A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

Dr. Marshall C. St. John

Note: The author makes no claims to originality in the following. He has borrowed lavishly from denominational brochures, websites, and other internet resources, as well as official Minutes, and other books about the PCA. Please feel free to copy and reproduce the following information.

WHAT IS THE PCA?

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) was formed to be a denomination that is --

Faithful to the Scriptures

True to the Reformed Faith

Obedient to the Great Commission

By “Reformed” we mean that we are connected to the teachings of the historic Church, and the doctrinal beliefs recovered by the Reformation.

By “Presbyterian” we describe our representative form of church government. Local congregations are govberned by a “Session” of “presbyters” (elders), elected by the members of the local church. Local churches within a specified geographical area are called a “Presbytery.” Representatives of all the PCA congregations meet once a year in a “General Assembly.”

By “Obedient to the Great Commission” we mean that we are eager to be busy with the work of evangelism and church planting, both in North America and around the world. We want every human being to hear the Gospel and become a believer and follower of Jesus Christ.

The history of the PCA began with the formation of the Presbyterian form of church government, which may be traced back to the Reformers, especially John Calvin and John Knox.

JOHN CALVIN OF SWITZERLAND

John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564) was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, he rejected Papal authority,

established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance, and

created a central hub from which Reformed theology was propagated. He is renowned for his teachings and writings, in particular for his Institutes of the Christian religion. Calvin's "scheme of ecclesiastical governance" was later called "Presbyterianism."

The word "Presbyterianism" comes from the New Testament Greek word translated "elder." Presbyterianism is a system of church government, in which leadership and authority is centered in a group of elders; not in a bishop; not in the congregation.

If authority flows from a system of bishops, then you have the Episcopal form of church government.

If authority flows from the congregation, meeting and voting on every issue, then you have the Congregational form of government.

Presbyterianism is also representative church government. The congregation elects elders, who seem to be gifted and called by God to their office, who then rule the church. This is very much like the House of Representatives or Senate, in the government of the USA.

Calvin established the authority of elders in Geneva, and taught his system of church government to visiting theological students, the most influential of which was John Knox of Scotland.

JOHN KNOX OF SCOTLAND

John Knox (c. 1514 – November 24, 1572) was a Scottish religious reformer who took the lead in reforming the Church in Scotland along Calvinist lines. He is widely regarded as the father of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland and of the Church of Scotland.

Knox returned to Edinburgh May 2, 1559. The time was a critical one. During his absence the reform party had become more numerous, more self-reliant and aggressive, and better consolidated. The queen dowager, Mary of Guise, acting as regent for her daughter, the young Mary I of Scotland, then in France, had become keener to crush the Protestants and determined to use force. Civil war was imminent, but

each side shrank from the first step. Knox at once became the leader of the reformers. He preached against "idolatry" with the greatest boldness, with the result that what he called the "rascal multitude" began the "purging" of churches and the destruction of monasteries. Politics and religion were closely intertwined; the reformers did not hesitate to seek the help of England.

Knox negotiated with the English government to secure its support, and he approved of the declaration by the lords of his party in October 1559 suspending their allegiance to the regent. The death of the latter in June 1560 opened the way to a cessation of hostilities and an agreement to leave the settlement of ecclesiastical questions to the Scottish estates. The doctrine, worship, and government of the Roman Church were overthrown by the parliament of 1560 and Protestantism established as the national religion. Knox, assisted by five other ministers, formulated the confession of faith adopted at this time and drew up the constitution of the new Church: the First Book of Discipline.

The Church—or Kirk—was organised on something approaching Presbyterian lines. Priests were replaced by ministers (from the Latin for servants), with each parish governed by the Kirk Session of elders. John Knox died in Edinburgh on November 24, 1572.

IRISH PRESBYTERIANISM

From Scotland, Presbyterianism spread to Ireland.

Presbyterianism in Ireland dates from the time of the Plantation of Ulster in 1610. During the reign of James I of Ireland (James VI of

Scotland) a large number of Scottish Presbyterians emigrated to Ireland. The first move away from the Church of Scotland, of which the Presbyterians in Ireland were part, saw the creation of the Presbytery of Ulster in 1642 by chaplains of a Scottish army which had arrived to crush the rising of 1641. Under Cromwell congregations multiplied and new presbyteries were formed. After the Restoration, nonconforming ministers were removed from parishes of the Established Church, but the Irish administration could not afford to alienate such a substantial Protestant population and Presbyterianism was allowed to continue in the country.

AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANISM

The Rev. Francis Makemie (1658-1708)

Makemie was an Irishman, born near Rathmelton, Donegal county, Ireland in 1658. He studied for the ministry at Glasgow University, where in February, 1676, he was a student in the third class. In 1680 the Irish Presbytery of Laggan received a letter from Judge William Stevens, a member of Lord Baltimore's Council, entreating that ministers be sent to Maryland and Virginia. The next year it licensed Mr. Makemie, and ordained him soon in 1682, as a missionary for the American colonies.

He preached for a time in Barbados. About 1684 he began his labors on the continent. In 1690 his name figures in the records of Accomac County, Virginia, where he was engaged in the West India trade, and where in 1692 four hundred and fifty acres of land were granted to him. Here he married Naomi, daughter of William Anderson, a wealthy merchant.

In the Southeast corner of Maryland there were three or four "meeting houses," and in the one at Snow Hill he organized a church. An elder and merchant, Adam Spence, had probably signed the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland, and a descendant of his, reciting the tradition of a hundred and thirty years, thus writes of Mr. Makemie: "One generation has uttered his praises in the ears of its successor, and you may, even yet, hear their echo. Parents made his surname the Christian name of their children, until, in the neighborhood of Snow Hill,

it has become a common one." This hill was his base of missionary operations.

It was not long before quite a number of congregations were gathered in the region which he had selected as his field of labor. An itinerant missionary, and in reality the bishop of a primitive diocese, he journeyed from place to place, sometimes on the eastern shore of Maryland, sometimes in Virginia, and sometimes extending his

journeys as far as South Carolina. To the extent of his ability he supplied the feeble churches, but he deeply felt the need of others to assist him.

In 1704 he went to London, and on his return brought back two other missionaries, who, along with Makemie himself and four others, formed at Philadelphia in the spring of 1706 the first Presbytery.

Mr. Makemie died at his residence in Accomac Virginia, in the Summer of 1708, leaving a widow and two daughters. He made liberal bequests to charitable objects, and distributed his valuable library among his family and two or three other friends.

He is generally regarded as the first regular and thorough Presbyterian in America, and the father of the American Presbyterian Church.

THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES

A great deal happened in the history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States between the time of Francis Makemie and the War Between the States. Presbyterians existed in half-a-dozen different denominations. But the largest was the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. This denomination became two separate denominations on December 4,1861, when commissioners from Southern presbyteries met in Augusta, Georgia, to renounce the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Old School) and to form the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. (After the war, the church changed its name to the Presbyterian Church in the United States.)

In its "Address to All the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the Earth," the church outlined the Northern ecclesiastical indiscretions that forced its separation, especially the Gardiner Springs Resolutions of the previous General Assembly that declared the church's obligation to uphold the Union and support the federal constitution. In the minds of Southern Presbyterians, this was a violation of the spirituality of the church by an unwarranted engagement in partisan politics. Thus we find the PCUS, the mother church of the PCA, coming into existence.

Let us now move ahead very rapidly over one hundred years, during which the PCUS (and most American denominations of all persuasions) declined from its spiritual peak into Liberalism.

WHY WAS THE PCA CREATED?

The PCUS (Presbyterian Church in the US) is the mother church of the PCA. When the PCA was brought into existence in 1973 it was created by churches and elders separating themselves from the PCUS in order to found a Bible-based truly Christian Church.

There are a number of reasons that these churches and elders left the PCUS:

1. The PCUS denied the authority of the Bible.

2. The PCUS required the ordination of women as elders and deacons.

3. The PCUS defended abortion and funded abortions.

4. The PCUS joined the National and World Council of Churches which support communism around the world.

5. The PCUS defended Darwinian evolution.

6. The PCUS was promoting sexual immorality to church youth.

7. The PCUS opposed capital punishment of murderers.

8. The PCUS welcomed some ministers who denied the virgin birth, and the deity and resurrection of Jesus, and refused to accept some ministers who believed in these doctrines.

9. The PCUS was run by a political machine which excluded conservatives from influential posts.

10. The PCUS redefined missions as social action, and downplayed evangelism and church planting.

HOW WAS THE PCA CREATED?

Conservatives in the PCUS had fought the growing "Liberalism" in their denomination for decades.

