# Why so many presbyterian churches?



## JesusIsLord (May 29, 2016)

HI guys, I've noticed that there are a lot of different presbyterian churches like pca,pcusa,opc. Is there a reason for this? Are there any books or articles on the history of the presbyterian church and it's different "churches"? Thanks guys


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## NaphtaliPress (May 29, 2016)

Apostasy and error and and schism and division and dis-establishment.


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## jwithnell (May 29, 2016)

You should read a biography on J Gresham Machen to get a sense of why at least the OPC formed. We presbyerians place a high emphasis on scholarship, and I suspect that leaves us vulnerable to the shifts in academia. In the OPC, we view Princeton and the PCUSA as the ones who left because they abandoned the historic confessional standards. The more conservative southern church took longer to go off the tracks, creating another set of circumstances and the formation of the PCA.


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## Edward (May 29, 2016)

NaphtaliPress said:


> Apostasy and error and and schism and division and dis-establishment.



And, in some cases, personalities.


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## JesusIsLord (May 29, 2016)

Ok, do you have any biographies in specific that you would recommend? (I saw a bunch on amazon)


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## Beezer (May 29, 2016)

As a somewhat related aside, I'm currently reading Michael Hines' "History of the American Restoration Movement" and I found it interesting that the pioneers/founders of this movement were Presbyterians who tired of the schismatic nature of the Presbyterian Churches of their day back in the early 1800s. 

For those who know their American church history...is it correct to say Presbyterians are the most schismatic/divisive among the various Protestant denominations in this country?


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## TheOldCourse (May 29, 2016)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe.../1920px-Churches_of_Scotland_timeline.svg.png

And that's just in Scotland. Most of the divisions were caused by departures from the church standards in doctrine and practice and the associated reaction by the orthodox against that departure. Oftentimes that story ends with the orthodox being forced out and having to form a new church body. It happens again a few decades down the road and the cycle repeats. Including churches of different national/cultural backgrounds all following their migrants to the New World and then going through similar patterns and you have most of the diversity you see today. I'm not aware of a good book that covers the history well to relatively contemporary times, though D.G. Hart has a couple that would be relevant to the subject. Many Reformed histories like Schaff or D'Aubigné tend to stop soon after the Reformation is secured in England and don't address the twists and turns thereafter.


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## Beezer (May 29, 2016)

For a new book on the history of the PCA you might consider reading Sean Michael Lucas' "For a Continuing Church" published last year by P&R. 

I have a copy in front of me, but haven't read all the way through it.


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## jwithnell (May 29, 2016)

Mr. Hart is generally good. A much shorter treatment is among John Piper's series; Contending for the Faith?

In all fairness, the non-denominational churches may take the most-schism status given they can go off endlessly on their own. The presbyterian form of government creates a put-up with it or make a public split situation. (And, arguably, putting up with bad theological trends has led to decades-long decay in denominations long before splits happen. Just look at the northern church from the 1890s to the 1930s.)

Re: the splits in the early 1800s, I'd be careful about accepting criticism. A lot was at stake and seems to have ties to deeper cultural trends. I noticed baptists, Friends, and others having splits at almost the same time as the presbyterians.


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## BGF (May 29, 2016)

Sean Lucas has another book called On Being Presbyterian. The first two parts are on doctrine and practice. The third is a brief summary of presbyterian history. Though it doesn't go too in-depth, it will give you all the major events and players. You can then do further research on your own.


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## jwithnell (May 29, 2016)

That last book has flown under my radar. It looks helpful.


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## NaphtaliPress (May 29, 2016)

Invariably strong personalities leading one or both sides often play a role and I thought of stating that but figured it was a subset of these and opted for brevity. 



Edward said:


> NaphtaliPress said:
> 
> 
> > Apostasy and error and and schism and division and dis-establishment.
> ...


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## brendanchatt (May 29, 2016)

Presbyterian churches also do things officially. There may be many more groups that have separated with little or no record of their new congregations, etc...


