A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)
The following is adapted from an article by the late Dr. Marshall St. John (1947-2011), a faithful PCA pastor and Elder. Used with permission.
What Is the PCA?
In 1973, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) was formed to be a denomination that is (1) Faithful to the Scriptures, (2) True to the Reformed Faith, and (3) Obedient to the Great Commission.
Scripture alone is the final authority for faith and life. We believe that when we seek to be faithful to Scripture, we will seek to be Reformed and Presbyterian, and focused on fulfilling the Great Commission.
By “Reformed” we mean that we are connected to the teachings of the historic Church, and the doctrinal beliefs recovered by the Reformation.
By “Presbyterian” we describe our representative form of church government. Local congregations are governed by a “Session” of “presbyters” (elders), elected by the members of the local church. Local churches within a specified geographical area are called a “Presbytery.” Representatives of all the PCA congregations meet once a year in a “General Assembly.”
By “Obedient to the Great Commission” we mean that we are eager to be busy with the work of evangelism and church planting, both in North America and around the world. We want every human being to hear the Gospel and become a believer and follower of Jesus Christ.
Our History
The history of the PCA, like all other Christian churches, shares a common heritage that stretches back to the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ (and underneath that back to the saving purposes of God in eternity past, and through the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament). More recently, our history begins with the formation of what has become known and the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, which can be traced back to the time of the Reformation, and especially with the works of John Calvin and John Knox.
John Calvin of Switzerland
John Calvin (July 10, 1509 — May 27, 1564) was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology. In Geneva, he rejected Papal authority, established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance, and created a central hub from which Reformed theology was propagated. He is renowned for his teachings and writings, particularly his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin’s “scheme of ecclesiastical governance” was later called “Presbyterianism.”
The word “Presbyterianism” comes from the New Testament Greek word translated “elder.” Presbyterianism is a system of church government in which leadership and authority is grounded within a group of elders, not in a singular bishop or in the congregation as a whole. Authority flowing from a hierarchical system of bishops is an Episcopalian form of church government. Authority flowing from the congregation, where members meet and vote on every issue, is a Congregational form of church government.
Presbyterianism, on the other hand, is a representative form of church government, where authority is neither centralized in one person at the top, nor decentralized amongst the congregation. Rather, the congregation elects elders—men who bear signs of giftedness and calling by God to their office, who then undertake the work of governing and shepherding the church.
Calvin established the authority of elders in Geneva and taught his system of church government to visiting theological students. One of his most influential students would be John Knox of Scotland.
John Knox of Scotland
John Knox (c. 1514 — November 24, 1572) was a Scottish religious reformer who took the lead in reforming the Church in Scotland along Calvinist lines. He is widely regarded as the father of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland and of the Church of Scotland.
Knox returned from Geneva to Edinburgh on May 2, 1559, amidst much national turmoil. During his absence the reform party had become more numerous, self-reliant, aggressive, and better consolidated. The queen dowager, Mary of Guise, acting as regent for her daughter, the young Mary I of Scotland, had begun using forceful and violent means to squash the Protestant movement in her country. Civil war was imminent, and Knox at once became the leader of the reformers. He preached against idolatry with great boldness and began the “purging” of idols from churches and even the destruction of monasteries.
Politics and religion were still closely intertwined at this time, and the reformers did not hesitate to seek the help of England. Knox negotiated with the English government to secure its support, and due in part to his efforts, in 1560, the doctrine, worship, and government of the Roman Church were overthrown by parliament and Protestantism was established as the national religion. Knox, assisted by five other ministers, formulated the confession of faith adopted at this time and drew up the constitution of the new Church: The First Book of Discipline.
This new Church—or Kirk—was organized along Presbyterian lines. Priests were replaced by ministers (from the Latin for servants), with each parish governed by the Kirk Session of elders. John Knox died in Edinburgh on November 24, 1572.
