Lessons from History: What is an Evangelical Presbyterian to Do?

The Presbyterian church in which I was converted over 20 years ago began in the United Presbyterian Church in North America (UPCNA) in the early 1950s, became a UPCUSA congregation when the UPCNA merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) in 1958, then stayed in the Presbyterian Church (USA) when the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) merged with the UPCUSA in 1983. In the early 2010s, that congregation left the PC(USA) for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). Not a week goes by that I do not give thanks to God for the faithful—and often marginalized—witness of that congregation and its leadership over the decades of its existence.

Since the church of my childhood has landed in the EPC, it has experienced far more peace, fruit, and presbyterial fellowship in its ministry than it had in the years leading up to its sad—but necessary—departure from the Mainline Church. For this, I give praise and glory to God, even as I have pursued and entered ministry in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), my ecclesiastical home for well over a decade.

But the EPC seems to be at something of a crossroads. With the recent petitioning of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis to join the EPC, the denomination is confronted anew with the question of how to weather our day’s storm of sexual confusion. Open letters are circulating, social media is abuzz, and prayer meetings are ringing with petitions for continued faithfulness among evangelical Presbyterians of all denominational stripes. It is a cold-hearted Presbyterian—a truly “frozen chosen”—congregation that does not yearn for the EPC to demonstrate manfulness in the face of what has become an all-too-common and potent foe: compromise with the reigning mores of a sexually depraved and perverse generation.

Several of my fellow Presbyterian pastors (of different denominations) have related to me conversations they have had with EPC ministers who are alarmed by the prospect of a severe leftward slide in their communion. There are two stories from recent Presbyterian history that ought to be considered as the EPC approaches the nearing crossroads. The stories concern different denominations, but at the center of each account is a good man who found himself in a similar quandary and made a decision that changed the course of American Presbyterian history for the better.

The PCUS/PCA Story

In the 1950s, a young man named Morton Howison Smith had an opportunity to leave the woefully liberalizing PCUS and join with an Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) plant in Valdosta, GA. He related the following story to many:

I had talked with Dr. [Cornelius] Van Til about moving to the OPC, and his advice was that I should stay in my mother Church and leave my mark on her. During this time we had Dr. Will McIlwaine, a Southern Presbyterian missionary to Japan, with a brother missionary in the OPC, come to visit the congregation. As I drove him back to Atlanta, he urged me not to leave the Southern church yet. He said that each furlough things were worse in the home Church, and that the only bright light that he saw was a group of us struggling for the purity of Columbia Seminary, and that he saw Jack Scott and myself as needed if there was ever to be a reform in the Southern Church. He ‘Farelized’ me to stay in the Southern Presbyterian Church, which I decided I must do.[1]

You may be wondering, “What mark did Morton Smith leave on his church?” Over the ensuing two decades, Dr. Smith provided the theological heft and ecclesiastical memory to encourage the founding generation of the PCA to leave the PCUS and form a theologically evangelical and confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian denomination in the American South. He served as the PCA’s first Stated Clerk from 1973 to 1987, a founding professor at both Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS and Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, SC, and as moderator of the 28^th General Assembly of the PCA in 2000.

Dr. Morton Howison Smith certainly left his mark on American Presbyterian history, and in God’s good providence, we can credit the two respected fathers of Twentieth Century American Presbyterianism—one of whom was in a sister denomination that surely would have benefited greatly from Dr. Smith’s direct involvement—who encouraged him to stick it out and pursue faithfulness where the Lord had him.

The ARP Story

In the 1970s, while teaching at RTS after the creation of the PCA, Dr. Smith taught a group of students from the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP). The ARP was (and still is) concentrated in the Carolinas and had by that time become nearly as Liberal as the Mainline Church. This group of young men talked to Dr. Smith about pursuing ministry in the PCA (perhaps taking with them some of the more conservative congregations of the ARP) and being part of the dynamic evangelical Presbyterian denomination in the Southland. What do you think Dr. Smith’s advice to them was?

Echoing Dr. Van Til, Dr. Smith encouraged those men to “stay in [their] mother Church and leave [their] mark on her.” Following the advice of their professor (and their professor’s professor), they stayed in the ARP. The ARP then became an all-too-rare case study—along with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS)—of denominational recovery.

Today, the ARP is committed to a robust evangelical Presbyterianism, in large measure thanks to the efforts of a committed group of young churchmen trained at RTS under Dr. Morton Howison Smith. This story has been related to me by several ministers in the ARP, and by Dr. Smith himself (without the attribution of credit to himself—he was a very humble and self-effacing gentleman) before his death in late 2017.

The EPC Story?

Whither thou, oh brethren in the EPC? Over the next months and years, it is certain that you will have conversations involving the key terms, “staying,” “leaving,” “starting,” and “joining.” Much like brothers in the PCUS and the ARP before you, you will have decisions to make.

Perhaps those decisions will lead to the creation of some new church of evangelical Presbyterians in North America. Let’s call this “the PCUS/PCA option.” Or perhaps those decisions will lead to the renewal of the EPC and shoring up of a thoroughly uncompromised conservative and evangelical identity for the Church. Let’s call this “the ARP option.” But are there any alternatives besides the PCUS/PCA and ARP options? The answer to this question lies in the very different ecclesiastical environment in which you find yourself.

When the PCA formed in 1973, there was no viable ecclesiastical alternative in the American South with which those concerned Presbyterians could unite themselves. There also was no Presbyterian Church to the left of the PCUS to which conservatives could commend their theologically Liberal friends. In other words, there were no “heat sinks” to either the right or the left. Something new (or better, continuing) needed to be formed because the old Southern Presbyterian Church could not be reformed.

When the ARP began to turn around, the PCA was still young and shoring up its theological identity.[2] It was not an attractive alternative at the time for conservatives, notwithstanding the expression of interest from Dr. Smith’s young students. Also, it was much more difficult to leave the ARP (either to the Left or the Right) with property and assets intact due to constitutional provisions at the denominational level. It made all the sense in the world for evangelicals to work toward reformation rather than new formation.

As the EPC deals with a potentially destabilizing issue of deep theological, cultural, and moral import, where do you find yourselves? Unlike your brothers in the PCA and ARP before you, there are viable national Reformed and Presbyterian denominations that are both more theologically broad and more theologically narrow than is the EPC at present. To your left, you have the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterian (ECO) and a variety of denominations standing in the Dutch Reformed tradition. To your right, you have the denominations mentioned above (the PCA, the OPC, the ARP) and other bodies affiliated with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC).

The lay of the land suggests that while you stay and fight for faithfulness where the Lord has you (in the EPC), you would do well to begin seriously studying your confessional documents and the corresponding documents of adjacent churches, and to clarify where you stand on the following matters (among others): women in ordained ministry, the gifts of the Spirit, worship, and confessional subscription.

It may be that you will be pursuing a transfer of denominational membership and affiliation in the near future. Or, it may be that the Lord will use the latest controversy swirling around theological anthropology and hamartiology (the doctrines of man and sin) to clarify where exactly the EPC stands as a continuing Evangelical and Presbyterian Church. Many of us your fellow Presbyterians are praying for you.

Zachary Groff (MDiv, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary) is Pastor of Antioch Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Woodruff, SC, and he serves as Managing Editor of The Confessional Journal and as Editor-in-Chief of the Presbyterian Polity website.