- Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
Infobox Christian denomination
name = Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
caption =
main_classification =Protestant
orientation =Calvinist
founder =John Witherspoon
founded_date = 1789
founded_place =Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
parent =Church of Scotland
separations =Cumberland Presbyterian Church (separated 1810; reunited in part 1906); divided into New School and Old School bodies 1836-1869;Presbyterian Church in the United States (separated 1861; reunited 1983); theEvangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) formed 1981
associations = Merged with theUnited Presbyterian Church of North America in 1958 to form theUnited Presbyterian Church in the United States of America The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, or PCUSA, was an American
Presbyterian denomination. It was organized in 1789 under the leadership ofJohn Witherspoon in the wake of theAmerican Revolution and existed until 1958, when it merged with theUnited Presbyterian Church of North America to form theUnited Presbyterian Church in the United States of America . The first Assembly of the PCUSA met inPhiladelphia in 1789. It adopted theWestminster Confession of Faith , together with the Larger Catechism and the Shorter Catechism, as the church's subordinate standard (to theBible ). The General Assembly modified the confession to bring its teaching on civil government in line with American practices and by removing references to thepope as ananti-christ . The new church was organized into four synods:New York andNew Jersey ,Philadelphia ,Virginia , andthe Carolinas . These synods included 17 presbyteries and 419 .During the
Second Great Awakening , the PCUSA proved somewhat less adept at using revival techniques to attract new members than the newly-emergentMethodist andBaptist denominations. TheCumberland Presbyterian Church , which originated from revivals inKentucky andTennessee , separated from the PCUSA at the time of this revival. Nonethless, growth progressed apace from east to west, covering most of the U.S.In the
Old School-New School Controversy the church divided into a New School (favoring revivals and a less stringentCalvinism ) and Old School (favoring traditional Calvinism and formal worship) in 1836; these factions would not reunite until 1869. In the meantime, in 1861, almost all the churches in theSouthern U.S. separated from the PCUSA over the issue of slavery, forming what would come to be known as thePresbyterian Church in the United States . The PCUSA thus became known (sometimes pejoratively) as the "Northern church," although it maintained a presence in the Southern U.S. through its work amongAfrican-Americans and through some congregations inAppalachia that, in accordance with the region's political support for the Union, refused to leave for the PCUS.Most of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church reunited with the PCUSA in 1906, at which time the Westminster Confession was revised again, in part to accommodate the more
Wesleyan -Arminian views of the CPC. The CPC acquisition brought this group of Southern and border-state (e.g., Kentucky,Missouri ) churches back into the historic fold.Between 1922 and 1936, the PCUSA experienced a major controversy, the
Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy , concerning matters such as inspiration of the scriptures, the role of the confessional standards, and thetemperance movement . This occasioned the formation of the first explicitly conservative schism in American Presbyterian history in theOrthodox Presbyterian Church .In 1958, the PCUSA merged with the
United Presbyterian Church of North America to form theUnited Presbyterian Church in the United States of America . It was this body that merged with the PCUS to form the present-dayPresbyterian Church (USA) , in 1983.External links
* [http://www.bible-researcher.com/wescoappb.html PCUSA Changes to the Westminster Confession]
* [http://www.history.pcusa.org/pres_hist/briefhist.html A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America]
* [http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/p/presbyterian_church.html Presbyterianism in Kansas]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=6BGceH6DBEgC&dq=new+school+presbyterian&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=aSMfx5JXz9&sig=Cpg_N_ySofwYJlhPgF6-cOi69Hg The Reunion of the Old and New-School Presbyterian Churches]
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