By Steve Salyards, The GA Junkie
Union Presbyterian Seminary has produced and released a new documentary, Division and Reunion: a Reflection on American Presbyterianism. It can be viewed online or a DVD ordered through that page.
The brief description on the page talks about the documentary like this:
We are pleased to present Division and Reunion: a Reflection on American Presbyterianism, a documentary narrated by lifelong Presbyterian Dr. Condoleezza Rice. We at Union Presbyterian Seminary hope this film will be a learning tool and a way to build faith, showing how God works through reconciliation. Special thanks to the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Anne Carter Robins and Walter R. Robins, Jr. Foundation for their support.
There are a couple of points in this description that struck me as I watched the video. The first is the use of the term reflection in the title. This is not a comprehensive documentary on American Presbyterianism, far from it. But it is a reflection on history of division and reunion in the mainstream branch. And since that is the focus you can understand why another word in that description – reconciliation – is emphasized throughout the piece.
An additional important point to be aware of at the onset is that between filming and the final title and description a bit of the focus seems to have shifted. While the title refers to American Presbyterianism, In their concluding comments both Dr. Rice and Dr. Brian Blount, President of Union Presbyterian Seminary, refer to this as a look at the Southern Presbyterian Church. Watching the documentary again, it clearly is that with an emphasis on events and groups related to the old southern church. For example, when the Second Great Awakening and the Restoration Movement is discussed the focus is on Barton Stone and the Cane Ridge movement in Kentucky but no mention is made of the Campbells of Pennsylvania. Similarly, of the groups that split off from the mainstream in the 20th Century only the split in the southern church forming the PCA is mentioned, and northern divisions forming the OPC, BPC and EPC are not mentioned and the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy is only alluded to.
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Whatever the content does reflect on the current PCUSA, the difficulty in analysis is that for most intents and purposes the contemporay PCUSA has morphed into more of a social-politcal-advocacy non-profit, vice anything related to a religious denomination. In the historic or classic understanding of confession or doctrine. The contemporary PCUSA has far more in common with Quakers, scientific secularists, new age environmentalists, modern nihilism, than anything related to historic Christianity.
Presbyteries of the PCUSA are by and large either comatose or in a hospice mode of operations, or try to function as real estate holding agencies. The Book of Order little more than a business process manual. They have ceased to exist in the reformed sense of defenders of the faith or collegiality of its clergy and ruling elders.
The historical mainline root has died of a cancer, the nature of can be debated, but dead it is. Going forward, Presbyterianism in America as a force in American faith and culture will be defined more in the trajetories of the ECO/EPC/PCA/ARPC/Cumberland’s of the world, vice the insular, odd, idiosyncratic and dying sect known as the PCUSA.
AMEN Peter; clearly and accurately summarized! AND PC(USA)not far behind the beloved Church of Scotland having to sell off property for survival. But then, presbyteries trying very hard to take over real property for the residual small number of “loyalists”. POJ just went after 2 campus property in Richmond with “buy-out” bill of $3.5 million; real exhibition of “GRACE”; not.
I don’t see much to disagree with here, but the dying sect is still bigger than the other denominations you listed combined. That will change over time, but perhaps quite a few years yet. I believe PCUSA will at some point merge with one or more other dying liberal denominations — which means, of course, that any Presbyterianism remaining in PCUSA will be snuffed out.