Presbyterian Apostasy and Generation Gap - Similar to Lutherans. This is the PCA

(I’m waving the white flag. This blog has, at least for now, morphed into one concerned mostly about the denomination I serve. For my tens of readers who look here for other things I understand the glazed look in your eyes.)

Al Baker gets high marks for entering the discussion about the state of the Presbyterian Church in America. His recent assessment of where the denomination is and what to do about it identifies genuine issues. The effort is game and solutions offered are sincere. I think it misses the mark with both its overstatement (“saving” the PCA?) and slight generational bias. Bill Smith’s take on it is, I think, fair.

I confess to being increasingly pessimistic that the conversation we need about the PCA will take place. Mind you, there will be endless talk about it. But not much conversation. At least not the kind we need. And I’m increasingly convinced the reason is because we’re starting at the wrong point.

A few months back I was at a gathering of denominational leadership. Not the secret kind. A regular meeting of Permanent Committee chairmen and Coordinators. My role as chair of the Permanent Committee on Reformed University Ministries got me in the room. The time was encouraging and thoughtful. There was much to be thankful for. Near the end of the meeting discussion turned to increasing the interest of “young pastors” in the work of General Assembly. It’s important to note that in my mid 50’s I was one of the youngest men in the room. Most of the talk centered on the need to retool the schedule of General Assembly to provide the kind of experience young pastors would prefer. Up to that point I had not said much. I started talking.

My point? It is a mistake to think changes to the General Assembly schedule would have any bearing at all on how it is perceived. A better approach would be a brutally honest awareness of deeply entrenched patterns of denominational habits that were established during our formative years. I think I came off (now here’s a shock) a bit, well, forward. But even counting that it was clear the people I was addressing had little interest in what I was talking about.

Young pastors? I’m on record as being, on balance, a fan. But as much as I like them evidence indicates they have little avidity in taking a serious look at the context of the PCA’s formation and how that has made us, in so many ways, what we are. I can’t be too harsh on them. I doubt I would have any interest in at their age either.

So we have one generation where it’s hard to take a detached look at how the PCA came into existence. And one that for a lot of reasons can’t be bothered. And that is a pity. Historian Shelby Foote insisted that a clear understanding of the Civil War was the basis for understanding the United States. “The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we have become, good and bad things.”

Invoking the Civil War in any talk about the PCA is, in so many ways, leading with the chin, but Foote’s point is a larger one. Understanding ourselves is tricky when events that really do define us are unexamined or misunderstood. With the PCA it is especially difficult due to our (really) short institutional history. A certain clarity is gained with the passing of time. The emotional complexity of struggles still in living memory of so many tend to muddle the process of self-awareness. I don’t think it’s even possible at this point to construct a reliable historical narrative of the PCA that’s not enmeshed with the soft-focus of hagiography or the reductionism of shilling for a current ecclesial agenda (“We stand for what our founding fathers stood for!”). This doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s just harder and we have to go about it differently.

I think there is a good place to start. I’m not sure how many will care or take the effort needed. But here goes.

In 1977 Roland Barnes compiled a series of articles as part of a denominational history class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Roland is Senior (and organizing) Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Statesboro, Georgia where he has served for 32 years. They were taken from the Presbyterian Journal (more about the Journal later). Two were added later. One each from thePresbyterian Guardian and The Banner of Truth. Several years ago he made copies and gave one to me while I was serving as RUF Campus Minister just down the road at Savannah College of Art & Design. When I read them I knew it was a unique snapshot of the Presbyterian Church in America and its beginnings. And, given more than a cursory look, a vital clue to so much of what we are now, and what we struggle with. Events that “defined us as what we are and..opened us to being what we became, good and bad things.”

Roland has kindly given me permission to reproduce and share them. There are two links below this post. One is an online flipbook of this collection. The other to download a pdf copy. Before you click on them, please consider the following.

The articles date from February 17, 1971 to January 20, 1978 and record events from about three years before the PCA was established up to the fifth General Assembly. The Presbyterian Journal was founded in 1942 as the Southern Presbyterian Journalto be an independent voice “to challenge the assumptions and activities of the liberals and to return the [Southern Presbyterian] denomination to its biblical moorings.” It ceased publication in 1987. By 1971 the Journal was one of the principle voices calling for a “Continuing Presbyterian Church” out of the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS). There were others but none matched the Journal for its reach and influence.

So this is not a dispassionate account of events. It is not an historical narrative. To those far removed from these events it may seem demoded, strange and perhaps a little embarrassing. To some who lived through it, this may seem like replaying the best years of their lives. And that is our problem. And why it will take some work to see how these documents reveal so much about us. Good and bad.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be posting some thoughts about how these events and even the way they’re described are essential in understanding where we are as a church.

If you look at these pages and begin to smirk, wipe it off your face. If you look at these and just see the glory days, you’re not seeing it honestly enough. Try again. If we can manage to arrive at some shared agreement of how God worked through men, to paraphrase John Newton, who were men of great faith to a great Savior who where themselves great sinners…maybe we can have the conversation we need.

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SELECTED ARTICLES DEPICTING THE FORMATION PERIOD PRIOR TO AND THE ACTUAL FORMATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA

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