Presbyterian Church
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Presbyterian Church - Background
There are at least eight Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. The Bible Presbyterian
Church is a fundamentalist group with membership of roughly 10,000. It stands for old-line
Presbyterian doctrine and is openly opposed to ecumenism and modernism. It's origin is
traced to the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the early 20th century.
Conservative Presbyterians who were opposed to theological modernism set up their own
seminary and mission board to offer an alternative to the ones which had been taken over
by liberal thought. The leaders of this conservative movement were brought to trial by the
denomination and defrocked. The apostates charged the Bible believers with heresy! The
group which subsequently pulled out of the old-line Presbyterian denomination formed two
different independent groups: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, led by J. Gresham Machen,
and the Bible Presbyterian Church, led by Carl McIntire. In 1941 the Bible Presbyterians
joined with other fundamentalists to form the American Council of Christian Churches in
opposition to the liberal National Council of Churches in America. In addition to standing
against modernism and ecumenism, the Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC) granted autonomy to
the local assembly. Unlike the liberal Presbyterian denominations, each church in the BPC
owns its own property and calls its own pastor. In contrast to this, the old-line
Presbyterian denomination "entered suits in the civil courts against scores of
churches that had withdrawn, and in almost every instance the defending local church lost
its property to the denomination. This was in spite of the fact that in most cases the
local churches had purchased their property with no financial aid from the
denomination" (David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity, p. 319).
The Free Presbyterian Church has a similar heritage. They stand firmly in the old
Presbyterian faith, are strictly separated from the apostasy of the hour, hold to the
Authorized English Bible, and exercise autonomy of the local assembly. The Free
Presbyterians were founded in 1951 in Northern Ireland. The fiery fundamental Presbyterian
Ian Paisley is identified with the Free Presbyterians. There are 17 of these congregations
in North America and roughly 100 in the world.
The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PC-USA)
PC-USA is the largest Presbyterian denomination in America, with roughly 3,000,000
members in 11,500 churches. It was formed in 1983 from a merger of the United Presbyterian
Church in the U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church in the United States. These two
denominations had resulted from a division along the lines of North and South following
the outbreak of the Civil War, and were reunited in the 1983 merger. The Presbyterian
Church U.S.A. is modernistic and radically ecumenical. It is a member of the National and
World Council of Churches. Like most liberal denominations, the PC-USA has been losing
members steadily. The denominations which formed the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. lost 1.3
million members between 1965 and 1992. Membership in the PC-USA has been declining by
30,000 to 40,000 a year.
The PC-USA and Ecumenism.
The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is a member of the radical National and World Council of
Churches. Mainline Presbyterians were instrumental in the founding of these liberal bodies
in 1948 and 1950. The PC-USA maintains dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. The
ecumenical mindset of the average Presbyterian minister is reflected in an article written
by Dr. Richard Lovelace, professor of Church History at Gordon-Conwell Theological
Seminary and an ordained Presbyterian Church U.S.A. minister. In his article Three
Streams, One River? Lovelace not only cited examples of the fact that Catholics,
charismatics and evangelicals are moving closer together--he actually advocates and seeks
to encourage such unscriptural unity. ... Dr. Lovelace says that Roman Catholics, Orthodox
and Anglicans have much to contribute to the formation of a "united church which is
truly Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal." In 1986 the PC-USA General Assembly
voted to share ministry and sacraments with the Lutheran denominations which formed the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Efforts to absorb Presbyterians with other liberal
denominations in the States have been in progress though the Consultation on Church Union
(COCU) since 1961. This attempted union of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists,
United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and others has been making steady progress
through the years. In June 1993 The PC-USA approved a proposal to enter into covenant
communion with the other denominations in the COCU.
The PC-USA and Modernism.
The gospel promoted in the PC-USA is primarily a false social gospel. In 1984,
moderator Harriet Nelson said, "The Gospel is not just telling people they are saved.
