The Creation and Shaping of an American Presbytery
A Review of Historical, Theological, Organizational, and Leadership Issues
In and Around the Presbytery of Elizabeth
Robert Foltz-Morrison
©2009
This paper draws on research undertaken to complete the requirements for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Hartford Seminary relevant to my ministry setting as the Executive Presbyter of the Presbytery of Elizabeth (1997-2009). The first part focuses on the presbytery and the second on presbytery leadership.
Part I
The Organization and Function of the Presbytery
Within American Presbyterianism
More than 350 Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations dot the landscape of New Jersey. These churches are part of seven presbyteries—geographical, “middle” governing bodies between local congregations and the national denominational body.[1] Presbyterians have established churches in New Jersey over five centuries, from the 17th through the 21st centuries. The Middle Colonies, which included New Jersey, became a stronghold for Presbyterianism in early American history. The oldest church in the Presbytery of Elizabeth (and the oldest English-speaking church in New Jersey) dates from the city’s founding by settlers from Connecticut and Long Island in 1664 when the British assumed control over this region previously under the administration of the Dutch. The first congregations that organized and identified as Presbyterian in the state were extensions of the European populations and the churches from which they had emigrated. These largely Scotch-Irish and other Reformed immigrants used the 1645 Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church Government as their guide for organizing presbyteries early in the 18th century.[2] Lewis Wilkins describes the presbytery then as having “powers of jurisdiction” which were governmental and liturgical and vested in groups of persons composed of ministers and elders.[3] This post-Reformation church in the New World reflected the Reformers’ attempts to redefine the traditions and concepts of Western Catholic canon law in which they had been schooled. Reformed polity reassigned ecclesiastical powers to the presbytery from the diocese and individual bishops. The Form of Presbyterial Church Government defined an identity distinct from Anglicans, who settled in the South, and Congregationalists, who settled in New England. This distinction for the Middle Colonies was important because nine of the original thirteen colonies had churches established or favored by law before the American Constitution was written and implemented throughout the states.[4]
Lefferts Loetscher sees this formation of the presbytery in 1706 providing two instructive forecasts for American Presbyterians. The first: the presbytery united through its ministers the “two quite differing and often conflicting heritages of Puritan Presbyterianism and of Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism.”[5] The former placed more emphasis on spontaneity, vital impulse, and adaptability rather than fixed theology and church government. The latter stressed the more objective aspects of faith: precise theological formation, the distinct character of Reformed ministry, and orderly and authoritarian church government.[6] Uniting these heritages anticipated the pluralism—and a polarity or dialectic—that would characterize American Presbyterians. The second forecast: unlike Scottish Presbyterianism, organized through an act of Parliament and implemented by its General Assembly, American Presbyterianism would be organized “from the ground up,” establishing a more democratic than hierarchical nature.
This first presbytery (Philadelphia) grew so fast that a Synod of four presbyteries convened by 1717. A Synod, in the 17th and 18th centuries consisted of representatives of all the churches in their region. There was a close relationship between congregations and each of the two higher governing bodies. Re-alignment of presbytery boundaries continued over each of the next two centuries as the number of communities between Philadelphia and New York with Presbyterian churches increased.[7] These young American Presbyterian churches struggled to define the essential beliefs and practices of their ministers. British and Scottish Presbyterians required the subscription of all its ministers to particular theological creedal statements. Jonathan Dickinson argued at the Synod assembly that this amounted to elevating human documents to the level of the Scriptures themselves. The American Presbyterian Synod compromised, deciding to adopt in 1729, but not “subscribe to,” the essential tenets of the Westminster Confession written by the English Parliament less than 50 years earlier. Loetscher adds: “This Adopting Act became a kind of Magna Charta in the Church’s theological history, but unfortunately the ambiguity of its crucial phase ‘essential and necessary articles’ would rise to vex the Church again and again.”[8]
The debate had barely subsided when Presbyterian churches wrestled with the experiential faith embodied in the “Great Awakening”--which began in the Raritan Valley of New Jersey. Old Side Presbyterians were strict about its ministers subscribing to the rational expression of faith embodied in the Westminster Confession, while New Side Presbyterians wanted to embody the “experiential faith” sweeping the American Colonies in the 1730’s. Researchers estimate that only 5-10% of the general colonial population attended church in the early 18th century.[9] The Great Awakening brought Christianity to the common people, not merely the few “elect” or the educated classes. Presbyteries, lacking a long history of collective constitutional standards, aligned themselves into two new and sometimes hostile Synods: Philadelphia (Old Side) and New York (New Side).
