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@comcast.net