"The
Madness of the Hour Having Passed"
Orthodoxy,
Liberal Church Politics and Memorial Presbyterian Church of St. Louis
Gregory Johnson • Saint
Louis University • December 1997
A Unanimous Vote
On Monday evening, July 21, 1980, at about 7:30 PM, the congregation of St. Louis' historic Memorial Presbyterian Church assembled in the church's sanctuary for a congregational meeting. Excitement, and not a little fear, was in the air that night, as members of the church had received a letter that week from Pastor George Scotchmer explaining why this meeting was necessary at the present hour.[1] Having struggled to maintain Christian orthodoxy against rising liberalism within the northern United Presbyterian Church USA [UPCUSA] for most of the century, the congregation voted that night to terminate its 116 year relationship with the denomination. The vote was 153 to 0, with one recorded abstention:
BE IT RESOLVED, that the Congregation and Corporation of the Memorial Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, Missouri in a duly called concurrent meeting of the Congregation and Corporation does hereby terminate the voluntary association which has existed until now between this Congregation and the Presbytery of Elijah Parish Lovejoy of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Congregation of Memorial Presbyterian Church of St. Louis does hereby authorize the Session and Trustees of the church to take any steps necessary, ecclesiastical and legal, to carry out both the spirit and intent of this resolution.[2]
So far as the members of Memorial Presbyterian Church were concerned, a century of evangelical struggle within the mainline denomination had come to an end that very night.
But for the denomination, the struggle was then only beginning. Notified by Rev. Scotchmer of the church's actions by letter of July 30, 1980, the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Presbytery of the UPCUSA met one week later on August 7 to discuss Memorial's departure. The Presbytery at this and subsequent meetings into 1981 declared its conviction that "no particular church has authority to terminate or sever its connection with the denomination,"[3] declaring the church's actions "null and void and of no effect."[4] The Presbytery further declared that the Session of Memorial was "unable or unwilling to manage wisely the affairs of its church,"[5] and that the Presbytery was therefore justified in establishing an "administrative commission" which was to function with full authority and replace the church's elected Session.
The then current Session of the church was hence ordered to immediately cease all activity, and the church was commanded to hand over to the presbytery-appointed administrative committee the management and control of all the affairs of the church, together with the delivery over to the new committee of all church property, including the place of worship at 201 South Skinker Boulevard, the minute books of the Session, the records of members and their addresses, and all records relating to the investments, funds and financial affairs of the church.[6] None of the members of this new administrative committee had previously had any association with Memorial Presbyterian Church.
In a letter dated June 12, 1981 and signed by Paul Jaeggi, Clerk of the Session, the church's leaders repeated their contention that the matter was resolved, and that the church no longer had any relations with the denomination. Having been ordered to appear before a meeting of Presbytery, the church's Session replied:
The members of the Session have received and reviewed your letter of May 11, 1981 in which you reiterate the actions taken by the Presbytery of Elijah Parish Lovejoy at its meeting.... We have considered your letter and in that our congregation has voluntarily terminated our association with the UPCUSA and inasmuch as the decision to terminate this ecclesiastical association is clear and final we feel it would be inappropriate for us to appear at the meeting of Presbytery....[7]
The Presbytery responded by filing a lawsuit against the Session of the Memorial Church, demanding that it immediately turn over the control and most importantly the property of the church to Presbytery. On September 13 and 14, 1982, Presbytery of Elijah Parish Lovejoy vs. George Scotchmer, et al. was heard before the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis. The case would eventually be decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals, and then appealed further to the Missouri Supreme Court, which would let the Missouri Court of Appeals decision stand.[8] It would be the middle of the 1980s before the madness would finally pass and Memorial Presbyterian Church's struggle to leave the UPCUSA would be ultimately successful.
ROUND
ONE: Walnut Street Church & the
Northern Presbyterians, 1865-1877
Memorial Presbyterian Church had been established in the waning years of the Civil War in a city, St. Louis, with loyalties divided between North and South. Planted as a colony from Second Presbyterian Church in what at the time was the city's far western edge, the congregation held its first worship service on July 4, 1864 in its new building at the intersection of Sixteenth and Walnut Street.[9] At the time the church was commonly known as the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church, pastored for its first thirty-two years by the respected and influential Rev. James H. Brookes.