It also means meeting needs--things like providing food for the hungry and clothing for
the naked." The PC-USA supports all sorts of radical social-political causes in the
world, but gives very little to evangelistic work. A survey taken in 1986 revealed that
only 5% of the "clergy" and 16% of the membership in the PC-USA believe the
Bible is to be taken literally. More than 75% of those polled rejected the idea that those
who have not heard of Jesus Christ will be damned. In 1987 the PC-USA adopted a report
which says that Christians and Jews worship the same God and that Jews are already in a
covenant relationship with God and do not therefore need to be born again through faith in
Jesus Christ to enjoy such a covenant. In 1982 the United Presbyterian Church ordained
Mansfield Kaseman in spite of the fact that he denied that Jesus Christ is God, that He
was sinless, and that Christ rose bodily from the dead. In typical neo-orthodox
doublespeak Kaseman said, "I believe in the resurrection without necessarily
believing in the bodily resurrection." When asked if Jesus is God, he replied,
"No, God is God." Yet the presbytery voted 165-59 to admit Kaseman to the
Presbyterian ministry. Also in 1982 the director of the United Presbyterian missions
program, G. Daniel Little, rebuked fundamentalists for supporting creationism, and labeled
the literal creation view "denial of the living God" and "calcifying of
narrow, outdated views." The "Brief Statement of Faith" approved at the
1991 General Assembly of the PC-USA contained no clear affirmation of the Trinity; made no
reference to Heaven, Hell, or the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it affirmed
sexual equality and environmental concerns.
The PC-USA and Abortion.
The PC-USA is a member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which seeks
"to encourage and coordinate support for safeguarding the legal option of
abortion." Its 1985 Assembly reaffirmed its support for the right to abortion and
determined that no new studies on abortion be undertaken. This was a move to permanently
silence abortion opponents within the denomination.
The PC-USA and Homosexuality
A vote to disassociate the PC-USA from homosexual ministries within the denomination
failed by a margin of 2-1 at its 1984 Assembly. The PC-USA has a formal policy that allows
for homosexuals to be received as members, and even allows for the ordination of
homosexuals as long as they do not engage in same-sex relationships. In practice,
homosexuals within the PC-USA carry on with their perverted lifestyles, and the PC-USA
brings no discipline against them. The committee which recommended the change in
homosexual policy in 1991 equated "sexism" and "heterosexism" with
"racism" and condemned resistance to homosexuality as homophobia. In 1992 an
openly homosexual woman, a divorced mother, was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry. The
1988 assembly of the Presbytery of Genesse Valley, New York, invited the Rochester Gay
Men's Chorus to perform a concert. In 1991 the PC-USA filed a
"friend-of-the-court" legal brief in support of the attempt to overthrow
Kentucky's sodomy law. In 1992 the PC-USA Committee on Educational Ministry recommended
that the denomination refuse to allow Boy Scout troops to use church basements to punish
the Scouts for their policy of barring homosexuals from being troop leaders. Erig
Graninger, associate general counsel for the Presbyterians, said, "It is not for the
state to tell the citizens of Kentucky what their morals should be." Delegates to the
1993 PC-USA Assembly voted to support Clinton's effort to remove the military's ban on
homosexuals.
The PC-USA and Feminism.
The predecessor Presbyterian bodies which formed the PC-USA have long been involved in
feminist causes. The Presbyterian Church in the USA was the first of the mainstream
religious bodies to ordain women as ruling elders in 1930. By 1993 PC-USA had 2,419
ordained women ministers. Women were elected to head the PC-USA in 1984 and again in 1989.
It is interesting that 61% of PC-USA membership is female. The new Presbyterian hymnal
adopted inclusive language for God and deleted "Onward, Christian Soldiers"
because of the "military imagery." The PC-USA contributed a grant of $66,000 to
sponsor the WCC Re-imagining conference November 1993 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The most
radical forms of feminism and goddess worship were promoted at this meeting. The
conference coincided with the midpoint of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in
Solidarity with Women, an initiative of the World Council of Churches that began in 1988.
The PC-USA and Paganism.
