United Presbyterian Church of North America

Infobox Christian denomination
name = United Presbyterian Church of North America


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main_classification = Protestant
orientation = Calvinist
polity = Presbyterian
founder =
founded_date = 1858
founded_place =
separated_from =
parent =
merger = Northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanter and Seceder) and the Associate Presbyterian Church (Seceders)
separations =
associations = Merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1958 to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
area =
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footnotes = The United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPCNA) was an American Presbyterian denomination that existed for exactly one hundred years. It was formed in 1858 by the union of the Northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanter and Seceder) with the Associate Presbyterian Church (Seceders). It began as a mostly ethnic Scottish denomination, but after some years it grew somewhat more and more ethnically diverse, although universally English-speaking.

Its theology was a conservative Calvinism and also held the distinctives of the Covenanters and Seceders, such as public covenanting, adherence to the Solemn League and Covenant, and exclusive use of the Psalms in singing. (These are very similar to a sister body that still exists, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.) The church moderated some of its stances in the twentieth century, such as when it released its "Confessional Statement and Testimony" (1925), abandoning compulsion of such practices as exclusive psalmody.

Around this time, the UPCNA sought mergers with various other Reformed churches, and finally agreed to merge with the much larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1958, the year of its centennial, to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Most UPCNA-heritage congregations entered into the present Presbyterian Church (USA) (which succeeded the UPCUSA in 1983), but some of more evangelical conservative orientation departed in the 1970s to denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America (founded 1973) or the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (1981). It is likely that most PC(USA) churches from this heritage remain conservative evangelical in theology, opposing most socially liberal initiatives proposed by the denomination and, in some cases, actively participating in the denomination's renewal lobbies.

The UPCNA was geographically centered in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, areas of heavy Scottish and Scotch-Irish settlement on the American frontier. Within that territory, a large part of its adherents lived in rural areas, which amplified the denomination's already highly traditionalist worldview.

References

Hart, D.G. and Noll, M.A. "Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America." Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999.