The History of Presbyterianism in the United States

The History of Presbyterianismin the United States Part 5: The Fundamental Religion B – Fundamentalism Becomes Militant

George Calvert, 1579-1632 • Secretary of State under King James I/VI. • Fell from political grace in 1625 but granted the title of First Baron Baltimore of Ireland. • Sought out colonization in the New World as a refuge for English Catholics. • Tried first in Newfoundland but found conditions to be too harsh. • Applied for a new charter in the Chesapeake region but died before it was granted. The Founding of the State of Maryland

Leonard Calvert, 1606-1647 • Second son of George Calvert. • 1st Proprietary Governor of MD • Attempted to govern with absolute (and distinctively Catholic) authority • but was over-ruled and forced to govern by the Common Laws of (Anglican) England • and in 1644 faced a Protestant rebellion and was forced to flee to Virginia • The state was named after Henrietta Maria of France (wife of Charles I, mother of Charles II and James II) • Because of her Catholicity, she never received the crown of England.

Master Timeline United States Europe • 1620 – Mayflower lands • 1730s-1743 – 1st Great Awakening • 1776-1783 – American Rev. • 1790-1840 – 2nd Great Awakening • 1830 – Book of Mormon • 1850-1900 – 3rd Great Awakening • 1861-1865 – American Civil War • 1870 – Scottish Common Sense • 1889 – Moody Bible Institute • 1891 – Briggs’ address • 1909 – Scofield Reference Bible • 1910 – Pres. G.A.: 5 Fundamentals • 1914-1919 – World War I • 1922 – “Shall Fund.s Win?” • 1923 – The Auburn Affirmation • 1925 – The Scopes Trial • 1929 – Westminster Theo. Seminary • 1936 – Orthodox Presbyterian Ch. • 1936 – John Mackay, Princeton Sem. • 1643 – Westminster Confession of Faith • 1650-1800 – Age of European Enlightenment & of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy • 1770s-1900 – Rise of German Higher Criticism • 1789-1799 – French Revolution • 1827 – Plymouth Brethren begin meeting • 1833 – Slavery Abolition Act of England • 1859 - Charles Darwin – Origin of Species • 1862-77 – Darby travels to the United States • 1919 – Rise of Neo-Orthodoxy United States (cont.) 1937 – Death of J. Gresham Machen - Bible Presbyterian Ch. (McIntyre) 1966 – RTS, Jackson, MI 1967 – Confession of ‘67, Book of Confessions 1973 – PCA 1983 – Union of UPCUSA & PCUS

The Great War Archduke Franz Ferdinand The Ottoman Empire

World War I – 1914-18 • 9 million combatants died • 16 million killed & 20 million wounded • Causes: • increased military technology • Spanish Flu

Fundamentalists differ regarding World War I William Jennings Bryan Billy Sunday • resigned from Wilson’s cabinet as Secretary of State rather than support the war. • advocated peace & only reluctantly supported the war. • avoided anti-German rhetoric and vitriol. • zeal for the Gospel and patriotic enthusiasm went hand in hand. • preached a message of Christian nativism. • “If you turn hell upside down, you will find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.” Marsden

The Millennial Expectation/Hope Essentially Calvinistic: The Kingdom of God on earth; the conquering of evil; the spread of moral influence in culture; optimistic PremillennialAmillennial Postmillennial

The Millennial Expectation/Hope Essentially Pietistic: Pessimistic; losing the Christian influence on culture/society; anticipation of deliverance from evil; confirmation of God’s acting in history. PremillennialAmillennial Postmillennial Adventist dread and apathy Intensified opposition to German theology and scholarship

Arno C. GaebeleinPastor, First Baptist Church, NYC “Signs of the Times” 1910 - The Present Age: Condemned “Efforts to reform this age was Satan’s way of lulling the world into ignoring the crisis.”

Arno C. GaebeleinPastor, First Baptist Church, NYC Corrupt German Biblical scholarship was at the root of the astounding moral collapse of German civilization!

Arno C. GaebeleinPastor, First Baptist Church, NYC German barbarism could be explained as a result of an evolutionary “might is right” superman philosophy – the same could happen in America.

Arno C. GaebeleinPastor, First Baptist Church, NYC 1917 The “Red Scare” and the “Yellow Peril”! “Our civilization and religion will be totally destroyed!”

the Rev. Oliver W. Van Osdel “Sometimes people ask what are the objections to dancing and theaters and card playing and such things; they say these are not to be severely condemned; but you will notice that the people who indulge in these worldly things are always loose in doctrine … the two go together, and when you find people indulging in worldliness they becomes loose in doctrine, then apostasy easily creeps in, the union of Christendom becomes possible and probably will be united through corrupt doctrine under one head, the Pope of Rome.”

Fundamentalism’s Growth – 1920-25 Fundamentals of the Faith National Moral Crusade • Opposition to any who deny or tolerate denial, such as the modernist/liberals. • Further growth of Dispensationalism in Presbyterianism. • Further separation/isolation within Baptist circles. • In both, the primary focus was on individual salvation. • Opposition to the teaching of evolution in public schools. • Intensified sense of legalism with regard to socially popular moral concerns. • Missionary endeavors were considered absolutely crucial at the same time suspicion of “foreign invasion” intensified at home.