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## NaphtaliPress (May 29, 2016)

There is the old joke that I'm sure most have heard and might originally could have had Baptist substituted for Presbyterian so I'm not sure this was originally a Presbyterian 'joke.' But a man was rescued after spending many many years shipwrecked alone on a deserted island. As they sailed away, the captain asked the man what were three structures built on the beach. The man said the building on the left was his house, and on the right his church. What is the building in the middle the captain asked? Oh, that was my former church the man replied. 


Beezer said:


> For those who know their American church history...is it correct to say Presbyterians are the most schismatic/divisive among the various Protestant denominations in this country?


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## Peairtach (May 29, 2016)

There are fewer Presbyterian churches than independent ones. They don't even try to express formal unity.

Sent from my C6903 using Tapatalk


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## NaphtaliPress (May 29, 2016)

For the grand daddy of all Presbyterian fights see Kyle D. Holfelder, Factionalism in the Kirk during the Cromwellian Invasion and Occupation of Scotland, 1650 to 1660: The Protester-
Resolutioner Controversy, Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Edinburgh (1998). The pdf is online and I think I posted it before but don't have it at hand. I found it fascinating and a bit bubble bursting; there is too much romanticizing of Scots Presbyterian history from this period. In generalities historians recognized it was a nasty fight but out of shame the earlier historians tended to simply bury the subject and facts got buried.


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## TheOldCourse (May 29, 2016)

NaphtaliPress said:


> For the grand daddy of all Presbyterian fights see Kyle D. Holfelder, Factionalism in the Kirk during the Cromwellian Invasion and Occupation of Scotland, 1650 to 1660: The Protester-
> Resolutioner Controversy, Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Edinburgh (1998). The pdf is online and I think I posted it before but don't have it at hand. I found it fascinating and a bit bubble bursting; there is too much romanticizing of Scots Presbyterian history from this period. In generalities historians recognized it was a nasty fight but out of shame the earlier historians tended to simply bury the subject and facts got buried.



https://core.ac.uk/download/files/39/12813060.pdf


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## BGF (May 29, 2016)

jwithnell said:


> That last book has flown under my radar. It looks helpful.



I should say the third section deals mainly with American Presbyterian churches.


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## Ryan J. Ross (May 30, 2016)

Where's Eerdmans when you need them? I'd add Frank Smith has probably the most comprehensive history of the PCA. For OPC, Fighting the Good Fight and The Presbyterian Conflict are good, if partisan, sources. Rarely does a good academic work get published on Presbyterian divisions—and unlike the very good diss. cited above, it's not for lack of source material.


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## Jake (May 30, 2016)

I remember a comment from a fellow in a smaller Presbyterian denomination, who had come from an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church when asked about being in a small denomination: "it's way better than when I was an IFB church. It seemed like every church was its own denomination and no one could agree with anyone. To have so many people agreeing is great!"


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## TheOldCourse (May 30, 2016)

Ryan J. Ross said:


> Where's Eerdmans when you need them? I'd add Frank Smith has probably the most comprehensive history of the PCA. For OPC, Fighting the Good Fight and The Presbyterian Conflict are good, if partisan, sources. Rarely does a good academic work get published on Presbyterian divisions—and unlike the very good diss. cited above, it's not for lack of source material.



If one is interested in academic work utilizing a great deal of source material here is another one that may be of value with respect to the Scottish church http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Contr...&qid=1464613378&sr=1-1&keywords=9781843837299. It's not from a confessional perspective though, doubtless.


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## Fogetaboutit (May 30, 2016)

I thought this book was helpful to understand the big picture, although it's not limited to American Presbyterianism.

http://www.heritagebooks.org/products/presbyterian-and-reformed-churches-a-global-history.html


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## TylerRay (May 30, 2016)

Beezer said:


> As a somewhat related aside, I'm currently reading Michael Hines' "History of the American Restoration Movement" and I found it interesting that the pioneers/founders of this movement were Presbyterians who tired of the schismatic nature of the Presbyterian Churches of their day back in the early 1800s.



The Campbellites are schismatic heretics, not reformers, not restorationists, and not ecumenists. You would do well to shun them and their Pelagian, works-righteousness-based apostasy.


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## yeutter (May 30, 2016)

As already mentioned, the Presbyterians are not the only group that seems to fracture into multiple denominations. The Lutherans may even be worse. Once in America and freed from connection with the state Church; Lutherans have fractured into even more groups then the Presbyterians.

Anglicans are also an increasingly fractured body. In 1978, the Episcopal Church adopted a new Book of Common Prayer; and started officially ordaining women and homosexuals. The conservatives in the Episcopal Church revolted and had four new bishops consecrated to continue the Anglican witness on this continent. One of these four promptly apostatized to Rome with his group of followers. Within two years the other three had each established separate denominations. These three denominations have spawned at least another dozen Anglican denominations.


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## Beezer (May 31, 2016)

> The Campbellites are schismatic heretics, not reformers, not restorationists, and not ecumenists. You would do well to shun them and their Pelagian, works-righteousness-based apostasy.



Thanks for the advice. It's a book on the history of the movement is all. Points I find interesting should in no way be confused as my subscribing to any of their views.


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## DMcFadden (May 31, 2016)

Beezer said:


> > The Campbellites are schismatic heretics, not reformers, not restorationists, and not ecumenists. You would do well to shun them and their Pelagian, works-righteousness-based apostasy.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the advice. It's a book on the history of the movement is all. Points I find interesting should in no way be confused as my subscribing to any of their views.



Campbellites are an interesting group. A few years ago it was reported that the highest percentage of mega churches in America were of a Cambellite (Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ) pedigree. They are biblicists to the umpteenth degree. I remember speaking with the president of a restorationist school a few years back. When asked why they required two full years of classes on the Gospels/Life of Christ but only a single 2 unit class on "doctrine," he opined that it was intentional. They did not want to sully their biblicism with "doctrine" that was merely the product of human arguments and contrivance. Their often repeated claim is that "we are not the only Christians, but we are only Christian." But, this needs to be balanced against the empirical data that they are not only the most denominational non-denomination, but that they display a very insular character usually associated with the most judgmental denominations and cults. As wrong as they are, the combined efforts of the network drawrfs most solid evangelical denominations by just about every metric.

I would count them as heterodox rather than heretical, but that may be as much a difference in terms of art as opinion. They are certainly as semi-Pelagian as Baptists, less so than Pentecostals.

An IVP book back in 2002 asked how much we should consider them "evangelicals" in the broad evangelical tradition. Their leading theologian, Jack Cottrell, is a graduate of Westminster and Princeton, who participates in a number of evangelical gatherings and associations such as ETS and complementarian groups, further blurring the lines. Each year 8,000+ of them gather for a convention (compare that to your average attendance at a denomination annual gathering!!!) where they draw more than 250 exhibitors hawking their wares. For a non-denomination, they represent a network of churches, publishing houses, foreign missions, shared benevolences, home missions, and a string of Bible colleges, universities, and seminaries.

The disagreements between denominations in the nineteenth century (and within them, for that matter) gave rise to the ideal of restoration. They thought that all would be fixed if they could just eschew the doctrinal exactitude that they thought gave rise to internal friction and external fighting between denominations. But, the notion that "doctrine divides" (a slogan that would later take on new force within the charismatic movement and turned into a virtual mantra by their premier theologian, J. Rodman Williams) was closely tied to the naive biblicism that promoted "first century Christianity" as the solution to everything. This repristination theology has not proven to produce churches any freer of friction than nineteenth century denominations.


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## TylerRay (Jun 1, 2016)

DMcFadden said:


> They are certainly as semi-Pelagian as Baptists, less so than Pentecostals.



Perhaps I can be corrected, but it's my impression that they hold to the the purest form of Pelagianism extant in a Trinitarian church.


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