Irish Presbyterianism
From Scotland, Presbyterianism spread to Ireland, dating back to the Plantation of Ulster in 1610. During the reign of James I of Ireland (James VI of Scotland) many Scottish Presbyterians emigrated to Ireland. The first move away from the Church of Scotland, of which the Presbyterians in Ireland were part, saw the creation of the Presbytery of Ulster in 1642 by chaplains of a Scottish army which had arrived to crush the uprising of 1641. Under Cromwell, congregations multiplied, and new presbyteries were formed. After the Restoration, nonconforming ministers were removed from parishes of the Established Church, but the Irish administration could not afford to alienate such a substantial Protestant population and Presbyterianism was allowed to continue in the country.
American Presbyterianism
The Rev. Francis Makemie (1658—1708) was an Irishman, born near Rathmelton, Donegal County, Ireland in 1658. He studied for the ministry at Glasgow University, where in February 1676, he was a student in the third class. In 1680 the Irish Presbytery of Laggan received a letter from Judge William Stevens, a member of Lord Baltimore's Council, asking that ministers be sent to Maryland and Virginia. The following year Mr. Makemie was licensed and ordained as a missionary for the American colonies.
He preached for a time in Barbados. About 1684 he began his labors on the continent. In 1690 his name figures in the records of Accomack County, Virginia, where he was engaged in the West India trade, and where in 1692 four hundred and fifty acres of land were granted to him. Here he married Naomi, daughter of William Anderson, a wealthy merchant.
In the southeast comer of Maryland there were three or four “meeting houses,” and in the one at Snow Hill he organized a church. Reflecting on his ministry at Snow Hill, a local elder and merchant would write thus of Mr. Makemie: “One generation has uttered his praises in the ears of its successor, and you may, even yet, hear their echo. Parents made his surname the Christian name of their children, until, in the neighborhood of Snow Hill, it has become a common one.” This hill was his base of missionary operations.
It was not long until many congregations were gathered in the region which he had selected as his field of labor. As an itinerant missionary to these churches, he journeyed from place to place, sometimes on the eastern shore of Maryland, sometimes in Virginia, and sometimes extending his journeys as far as South Carolina. To the extent of his ability, he supplied the feeble churches, but he deeply felt the need of others to assist him.
In 1704, he went to London, and on his return brought back two other missionaries, who, along with Makemie himself and four others, formed the first American Presbytery at Philadelphia in the spring of 1706.
Mr. Makemie died at his residence in Accomack, Virginia, in the summer of 1708, leaving a widow and two daughters. He made liberal bequests to charitable objects and distributed his valuable library among his family and friends. He is generally regarded as the first regular and thorough Presbyterian in America, and the father of the American Presbyterian Church.
The War Between the States
The history of American Presbyterianism is a long and winding road with much more historical detail than can be covered in this article. Of much importance to the history of the PCA, however, is the effect of the Civil War on the American Presbyterian Church.
Prior to the War Between the States, American Presbyterians had split along theological grounds regarding the Great Awakenings and the Revivals that were taking place in the country.[1] Many of those theological debates were forced into the background at the outbreak of the war. Not long after the Battle of Fort Sumter, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America met in May 1861 and adopted the Gardiner Spring Resolutions, named after the New York City pastor who proposed them. These resolutions required that all elders and churches give “devotion to the Union of these States, and their loyalty to the Government.”
In the minds of Southern Presbyterians, these resolutions were a violation of the spirituality of the church by an unwarranted engagement in partisan politics. Thus, in December of 1861, commissioners from the Southern presbyteries met in Augusta, Georgia, and withdrew from the Northern church in order to form the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, which would be renamed after the war to the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). This new church would be the mother church of the PCA.
The Beginning of a New Church
Over the next 100 years, many things would take place in the Southern Presbyterian Church which would ultimately lead to the creation of the PCA.
Why Was the PCA Created?
The PCA was created in 1973 by churches and elders separating themselves from the PCUS in order to establish a Bible-based, truly Christian Church.
There are a number of reasons that these churches and elders left the PCUS. Among these reasons were many objectionable beliefs and activities. At the time of the PCA’s founding, the PCUS…
Denied the authority of the Bible.
Required the ordination of women as elders and deacons.
Defended and funded abortion.
Joined the National and World Council of Churches which supported communism around the world.
Defended Darwinian evolution.
Promoted sexual immorality to church youth.
Opposed capital punishment of murderers.
Welcomed some ministers who denied the virgin birth, and the deity and resurrection of Jesus, and refused to accept some ministers who believed in these doctrines.
Was run by a political machine which excluded conservatives from influential posts.
Redefined missions as social action, and downplayed evangelism and church planting.
How Was the PCA Created?
Conservatives in the PCUS had fought the growing “Liberalism” in their denomination for decades.
It became clear that a conspiracy of liberal ministers and seminary professors in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) were engaged in an organized effort to gain control of the church. These men, led by Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson (a professor at Richmond Theological Seminary), formed a secret organization which they called “The Fellowship of St. James.” They sought to have the church abandon its belief in the integrity and authority of the Bible, to compromise on the doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and to participate more actively in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Their primary goal, however, was to unite the PCUS with the far more liberal and three times larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America—the Northern Church. In order to achieve these goals, they developed a political machine to control the actions of the church.
The Southern Presbyterian Journal
To let the members of the PCUS know about this attempt to undermine our historic faith and to encourage conservatives to resist the efforts of the liberals to gain complete control, Dr. Bell (the father of Billy Graham's wife, Ruth) and Dr. Henry B. Dendy, minister of the Weaverville, North Carolina Presbyterian Church, founded The Southern Presbyterian Journal. Dr. Bell served as editor and Dr. Dendy as business manager.
By 1964 the secret “Fellowship of St. James” was replaced with a new and larger group called “The Fellowship of Concern.” They redoubled their efforts to merge our Southern Church with the far more liberal Northern Church. This group was in complete control of the General Assembly’s Nominating Committee, many of the synods and presbyteries, the board and agencies, colleges, and seminaries and most of the important committees of the church.
Dr. Bell and several other conservative leaders met in Atlanta and concluded that informing church members regarding the direction the liberals were taking the church through the Presbyterian Journal would never return control to Bible-believing Presbyterians. They decided that an alternative, conservative and confessional organization was needed to push back against the progressive agenda of the Fellowship of Concern.
Concerned Presbyterians
At the Journal board meeting in August of that year (1964), Kenneth S. Keyes was asked to form and head such an organization. With $15,000 seed money which the board provided, Concerned Presbyterians was formed in the fall of 1964 with Col. Roy LeCraw of Atlanta serving as vice president, W. J. (Jack) Williamson of Greenville, Alabama, as secretary and J. M. Vroon of Miami as treasurer.
The first bulletin from Concerned Presbyterians listed the following reasons as the necessity of this new organization, and why everyone—pastors, elders, and those in the pews—should be concerned:
The primary mission of the church—winning people to Jesus Christ and nurturing them in the faith—was being compromised by overemphasis on social, economic, and political matters, forgetting the necessity for regeneration.
The integrity and authority of the Word of God was being questioned by dubious theories of revelation in some of the literature of the church.
Some presbyteries no longer required complete loyalty to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.
Continued membership in the National Council of Churches involved the PCUS in activities, pronouncements, and programs which were in clear disobedience to the Word of God.
The establishment of a central treasurer of the General Assembly which had the power to determine the disbursement and use of financial gifts against the express wishes and desires of the donors.
The renewed determination of the PCUS to unite with the Northern Church (at the time the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A.), which had already abandoned the confessions and doctrines of the Reformed faith.
Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship
When it became evident that those in control of the PCUS were no longer interested in evangelism, Rev. William P. Hill organized the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship. Starting with two full-time evangelists, they eventually had fifteen evangelists serving the church. This group would become a sending agency for conservative churches in the PCUS who still wanted to support and send missionaries, but were wary of using the denomination’s Board of World Missions which had compromised on many doctrines of the church.
Presbyterian Churchmen United
In 1969 more than 500 conservative ministers formed Presbyterian Churchmen United and ran 3/4-page statements of their beliefs in as many as 30 leading newspapers.
Dr. John E. Richards, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Macon, Georgia, headed this organization and Rev. Paul P. Settle was its field director. They both played a very active role in speaking at conservative rallies and informing members in the pews of the activities of the progressive wing of the church.
By this time, presbyteries where liberal elders were in control were receiving ministers who did not believe in the Virgin Birth, the validity of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross, His bodily resurrection, and other cardinal doctrines of the faith.
In addition, the Board of World Missions was replacing conservative leading missionaries with men and women who no longer believed that leading the unsaved to Christ was their primary mission. The progressive-controlled courts of the church made no effort to discipline a minister in West Virginia who “married” two homosexuals at a church in Washington D. C., or a Louisville, Kentucky minister who offered himself for a position as elector in the Communist Party. Some of the liberal-leaning presbyteries were blocking the efforts of conservative churches to call conservative ministers.
A New Seminary
Southern Presbyterian conservatives, like their counterparts earlier in the century in the North, represented a mixture of doctrinal viewpoints that ranged from firmly committed Old School Presbyterians to fundamentalists who resisted social change. Moreover, there were divisions between those who sought reform from within and others who urged the need to separate. All parties seemed to agree, however, that a seminary was needed to provide ministers for the conservative cause, given their suspicions about the teaching at the four seminaries of the South (Austin, Columbia, Louisville, and Union). A key step in the promotion of the conservative cause was taken in 1966, when Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, was established on explicitly Old School Presbyterian grounds, especially underscoring the spirituality of the church. (Note: Reformed Theological Seminary never became the “official” seminary of the PCA, but remains an independent organization, though many of its students do become PCA pastors.)
Concern for Christian Youth
In 1961 the National Council of Churches published and distributed a booklet entitled “The Meaning of Sex in Christian Life.” Its text was a hypothetical heart-to-heart talk between a church leader and a teenager.
On one page the church leader told the youth: “Our culture declares that all sexual activity within marriage is legal, proper, and good, while any such activity outside marriage is illicit, sinful and wrong. We know that there is sexual contact between unmarried couples that is motivated by love, and which is pure and on occasions beautiful.”
Around 1970, the PCUS’ Board of Christian Education joined with the Northern Church and the United Church of Christ in publishing a monthly magazine called “Colloquy.” In one issue of Colloquy, this statement was printed on pre-marital sex: “If kids were made aware of alternatives, they wouldn't have to worry about getting into trouble. If there was some way you could stop pregnancy, I don’t think there would be anything wrong with sex.”
An Intolerable Situation
At the 1971 General Assembly the four conservative organizations (the Southern Presbyterian Journal, Concerned Presbyterians, Evangelistic Fellowship, and Presbyterian Churchmen United) decided to make an all-out effort to elect three conservatives to the Permanent Nominating Committee—the single, most vital committee in the church. The nominees were Dr. C. Darby Fulton who had capably directed the Board of World Missions for many years, Walter Shepard, a former missionary, and Ruth Bell Graham (Billy Graham's wife.)
For that same election, the liberal contingent in the church made three nominations of their own: a layman from Charleston, West Virginia, who had given the church $50,000 to start paying for abortions; a minister from San Antonio, Texas, who held several indiscriminate liquor parties and would at one such party get two youth delegates in the church so drunk that they had to be hospitalized; and a liberal woman from Texas. It was the most radical group ever nominated for this important committee. All three were elected.