The Utica, New York Presbytery of the PC-USA appropriated $700 to bring a Buddhist monk
from Bangkok to Utica to train local Asians in Buddhist doctrine. They said they wanted to
protect the Asian culture. The 1992 General Assembly of the PC-USA was opened with a pagan
Indian ritual to expel unwanted spirits and attract desired ones. In March 1989, a witch
named Starhawk addressed the San Francisco Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She spoke
under the auspices of a campus group called the Feminist Perspectives Committee which
attempts to raise awareness concerning feminist issues. The witch performed ritual chants
as prayers to "the powers under the earth." Starhawk is a licensed priestess of
the Covenant of the Goddess. She referred often to the "Mother-Father God," a
concept used in feminist theology.
Presbyterians participated in the production of the National Council of Churches
inclusive language lectionary, which removed masculine references to God; addressed God as
"Father and Mother"; deleted passages which instruct the wife to submit to the
husband; changed many words, such as "son" to "child,"
"king" to "ruler," "kingdom" to "realm"; and added
the names of wives to the O.T. genealogies. A paper entitled "Theologies Written from
Feminist Perspectives" was distributed at the 1988 General Assembly of the PC-USA.
The author, Cythia Campbell of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas, said
that many feminists reject the concept of redemption because it "reinforces a notion
of human passivity ... and, they question whether the worship of a redeemer who is male is
possible or healthy for women." Campbell admits that feminist theology is open to
"goddess religion and Wicca, more popularly known as witchcraft." At the 1988
assembly of the Presbytery of Genesse Valley, New York, a liturgy was distributed which
had been written by a lesbian Episcopal priest. Included were the words: "We give you
thanks, O empowering Mother, for our sisters and brothers in all nations--black, brown,
yellow, red, and white; older and younger; richer and poorer; lesbians, gay men, lovers,
spouses, parents, children, teachers and learners; workers in many tasks; siblings in a
common home."
As we have noted, the PC-USA was a chief sponsor of the World Council of Churches
Re-imagining conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in November 1993. A key theme was the
celebration of Sophia, the supposed goddess of creation. The conferees joined together in
repeating a prayer to Sophia, including these words: "Our maker Sophia, we are women
in your image. ... Sophia, creator God ... shower us with your love. ... we invite a
lover, we birth a child; with our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasures
and sensations. ... Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image. ... With the honey of
wisdom in our mouths, we prophesy a full humanity to all the peoples." Korea's Chung
Hyung Kyung told the crowd, "My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart,
my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain."
The PC-USA and Charismatics.
Brick Bradford, general secretary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Renewal Ministries
International, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of the Presbyterian clergy are charismatic,
but only a handful of their congregations are. Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
and the small Evangelical Presbyterian Church support the renewal more so than other
Presbyterian denominations, he says (Christian News, May 19, 1986). [See Charismatic
Movement.]
The PC-USA and Immorality.
Divorce and immorality are rampant in the liberal denominations because there is no
clear separation from the world. We have seen the denomination's tolerant attitude toward
homosexuality. A report entitled "Sexuality, Spirituality and Social Justice"was
distributed throughout the PC-USA in 1990-91. It said "the moral for Christians ought
not be marriage, but rather justice-love. ... Where there is justice-love, sexual
expression has ethical integrity. That moral principle applies to single, as well as to
married, persons, to gay, lesbian and bisexual persons, as well as to heterosexual
persons." The report indicated that a person can have sexual relations outside of
marriage and still be right with God.
Presbyterians outside of the U.S.A.
Presbyterian denominations in many lands are being absorbed into larger ecumenical
bodies. The Presbyterians in India united with Methodists, Anglicans and others to form
the Church of South India in 1947 and the Church of North India in 1970. Seventy-five
percent of the Presbyterians in Australia united with Congregationalists and Methodists in
1977 to form the Uniting Church of Australia. The Presbyterians in Canada merged with the
Methodists, Congregationals, and Evangelical United Brethren in 1968 to form the United
Church of Canada. Similar ecumenical accords have happened in Nigeria, South Africa, and
Belgium.
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