Walnut Street Church was a Northern church, the General Assembly of the denomination having divided in two in 1861 shortly after the outbreak of the war. Further, the congregation was associated with the Old School Presbyterian Church, with its commitment to the orthodox theology of Charles Hodge and Princeton Seminary over against the New School Presbyterians with their Pelagian tendencies and politicized gospel whose spiritual center was Yale Divinity School. The Walnut Street Church began with an Old School commitment to Presbyterian orthodoxy with its submission to the inerrant Scriptures as summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
It was less than a year after the congregation's founding that Walnut Street Presbyterian Church entered into its first conflict with denominational authorities. In May of 1865 in the final months of the Civil War, the Old School General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church in the United States meeting in Pittsburgh passed a resolution requiring all church Sessions within the denomination to examine southerners who sought membership as to their views regarding slavery and the Confederate government. In the past, examination had covered only spiritual matters, and the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church was among a group of churches who refused to cooperate with the denomination's resolution.
"This order we instantly determined to disobey," wrote the members of the Walnut Street Session.[10] From its inception earlier in the War, the Walnut Street Church had seen itself with a spiritual mission which could not be encumbered by politics, not even during civil warfare. The Session argued in 1877:
It was distinctly understood at the time of our organization, that we would know in the house of God no political parties nor sectional sympathies, and the assertion was made good by the election of Ruling Elders and Deacons of opposite political sentiments, some being in favor of the North, and some wishing the success of the South, in the war that was then hastening to its close. More colored persons were members of this church during the first years of our history than any other congregation of white worshippers in the city, and applicants for admission into our communion were constantly received without the slightest reference to nation or race or politics.[11]
In this light, the action of the General Assembly to require abolitionism and support for the Union was understood as an unacceptable politicization of the church, much to the detriment of her spiritual and theological mission. Walnut Street and other like-minded churches (primarily in the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, since churches in northern states could hardly find southerners to examine) voiced their protest to this political incursion into the spiritual realm by signing a Declaration and Testimony opposing the examinations, which most of the Walnut Street Session "gladly" signed.
The denomination did not back down in the face of this protest. The General Assembly met in St. Louis in May of 1866, and by a vote of four to one adopted a resolution barring those who signed the Declaration and Testimony from all church courts above the Session for a one year period and requiring them to appear before the General Assembly the following year to answer for their actions in this matter. The result was that churches whose leaders had signed the Declaration were forced to separate from the Northern Church, those in Missouri forming an independent Synod of Missouri, which was affiliated with neither the Northern nor Southern Church, and their churches were dropped from the rolls of the Old School General Assembly. Thus not only would support for the Confederacy be a dividing issue in the Presbyterian Church, but so too support for supporters of the Confederacy was now to become an issue to cause division.
But the Walnut Street Church and others withdrawing to form the independent Synod of Missouri insisted that they were not schismatics; they left because they were forced to leave and would return as soon as the concerns which forced division were removed. The Walnut Street Church Session voted unanimously to support the Synod's insistence that it was "not with the view of entering into any other ecclesiastical organization; it being our purpose to stand where we have always stood, as the Synod of Missouri in connection with the Old School Presbyterian Church in the United States of America."[12] Again with the unanimous consent of the Walnut Street Session, the church's representative in the Synod voted that:
We surrender no right; we renounce no duty that attaches to the position we have so long held by ordination, which made us office-bearers in the house of God. We claim to be still members of the Old School Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, entitled to participation in all its rights and privileges, and bound by all its duties. We are content to bear for a time the harsh and unjust decision, which declares us not to be a true and rightful Church of Christ; and calmly and hopefully await the time, when, the madness of the hour having passed, our brethren will do us justice and repair their wrong, reinstating us in all the privileges that are now denied.[13]
This independent Synod of Missouri in October 1868 reaffirmed its commitment to reunite only with the Northern Church when reunion would become possible, but beginning in 1869 a movement was made to bring the Synod into the Southern Church. In 1870, this proposal was soundly defeated, but by 1873 southern supporters had achieved a majority within the Synod, and the Synod with its presbyteries voted to send delegates to the 1874 General Assembly of the Southern Church. This southern union was vigorously opposed by the Walnut Street Church, which saw at stake a "matter of principle" and a "conviction of duty to the Lord Jesus Christ."[14] Commitment to the existing denomination, even if expelled from it, was the proper Christian path, and sectional interests must not be made to override the desire for reconciliation with the Northern Church.
Before the 1874 General Assembly of the Southern Church met, the Northern 1874 Old School General Assembly met, again in St. Louis, and surprised Walnut Street by unanimously adopting a resolution setting forth the concerns expressed in the Declaration and Testimony, rejecting any political mission for the church and prohibiting churches from speaking where Christ had not spoken. The Walnut Street Session described the Assembly's action as a repentance which would enable reconciliation with the Northern Church:
At length after patient and prayerful waiting, our testimony was heard, and we beheld the touching spectacle of an entire Assembly retracing their steps, and cordially accepting the views we had all along maintained, by planting their feet upon the plenary inspiration of the word of God, the doctrines and polity set forth in our Standards, the obligation of all our judicatories to obey our Presbyterian Constitution, and the non-political, non-secular character of the church of God, as a kingdom not of this world, forbidden to speak where Christ has not spoken, or to legislate where Christ has not legislated, or to handle or conclude anything but that which is ecclesiastical, not intermeddling with civil affairs that concern the commonwealth.[15]
Here the General Assembly was understood to have acknowledged its error from 1865, and planted itself anew upon the complete inspiration of the Bible, the foundation upon which orthodoxy could resist being swayed by the political winds of the hour. As the Walnut Street Church's opposition was to what it viewed as a practical denial of the plenary inspiration of Scripture through a politicization of Christianity, it does not seem to be an over-interpretation to suggest that the issue at stake, at least in the eyes of the Walnut Street Church, was an early species of liberalism manifest in a political mission for the church and in a doctrinal looseness which at the time was more associated with New School Presbyterianism.
The Session of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church responded to the Northern General Assembly's resolution on July 10, 1874 by unanimously adopting a paper stating that the General Assembly's actions would be "the end of our controversy with that body." The paper states:
We stand, therefore, precisely where we stood previous to the action of the Old School Synod of Missouri..., determined to know neither North nor South in the house of God, refusing to consult our natural inclinations in seeking to promote the interests of His Kingdom; and anxious to avoid even the appearance of being controlled by political prejudices or sectional sympathies in our association with other Christians. We furthermore declare that the recent unanimous action of the Northern General Assembly, in frankly and fully accepting and adopting the principles for which we have testified and suffered during the past eight years, ought to be, and shall be, the end of our controversy with that body.[16]
But while Walnut Street Church understood its controversy with the Northern Church to be at an end, the independent Synod of Missouri of which the congregation was a part continued forward with union with the Southern Church in 1875, leading Walnut Street to a conflict with that body. The ecclesiastical affiliation of Walnut Street Church was a frequently discussed subject in the meetings of the Session, and there was until 1876 no unanimity among its members.[17] It would not be until 1877 that the Walnut Street Church would formally reunite with the Northern Church, in part because there were still some in the congregation who resented the North, who "were still embittered against everything that had the term 'northern' applied to it." To this faction, the Session pleaded, "Confidently do we appeal to those in the Church who, through grace, can rise above their prejudice against 'Yankees' to decide whether we could have done less [than end the controversy with the Northern General Assembly]."[18] And by 1876, the Session thought it had achieved a consensus among the members of the congregation.
Some members continued to oppose reunion with the North.[19] One man stood on his pew after the reunion was announced Sunday morning, October 6, 1876, and shouted to the thousand worshippers there gathered that the planned reunion was "illegal and wholly unauthorized".[20] Still, the congregation voted 197 to 21 to voluntarily rejoin the Northern Church.[21] In that year, the Session sought a letter of dismissal from the (by then) Southern Presbytery in order to be discharged to the care of the Northern body. The Southern Presbytery refused to grant such a letter of dismissal, instead merely dropping the congregation from the rolls (a less polite manner to achieve the same end). And on January 11, 1877, the Walnut Street Church was "restored to the rolls" of the Northern Presbytery of St. Louis, having "voluntarily sought to resume ecclesiastical relations."[22] The madness of the hour had passed, and Walnut Street Church could resume its ministry within the Presbyterian Church USA.
ROUND
TWO: Washington & Compton & the
Northern Presbyterians, 1922-1940
In the midst of the crisis over the Declaration and Testimony, the Old and New School Presbyterian Churches in the North merged in 1869 to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It was to the rolls of this reunited Northern Church that Walnut Street was restored. Though some conservative Old School Presbyterians such as Princeton's Charles Hodge opposed the merger, concerned over the orthodoxy of the New School Presbyterians, other equally conservative voices supported the reunion, including Hodge's son, A. A. Hodge, also a professor at Princeton Seminary. The accepted viewpoint among Presbyterians at the time was that the New School had in fact become increasingly orthodox since its split from the Old School in 1837, and the slavery issue by 1869 was no longer a force dividing the two Schools. But with the denomination's merger with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1906 (an Arminian frontier denomination founded during the first Great Awakening), conservatives feared a doctrinal drifting within northern Presbyterianism.
In 1874, David Swing, the New School pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, was accused and tried for heresy for denying the Westminster Confession of Faith in his sermons. Swing responded by arguing that no one should preach the Westminster Confession of Faith, but that pastors should change their views to keep them in line with the thoughts of the day. Swing's Presbytery acquitted him of the charge of heresy, but when his accuser threatened an appeal to the Synod, Swing resigned.
Charges of heresy within the Presbyterian Church USA remained few until the 1890s, when the infamous Charles Briggs, a professor at Union Seminary in New York, was accused of embracing higher criticism of the Bible. In 1891, the General Assembly vetoed Briggs' appointment to a chair at the Seminary, and he was suspended in 1893, upon which Briggs became an Episcopalian and Union Seminary became independent. In 1892, Henry Preserved Smith, also with New School roots, was deposed by the Presbytery of Cincinnati for heresy, Smith later becoming librarian at Union Seminary. And in 1900, Arthur Cushman McGiffert was charged with heresy, but he resigned and became a Congregationalist before the trial. Still, it was becoming increasingly clear that modernism was infiltrating Presbyterian churches.
In
1892, the General Assembly responded to this trend with its Portland Declaration, voting two-to-one that the Bible in its
original manuscripts was without error (inerrancy), and affirming the virgin
birth of Christ, his substitutionary atonement for sin, Christ's bodily
resurrection and the authenticity of biblical miracles. These five fundamentals were reaffirmed in
1910 and 1916, the General Assembly holding that it was necessary for a man to
hold to all five of these fundamentals in order to be ordained a Presbyterian
minister. The last time the General
Assembly required adherence to the fundamentals was at the General Assembly of
1923. That same year the General
Assembly voted to require the preaching of Harry Emerson Fosdick's First
Presbyterian Church of New York City to conform to the Westminster Confession
of Faith, but only by a vote of 439 to 359—and the Assembly refused to oust
Fosdick, who had openly mocked the fundamentals in his infamous 1922 sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win?
The General Assembly of 1924 differed greatly from that of 1923. While in 1923, ministers were required to affirm the five fundamentals, in 1924, over 1,200 ordained Presbyterian ministers (about 10 percent) signed the Auburn Affirmation, which stated that the fundamentals were theories only, and that other viewpoints should be tolerated within the denomination. The Presbytery of Cincinnati overtured the General Assembly to discipline the 1,200, but no action was taken. The next year, 1925, would bring the Scopes trial, a public relations disaster for fundamentalists, and in 1929 liberals in the General Assembly would forcibly reorganize Princeton Seminary, the last stronghold of Old School Presbyterian orthodoxy, including on the reorganized school's board two signers of the Auburn Affirmation. That same year J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til and others would leave Princeton and found Westminster Seminary independently of the denomination. In 1935 Machen would be accused of insubordination for supporting an independent missions board, and in 1936 he would be defrocked. That same year, a group of churches would leave the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Walnut Street Presbyterian Church, which after its 1879 move to Midtown St. Louis became known as the Washington and Compton Presbyterian Church, and after 1926 as the Memorial Presbyterian Church, would not be among the churches to leave with the Orthodox Presbyterians. Despite the increasing madness in the General Assembly, this congregation found it was still able to bear an evangelical witness within the mainline denomination. In an address to the congregation in 1937, William McChesney Martin stated, "We are proud of being Presbyterians and will always remain so if we are allowed to be true to our heritage, which at the present time is the avowed doctrine of the Presbyterian Church."[23] Liberals had not yet achieved complete domination over the churches, he explained, "The [Auburn] Affirmation is just an affirmation and according to the Assembly's own records [i.e. the 1923 General Assembly], a Presbyterian is one who believes in the principles I have stated." But he also warned, "It is well though not to forget that those who hold more liberal doctrines are still ministers in the Presbyterian Church and would like to justify their stand by having others be as liberal as they are. We speak of the situation with regret and with a love of Presbyterianism great enough to speak of its faults as well as its virtues."[24]
But while Washington and Compton Presbyterian Church did not separate from the denomination, it did take steps to insure that its property would never fall into the hands of the liberals in the General Assembly. In 1922, a trust was established through which all church funds would pass, which was independent of the church and thus independent of all denominational control. This trust, the Memorial Trust Fund, would be tied to certain doctrinal affirmations which were then being questioned within the UPCUSA. In the same 1937 address mentioned earlier, William Martin explained that it would be inadequate to merely specify that the money invested be for a "Presbyterian Church."[25] Rather, because some Presbyterians are liberals, the use of church funds had to be subject to doctrinal affirmations which were explicitly required to be a legally binding limitation on the trust "forever".[26] The trust states that since its beginning, the church:
