All right, good morning or good afternoon. Well, it's still morning. It's been a while. If you can, some of you who may have been here before, I'm Darryl Hart. I am visiting from Michigan where I teach history, but I'm on sabbatical, which is why I'm here right now. I'm not delinquent or taking long weekends. So we've been looking at sort of the fingerprints of the OPC, or use another metaphor, the DNA, trying to think about what the narrative of our church is and what gives it an identity. Because, as I tried to say the first week, that narratives or stories define, in some ways, who we are. The memories that we have of ourselves, how we carry those around, they define who we are. I used also the example of the nation and the way that we tell the story of the nation, in many respects, helps us understand what it means to be an American, for good or ill. Right now, that's hotly contested, in case you haven't heard. And so we're thinking about that. And so today, I want to cover, think about liberalism, which is the immediate backdrop to the founding of the OPC. The OPC emerged in 1936 out of a almost 15-year controversy over liberalism, at least as it transpired within the courts of the Presbyterian Church USA, the Northern Presbyterian Church, also as it's known. And there has been a book group going on here at the congregation about Christianity and liberalism. And not to give the book away, but the argument of the book, if you haven't noticed already, is that Christianity and liberalism are two entirely different religions. I hope that doesn't spoil it for you. And we'll talk more. weeks ahead, depending on church schedules, which is part of the reason why I've been traveling and you've had other business in this hour. But we'll talk more about that, Machen's book and Machen's influence, in weeks ahead. But we want to consider this morning, how did the PCUSA become liberal, or what would give you evidence that the church was liberal? And just to give a highlight briefly of what I've tried to cover so far, we covered colonial Presbyterianism and the highlights of that period involve first the first pretty good awakening, not a great awakening, only a pretty good awakening. And the ambivalence that Presbyterians have about revivals and awakenings and that kind of piety. And there was a controversy in the church between the old side and the new side. And those two, they weren't called denominations yet, but those two communions, as it were, or two synods, remained separate for almost 15 years. And then there was also the revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The original Westminster Confession in 1646 had teachings about the civil magistrate that didn't make sense anymore in the environment of the American founding. So the Presbyterian Church USA revised the Confession of Faith, especially on the civil magistrate. So those are two developments in colonial Presbyterianism to keep in mind. And that's just sort of, those developments apply to all American Presbyterians, meaning the PCA, the EPC, the OPC, all the churches that come out of that. older PCUSA, the Northern Presbyterian Church, or the Southern one that go back to the first General Assembly of 1789. So there's nothing inherently peculiar about that as it pertains to the OPC. But then the second week, we talked about the second even not so good awakening. which led to a controversy and a split in the Presbyterian Church again between old school and new school Presbyterians. And there, the old school Presbyterians were getting much closer to the sweet spot of the OPC because One of the seminaries, especially the Northern Seminary, was identified with Old School Presbyterian Church, and the Old School Presbyterians were careful to preserve and defend the Calvinism of the Westminster standards. They were also careful about Presbyterian polity and not cooperating with interdenominational organizations, at least in conducting the work of the gospel ministry. Those are concerns, those old school concerns, are very much pertinent to The OPC, Princeton Seminary, taught those concerns as an old school seminary. And if you know the history of, and I'll talk about this more, God willing, in the future, the history of the OPC comes out of Westminster Seminary, which came right out of Princeton Seminary because of the controversy over liberalism. in the Presbyterian church. So when we talk about old school Presbyterians, we're getting much closer to what the OPC has been about. But anyway, this brings us then finally to, say, 1920, jumping ahead to the 20th century. What might be evidence that the church was liberal? Perhaps the biggest example, which might leave you scratching your head a little bit, of liberalism in the church, especially as Machen encountered it at the General Assembly of 1920. Machin was a first-time commissioner to a general assembly. He had actually just served in the war, not as a soldier, as a YMCA secretary where he mixed hot chocolate and sold cigarettes and also led Bible studies for soldiers serving in World War I. It was actually a very decisive time in Machin's life to see the civilized, so-called civilized powers of the Western world at war with each other in a war of such great destruction. It made a truly big dent on Machen's outlook about the world and where it was going. But he comes back, he's a commissioner in 1920 at the General Assembly, and he hears a plan there for a union of all the Protestant churches in America. So what could be bad about union? What could be bad about ecumenism? Doesn't Christ tell his churches to be one? And to make this story even a little bit more dramatic, the person presenting this plan for organic union of the churches was the president of Princeton Theological Seminary, a man by the name of J. Ross Stevenson. So there are some dynamics at work there. The General Assembly, Princeton Seminary, already the controversy is going to ensue from those two institutions, as it were, over liberalism. So what could go wrong with church union? Well, similar development was at work in Canada. I understand