Key leaders: Lyman Beecher; Nathaniel W. Taylor; Henry Boynton Smith. In 1861 the Presbyterian Church split over slavery. In summer 1861 the Old School Presbyterians issued a resolution calling for members to support the federal government. The Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA) pieced together a Methodist family tree, . Presbyterians and Slavery By James Moorhead A truly national denomination from the 18th century to the Civil War, American Presbyterianism encompassed a wide range of viewpoints on slavery. Not only were the principles of the Constitution identified with the cause of the Kingdom of God, but enlisting in the Union Army was marked as an evidence of discipleship to Christ. 1572 - John Knox founds Scottish Presbyterian Amongst the Southern Presbyterians, the reunion of the Old School and New School factions failed to create a major effect. - Episcopalians largely framed slavery as a legal and political issue, not moral or ethical. Those are the gentle, mournful sounds of a denomination imploding," Donald A. Luidens, professor of sociology at Hope College in Holland, Mich., wrote in an article featured in November's Perspectives. Like the College of New Jerseys presidents, faculty, and students, the Presbyterians of Princeton attempted to occupy a middle ground, hoping for a gradual end to slavery while opposing what they deemed the fanaticism of abolitionists.[6]. Copyright 2023 The Trustees of Princeton University. [15] While some conservatives felt that union with United Synod would be a repudiation of Old School convictions, others, such as Dabney feared that should the union fail, the United Synod would most likely establish its own seminary, propagating New School Presbyterian theology. The problem: The facts make the positive spin a little difficult to compute. Before 1844, the Methodist Church was the largest organization in the country (not including the federal government). In a sermon defending Americas struggle for independence in 1776, Jacob Green, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Hanover, New Jersey, asked: This inconsistency, he concluded, was a crying sin in our land. In 1787, at a time when many of the northern states had adopted laws to free slaves gradually, the Synod of New York and Philadelphia declared that it shared the interest which many of the states have taken[toward] the abolition of slavery. In 1818, the denominations General Assembly (the successor to the Synod), adopted a resolution framed in bolder language: The Assembly called on all Christians as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom. The resolution passed unanimously, and the committee that prepared it was chaired by Ashbel Greenthe son of Jacob Green, the president of the College of New Jersey, and president of the Board of Directors of Princeton Theological Seminary.[2]. In fact, the same General Assembly that adopted the statement also upheld the defrocking of a minister in Virginiathe Reverend George Bournewho had condemned slaveholders as sinners. 1837: Old School and New School Presbyterians split over theological issues. They sat on boards such as the American Home Missions Society and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists (and, to some extent, Episcopalians) all split over slavery, mainly along the Mason-Dixon Line. Those ministers and their congregations disagreed with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II. 1843: 22 abolitionist ministers and 6,000 members leave and form new denominationWesleyan Methodist Church. Southerners feared deeply any attempts to free the millions of slaves surrounding them. At the. The Presbyterian Church is a Protestant Christian religious denomination that was founded in the 1500s. This was not quite the end of the division for the Methodists. Prentiss considered the Confederate rebellion against the federal government a rebellion against God himself because it violated the sovereign union that God had ordainedHe equated the rebellion with religious heresyit is like atheism, and subverts the first principles of our political worship, as a free, order-loving, and covenant-keeping people. The assembly warned against harsh censures and insisted that the sizable number of those in bondage, their ignorance, and their vicious habits generally, render an immediate and universal emancipation inconsistent alike with the safety of the master and the slave. Slavery, they declared, could not be ended until those in bondage were prepared for freedom. Both Old School and New School Presbyterians in the North had shared similar convictions regarding support of the Federal Government, although support of the Federal Government was not as unanimous amongst Northern Old School Presbyterians. We see this plainly in a statement from the 1856 General Convention. Kingsport church was part of the regional Southern Synod after a North/South split occurred in 1857. Ella Forbes, African American Resistance to Colonization, Journal of Black Studies 21 (Dec. 1990): 210-223; Sean Wilentz, Princeton and the Controversies over Slavery, Journal of Presbyterian History 85 (Fall/Winter 2007): 102-111; Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); James H. Moorhead, The Restless Spirit of Radicalism: Old School Fears and the Schism of 1837, Journal of Presbyterian History 78 (Spring 2000): 19-33; George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970). 1837 Presbyterian Church split into Old and New School branches over various issues, . Later, latent Old Side-New Side differences led to the formation of a new denomination, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, in 1810. . In the schism of 1837 a very small minority of Southerners joined the New School. After the two factions split into separate denominations in 1837-38, the college and town wasas historian Sean Wilentz observesthe foremost intellectual center of Old School Presbyterianism.[5]. was utterly inconsistent with the laws of God, was a gross violation of the sacred rights of nature, was totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the Gospel, that it was the duty of all Christiansto obtain the complete abolition of slavery. Meanwhile Old and New Schoolers in the North had formed the Presbyterian Church USA. After six weeks the conference voted, finally, to ask Bishop Andrew to desist from serving as a bishop. [14] For a contemporary review of the actions of the Presbyterian General Assembly regarding slavery, see A. T. McGill, American Slavery as Viewed and Acted on by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1865). In 1793 the General Assembly confirmed its support for the abolition of slavery but stated this only as advice. Browse 60+ years of magazine archives and web exclusives. These denominations operated separately until they reunited in 1983 to become what is known today as the PCUSA. The wealth of the South became concentrated in the hands of large cotton plantation owners, who also dominated state politics and were elected to the U.S. Congress and appointed as judges to federal courts. standard) of human rights.. The action was vigorously protested by Charles Hodge who protested that the church had no right to make a political issue a term of communion: That although the scriptures required Christians to be loyal to their governments, and to obey the powers that be, the Assembly had no authority to decide which government had the right to that loyalty. 