is not a decision that McAtee rails against. He leaves the reader pondering what would have happened had more time and energy been given to theological issues besides church property and the “theology” of identity: race, gender and region. Certainly those issues were (and are) important. But where is God in all of this? Who we are as individuals and how we do the work of church together are not only ecclesiastical questions, but theological issues, as well.
The Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings have been settled long ago. And the events of Presbyterian denominational life between 1969 and 1983 have too. But the ghosts of each are heard down through the passages of time. And just as a new era began in 1066, so it did also in 1983. We will all await and see what our progeny say about 2006.
Joel L. Alvis Jr. is an instructor at Johnson C. Smith Seminary in Atlanta, Ga.