The schism slowed but did not deter the start of new churches (including in New Jersey[10]) or the westward and southern expansion of Presbyterians, sometimes aligned with one or the other “side.” For a period of 17 years (1741-1758) these two sides separated from one another, reuniting following discussions that involved concessions on both sides. Patterns for Presbyterians were unfolding. Loetscher saw the revivalist’s emphasis on emotion undermining sober religious thinking and becoming exclusively interested in individuals, weakening the idea of church. Williston Walker saw the Great Awakening coming at time when familiar European patterns of outreach were proving ineffective in the American colonies. Both Loetscher and Walker, and Wilkins, saw an American understanding of Presbyterianism begun: that of a church with a mission.[11]
Meanwhile, a larger national rebellion was building, related to what had taken place a century earlier with English “standards” developed in the 17th century. Loetscher describes the Westminster Standards as based on covenant theology, long held by the Puritans. God enters into a covenant with fallen human beings by offering them salvation in Christ upon the condition of their faith. Together with the social contract theory, Puritans believed that people enter into a contract with a king to rule over them. If the king violated the terms of the contract and became tyrannical, the king could be restrained or deposed. Parliament tested this covenantal and contractual standard with their war against King Charles I, whose defeat by Oliver Cromwell resulted in the king’s execution in 1649. However, English Presbyterians did not fare well in the 18th century after Cromwell’s death. All clergy were required to become part of the Church of England. Three thousand left. Civil government abolished higher Presbyterian judicatories (presbyteries and synods) and established uniform Anglican worship in churches. Only members of the Church of England could study theology in English universities. Puritans became the first to leave home to begin anew in a colony in America.
Presbyterian ministers in the colonies knew well this history. The former two synods, now united, gathered in 1775 and issued their first social pronouncement by the church’s highest judicatory: a pastoral letter to King George III of England about the treatment of English subjects in the colonies. The king himself referred to the problems in the colonies as a “Presbyterian rebellion.” The Synod appointed a day of “solemn fasting, humiliation, and prayer” to be observed by all Presbyterian congregations. When English soldiers fired upon colonialists later that year, many preachers took to the pulpit stating the king had broken his social contract. This released colonial subjects from their allegiance to him. Jonathan Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and a Presbyterian minister, served as a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Presbytery of Hanover (VA) first endorsed it. Pastors and members of Presbyterian congregations went to war against the state. Martin Marty writes that Charles Inglis, Episcopal rector of Trinity Church in New York, went on record to say he could not find a single American Presbyterian minister who did not use the pulpit and every other means to promote the Continental Congress and colonist causes.[12]
While Presbyterians may take pride in the American Revolutionary War being referred to as “a Presbyterian rebellion,” the war dragged on for five years and, as church historian Ernest Trice Thompson laments, brought demoralization and loss to American churches. The British destroyed church buildings and congregants scattered or were killed, as the Reverend James Caldwell of First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, NJ and his wife, Hannah, murdered in separate shootings.[13] A separation of church and state occurred with that war that when written into the United States Constitution in 1789 and ratified by the colonial states would bring a significant and American change from “state churches” to the church as a voluntary organization.[14]
Presbyterians, Walker notes, seized the opportunity after the war ended to reorganize. They drew up a new constitution that provided for a national Presbyterian structure headed by a General Assembly, with constituent Synods. The Presbyterian Church then numbered 420 churches. Settlers moved westward beyond the “original colonies.” By 1800, the denomination had more than 500 churches widely distributed throughout its 26 presbyteries. The territory of the United States more than doubled in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. By 1816, The General Assembly minutes reflect the United States population had grown to 8.5 million. By 1870, the size of the U.S. territory had doubled again while its population more than quadrupled.[15] The challenge before the church then: the evangelization of the western frontier in the 18th century.