1845: Home Missions Board refuses to appoint a Georgia slaveholder as missionary. "Listen. This debate raised important theological . More from the story: Phil Hendrickson is a former charter member and session clerk of the Presbyterian Church of Stanley. These were the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist. At the General Assembly of 1837, these synods were refused recognition as lawfully part of the meeting. Theologically, The New School derived from the reconstructions of Calvinism by New England Puritans Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy and wholly embraced revivalism. Colonization appealed to diverse motives. If you're already working with an architect or designer, he or she may be able to suggest a good Laiz, Baden-Wrttemberg, Germany subcontractor to help out . During the 18th century, New England and Mid-Atlantic churchmen formed the first presbyteries in American colonies that would later become the United States. In time, the PC-USA would eventually welcome the Arminian Cumberland Presbyterians into their fold (1906), and incidences[spelling?] They established the Presbyterian Church in the United States, often simply referred to as the "Southern Presbyterian Church". As we have noted there were but few New School men in the South so the main split was in the Old School, the official PCUSA. And many of the slaves really belonged to his wife, not to him. Generally speaking, the Old School was attractive to the more recent Scotch Irish element, while the New School appealed to more established Yankees (who by agreement became Presbyterians instead of Congregationalists when they left New England).[10]. This act became the cause for Southern Presbyteries and Synods to secede from the PCUSA. Southern abolitionists fled to the North for safety. Any part of the story that's left untold? The presbytery of Lexington, Va. had disciplined him for his contentiousness. He stated that thousands of good Presbyterians believed that their scriptural subjection and loyalty belonged to their State government and not to the Federal government. The latter supported the abolition of slavery. Although church officials offered theological reasons for the split, the larger national debate over slavery and secession figured prominently in the decision to form a separate denomination. Some ministers of other Christian denominations joined them, as did secular proponents of the European Enlightenment. At the Assembly of 1837 the Old School delegates from both the North and the South agreed not to make the issue slavery. To the extent that abolitionism found a home in Presbyterianism, it did so chiefly in those sections of the church where the enthusiastic revival style of evangelist Charles G. Finney held swaymost notably in the so-called Burned-over district of upstate New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio. The controversy reached a climax at a meeting of the general assembly in Philadelphia in 1836 when the Old School party found themselves in the majority and voted to annul the Plan of Union as unconstitutionally adopted. Chattel slavery was legal, and practiced, in all of the North American British colonies. for less than $4.25/month. When writing about Iran, women and hijab, stress the Islamic roots of it all. 1861: When war breaks out, the Old School splits along northern and southern lines. Nathan Beman went further, saying that the principles of equality of men and their inalienable rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence , could be traced as much to the Apostle Paul as to Thomas Jefferson. Five Presbyterians signed the Declaration of Independence. A majority of Presbyterian Church (USA) presbyteries voted in 2011 to open the door to clergy and lay leaders in same-sex . The city's presiding Methodist elder, however, wouldn't recognize them. It helped bring about a breakup in the national political parties, which splintered into factions. And the shattering of the parties led to the breakup of the Union itself.. I.T. This missions emphasis resulted in new churches being formed with either Congregational or Presbyterian forms of government, or a mixture of the two, supported by older established churches with a different form of government. Barnes was forced to admit that the scriptures did not exclude slaveholders from the church, but he continued to maintain that although the scriptures did not condemn slavery per se it laid down principles that if followed would utterly overthrow it. The Last World Emperor in European History. A native of Donegal, Ireland, Makemie resided for some time in the British colony of Barbados, whose prosperity depended on slaves and sugar, and his residence in Barbados and trade with the colony financially supported his ministerial labor in North America. "Every time you open a book, you find another story," said . "We are in the midst of one of those great moral earthquakes, so . He continues to serve as senior editor of theJournal of Presbyterian History. Southern theologians defended both slavery and secession from the scriptures. In the colonial era, Scots-Irish immigrants comprised the large part of American Presbyterians. Non-clergy participated in American slavery and the slave trade to a greater extent than church leaders such as Makemie and Davies. And the plantation owners believed with all of their being that maintaining their way of life depended on the institution of slavery. Upon hearing that the region was under control of the southern and pro-slave portion of the Presbyterian church, the members of Kingsport church voted to align . In 1857, the New School Presbyterians divided over slavery, with the Southern New School Presbyterians forming the United Synod of the Presbyterian Church.[13]. But within eight years, three major denominations had been split apart. The Presbyterian Church was divided into religiously liberal and conservative camps more than 100 years ago, but the geographical, economic and cultural factors that led to the Civil War overrode .