It became clear that a conspiracy of liberal ministers and seminary professors in the Presbyterian Church in the United States--the so-called southern Church—were engaged in an organized effort to gain control of the church. These men led by Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson--a professor at Richmond Theological Seminary--formed a secret organization which they called "The Fellowship of St. James." They sought to have the church abandon its belief in the integrity and authority of the Bible, to water down the Westminster Confession of Faith, and to participate more actively in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Their primary goal, however, was to unite the PCUS with the far more liberal and three times larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America--the Northern Church. They developed a political machine to control the actions of the church.

SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL

To let the members of the Presbyterian Church U.S. know about this attempt to undermine our historic faith and to encourage conservatives to resist the efforts of the liberals to gain complete control, Dr. Bell (recently returned from China, the father of Billy Graham's wife, Ruth; and Dr. Henry B. Dendy, minister of the Weaverville, North Carolina Presbyterian Church, founded The Southern Presbyterian Journal. Dr. Bell served as editor and Dr. Dendy as business manager.

By 1964 the secret "Fellowship of St. James" was no longer secret so they replaced it with a new and larger group which they called "The Fellowship of Concern." They redoubled their efforts to merge our Southern Church with the far more liberal Northern Church. This group was in complete control of Assembly's Nominating Committee, many of the synods and presbyteries, the board and agencies, colleges and seminaries and most of the important committees of the church.

Dr. Bell and a number of other conservative leaders met in Atlanta and concluded that informing church members regarding the direction the liberals were taking the church through the Presbyterian Journal would never return control to Bible-believing Presbyterians. They decided that an organization was needed to actively combat what the liberals were doing and that it would be a lay organization because if conservative ministers in liberal presbyteries became involved they could be defrocked.

CONCERNED PRESBYTERIANS

At the Journal board meeting in August of that year, Kenneth S. Keyes was asked to form and head such an organization. With $15,000 seed money which the board provided, Concerned Presbyterians was formed in the fall of 1964 with Col. Roy LeCraw of Atlanta serving as vice president, W.J. (Jack) Williamson of Greenville, Alabama, as secretary and J. M. Vroon of Miami as treasurer.

The first bulletin from Concerned Presbyterians listed these reasons for concern:

* because the primary mission of the church-winning people to Jesus Christ and nurturing them in the faith-is being compromised today by overemphasis on social, economic and political matters, forgetting the basic necessity for regeneration.

* because the integrity and authority of the Word of God are being questioned by dubious theories of revelation in some of the literature of the church.

* because some presbyteries no longer require complete loyalty to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.

* because continued membership in the National Council of Churches involves us in activities, pronouncements and programs of which we strongly disapprove and repeated protests to that body have been ignored.

* because the plan to establish a central treasurer now approved by the General Assembly indicates a determination to regiment the benevolence giving of the church's members by "equalizing" their gifts-in effect actually thwarting the wishes of many donors.

* because another determined effort has been started to effect a union of the Presbyterian Church U.S. with the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A- which is now engaged in negotiations to unite with denominations that do not adhere to the Reformed faith.

By this time many conservative members were leaving churches which were pastored by liberal ministers.

PRESBYTERIAN EVANGELISTIC FELLOWSHIP

When it became evident that those in control of the PCUS were no longer interested in evangelism, Rev. William P. Hill organized the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship. Starting with two full-time evangelists they eventually had fifteen evangelists serving the church. Later on this group became a sending agency for missionaries so that PCUS conservative churches which had stopped giving to the church's Board of World Missions had missionaries whom they could support.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHMEN UNITED

In 1969 more than 500 conservative ministers formed Presbyterian Churchmen United and ran 3/4 page statements of their beliefs in 29 or 30 leading newspapers.

Dr. John E. Richards, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Macon, Georgia, headed this organization and Rev. Paul P. Settle was its field director. They both played a very active role in speaking at conservative rallies, informing members in the pews regarding what the Liberals were doing to the church. By this time presbyteries where the Liberals were in control were receiving ministers who did not believe in the Virgin Birth, the validity of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross, His bodily resurrection and other cardinal doctrines of the faith.

The Board of World Missions was replacing conservative leading missionaries with men and women who no longer believed that leading the unsaved to Christ was their primary mission. The Liberally controlled courts of the church made no effort to discipline a West Virginia minister who "married" two homosexuals at a church in Washington D. C., and a Louisville, Kentucky, minister who offered himself for a position as elector in the Communist Party. Some of the Liberal presbyteries were blocking the efforts of conservative churches to call conservative ministers.