there are some Canadians in the congregation, so your ears may perk up here at this point. In 1925, Canada had a church union movement that produced the United Church of Canada. And this was a union of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans, all to form this one church. Now, one of the problems with church union is that it didn't actually consolidate all those churches. It actually just created one more denomination because there were Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans that all remained outside the United Church of Canada. So instead of having one church out of the three, you now have four different churches. And one of the reasons why some would object to church union was that they thought there's something different between Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans, and that Presbyterians tend to think that our way of doing things is biblical. I know the other churches do as well, but we would consider those churches in error in some ways. So how can you cooperate with people whom you think are in error? This would be not simply church polity, but also theology. Especially when you think about Methodists being, in some ways, Arminian in their theology. This is in the case of Canada. But in the United States, there's a similar development, an organic union to produce one Protestant church. And some of the reasons for this is that it would be more efficient to have one church. Some people thought, well, you all believe the same things anyway. We don't really think the way Calvin or Cramner or Wesley did, so can't we all just get along? And in fact, didn't we just all cooperate a lot during World War I in various kinds of religious activities? So here's the preamble to the plan. If I had a PowerPoint or if I had a copy machine, I could have made these available. So please try to follow me in this. It's not that long, but still, it might be easier to follow if you had a copy. So here's the plan's preamble. Whereas we desire to share as a common heritage the faith of the Christian church, which has from time to time found expression in great historic statements. So from time to time, in great historic statements, this common heritage is found expression. And then they go on to talk about some of the things we believe. Whereas we all share belief in God, our Father, in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Savior, in the Holy Spirit, our guide and comforter, in the holy Catholic Church, through God's eternal purpose of salvation, is to be proclaimed, and the kingdom of God is to be realized on Earth, So here you have sort of a distillation of, say, the Nicene and the Apostles' Creed, God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, Holy Spirit, Holy Catholic Church. And then they go on, in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as containing God's revealed will and the life eternal. And whereas having the same spirit and owning the same Lord, we nonetheless recognize diversity of gifts and ministrations for whose exercise due freedom must always be afforded in forms of worship and in modes of operation. Which really, once you start talking about diversity of gifts and ministrations for ministry and different forms of worship, et cetera, then you really don't necessarily have a unified church. But anyway, that's basically the theological justification for this plan of union, at least what people were agreeing to. And you may not find that necessarily objectionable, but it also leaves a lot on the floor, conceivably, and that's the way it struck Benjamin Warfield. who was a professor at Princeton Seminary, I think probably the greatest theologian at old Princeton. Charles Hodge was more influential, and Charles Hodge wrote more books. But Warfield was really a sharp fellow. And he died soon after this. And one of the last things that he wrote was a critique of this plan of union. And he writes this, among other things about this. Now, it is perfectly obvious that the proposed creed contains nothing which is not believed by evangelicals. In other words, this is what all evangelicals believe. But he goes on. It is equally obvious that it contains nothing which is not believed by adherents of the Church of Rome, for example. So that gets even broader than Protestants. And it is equally obvious that it contains nothing which is not believed by respectable Unitarians. So how much broader could you get than that? That is as much to say that the creed on the basis of which we are invited to form a union for evangelizing purposes, so that's a key, this is the basis by which we're to go out and proclaim the gospel, contains nothing distinctively evangelical at all. Nothing at all of that body of saving truth for the possession of which The Church of Christ has striven and suffered through 2,000 years. It contains only a few starved and hunger-bitten dogmas of purely general character, of infinite importance in the context of evangelical truth, but of themselves of no saving sufficiency. So far as the conservation and propagation of evangelical religion is concerned, we might as well form a union on our common acceptance of the law of gravitation and the rule of three. Notice, basically they're saying nothing more than laws of gravitation and some laws about math. At least that was Warfield's estimation of this proposed plan for organic union. So it's all very vague. It's incredibly general compared to the particularity of the Westminster Confession and the three forms of unity. So how did it happen that Presbyterians were involved in this process of church union to the point that they would be giving away many of the things that they believed and many of the practices that they maintained? So this goes back then to actually the end of the old school, new school controversy. That old school, new school controversy again started in 19, excuse me, 1837 when old school Presbyterians objected to a kind of, departure from the Westminster Confession, departure from Presbyterian polity in the Presbyterian Church. That division remained, those two churches remained