Origin
In 1932 the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took an ambiguous position in regard to a theologically liberal report on missions, a decision that provided conservatives in the denomination further ammunition when one of the denomination's most prominent missionaries, the author Pearl Buck, endorsed the document as "masterly statement" and labeled traditional notions of salvation "superstitious." The following year, J. Gresham Machen, a theologically conservative intellectual, was most instrumental in creating the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Interpreting the existence of the new board as a direct challenge to its denominational authority, the Presbyterian church brought the members of its board to trial—although Machen was never given the opportunity to defend his actions. In March 1935, the members of the Independent Board were found guilty and suspended from the ministry. In 1936, fundamentalists less concerned than Machen with the Board's Presbyterian identity, ousted Machen as president and installed "a minister of a nondenominational church."
Read more about this topic: Independent Board For Presbyterian Foreign Missions
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)