Division & Reunion in the Presbyterian Church, US
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Division & Reunion in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.: A Mississippi Retrospective Mississippi mirrored the tensions within Southern Presbyterianism during an era of civil rights agitation, theological reassessment, and a conservative secession to form a separate Presbyterian Church in America. by R. Milton Winter IN 1983, THE SOUTHERN-BASED PRESBYTE- with 17,851 members may be seen as a price rian Church in the United States (PCUS) joined American Presbyterians paid for national re- with the United Presbyterian Church in the union.1 U.S.A. to form the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), After the Civil War, the South’s religious a union strongly opposed by many of the separation was more enduring than its politi- southern church’s conservatives. In the de- cal schism. Although several of the smaller cade preceding this union, half of Mississippi’s religious bodies quickly resumed communion PCUS congregations left to join the Presbyte- across sectional lines, the three largest—Bap- rian Church in America (PCA). A few years tist, Methodist, and Presbyterian—persevered later, still others left the PC(USA) to join the in disunity. In 1920, churches remained among Evangelical Presbyterian Church. These ac- the nation’s most distinctly sectional institu- tions occurred in a region where many consid- tions, and while Methodists reunited in 1939, ered secession an ancient and honorable means and Southern Baptists pushed north and west of resolving differences. The Magnolia State’s with their own special brand of revivalistic ecclesiastical realignments came in an era evangelism, the Presbyterian Church, U. S. when social and political change was rapid, (retaining the name it adopted in 1865), be- often occurring in tumultuous, disorderly ways. came virtually the only remaining American Many found this unsettling, and in Mississippi, institution organized along the lines of the old far from Presby-terianism’s centers of strength, Confederacy. As late as 1967, Samuel S. Hill, key church leaders grasped the inherently Jr., remarked that except for a few exceptional conservative nature of religion and took what individuals and locales, Southern churches some saw as a “last stand” against change. were “captive” to regional values. This obser- While Mississippi could not withdraw from vation throws into bold relief the challenge the federal union, some of its Presbyterians which faced Mississippi Presbyterians in the and other conservative Protestants did secede 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s who held social, theo- from their denominational bodies. The Synod logical, and ethical views espoused by the of Mississippi, one of the smallest in the PCUS, Protestant mainstream.2 suffered greater loss than any other in the Presbyterian divisions of the 1970s and ’80s, I with the result that one could no longer speak of a “solid South” in Presbyterian terms. Loss or Mississippi Presbyterian resistance to division of 128 Mississippi PCUS churches reunification with northern Presbyterians was Dr. Winter is Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Stated Clerk of St. Andrew Presbytery. Journal of Presbyterian History 78:1 (Spring 2000) 68 Journal of Presbyterian History as old as southern Reconstruction.3 Thus in and predicted that if the issue was forced, 1873, when James A. Lyon, Professor of schism would occur in the PCUS. “Already Moral Philosophy in the University of Mis- we have a divided church. The only ques- sissippi, urged establishment of fraternal re- tions are when and where will the cleavage lations with the Presbyterian Church in the take place.” The bar for union was raised so U.S.A., he aroused vehement opposition. high as to make it virtually impossible (ap- Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer of First Pres- proval of three-quarters of the PCUS byterian Church in New Orleans (which was presbyteries was required after 1914). Still, then part of the Synod of Mississippi) pro- negotiations were carried on sporadically tested that official correspondence would with the U.S.A. Assembly and others. On 6 sanction the reunion of the Old and New April 1930, an overture came from the ses- School Assemblies in the North. That re- sion at Holly Springs to North Mississippi union, which had occurred in 1870 despite Presbytery calling for “union in one General conservative objections, involved, said Assembly of all the Presbyterian and Re- Palmer, “a total surrender of all the great formed Churches in America.” The overture testimonies of the Church for the fundamen- was forwarded to the General Assembly tal doctrines of grace.” He declared that “of where it languished. The minister offering these failing testimonies we [the PCUS] are the resolution was George L. Bitzer, a leader now the sole surviving heir.”4 of astonishingly progressive mien in an oth- Five years later, when the PCUS revisited erwise conservative region of the church.6 the proposal for fraternal relations with the Throughout Southern Presbyterianism, U.S.A. Assembly, Moses Drury Hoge of Rich- opposition to union was bound up with mond, Virginia, rebuffed critics in Missis- belief that the Northern church was commit- sippi: “If, after all the great sacrifices of ted to racial integration. In 1940, W. A. confessors and martyrs of past ages, we Gamble, writing in the Mississippi Visitor, alone constitute the true church; if this only the synod’s newspaper, listed reasons for is the result of the stupendous sacrifice on opposing union with the U.S.A. Assembly: Calvary and the struggles of apostles and theological “modernism”; strong support for missionaries and reformers in all genera- the Federal Council of Churches (the South- tions; then may God have mercy on the ern Church was also a member, albeit some- world and his church.” Although most in times reluctantly); mixing of church-state Mississippi deserved their reputations as re- issues; the “unbridled supremacy” of the union opponents, there were a few who U.S.A. Assembly over presbyteries and ses- favored denominational rapprochement. Dr. sions; the Northern church’s support for H. M. Sydenstricker of the Presbyterian union with the Episcopal Church; granting Church at Water Valley (and uncle of novel- of social courtesies to Negroes; observance ist Pearl S. Buck), urged in 1884 that the of Lincoln’s birthday; and support for a fed- China missions of the U.S.A. and U.S. eral anti-lynch law.7 churches be combined. The proposal came In 1944, reunion opponents, rallied by to naught.5 the Southern Presbyterian Journal, called By the twentieth century, Northern and those agreeing with its aims to do everything Southern Presbyterians stared at one an- possible to organize a “continuing church” other across fixed chasms. Members and if and when the “inevitable” union with the ministers were freely exchanged, and bor- PCUSA should occur. By 1949 a Continuing der state congregations existed side by side. Church Committee was raising funds. Con- Some cooperation existed, as in Louisville servatives such as former Belhaven College Seminary and some mission fields. But those president W. H. Frazer peppered the church who envisioned greater oneness were warned with articles against the proposed plan of when J. B. Mack of the Presbyterian Stan- union. Reunion was defeated by Southern dard surveyed the “union question” in 1906 presbyteries in 1954 (including all five Mis- Division & Reunion in the Presbyterian Church, U.S. 69 sissippi presbyteries). The vote came just a blacks had long before withdrawn from few months after the Supreme Court’s con- white-dominated congregations, creating the troversial Brown v. Board of Education de- situation to which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. segregation decision, which brought racial referred in his famous sermon in Wash- fears to a boiling point and was blamed by ington’s National Cathedral, as “11:00 many for the proposal’s defeat. All the while, o’clock, Sunday, America’s most segregated predictions continued that whenever union hour.” Moreover, although the number of of Southern Presbyterians with their sister black Presbyterians in the South was small Assembly came about, a “continuing” South- and declining, the inclusion of Negroes in ern Church would result.8 meetings of church governing bodies and The process of negotiating the reunion of services of worship (other than attendance the PCUS and its U.S.A. counterpart (known at weddings, baptisms, and funerals of whites after 1958 as the United Presbyterian Church by whom they had been employed), implied in the U.S.A. or UPCUSA) was complex. to old-order Presbyterians a bestowal of Several factors influenced Mississippi con- social equality that opened the way to famil- servatives to oppose reunion at every step. iar associations which might ultimately in- These gave rise to the agenda which advo- clude courtship and marriage. Many sought cates hoped a continuing Southern Presby- to perpetuate segregated congregations, terian denomination would uphold. Dis- presbyteries, and synods, but some Missis- putes centered around fidelity to the so-called sippi Presbyterians, black and white, de- “fundamentals” of the faith, i.e., the Bible’s sired change.11 plenary inspiration and the virginal concep- In 1950, Dr. Walter L. Lingle of Davidson tion, substitutionary atonement, bodily res- College in North Carolina had proposed urrection, and physical return of Christ; the abolition of the segregated Snedecor Memo- drawing and redrawing of presbytery and rial Synod (which served Mississippi’s PCUS synod boundaries; and objections to ordina- black constituents), and for the first time that tion of women;9 the doctrine of the Church’s year, blacks attending the PCUS General “spirituality”; and alleged Northern Presby- Assembly at Massanetta Springs, Virginia, terian proclivities for involvement in “politi- were allowed to enter the dining room by cal causes”; as well as local ownership of the same door as whites. Four years later the church property. Underlying all these mat- PCUS was the first church body to meet after ters and exercising influence to a degree still the Brown decision.