Presbyterian church historian James H. Smylie saw considerable authority and power located in the presbyteries, though responsibility for the whole system lay in the General Assembly.[16] When the first American Presbyterian General Assembly convened in 1789, it defined the role for the presbytery in its constitutional Form of Government as:
Cognizance of all things that regard the welfare of the particular churches
within their bounds…receiving and issuing appeals from the session…
examining, and licensing candidates for the gospel ministry…ordaining,
settling, removing, or judging ministers…resolving questions of doctrine
or discipline…condemning erroneous opinions…visiting particular churches
…uniting or dividing Congregations…ordering whatever pertains to the
spiritual concerns of the Churches under their care.[17]
Congregants were charged with attending worship and supporting with financial resources the work of the church. Whereas the clergy had previously lived on the provisions (food, land, shelter) of members, now congregants were encouraged to make regular voluntary monetary contributions for ministerial service. The denomination and its presbyteries had a challenge before it. In 1789, there were only 177 ministers and 205 of the 420 congregations had vacant pulpits.[18]
The Minutes of the Presbytery of Jersey in the early 19th century confirm this directive shaped presbytery responsibility.[19] The Presbytery examined candidates on both their education (languages, math, science, philosophy, theology, ecclesiastical history) and their doctrine, usually requesting candidates to present a paper on a subject assigned by the presbytery. Ordinations, as well as ecclesiastical trials (as the removal of ministers), took place over the course of two to three day presbytery meetings, or a series of meetings. Ministers often presented reflections on subjects requested ahead of the next meeting. Many meetings reported the “State of Religion” in the presbytery, highlighting churches in which many “awakened” to faith and joined the church through revivals or periods of prayer. One year (1821) the presbytery expressed its corporate spiritual concern by taking the following action: “Whereas the Presbytery at the last stated meeting taking into consideration the low state of religion in our congregations, did agree to spend a day in private fasting and prayer.” (Minutes, p. 529)
Theologically and ecclesiastically, Presbyterians struggled with the authority of the church within the advance of political democracy in the new nation and the emotionalism of a second “Great Awakening” that swept westward from Kentucky in 1800. The Presbytery of Jersey spent considerable time on credentialing an educated clergy largely for “settled” churches. Settled churches, with their ordained officers, established new churches in the colonies. Traveling revivalists aided the effort to establish new churches as much as they also contributed to the Presbyterian struggle of identity, for they had less accountable to any particular presbytery or theology. The slow credentialing process of church leaders by a seminary education with tests and thorough oral examination hardly proved adequate to keep up with the expanding continental challenges.
The need for clergy educated in Presbyterian “doctrine, worship, and government” brought about the separate establishment in 1812 of Princeton Seminary out from under the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The experiences of most Presbyterian controversies were close to New Jersey as the Presbytery of Jersey lay between the battle fields of Philadelphia and New York, and participated in the ongoing disputes (as precision in credentialing and ministry and presentations) in one Stated Meeting after another. In 1824, the Presbytery of Jersey divided into two presbyteries: Newark and Elizabethtown. The Standing Rules of 1824 reflected the Presbytery of Elizabethtown’s membership (16 ministers and 15 congregations), meeting schedule (third Tuesday in April and first Tuesday in October), structure (Education Committee, funds for missionaries and commissioners), and oversight (moderator and two temporary clerks chosen at every stated meeting, Stated Clerk and Treasurer elected by ballot). The rules also set aside time the second evening “as a season of prayer for the blessing of God upon the kingdom of Christ, and especially the ministers, elders, and congregations belonging to the Presbytery.”[20] In addition, through the reorganization of 1824, all presbyteries in New Jersey related to one another in a single synod: the Synod of New Jersey.
Another Presbyterian schism erupted in 1837—the Old School versus the New School--that involved questions about (a) whether evangelization of the West (along with Native Americans and their lands) should be done by Presbyterians alone or in concert with the Congregationalists, and (b) whether it should be carried out by church judicatories, church boards, or independent lay boards.[21] The first Presbyterian board, as a separate mission agency, began in 1802 with the General Assembly’s appointment of the Standing Committee on Missions. Unfortunately, that ended with the division of the church in 1837. Nevertheless, both the Old School and New School pressed forward their work of evangelization. Both schools founded churches in the present Presbytery of Elizabeth.[22] Only after reunion in 1869 could the General Assembly establish a national Board of Home Missions. While belated, that board served the denomination well from 1870 through 1923. Presbyterians joined what Wilkins called the “Evangelical American Denomination” which transformed all the major Protestant churches with a missional form quite different from their roots in Europe.[23] The impact on American Presbyterians resulted in the General Assembly in 1903 revising its Westminster Confession of Faith to add chapters on the “Holy Spirit” and on “Mission,” with the majority of presbyteries concurring.