separate until 1869. four years after the end of the Civil War. And I say the Civil War on purpose because war, again, is a big factor in church union efforts. We saw it back at the time of the War for Independence. Soon after that, Congregationalists and Presbyterians went into a plan of union in 1801 to plant churches together in the Northwest Territories. Now after the Civil War, there's going to be a desire to bring the two old school and new school churches back together. And lo and behold, 1920, there's another plan of union after World War I. So war actually erodes differences between churches because churches wind up being on the same side politically oftentimes during a war. So this period between 1869 and 1920 is the period of ecumenism. It's the great age of ecumenism, both in the United States, but also Canada, but also in Western Europe. And in the case of the United States, this was not simply a desire for church union, but also a desire For the churches to be more, they wouldn't have called it woke at the time, but they were becoming more woke because they were applying principles of social justice or the social gospel. They thought the church should be engaged in that. And the political platform for that social gospel was the progressivism of both the Democratic and Republican parties at times, but also the Progressive Party itself. I'll say more about that in a second. And all of these things, church union, political progressivism, and the social gospel were designed to do something that most of us would probably want. They were designed to Christianize America. Who wouldn't want that? And this is a kind of Christian nationalism well before Jerry Falwell, senior or junior, rose to prominence. And this is something that people don't forget. The religious right, dating say with Ronald Reagan, et cetera, is simply doing what mainline Protestants had been doing for a good hundred years before that. So 1869 is the key date here because it's the reunion of the old and new school churches in the north. And here is part of the plan of that union of 1869. And again, I wish I could hand out to you this language, but it's really quite striking how much Presbyterians in 1869, and you would think Presbyterians then would be pretty conservative and not very liberal, but how much they're actually charting themselves Not on the basis of scripture, but on the basis of political realities in the United States. So this goes, you know, we may think this is happening a lot today, but it goes way back. So here's part of what these churches say in their plan of union. The changes which have occurred in our own country and throughout the world during this last 30 years, it's basically 30 years of the time of separation of the old and new school churches, arrest and compel attention. Within this time, the original number of our states has been very nearly doubled. And all this vast domain is to be supplied with the means of education and the institutions of religion as the only source and protection of our national life. So we're counting the number of states admitted to the Union, and this is a time when the United States is still not formed all the way across the continent. And the church still feels compelled to serve the national interest in some way. They go on, the population crowding into this immense area is heterogeneous, instead of homogenous. Six million of immigrants representing various religious and nationalities. have arrived on our shores within the last 30 years. And four millions of slaves recently enfranchised demand Christian education. And this is not a welcome development, necessarily, because it goes on to say, it is no secret that anti-Christian forces, Romanism, ecclesiasticism, rationalism, infidelity, materialism, and paganism itself, assuming new vitality, are struggling for the ascendancy. Christian forces should be combined and deployed according to the new movements of their adversaries. It is no time for small and weak detachments which may easily be defeated in detail. So there again, there's a reason to unite so that we can combine our resources to fight these bad things that are happening in the United States. And it's not as if this quotation I just read associates these bad things with all these immigrants and the recently freed slaves, but it is the case that there was a real fear of immigration, especially in the United States during this time. And this 1869 is just the beginning of a massive wave of immigration that goes on down to 1920 as well. And white Protestants, Protestants especially of Anglo-American background or British descent, were quite alarmed by what was happening in the United States and they wanted to try to retain the Christian character of the United States. So these new circumstances taking place in the United States, not because we've come to some new understanding of scripture and what we should do to be united as a church. No, it's what's happening in the nation which is compelling us to form this union to bring the old school and new school churches back together. And then it goes on to say, a lesson has been given us in recent years as to the ease with which diversities of sentiment may be harmonized and combined in one purpose to maintain the national life. That's a code for saying, The Union forces came together to defeat something in the South and to preserve national unity. And it goes on then to say this statement, the necessity of a closer union among Christians of a common faith and order has come to be felt in a new sense by the members of our several churches. It cannot be denied that there exists a widespread and earnest longing for more of visible unity among all classes of Christian people. Now, this is quite a striking couple of sentences. Many of the ecclesiastical organizations of Protestant Europe had their origins in remote controversies connected with the Reformation. That was a time for the assertion of truth rather than for the expression of love. Nothing is so long lived and inveterate as ancestral memories and prejudices. So notice, making a couple