THE
PRESBYTERIANS:
THE REFORMED PEOPLE OF GOD
(This is the second in a series of reports on my visits to all the churches in my home town of Denton. Texas. These visits have confirmed my conviction that we all have far more in common than we have differences, and that we should emphasize the former rather than the latter. These visits have given me cause to look more deeply into the rich and varied traditions of these churches. Since these visits always follow my attendance at a Church of Christ in an earlier service, it is to be expected that I would make comparisons between these churches and my own. And so the reader will forgive me when these comparisons are reflected In these reports.)
My
home town of Denton, Texas might be called "a Baptist town" (The
Baptist Church is sometimes said to be our state church!) but hardly - a
Presbyterian town." And yet the Presbyterians have a unique presence in
this city. There are two Presbyterian denominations represented, the United
Presbyterian Church of the United States (three congregations) and a
congregation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which has a history and
tradition all its own. The UPC has its regional headquarters here, called
The Synod of the Sun, the "Sun" referring to the sunbelt states of
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It conducts the synodal affairs
for 1,015 churches. The Cumberland denomination has but one children's home,
and it is located in Denton. There is also the Korean Presbyterian Church,
which meets in the facilities of the First Presbyterian Church.
I
have visited all five of these churches, along with the Synod office and the
Cumberland Presbyterian Home. The Korean church made up mostly of Koreans
who are students in our two universities, conducts its service only in
Korean, but it was nonetheless a great experience to worship with them.
About 40 were present and the preacher was from the Korean Presbyterian
Church in Dallas, a lovely Korean woman. I was surprised to learn that there
are 300 Korean Presbyterian churches in the United States. The Presbyterians
are strong in Korea but badly divided. Even when it is in a foreign tongue a
Christian service can be meaningful because of the universal language of
love. Too, one recognizes the hymns and finds himself quietly singing along,
translating them into his own tongue, which is another instance of how much
we have in common. I will inject a proposition at this point: we
ought to be able to have at least
some fellows hp with all those who sing the same hymns we do. That
reminds me of an ancient Roman description of the early Christians,
"They sing hymns to one called Christ." Should there not be some
closeness between all those who do that?
Speaking
of singing, the First Presbyterian Church in Denton has one of the most
inspiring choirs I've ever heard, and its pastor, Jim Lacy, can be counted
on to give a meaningful discourse from the Bible. I was also impressed by
the Sunday School teacher I heard, supposing him to be an unusually
well-educated layman, only to learn that he has been a missionary to South
America for 20 years!
The
Presbyterian churches impress one as not only friendly, affluent, white, and
educated, but also as dedicated and responsible. They'll still be around
next year and a decade from now, and it is not all that important who the
pastor is. Unlike many "Independent" churches that come and go
with the vagaries of some preacher, the Presbyterians are always there and
always the same, while pastors come and go. The "Independent"
preacher often owns the church or has financial control, or, if need be, he
can by hook or crook "steal" the property. That can't happen in a
Presbyterian church. A .'charismatic" preacher in east Texas tried to
"steal" a church, but had to settle for dividing it and going
"Independent" in another location. The Presbytery owns the
property and it can come in and remove the pastor if the Session (board of
elders) is inclined to defend an heretical or immoral pastor. But only the
Session can hire the pastor and only the congregation can select the
Session. It seems to work well.
My
interview with Randy Hammer, pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church,
revealed remarkable parallels to the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
"It sounds like the Campbellites!," I told him as he recounted the
history of Presbyterian divisions.
His
own tiny denomination of 90,703 total members but only 53,000 active members
in 811 churches (those honest figures are impressive in these days of
inflated numbers) was not always tiny, Starting about the same time as the
Campbellites (1810), on the American frontier the Cumberland church grew
somewhat like we did and had 200,000 members by the turn of the century. In
1906 over half of them reunited with the main body of Presbyterians from
whom they had earlier separated. Those who chose not to reunite are the
Cumberland church today. While they once had numerous educational
institutions, they now have but one college. Bethel in Tennessee and one
seminary in Memphis.
The
founders of the Cumberland church did not intend to start another
denomination. Three Presbyterian divines, disenchanted with their churches
insistence on an "educated" ministry, indifference toward
evangelism, and belief in "double" predestination (some are
reprobated to hell while others are predestined for heaven), started a new
Presbytery and called it Cumberland, hoping that it could influence the
church at large. It grew rapidly and soon had its own Synod, and in time its
own General Assembly. And so it became a denomination all its own. That
gives you the order of polity in all Presbyterian churches: Session (local
ruling elders and pastor) Presbytery (many Sessions represented), Synod
(serving Sessions and Presbyteries), the General Assembly (highest governing
body, made up of equal number of elders and pastors from the Presbyteries).