A NEW SEMINARY WAS NEEDED

Southern Presbyterian conservatives, like their counterparts earlier in the century in the North, represented a mixture of doctrinal viewpoints that ranged from firmly committed Old School Presbyterians to fundamentalists who resisted social change. Moreover, there were divisions between those who sought reform from within and others who urged the need to separate. All parties seemed to agree, however, that a seminary was needed to provide ministers for the conservative cause, given their suspicions about the teaching at the four seminaries of the South (Austin, Columbia, Louisville, and Union). A key step in the promotion of the conservative cause was taken in 1966, when Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, was established on explicitly Old School Presbyterian grounds, especially underscoring the spirituality of the church. (Note: Reformed Theological Seminary never became the "official" seminary of the PCA, but remains an independent organization, though many of its students do become PCA pastors.)

THERE WAS CONCERN FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH

In 1961 the National Council of Churches published and distributed a booklet entitled "The Meaning of Sex in Christian Life." Its text was a heart-to-heart talk between a church leader and a teenager.

On one page the church leader told the youth:

"Our culture declares that all sexual activity within marriage is legal, proper and good, while any such activity outside marriage is illicit, sinful and wrong. We know that there is sexual contact between unmarried couples that is motivated by love and which is pure and on occasions beautiful."

In 1969 or 1970 the church's Board of Christian Education joined with the Northern Church and the United Church of Christ in publishing a monthly magazine called "Colloquy."

Of pre-marital sex it said:

"If kids were made aware of alternatives, they wouldn't have to worry about getting into trouble. If there were some way you could stop pregnancy, I don't think there would be anything wrong with sex."

At the 1971 General Assembly our four conservative organizations decided to make an all-out effort to elect three conservatives to the Permanent Nominating Committee-probably the most vital single committee in the church. Our nominees were Dr. C. Darby Fulton who had ably directed our Board of World Missions for many years, Walter Shepard, a former missionary, and Ruth Bell Graham (Billy Graham's wife.)

The Liberals nominated the layman from Charleston, West Virginia, who had given the church $50,000 to start paying for abortions, a minister from San Antonio, Texas, who held a liquor party in his room every night, invited our youth delegates and got two of them so drunk that they had to be hospitalized and a liberal woman from Texas. It was the most radical group ever nominated for this very important committee. All three were elected.

This assembly rejected an overture to withdraw from the National Council of Churches by a vote of 213 to 189. It condemned the Commission on Overseas Evangelism which the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship had set up to provide a vehicle by which churches and individuals who had lost faith in the Board of World Missions could support conservative missionaries. The vote was 270 to 126.

The assembly rejected a motion to order the Board of Christian Education to stop cooperating in publishing Colloquy--the blasphemous magazine which was undermining the morality of our young people.

A few weeks after the General Assembly representatives of Concerned Presbyterians, Presbyterian Churchman United, Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship and the Presbyterian Journal met in Atlanta to assess the situation. They decided that the time had come to abandon our efforts to change the Liberal leadership and to start planning for a new church. The vote was 25 to 1.

A steering committee of three members from each organization was appointed. Rev Donald B. Patterson was elected chairman, Rev. James Baird, vice chairman and Rev. Kennedy Smartt, secretary. Dr. John E. Richards resigned his pastorate at First Presbyterian Church, Macon. Georgia to become administrator for the steering committee.

In August 1971 this decision was announced with this statement:

INTOLERABLE SITUATION

We have reached the point where the situation in our beloved church has become intolerable to thousands of loyal Presbyterians who love the Lord, and want to serve Him in a Presbyterian church which will be true to His Word.

We feel that we can no longer be a part of a denomination in which the Board of Christian Education publishes literature which violates our Confession of Faith and encourages our young people to experiment with sex and drugs;

in a denomination in which the Board of World Missions no longer places its primary emphasis on carrying out the Great Commission;

in a denomination with seminaries which train ministers who substitute social and political action for the preaching of the Word;

in a denomination where presbyteries violate our constitution by receiving ministers who refuse to affirm the Virgin Birth. the bodily resurrection and other cardinal doctrines, while denying membership to faithful ministers who stand firmly for these doctrines which they vowed to uphold.

Especially do we feel that we can no longer subject our children and grandchildren to the kind of youth leaders that those in control have seen fit to place in these sensitive position-young radicals who seem determined to lead our young people away from their faith in God.

Two years was spent in laying the foundation for the new denomination.

ADVISORY CONVENTION

On page 94 of his history of the PCA (I Am Reminded), Kennedy Smartt records that an Advisory Committee met in August of 1973 at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. 160 churches were officially represented by 280 voting delegates, representing 40,000 church members. The Organizing Committee recommended that the 1933 Book of Church Order of the PCUS be adopted, with some minor changes, and the addition of an important chapter on church property. The Convention determined also that ordination to both elder and deacon offices would be accorded only to men. In How is the Gold Become Dim, Morton Smith states that the ordination of women to the offices of deacon or elder had been approved in the PCUS at the 1963-64 General Assemblies, and that the practice was "obviously contrary to the specific teaching of the Word of God." The denial of the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, lack of evangelistic emphasis, a Liberal bias in denominational literature, heavy-handed top-down authority, the World Council of Churches, abortion, female ordination, immorality and evolution were considered to be major issues in the need to form a new denomination.

THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PCA

In December 1973, delegates, representing some 260 congregations with a combined communicant membership of over 41,000 that had left the PCUS, gathered at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and organized the National Presbyterian Church, which later became the Presbyterian Church in America.

CHURCH GROWTH AND MERGERS

In 1982 the PCA received all the member churches of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod. The PCA also received Covenant College and Covenant Theological Seminary from the RPCES, and they became the “official” denominational college and seminary. Dozens of Orthodox Presbyterian churches, Bible Presbyterian churches and PCUSA churches have also left their denominations to become PCA churches.

MISSION TO THE WORLD

Mission to the World (MTW) is the missionary agency of the PCA. The roots of MTW may be traced back to the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship. PEF created great interest in foreign missions in the PCUS, which in turn led to the formation of the "Executive Committee for Overseas Evangelism" in 1971. In 1973 ECOE became MTW, with only six missionaries. In 1982 World Presbyterian Missions, the missions arm of the RPCES, was absorbed by MTW when the RPCES joined the PCA.

CHURCH GROWTH

The PCA Ministry Buildings Campus in Lawrenceville, Georgia (near Atlanta) is the location from which most of the ministries of the denomination are coordinated. These ministries are carried on by four Program committees -- Mission to the World, Mission to North America, Christian Education and Publication, Reformed University Ministries, and one service committee, the Administrative Committee, responsible for the administration of the General Assembly. Additionally, there are five agencies which also minister to the denomination: PCA Foundation, PCA Retirement & Benefits, Inc. (both located in Lawrenceville), Ridge Haven, (the PCA conference center located close to Rosman, North Carolina), Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, (the national educational institutions of the PCA).

On January 1, 1987 the PCA had 924 churches with 160,827 members. There were 99 groups in the process of forming churches. Our church became the most rapidly growing Presbyterian body in America. By the turn of the century the PCA consisted of over 1500 churches and 330,000 members. The PCA is a national Church, with churches in almost every state including Hawaii, and in three provinces in Canada.

The influence of the PCA extends far beyond the walls of the local church. Mission to the World has approximately 600 career missionaries in 60 nations of the world, about 430 two-year missionaries, and over 6500 short term missionaries. Because of the unique relationship between Mission to the World with over thirty mission organizations with whom some of our missionaries are working, some consider that the influence is far greater than our size might indicate. Indeed, PCA churches support an additional 690 career missionaries, covering over 130 nations.

Further, with more than 100 chaplains in the military, Veterans Administration, prisons, and hospitals, and 45 college and university campus ministers, the Gospel is proclaimed to a rather large audience around the world not reached through usual outreach channels. Because of the emphasis on education, there are many members of the PCA who are teachers and professors at all levels, including a significant number of large universities and theological seminaries.

WHAT DOES THE PCA BELIEVE ABOUT.....?

In the PCA, only the Book of Church Order is binding. In order for the PCA to take an “official” position on any issue, it is necessary for the denomination to go through the process of amending the Book of Church Order. This is a lengthy and cumbersome process.

However, each General Assembly of the PCA issues statements on a variety of issues confronting the Church and Society. These statements are not binding on the churches, pastors and people of the PCA, however they are indicative of the mind of the Church. Over the years, the PCA has taken the following positions:

ABORTION

The PCA has always spoken out very clearly against the practice of abortion. “Abortion in distinction from miscarriage, is the intentional killing of an unborn child between conception and birth...Is the unborn child a human person in God’s image? Scripture leaves no doubt about the continuity of personhood which includes the unborn child...It would therefore be a willful act of defiance against the Creator intentionally to kill an unborn child whose conception is so intimately a Divine as well as a human act. No child belongs only to man. He is God’s child. And His Word must govern the protection and care of that child both before and after birth...The Bible, especially in the Sixth Commandment, gives concrete protection to that life which bears the image of God. We must uphold that commandment.” (From the Sixth General Assembly, 1978)

SEXUALITY

The 20th General Assembly, meeting in 1992 issued a statement about Divorce and Remarriage that also spoke to human sexuality in general:

“The PCA reaffirms that sex is a gift from God which should be expressed only in marriage between a man and a woman. Therefore all sexual intercourse outside marriage, including homosexuality and lesbianism, is contrary to God’s Word (the Bible), and is sin.”

Homosexuality in particular had already been addressed by the 5th General Assembly (1977): “In the light of the Biblical view of its sinfulness, a practicing homosexual continuing in this sin would not be a fit candidate for ordination or membership in the Presbyterian Church in America.”

FREEMASONRY

In 1988 the 16th General Assembly addressed the issue of Freemasonry, due to its popularity in the South, and thus in many PCA churches.

The PCA “has serious concerns connected with membership in Freemasonry: Joining Freemasonry requires actions and vows out of accord with Scripture; participation in Masonry seriously compromises the Christian faith and testimony, and may lead to a diluting of commitment to Christ and His Kingdom...Our denomination should adopt a policy of correcting those who are involved in such organizations, with gentleness, that God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.”

ROMAN CATHOLICISM

In 1995 the 23rd General Assembly addressed the issue of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals working together on various moral issues confronting the United States. “We ... declare that our understanding of justification is not compatible with the teaching of the official Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, we maintain that Biblical unity must be grounded in fidelity to the teaching of Holy Scripture... (however) The PCA commends the Roman Catholic Church for its principled opposition to some of our national sins, and believes that it is altogether proper for the members of this church to be co-belligerents with Roman Catholics in these social and political endeavors.”

CREATION VS EVOLUTION

In 1999 the 27th General Assembly supported supernatural Creationism as opposed to “macroevolution.”

"Genesis 1 and 2 are a historic, self-consistent, and true account of God's creation of the universe and of mankind in six days...Genesis 1 and 2 do not represent a mythical account of creation without reality in space and time...Genesis 1 and 2 represent one unified account of creation and not two accounts that are inconsistent with each other...

God made all things directly by His command...the eight fiat acts of creation in Genesis 1 were discrete, supernatural acts, and describe the creation of all kinds...those things created by these acts were brought into existence instantaneously and perfectly....God made Adam immediately from the dust of the ground and not from a lower animal form and that God's in-breathing constituted man a living soul, in the image of God...God made Eve directly from Adam...the entire human race, with the exception of our Lord Jesus Christ, descended from Adam and Eve by ordinary generation...each of the kinds resulted from separate creative acts, and that any genetic development is only within these kinds, thus denying macroevolution."

WOMEN IN COMBAT

The 29th and 30th General Assemblies of 2001 and 2002 issued statements regarding the role of women in combat.

“The PCA believes that military service is a just and godly calling; however, that it presents special and difficult moral challenges in light of the integration of women into the armed services....The women of the PCA (should be) warned of the many difficulties and moral and physical dangers involved in serving in the military in secular America, due to their inherent greater vulnerability...The PCA declares that any policy which intentionally places in harms way as military combatants women who are, or might be, carrying a child in the womb, is a violation of God’s Moral Law...This Assembly declares it to be the biblical duty of man to defend woman and therefore condemns the use of women as military combatants, as well as any conscription of women into

the Armed Services of the United States...The Thirtieth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America adopts the above as pastoral counsel for the good of the members, the officers, and

especially the military chaplains of the Presbyterian Church in America. Be it further resolved that the Presbyterian Church in America supports the decision of any of its members to object to, as a matter of conscience, the conscription of women or the use of women as military combatants.”

Much more of the history of the Presbyterian Church in America may be discovered by researching the archives of the PCA, which are stored and catalogued at the library at Covenant Theological Seminary, in St. Louis, Missouri.

Wayside Presbyterian Church (PCA)

2502 Fairmount Pike

Signal Mountain, TN 37377

www.waysidechurch.org

Dr. Marshall C. St. John, Pastor

waysidechurch@vei.net