...has stood without wavering for the inerrancy of the Scriptures and for the System of Doctrine set forth in the Confession of Faith, emphasizing the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, the Deity and Humanity of Christ, Atonement by His Blood alone, Justification by Faith in Him, Sanctification through the Holy Spirit, World-wide Evangelization and the personal and imminent return of Our Lord Jesus Christ.[27]
Thus this independent Memorial Fund was tied to certain historic doctrinal affirmations, and these doctrinal affirmations were expressly given the power to limit the use of the church's funds. At the dedication service for the church's new edifice on Skinker Boulevard on December 6, 1931, a statement dedicating the church as a memorial to the historic doctrines of the faith was read, concluding with the note that "the funds with which this building was erected are impressed with the trust not to depart from the true faith as here defined."[28]
The church understood its decision to establish this trust as taking place in the context of the modernist-fundamentalist split within the denomination. In a sermon preached on the establishment of the Memorial Fund in 1922, Washington and Compton's pastor, Dr. Frank W. Sneed, spoke of two competing groups within the Presbyterian Church; "one group evidently regarded the church as an organized body of those assenting to the ethical ideals and standards of Jesus, and that it was the primary duty of the church to enforce these ideals and standards upon society." The other group "held to a more spiritual idea of the church. The church is more than an organization. It is an Organism the body, of which Christ is the Head. Its primary mission is to manifest Him. It can speak only when He has spoken."[29]
William McChesney Martin followed Sneed in a 1937 address explaining why the church had been renamed "Memorial" a decade earlier. Here Martin tied the modernist-fundamentalist controversy to the same issue the church faced in 1865, that is, the politicization of the gospel at the expense of historic Christian supernaturalism. "Then again, there has always been, not just in the Presbyterian Church, but in the church at large, what we may term two factions.... It is needless to say that this church has always stood for the spiritual idea of the church. It has always felt that what may be called the man-inspired idea of the church was dangerous to the true gospel of Christ."[30] Martin proceeded to link the 1865 conflict over the Declaration and Testimony to the Auburn Affirmation and the liberalism then popular within the UPCUSA.
This Memorial Trust Fund was for the explicit purpose of keeping the church's property out of the hands of the United Presbyterian Church, whose General Assembly was no longer insisting upon these fundamental doctrinal affirmations. Martin told the congregation:
The flaming torch of pure doctrine handed on through the ages from the early church to the Sixteenth Street Church, to the Washington and Compton Avenue Presbyterian Church, and now in the hands of the Memorial Presbyterian Church and other churches faithful to the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, must be guarded carefully, not with a foolish love, but with a discerning love in order that this church, impressed with its trust, must continue effective work in presenting a Saviour, not just a rabbi or a leader.[31]
In almost prophetic fashion, Martin continued:
It should be stated that by a Declaration of Trust, on file in the Recorder's Office, the Board of Trustees has stated that all funds received for this church building are subject to this trust and that all future funds received for this church building are subject to this trust. It is devoutly hoped that nothing will ever occur which will make recourse to legal methods necessary to protect our heritage. Such steps have been taken as seemed possible to protect this property in the event of any interference with our worship under the principles we now hold.[32]
In 1937 the Session of the church issued a statement whereby, while still holding out hope, it deplored what it called "unbelief" within the denomination. "In view of the unrest in the Presbyterian Church in the USA... the Session deplores the unbelief which has crept into the church at large and remains unrebuked, and which, we believe, has caused, to a large extent, the injustice and the sad conditions which now prevail. Let us not be discouraged. Prayer changes things."[33] But despite the unbelief surrounding them, the congregation hoped that through the independent Memorial Trust Fund its property would be safe, and the congregation thus free from the liberals' ultimate denominational coercion. In a letter from the church's lawyers dated November 6, 1940, Thomas White writes:
Replying to your letter of November 4 in reference to the property owned by the Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, you can rest assured that Bill Martin and I have done everything that could possibly be done to see that the title to our church building would be maintained in the congregation itself and that it could not be taken away by the General Assembly or any other church body.[34]
Washington and Compton Presbyterian Church, re-named (just before its 1926 move to Skinker Boulevard) Memorial Presbyterian Church as a "memorial" to the same historic doctrinal affirmations as the Memorial Fund, chose to counter liberalism within the Presbyterian Church USA, not by separating from the denomination, but by continuing in its evangelical mission from within, taking every step possible to protect its property from denominational control. This strategy would prove manageable through to the 1970s, but by 1979, the denomination's liberal General Assembly would be taking steps which would make this strategy no longer tenable.
