A Schism Takes Shape

A successor communion to the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is in the making. The first step was taken September 7 when six ministers and ten elders signed a resolution agreeing to “covenant together to form an association to be known as Vanguard Presbytery, a Provisional Presbytery for Southern Presbyterian and Reformed Churches Uniting.” The churchmen belong to congregations that have withdrawn from the denomination or are trying to. A constituting convention has been scheduled for November 14.

The move came rather unexpectedly and without prior encouragement from the main conservative elements in Southern Presbyterianism, a strong segment of whom have shown a separatist bent but have not ventured a break.

Moderator L. Nelson Bell issued a statement that expressed regret over the organizing of the Vanguard Presbytery “because it fragments the witness of the Church which they are repudiating. Their conservative witness is sorely needed in our midst.”

Many Southern Presbyterians are united in concern about their denomination’s leftward theological drift but divided over whether and when to sever ties.

The covenant to form Vanguard Presbytery was signed at a meeting in the Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia. Convener of the meeting was the Reverend Todd Allen, minister of the church, one of two Savannah congregations that left the denomination in 1966 in a move that after years of litigation was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court. A decision was made to incorporate Vanguard Presbytery in Georgia and to request legal counsel from Owen Page, the lawyer who handled the litigation of the Savannah churches. Allen was elected moderator, and Chester Hall of Louisville, Kentucky, was named stated clerk and treasurer.

A motion was adopted to leave the constituting resolution open for additional signatures for eighteen months. A motion to appoint an executive committee to transact business between meetings was tabled.

The resolution asserts “that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, and only infallible rule of faith and practice, and … that the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms set forth the system of doctrine declared in the Scriptures.” The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (1934 edition) is said to set forth “a reasonable and practical formulary for church organization.”

The November 14 meeting of the new presbytery will be held in the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation voted last month to declare itself independent.Some conservatives, including a number who advocate eventual separation, feel that defections now will make favorable property settlements more difficult if a merger is consummated. The local presbytery has refused to recognize the withdrawal.

Another decision of the Savannah meeting was that Allen, as moderator of the new presbytery, should accept an invitation to join the Steering Committee for a Continuing Presbyterian Church. The committee is composed of representatives of four conservative groups that have agreed that a schism is inevitable if the Southern Presbyterian communion continues to tolerate deviations from historic Presbyterian doctrine. The committee’s leadership has indicated it will support a proposed plan of union with the three-million-member United Presbyterian Church if the plan gives ministers and congregations the right to decide whether or not they want to belong to the merged denomination. If such a “survival clause” is not a part of the plan, then the steering committee plans to propose other tacks.

Bell said he is in “hearty sympathy” with the objections that Vanguard leaders have raised about the denomination, which has nearly a million members throughout the south. “However, as long as the constitution of our Church is the Westminster Confession of Faith,” he noted, “we are a confessional Church based squarely on the Holy Scriptures. Until that confession is repudiated, we have a solid source of reference and a clear statement of our beliefs, than which none better is to be found in any major denomination.”

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