Prohibition, 1920-1933 The Eighteen Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

Harry Emerson Fosdick • Ordained to the Baptist ministry, 1903 • B.D., Union Theological Seminary, 1904 • First Baptist Church, Montclair, NJ, 1904-1915 • First Presbyterian Church, NYC, 1919-1925 • Park Avenue Baptist Church, 1926-1946

“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” May, 1922 Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is his revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal, but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might really love the Lord their God not only with all their heart and soul and strength, but with all their mind, they have been trying to see this new knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge. …

Now, the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship. Shall they be allowed to succeed? … They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our Lord; that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration - … that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death placates an alienated deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner; and that we must believe in the second coming of our Lord upon the clouds of heaven … .

The question is: Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done. In this country and on the foreign field they are trying to do it. … I plead this morning the cause of magnanimity and liberality and tolerance of spirit. …

… [I]n the Bible … revelation is progressive. The thought of God moves out from oriental kingship to compassionate fatherhood; treatment of unbelievers moves out from the use of force to the appeals of love; polygamy gives way to monogamy; slavery, never explicitly condemned before the New Testament closes, is nevertheless being undermined by ideas that in the end, like dynamite, will blast its foundation to pieces. …

Side by side with these to whom the second coming is a literal expectation, another group exists in the evangelical churches. They, too, say, “Christ is coming!” They say it with all their hearts; but they are not thinking of an external arrival on the clouds. They have assimilated as part of the divine revelation the exhilarating insight which these recent generations have given to us, that development is God’s way of working out his will. …

I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed. Nobody’s intolerance can contribute anything to the solution of the situation which we have described. If, then, the Fundamentalists have no solution of the problem, where may we expect to find it? The first element that is necessary is a spirit of tolerance and Christian liberty. The second element which is needed … is a clear insight into the main issues of modern Christianity and a sense of penitent shame that the Christian church should be quarreling over little matters when the world is dying of great needs. …

So much of it does not matter! And there is one thing that does matter – more than anything else in all the world – that men in their personal lives and in their social relationships should know Jesus Christ. … I do not even know in this congregation whether anybody has been tempted to be Fundamentalist. … God keep us always so and ever increasing areas of the Christian fellowship: intellectually hospitable, open-minded, liberty-loving, fair, tolerant, … always [with] our major emphasis [being] upon the weightier matters of the law.

These were the days when Christians literally beat down the doors to get into church. "Crowds Smash Door: Near Riot to Hear Fosdick" ran the headlines of a 1924 newspaper. It was not uncommon for people to wait in front of the church for more than two hours in what they called the "bread line" so that they could be fed at Fosdick’s table. Church members were ticketed to ensure seating, but others had to find fragments of nourishment where they could, with some sneaking into already packed balconies through fire escapes and other evasive subterfuges, and with Fosdick’s own seat filled by a standee as soon as he entered the pulpit. L.I. Sweet

the Rev. Clarence Macartney Presbyterian Minister Arch St. Presbyterian Church Philadelphia, PA William Jennings Bryan Presbyterian Elder 3-time candidate for presidency the Rev. Harry Fosdick Baptist Preacher First Presbyterian Church New York City, NY the Rev. Dr. J. Gresham Machen Asst. Prof. of New Testament, Princeton Seminary, NJ

“The center of the contention lies between supernaturalistic evangelicalism on the one side, and naturalistic rationalism on the other. It is a contention between two spirits and two convictions which are mutually exclusive and destructive; one or the other must prevail, and the one which prevails will determine the character and the future of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., and will have an important influence upon the testimony of the whole evangelical church.” The Rev. David S. Kennedy, The Presbyterian

Men who insist that these and other theological formulas are vital to the perpetuation of Christianity are without exception men who have mistaken religion’s first definition – Christianity is not a dogma but a life.” The Continent

J. Gresham Machen • Assistant Professor of NT at Princeton Theological Seminary • Christianity and Liberalism, 1923 [T]he issue in the Church of the present day is not between two varieties of the same religion, but, at bottom, between two essentially different types of thought and life. There is much interlocking of the branches, but the two tendencies, Modernism and supernaturalism, … spring from different roots. … Christianity is not a "life," as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that--exactly the other way around--it is a life founded on a doctrine.

The Auburn Affirmation • Written & published in 1924 • as "AN AFFIRMATION designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America“ • eventually signed by 1,274 ministers of the PCUSA

The Auburn Affirmation • G.A. had no right to elevate “The Five Fundamentals” to “special test status” for ordination. • “The Five Fundamentals” are not essential to the system of doctrine taught in the holy Scriptures. • “The Five Fundamentals” are merely theories of those facts and doctrines.

The Auburn Affirmation • The Bible is not inerrant. • The General Assembly has no power to dictate doctrine to the Presbyteries. • Liberty of thought and teaching, within the bounds of evangelical Christianity is necessary. "Some of us regard the particular theories contained in the deliverance of the General Assembly of 1923 as satisfactory explanations of these facts and doctrines. But we are united in believing that these are not the only theories allowed by the Scriptures and our standards as explanations of these facts and doctrines of our religion, and that all who hold to these facts and doctrines, whatever theories they may employ to explain them, are worthy of all confidence and fellowship."

The Auburn Affirmation Within two years, the fundamentalists’ position was defeated, and within five years, the Assembly agreed that the unity of the Presbyterian Church is based not in uniformity, but in "the power of its faith to hold together diverse views and beliefs.“ The Auburn Affirmation was the culmination of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, which by 1924 had been a conflict of more than thirty years within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It is generally regarded as signaling a turning point in the history of American Presbyterianism, because it garnered the support of both theological traditionalists and liberals. (from WPC, Auburn, NY webstite)

New Covenant Presbyterian Church Preaching God’s Sovereign Grace to a World of Need 128 St. Mary’s Church Rd., Abingdon, MD 21009 410-569-0289 www.ncpres.org www.ephesians515.com

The History of Presbyterianism in the United States