This assembly rejected an overture to withdraw from the National Council of Churches by a vote of 213 to 189. It condemned the Commission on Overseas Evangelism which the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship had set up to provide a vehicle by which churches and individuals who had lost faith in the Board of World Missions could support conservative missionaries. The vote was 270 to 126.
The assembly also rejected a motion to order the Board of Christian Education to stop cooperating in publishing Colloquy—the blasphemous magazine which was undermining the morality of our young people.
The overwhelming defeat at this General Assembly, which in the eyes of many conservatives was their last effort to make real change in their beloved denomination, forced them to make a difficult decision. A few weeks after the General Assembly, representatives of the four groups, Concerned Presbyterians, Presbyterian Churchman United, Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, and the Presbyterian Journal met in Atlanta to assess the situation. They decided that the time had come to abandon the efforts to change the liberal leadership and to start planning for a new church. The vote was 25 to 1.
A steering committee of three members from each organization was appointed. Rev. Donald B. Patterson was elected chairman, Rev. James Baird, vice chairman and Rev. Kennedy Smartt, secretary. Dr. John E. Richards resigned his pastorate at First Presbyterian Church, Macon, Georgia to become administrator for the steering committee.
In August 1971, the decision to leave and form a new church was announced along with this statement:
Intolerable Situation
We have reached the point where the situation in our beloved church has become intolerable to thousands of loyal Presbyterians who love the Lord and want to serve Him in a Presbyterian church which will be true to His Word.
We feel that we can no longer be a part of a denomination in which the Board of Christian Education publishes literature which violates our Confession of Faith and encourages our young people to experiment with sex and drugs; in a denomination in which the Board of World Missions no longer places its primary emphasis on carrying out the Great Commission; in a denomination with seminaries which train ministers to substitute social and political action for the preaching of the Word; in a denomination where presbyteries violate our constitution by receiving ministers who refuse to affirm the Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection, and other cardinal doctrines, while denying membership to faithful ministers who stand firmly for these doctrines which they vowed to uphold.
Especially do we feel that we can no longer subject our children and grandchildren to the kind of youth leaders that those in control have seen fit to place in these sensitive positions—young radicals who seem determined to lead our young people away from their faith in God.
Two years were spent in laying the foundation for the new denomination.
Advisory Convention
In his anecdotal history of the PCA, l Am Reminded, Kennedy Smartt records that an Advisory Committee met in August of 1973 at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. 160 churches were officially represented by 280 voting delegates, representing 40,000 church members. The Organizing Committee recommended that the 1933 Book of Church Order of the PCUS be adopted, with some minor changes, and the addition of an important chapter on church property. The Convention determined also that ordination to both elder and deacon offices would be permitted only to men.
In How is the Gold Become Dim, Morton Smith states that the ordination of women to the offices of deacon or elder had been approved in the PCUS at the 1963-64 General Assemblies, and that the practice was “obviously contrary to the specific teaching of the Word of God.” The denial of the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, lack of evangelistic emphasis, a liberal bias in denominational literature, heavy-handed top-down authority, the World Council of Churches, abortion, female ordination, immorality, and evolution were considered to be major issues in the need to form a new denomination.
The First General Assembly of the PCA
In December 1973, delegates representing some 260 congregations with a combined communicant membership of over 41,000 that had left the PCUS gathered at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and organized the National Presbyterian Church, which later became the Presbyterian Church in America.
The PCA Today
Today, the PCA is the largest conservative Presbyterian denomination in the English-speaking world with over 2,000 churches and church plants containing over 380,000 members.
The PCA’s Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) runs 179 campus ministries worldwide, and its missions agency, Mission to the World (MTW), supports over 1,700 long and short-term missionaries in 105 countries around the world.
To learn more about the PCA, please visit pcanet.org.
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[1] For a more in-depth look at the history of American Presbyterianism, see D.G. Hart and John R. Muether, Seeking a Better Country, and Sean M. Lucas, For a Continuing Church.