gestures here toward the Reformation. It's old stuff. We don't really need that as much anymore. And also, it wasn't very loving. And so we need more love. Even though we're not all that loving about rationalism, infidelity, materialism, all those things, we want to defeat that. But still, that Protestant stuff that we brought with us from Europe to North America isn't all that relevant anymore. And then finally this last paragraph from this plan of union. Before the world we are now engaged as a nation. So this is a Presbyterian Church speaking as if it is a national body. We are engaged now as a nation in solving the problem of whether it is possible for all the incongruous and antagonistic nationalities thrown upon our shores, not sure that's the best verb to use, exerting their mutual attraction and repulsion to become fixed in one new American sentiment. If the several branches of the Presbyterian Church in this country, representing to a great degree ancestral differences, should become cordially united, it must have not only a direct effect upon the question of our national unity, But reacting by the force of a successful example on the old world must render aid in that direction to all who are striving to reconsider and readjust those combinations which had their origin either in the false or in the necessities of a remote past. So we want union in the church in order to achieve union in the nation and maybe even union around the world. This is really the beginnings of the quest for a liberal international order that really takes and flourishes after World War II with the formation of the United Nations, et cetera. But that sentiment is very much alive and well here in 1869 among these Presbyterians. And again, there's nothing wrong with union. Union is a good thing. Harmony is a good thing. And diversity can be a real... challenged to order and stability in a society or in a nation. So it's not as if their instincts are wrong, but how are they factoring their commitments as Presbyterians? What they understand the Bible to teach, what they understand the church to do, how are they factoring that into their understanding of both the union of the church and also union within the nation? So this is the beginning, 1869, of this great ecumenical age where Protestant churches, not just Presbyterians, Presbyterians are at the lead in forming a number of interdenominational or ecumenical organizations to try to get Protestants to unite. And the 1920 plan for organic union is the culmination of 50 years of effort. So in 1867, there's something called the Evangelical Alliance, which brings Protestants together in some form. In 1892, there's the formation of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. American Presbyterians and Reformed churches beginning to cooperate with European Reformed and Presbyterian churches. In 1906, there is a merger of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the PCUSA. So what? Well, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a really odd church that comes out of the not-so-good Second Great Awakening. And they are Cumberland, meaning Tennessee, largely, but also in the South. They left the PCUSA in roughly 1810 or 1813, somewhere in there. And to form a separate Presbyterian Church, they took out things like predestination, limited atonement, a number of these things that you associate with Calvinism. They just excerpted those from the Westminster Confession of Faith to form this Cumberland Presbyterian Church. So you're wondering, how would a church that already holds to the Westminster Confession include a church that doesn't hold to the same Westminster Confession? Well, one of the things that happens is that in 1903, the Presbyterian Church, USA, revises its Confession of Faith and adds a chapter on the love of God and Holy Spirit chapters there to soften the Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith. And the man I mentioned earlier, Benjamin Warfield, the professor at Princeton, he was a strong opponent of this revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith. And that was a controversy that went on in the Presbyterian Church for over a decade. But eventually, that revision did take place in 1903. And that was a way to set up this union with the Cumberland Presbyterians. But another important step of this ecumenical drive, and also the combination of a kind of Christian nationalism, the social gospel, and ecumenism, was the founding in 1908 of the Federal Council of Churches. Later, that organization would change its name to the National Council of Churches. And for baby boomers in the room, we may remember the National Council of Churches used to be a big deal. That was basically the voice of mainline Protestantism in the United States. And I would say, in my lifetime, for the last 25 years, you haven't heard about word one from the National Council of Churches. But it used to be the case, if they sent out a memo or a press release, people paid attention. That is no more. But anyway, the beginnings of that kind of mainline Protestant speaking with one voice happened in 1908. And one of the very first things that the federal council did was to pass, and I think this really illustrates the point of the way the church union goes together with social gospel. They passed a social creed for the churches. A social creed for the churches was the first item of business that they did. And it was 13 points, and I will only read Four or five of those. So first of all, for equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life. I mean, that's a good thing. It's not clear to me that that's what the church is really called to do. That's why we have government. For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational disease, injuries, and mortality. Again, that's a fine sentiment to hold, but is it something the church really is called to do? And these are actually also policy platform points from the progressive party or the progressive movement. The abolition of child labor was another plank. And probably we're all on the side of being