History V

[Raul Goulden]

There are at least eight Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. The Bible
Presbyterian Church is a fundamentalist group with membership of roughly
10,000. It stands for old-line Presbyterian doctrine and is openly opposed
to ecumenism and modernism. It's origin is traced to the
Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the early 20th century.
Conservative Presbyterians who were opposed to theological modernism set up
their own seminary and mission board to offer an alternative to the ones
which had been taken over by liberal thought. The leaders of this
conservative movement were brought to trial by the denomination and
defrocked. The apostates charged the Bible believers with heresy! The group
which subsequently pulled out of the old-line Presbyterian denomination
formed two different independent groups: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church,
led by J. Gresham Machen, and the Bible Presbyterian Church, led by Carl
McIntire. In 1941 the Bible Presbyterians joined with other fundamentalists
to form the American Council of Christian Churches in opposition to the
liberal National Council of Churches in America. In addition to standing
against modernism and ecumenism, the Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC) granted
autonomy to the local assembly. Unlike the liberal Presbyterian
denominations, each church in the BPC owns its own property and calls its
own pastor. In contrast to this, the old-line Presbyterian denomination
"entered suits in the civil courts against scores of churches that had
withdrawn, and in almost every instance the defending local church lost its
property to the denomination. This was in spite of the fact that in most
cases the local churches had purchased their property with no financial aid
from the denomination" (David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity, p. 319).