As we’ve been considering J.G. Machen’s racism and connection to Presbyterianism, the following selections from @SeanMLucas's book, For a Continuing Church (link at end), help paint the broader picture, especially re: the largest P&R denomination, the PCA.
A LONG thread (sorry):
A LONG thread (sorry):
"To be sure, there were connections between followers of northern Presbyterian fundamentalist J. Gresham Machen and their southern counterparts that contributed to the development of conservative dissent within the PCUS. 2/
And Machen’s Westminster Theological Seminary did play a role in supplying conservative ministerial leadership to the PCUS. 3/
Several leaders of the “Conservative Coalition” trained at Westminster—either graduating from the theological school or transferring to a PCUS seminary for the last year of school to ease placement. 4/
Some conservatives actually pastored churches in the OPC before coming south to serve conservative PCUS congregations. 5/
Even more, many of the issues over which southern conservatives agitated were issues that caused northern Presbyterians to bolt from that denomination, specifically the inerrancy of Scripture and confessional subscription. 6/
… Yet there were important differences. For example, while many in the Machen cohort that led the OPC in its early days sought to maintain a confessional Presbyterianism for its own sake, 7/
the majority of those who helped to develop the PCA were less interested in arguing over secondary theological issues that would distract from the larger goal of evangelizing and renewing American culture. 8/
Thus, rather than link arms with smaller, separatist northern Presbyterian bodies, the founders of the PCA forged a body that would emphasize conservative doctrine for the purpose of renewing American culture. But the PCA would be more than this. 9/
From the beginning, southern Presbyterian conservatives articulated right-wing social and political views that would shape the founding of the denomination and continue to characterize the vast majority of ministers and laypeople. 10/
In the post–World War II era, these conservatives articulated a religiously inspired version of conservative political ideology: anticommunism, anti-integration, and anticentralization. … 11/
[M]any ... who would form the PCA would articulate a more positive vision of political, cultural, and religious conservatism, which would place the new body solidly on the right wing of American denominations&give it a larger-than-expected influence inthe new Religious Right. 12/
Eighty-year-old J. E. Flow … attempted to state a positive vision that would justify the separate existence of southern Presbyterianism beyond his own rapidly declining life. At the center of the vision were five commitments: 13/
the “old school” interpretation of Scripture and the Westminster Standards; the presbyterian form of church government; the grassroots principle of church oversight, symbolized in the role of diaconal care; the spiritual mission of the church; 14/
and “the purity and integrity of the White man of North America upon whose shoulders are laid the burdens of the world.” 15/
Flow’s five commitments were near the heart of what most southern Presbyterian conservatives sought to preserve in the period between the fall of Berlin and the beginning of the Vietnam War. 16/
…They wrote countless articles defending “the fundamentals”—biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth of Jesus, his substitutionary death on the cross&bodily resurrection from the grave, the reality of miracles and the supernatural, and the hope of Jesus’ literal&physical return. 17/
These religious issues, however, would find their place in a larger defense of a southern conservative cultural system in which anticommunism, anti-integration, and anticentralization served important roles as complicated defenses of the inspiration of the Bible. 18/
[Nestled within many pages outlining Presbyterian defenses of segregation] Another defender of segregation from the Bible, Morton Smith [founding member of the PCA], then professor of Bible at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, also utilized many of these same texts. 19/
After admitting the essential unity of humankind, Smith stressed human diversity, appealing to Acts 17:26 and the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, from which he suggested that “the principle of separation of peoples or of segregation is not necessarily wrong per se. 20/
In fact, it seems clearly to be God’s order of things.” But he appealed to other texts as well. He looked at Deuteronomy 7:3, which, along with Genesis 6, Ezra 9–10, Malachi 2:10–16, and 2 Corinthians 6:14, argued against “intermarriage with other peoples” ... . /21
He tried to answer the integrationist’s use of Galatians 3:28 by sighing that “it can hardly be maintained that he meant to imply that there were no real and continued distinctions within the group that he lists.” /22
Rather, both Jesus and the apostle Paul exemplified the principle of “unity in diversity &...diversity in unity.” Hence, it was only fair to conclude, Smith believed, that the Bible gave good grounds to practice segregation and especially to avoid any intermarriage ... . /23
… It is important to notice that the conservatives’ vision was not markedly different from that of their progressive opponents. Both sides believed that the gospel had something to say to American and global “civilization.” /24
… These southern Presbyterian conservatives would raise their “banners” for Jesus as King over his church, the Bible as the inspired Word of God, the WCF as the best summary of what the Bible teaches,&the Great Commission to evangelize others as the lifeblood of the church. /25
But they would also raise their banners for other things—anticommunism, segregation, and anticentralization…. 26/
There was some amount of irony that southern Presbyterian conservatives took up the battle against Communism, integration, and centralization at all. 27/
After all, as evidenced by Flow’s five commitments, they had long been committed to the ideal of the “spiritual mission of the church,” which restricted the church’s work to creed, liturgy, and service and made commentary on political and social matters taboo. … 28/
[C]onservative leader L. Nelson Bell railed against “political churchmen”: “We resent this further intrusion of Church leaders into the realm of international politics for three reasons. First, they are not competent in that particular field. 29/
Second, they have no right to use the prestige of the Church in this matter. Third, we think their advice is dead wrong.” 30/
And it was this final point that often motivated conservative Presbyterian defenses of the spirituality of the church: the conservatives simply believed that progressive leaders were “dead wrong.” 31/
And with @SeanMLucas's help, the PCA adopted this wonderful report on Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation:
pcaac.org/racial-and-eth… 33/
pcaac.org/racial-and-eth… 33/
“The children and grandchildren of the PCA founders, however, are part of a denomination that has witnessed and participated in a Reformed awakening in the African-American community, and that is planting multiethnic congregations, establishing campus ministries at … 34/
historically black colleges and universities (which have a very substantial Asian membership), is deliberately reaching out into the Hispanic communities, and is intentionally and happily committed to a PCA that is increasingly multiethnic.” ~Ligon Duncan 35/35