opposed to child labor, but immigrants coming to the country, there was a time when they actually needed children to work. And it wasn't necessarily just the worst thing, although working in some of the factory conditions was pretty bad. For the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised, kind of a soft way of trying to talk about some kind of redistribution, even though they really don't talk about it in that way, of wealth. And then four, they have the last point in this social creed is for the abatement of poverty. It's succinct and to the point, but how would you ever Implement that. Anyway, so this is part of what the Federal Council was up to, was to endorse a social gospel. And again, it is right out of the Progressive Party's playbook. And so that's happening in 1908, and it's not very far from that to get to the plan of Organic Union of 1920, which is really what started Machen thinking about liberalism and how it was infecting the Presbyterian Church. So by way of conclusion, maybe have a little time for a couple questions. Notice this is how Machen concludes the book. And I guess this is a real spoiler alert. If you haven't, I'm not sure where the book group is, where you stand in the succession of chapters. But this is how he finishes the book. I believe this is the last, well, parts of the last two paragraphs. At the present time, there is one longing of the human heart which is often forgotten. It is the deep, pathetic longing of the Christian for fellowship with his brethren. It's interesting that he's that Christians want to be united but it's what they want to be united with their brethren for fellowship and he goes on one here's it is much it is true about Christian union and harmony and cooperation But the union that is meant is often a union with the world against the Lord, or at best, a forced union of machinery and tyrannical committees. How different is the true unity of the spirit in the bond of peace? Sometimes it is true the longing for Christian fellowship is satisfied. There are congregations. even in the present age of conflict, that are really gathered around the table of the crucified Lord. There are pastors that are pastors indeed. So notice where the source of unity comes from. It comes from gathering around word and sacrament. But such congregations in many cities are difficult to find. Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into church to seek refreshment for the soul, and what does one find? Alas, too often, One finds only the turmoil of the world. The preacher comes forward not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God's word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problem of sin. Such is the sermon. And then perhaps the service is closed by one of those Hymns breathing out the angry passions of 1861, which are to be found in the back parts of the hymnals. Here's a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, for instance. Thus the warfare of the world has entered even into the house of God, and sad indeed is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace. Is there no refuge from strife? Is there no place of refreshing? Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus' name? to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the cross. If there be such a place, then that is the house of God, and that the gate of heaven. So Meijian is very much writing with this whole development of American Protestantism for the last 50 years going on in his mind when he writes Christian liberalism. So if you want to look for liberalism in the church, it has to do very much with the social gospel, church union, these developments that were going on, which were making Questions about, say, the deity of Christ or the inspiration of the Bible look like, sort of, who really cares about that? We're interested in many other concerns. So that's how a church could become liberal, and I think that's actually how the Presbyterian Church did become liberal, and it's also very much This is Machin's perspective on what's happening, and it's my perspective as well, but I think there's a lot of truth in how that explains Machin's book and the controversies of the 1920s. So I have two minutes, if anyone wants to comment or a question. Yes? In the 1868 discussion where they were talking about how, if you didn't identify after the war, was it possible that the reference they made to the post-war occupation really think your food would be a similar cost? I mean, you can say that, yeah, we see my feds are in a civil war, so I'm going to re-unitize. It works, but it works at a cost. Okay, so first question is they Protestant ministers, both for Civil War and World War I, turned the sacrifices of lives during the war into examples of the sacrifice of Christ. So they could just sort of turn it into, this is what Jesus would do, in effect. Machen gives a talk or gives a sermon precisely about that. It's called The Church and the War. And he's horrified that people, that they would in some ways bring Christ's sacrifice down to that level, despite how great the cost was of the sacrifice of lives during that. So they just kind of put that as part of, you know, to have an omelet. dot, dot, dot. As far as the federal government, no. They weren't thinking that. And the reason why this failed, this plan failed, was there wasn't sufficient money behind it. The Rockefellers were actually interested in funding it, but there wasn't enough support from the churches to get it off the ground. So it would have been all through private contributions. OK, it's 1230, and I must stop there. Let me close in prayer. Our good and gracious God, we do thank you once again for this day of rest and worship. We thank you, Father, for the opportunity we had to hear your word proclaimed, to fellowship around your table. We thank you for also the witness of people from the past who have stood for your truth. We pray that you would encourage us with their example, and may we continue to be faithful to you in our callings. We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen.