Presbyterian Church in The United States - History

History

This group split from the main national body of Old School Presbyterianism, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), after that body's General Assembly passed the Gardiner Spring Resolutions passed in May 1861. These resolutions denounced secession as an act of treason. Prior to the split, the Old School Presbyterian Church was the only mainline Protestant denomination to maintain a national unity across sectional lines as late as mid-1861. During the American Civil War, the denomination was known as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America.

Also divisive was the Civil Rights Movement, the response to which in effect split the PCUS into three factions: a liberal group desiring full endorsement of the movement's platform, a moderate faction desiring church-wide consensus before taking positive action, and a conservative/traditionalist group vigorously opposing what it believed was the meddling of the church in the civil and cultural traditions of its native region. Conservatives argued that church activity on behalf of racial desegregation and voting rights constituted a violation of the doctrine of "the spirituality of the church," a late-19th century principle developed by PCUS theologians that declared that social reform and political participation were duties or pursuits to be taken up by individuals, not church courts. In particular, the conservative group defended that teaching aggressively, a doctrine that liberal critics deemed a justification for maintaining racial segregation and preserving the social standing of historic upper-class elites within Southern society, a fair percentage of which were PCUS members.

Having been eventually defeated numerous times in the General Assembly by a coalition of the liberals and moderates from the 1960s onward, some PCUS conservatives, primarily from non-metropolitan parts of the Deep South, founded what today is the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in late 1973, formally citing its rationale as " long-developing theological liberalism which denied the deity of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy and authority of Scripture" on the part of PCUS leaders. Some evangelicals, however, remained in the PCUS in order to contend for their beliefs; this group was more willing to perceive common cause with UPCUSA conservatives. Nonetheless, by the 2000s, some churches from both heritages began to depart the post-merger denomination over similar concerns and moral disputes, namely in favor of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

After the PCA congregations left, the PCUS was able to work more closely with the UPCUSA towards a merger which finally happened in 1983 as the two formed the present Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Today, this is the largest Presbyterian denominational body in the country with around 2 million congregants.