The
Presbyterians are proud of their polity, believing it to be eminently
Biblical, for they are ruled by elders (presbyters, hence their name), not
by Bishops and not by the majority in the congregation. And yet they are
protected, if need be, from an oppressive local eldership (Session) by a
larger number of elders (Presbytery). Practically speaking, however, it is
usually the pastor that runs the church, the Session humbly giving its
blessings, as is the case in most denominations. But the power structure is
there if and when needed.
The
Cumberland church is unique in that it has never had enough pastors and
there are presently over 100 vacant pulpits.
Like
the Cumberland beginnings, our own churches trace their origin to
reform-minded Presbyterian ministers who wanted to change things but did not
want to start another church. They too created a new Presbytery instead,
which they called the Springfield Presbytery. But unlike their Cumberland
counterparts, they had such a passion for Christian unity that they resolved
to lay to rest the entity they had created, lest it be conceived as
sectarian. In their Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery
(1804), which lives on as one of our founding documents, they wrote:
"Let this Body die and sink into union with the Body of Christ at
large." The unity movement they launched eventually became Christian
Churches/Churches of Christ/Disciples of Christ.
All
four of the founding fathers of our Movement were originally Presbyterian
ministers: Alexander and Thomas Campbell, Barton W. Stone, and Walter Scott.
That is why we sometimes Jokingly say, "if our Movement dies out, God
can always start over since there are still plenty of Presbyterians."
There are yet many Presbyterians even if there are now more Moslems in this
country than there are Presbyterians, a fact that I find disturbing. The
United Presbyterian Church numbers 3.057,226 in 11.621 congregations. The
General Assembly's budget is almost 100 million for 1988.20 million of which
is for social Justice and peacemaking.
Not
only do Presbyterians loom large in our own church's history, but in the
history of our nation as well. Members of Parliament in England sometimes
referred to the American Revolution as "the Presbyterian
Rebellion," partly because Presbyterians in America were especially
anti-British (due to antagonisms between England, where the Anglican was the
state church. and Scotland. where the Presbyterian was the state church) but
also because Presbyterians were in the forefront of the action. Twelve
Presbyterians signed the Declaration of Independence. They were also in the
forefront of the great revivals, the First and the Second Great Awakenings.
It was the second, led by James McGready, a Presbyterian, that fanned the
fires of revivalism in the 1790's that led to the famous Cane Ridge revival
in Kentucky in 1802, back to which we in Churches of Christ trace our
beginnings in the person of Barton W. Stone.
In
1984 the Moderator of the General Assembly of the UPC appointed a 21-person
committee to help the church recapture and reassert its identity as
"the Reformed people of God." We use that term to describe the
Presbyterians in this report, realizing that the Reformed faith is the
essence of Presbyterianism. In fact the 1988 Mission Yearbook.
published by the General Assembly. uses that term as contradistinctive to
both Catholic and Protestant. such as: "Present-day Presbyterians can
thus draw on the central commitments they share with sisters and brothers in
the Catholic, Protestant, and Reformed expressions of the church."
While they admit to being Protestants, they are of "the Reformed
tradition" within Protestantism. a distinction that is crucial in
understanding where they are coming from. But there are many Reformed
denominations. most of which belong to the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches, which trace their beginnings to John Calvin. Ulrich Zwingli, and
John Knox.
The
UPC Book of Order names ten doctrines that Presbyterians deem
essential, six of which are distinctively "Reformed. - The first two of
the ten are held in common with all Christians, the mystery oft he Trinity
and the incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. Two others are
shared by all Protestants: Justification by grace through faith and the
Scriptures as the final authority for salvation and the life of faith. The
six Reformed doctrines are: (1) God's sovereignty: (2) God's choosing
(election) of people for salvation and service: (3) the covenant life of the
church, ordering itself according to the Word of God: (4) a faithful
stewardship of God's creation: (5) the sin of idolatry is to worship
anything created rather than God: (6) the necessity of obedience to the Word
of God in working for Justice in the transformation of society.
It
is noteworthy that these six "essential" marks of the Reformed
faith, which has its roots in the theology of John Calvin, have little in
common with what has long been known as the "five points" of
Calvinism, which are: total depravity, unconditional election, limited
atonement, irresistible grace. and preservation of the saints. These
controversial doctrines have not been generally accepted by Christians. The
way the UPC now interprets the Reformed faith it is well nigh acceptable to
all believers. The oldline Calvinism that taught that some are eternally
predestined to go to heaven and others eternally reprobated to hell, and
"the number can be neither in- creased nor diminished" is
apparently dead. One Presbyterian minister told me that he didn't know a
single Presbyterian that believed that anymore. There is certainly freewill
and free choice implied in the six essentials, especially in no. 6. If no.2
implies predestination, it is stated in a way that is generally acceptable,
for it is clear in Scripture that God does
call or elect us for salvation and service.
We
can certainly agree with the way James W. Angell puts it in How To Spell
Presbyterian: