The Forming of the PCA: Part 9

Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.
Read Part 4.
Read Part 5.
Read Part 6.
Read Part 7.
Read Part 8.

There are many questions circulating out there by some elders of the PCA concerning the future of our denomination. Since this is a Pastoral blog, I believe it a good thing to look back at some of the writings of the fathers of our denomination as they were nearing the end of the PCUS and considering themselves what was to become of their own denomination, which in the end led to the formation of the PCA.  I believe we can learn from them, and so the following is Part 9 of this little series looking back to 'the fathers of the PCA.'  Please take time to read the entirety though it is long for a blog.  Trust me this is crucial.  

Editor's note: This should have been posted as Post 2, but there were some problems finding the article.

Summary By Dr. G. Aiken Taylor, Editor of The Presbyterian Journal

"What The 1968 Assembly Did To You"

The Presbyterian Journal. Vol. 27. No. 9. June 26, 1968. Pgs. 14-15.

Sometimes it is hard to develop an interest in what goes on at top Church meetings because the decisions do not seem to affect us down in our local congregations. 

Let's look at the decisions of the 1968 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church US as these might be translated into action in the next few years. Imagine, if you will, that you are a modern Rip Van Winkle coming back to your congregations in 1972, after an absence of four years. You could meet these (imaginary) situations:

• Your Session is discussing a note just received from the presbytery. In order to implement the instructions of the 1968 Assembly, your congregation is about to be grouped with two other congregations into a three-church field because it is smaller than 250 members.
• Your son has just finished his seminary training and is about to take charge of his first congregation. But the Selective Service laws have been changed as the 1968 Assembly requested. The young minister is classified 1-A by his draft board and inducted into the Army.
• You make a generous gift to the Rally Day Offering. Later you discover that some of it was sent to a militant civil rights action group.
• You make another generous gift to the Witness Offering during the World Missions season. Later you discover that some of your gift was sent to support a strike by maintenance men in a large city.
• You go to a presbytery meeting as an elder representing your church. There you find a large group of unfamiliar faces. You discover these belong to the representatives of the United Church of Christ in your area, with whose synod your own synod has formally invited.
• At that same presbytery meeting you are introduced to other strangers. These are the ministers and elders of the United Presbyterian churches in your area. Your presbytery has entered into full organic union with the corresponding presbytery of the UPUSA Church.
• At the next meeting of your session a letter is read from the presbytery's General Pastor informing you that unless you stop using that non-Presbyterian literature you are using in your Sunday School, the Committee on Pastoral Relations will recommend to the presbytery that your minister be divested of his office, your congregation dissolved and your property sold. (this already is happening in the Presbyterian Church US. After RCA merger it will be more easily done.)
• You are a salesman for a company producing photo products. You call on one of your best customers, TRAV (the television, radio and audio-visuals arm of the Church). You are told, regretfully, that since the Assembly supported the use of economic pressure they have been told to cancel your account. The Church has decided to boycott the products of your company because the company's hiring policies have been judged discriminatory.
• When you get home from work your wife tells you that the police have come to the house and confiscated your favorite bird gun under the new law against the possession of firearms. The law was passed after the Assembly adopted its resolution urging control of both sales and possession of deadly weapons.
• In the mail there is a packet of study materials for you (as chairman of the evangelism committee of the session).  These you are expected to use in preparation for a season of evangelism in your congregation. Because the Church has continued to reaffirm its commitment to the National Council of Churches it continues to use study and program materials prepared in New York by the NCC. Those in your hands are from the Division of Evangelism. they are largely devoted to riots in the cities and the equalization of wealth among the population.
• The next mail contains a copy of the new plan of union which will unite your Church (as a member of COCU) with eight other denominations into a super-Church of some 23 million members - if approved by the next Assembly.
• You make a sacrificial gift on Easter Sunday for overseas relief. Later you discover that some of your money went behind the Iron Curtain to benefit the people of a Communist country and that it was distributed without reference to the Gospel.
• Last Sunday your minister questioned a couple on profession of faith. For the first time you noticed that the questions he used were quite unfamiliar to you. They seemed to have very little in common with the questions that you have heard ever since you made your own profession of faith. Your minister explains that, under the new constitution (you have now merged with the RCA), he can make up his own questions as there are none specified in the Book of Church Order. He seems relieved that he doesn't have to use the old questions. Nobody believes those things any longer, he says.
• Your minister preaches a sermon in which he says that pre-marital sex relations are perfectly all right if the couple truly love each other. When you protest he reminds you that the 1968 Assembly showed a very strong inclination to support the "new morality" and he was merely following through.
• In that morning service t h e minister also read a letter from the Council on Church and Society of the denomination calling on Presbyterians to join in support of a particular bill before Congress. (sic) The letter has not been approved by the Assembly, but under the new rules it doesn't have to be.
• A rich uncle dies and leaves you a fortune. In gratitude you write a check for a large sum and send it undesignated to the presbytery's treasurer, thinking of the desperate need of our missionaries overseas. The letter of acknowledgment tells you that the money will be sent to some British missionaries in Ghana who have been financially hurt by the devastation of the pound.

Are these imagined cases extreme? Not as extreme as you might think. They are all quite possible under actions of the 1968 Assembly, or under policies announced to the Assembly. They constitute illustrations of the way Assembly actions are not "afar off," but affect you where you live.