ROUND
THREE: Memorial Church and the Northern
Presbyterians, 1980-1982
On July 16, 1980, Dr. George Scotchmer, who had pastored Memorial Church for the previous nineteen years, sent a letter to all the members of the congregation. In the letter he stated that the congregational meeting on Monday evening, July 21, would be one of the most important meetings in the church's history. The topic for discussion Monday night would be "the termination of our voluntary association with the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." Knowing that Memorial was the first church in the presbytery to take up this issue and knowing that other churches would therefore be watching, Scotchmer encouraged the congregation to seek "the special wisdom and undergirding of the Lord."[35]
Dr. Scotchmer explained that the move would be difficult for himself particularly, since he had as Memorial's pastor worked and prayed for renewal within the denomination, serving on the board of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns. Dr. Scotchmer had for decades battled liberalism within the local Presbytery, aligning himself with the leaders of two other conservative churches, Sutter Presbyterian, which would later leave the UPCUSA in the 1980s to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and Kingsland Presbyterian Church of Pagedale,[36] which merged into Memorial in 1975 (over objections from the Presbytery, which wanted to close the church and absorb its property[37]). However, Scotchmer continued in his letter, "in the past several years the trends within the denomination have become more and more offensive to evangelicals." Dr. Scotchmer listed twelve concerns in particular which drove him and the Session to request a congregational vote of separation:
1. The serious proposal by the denomination to ordain practicing homosexuals;
2. What Dr. Scotchmer called the "current spectacle" of a prominent professor at a Presbyterian seminary living with a woman not his wife without denominational discipline;
3. The ordination of a homosexual elder as moderator of Long Island Presbytery;
4. The strongly pro-abortion stance of the General Assembly;
5. The senseless distribution of General Assembly legal aid funds, such as to a convicted rapist in Tulsa;
6. A "growing constitutional fundamentalism" or coercion in which those who out of conscience oppose the ordination of women are denied ordination and congregations are forced to ordain women and youth as elders against their convictions;
7. This "growing constitutional fundamentalism" is accompanied by an "increasing theological liberalism", as demonstrated by the Capital Union Presbytery's ordination of man who blatantly denied the deity of Christ;
8. The waste of millions of dollars restructuring denominational government, resulting in greater inefficiency;
9. The growing tendency to politicize the Christian faith;
10. "The deterioration of the inner life of the church, theological fuzziness and religious syncretism have reduced overseas mission endeavor to an all time low;"
11. The UPCUSA was rated the fastest shrinking denomination in America in 1978
(-1.6%), while the conservative Presbyterian Church in America was rated the fasted growing denomination that year (+11.09%);
12. Finally, the action which the Session believed was forcing a decision at the present hour, the 1980 General Assembly's "Overture A" Property Amendment, which Scotchmer described as a "Berlin Wall" which, having passed the 1980 General Assembly and then currently being ratified by the presbyteries, would after its ratification "lock up" all Memorial property, the building and the endowments, for the General Assembly. Scotchmer added, "It is important that we act before this amendment is ratified by the presbyteries."[38]
That next Sunday, Dr. Scotchmer preached a sermon "When Separation Makes Biblical Sense" from Revelation 3:14-22, in which he carried the theme of separation throughout Scripture. In the sermon, he called on the congregation to vote to leave the UPCUSA at the congregational meeting the following evening, but warned them not to judge those who would choose to remain in the denomination. That Sunday evening, patoral assistant Lad Heisten recounted the church's history in a sermon titled, "Will We Continue to Build Upon the Rock?" That Monday, the congregation voted unanimously to terminate its 116-year relationship with the UPCUSA, and the legal battle ensued.
On Christmas Eve, 1982, the congregation of Memorial Presbyterian Church was informed that it had lost its court case with the Presbytery. Though Memorial had already affiliated with another denomination, the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America, all the church's assets were frozen, and they were required by law to turn their building and all their records and endowments over to the liberals they had fought for much of their history. There was hesitancy by some to appeal the Circuit Court decision, since the first suit had been filed by the Presbytery, not the church, and some were concerned that they might be breaking St. Paul's injunction against instigating lawsuits among believers if they pushed for an appeal.[39] But the church did appeal, the request being filed January 3, 1983, and on January 31, 1984, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, overturned Presbytery of Elijah Parish Lovejoy vs. George Scotchmer, et al, ruling that the congregation of Memorial Presbyterian Church had final claim to its property. A further appeal by the Presbytery to the Missouri Supreme Court would not overrule the Appellate Court decision. Memorial had been unable to renew the mainline denomination from within, but it had escaped with its property to continue its evangelical witness within an evangelical denomination. The members of Memorial would now hope that the madness of the hour had finally passed, so that they could continue as a memorial to the historic Christian faith.
Postscript: Some Recurring Issues
Several issues are illustrated by the study of Memorial Presbyterian Church and her struggle with liberalism within the Presbyterian Church USA. Among these issues:
1. A debate over the nature of the Christian church. Is the church a political organization to transform America into a more liberal society, or is the church a spiritual organism whose mission is to reconcile men to God through truths passed down from the early church? Memorial, sticking to its Old School Presbyterian roots, took the latter view, usually called the "spirituality of the church", while her liberal opponents took the former view. This was even the issue in 1866, though the politicization of Christianity was the exception to the norm within the Old School Church at that time. Still, that politicizing quality had become systemic by 1980. Memorial Presbyterian Church kept a commitment to orthodoxy in the face of modernity throughout the turbulent years of the 1920s and '30s, as was also characteristic of the "fundamentalism" of Princeton Seminary. Her vision for the church was spiritual and not political.
2. A commitment to the established denomination. It should be remembered that Memorial (as the Walnut Street Church) separated from the Southern Church in order to fulfill the congregation's commitments to the Northern General Assembly in 1877. Similarly, Memorial remained in that denomination even as other conservatives left to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. Memorial is thus representative of the non-separatist strand of evangelicalism which was willing to work within liberal denominations so long as its ministry was not directly impeded.
3. The
decline of liberal Protestantism and growth of evangelicalism since World
War II. Memorial left the mainline Presbyterian denomination in 1980, while another large number of churches left to found the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in 1981. In 1982, Memorial entered a denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, founded by conservative churches which had left the mainline Southern Church in 1973. The Presbyterian Church USA (combined Northern and Southern denominations, which merged in 1983) lost over 1,200,000 members between 1966 and 1987.[40] As Dr. Scotchmer mentioned in his letter, the UPCUSA was rated the fastest shrinking denomination in 1978, while the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America was the fastest growing. Part of this shift from liberal to evangelical denominations has been led by congregations themselves, and not merely by individuals.
4. Increasing coercion by liberal denominations. This is perhaps the most controversial point to be drawn from the Memorial case. To stem the rapid hemorrhaging which these mainline denominations are experiencing, there is evidence of an increased use of coercion by liberal denominations. It should be remembered that Memorial left the Northern Church in 1866, and then left the Southern Church in 1877, and in neither instance was there any attempt by the denomination to take the church's property. But despite the great lengths to which Memorial had shielded its property, and despite the congregation's unanimous vote to separate, the liberal UPCUSA in 1980 still sought to take it from the congregation. Similarly, though the denomination would discuss ordaining practicing homosexuals and men who deny the deity of Christ, it would not ordain anyone who did not believe in the ordination of women. Liberals, who in the 1920s only sought tolerance by denominational authorities, by the 1970s had themselves become the authorities, and it could be argued that liberals were decidedly less tolerant toward conservatives than conservatives in the 1920s had been toward liberals.[41] It is ironic that, rather than preventing churches from leaving, this denominational "mercenary mentality" was one of the primary reasons Memorial left.[42] Any thesis arguing for an increased use of coercion by liberal denominations in the twentieth century would find support from the example of the Memorial Presbyterian Church of St. Louis.
[42]Interview with Doris Skillman, November 30, 1997.