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by Vernon Broyles A presentation made at the Office of the General Assembly Fall Polity and Leadership Conference, Tucson, Arizona, October 31, 2006. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I know many of you well, but some of you don’t know me. I’m a graduate of Davidson College and Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and I was ordained in June of 1962 by Fayetteville Presbytery in North Carolina. My first pastorate was in a 225-member church in Scotland County, North Carolina. I assure you they knew what Presbyterians were there. In 1968, I accepted a call to a church in southeast Alabama and became a member of East Alabama Presbytery after a very, very rigorous examination to transfer into the presbytery. I spent the next fifteen years as a pastor in Alabama, most of that in the midst of the architects of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) separation and dealing with its aftermath. Our presbytery lost about half of its membership, as did Tuscaloosa Presbytery, our neighbor to the northwest. In the wake of that separation, we two got together and formed a new presbytery called John Knox, which was basically healthy and even grew some. When we came to reunion, we had to give up that name in favor of our neighbors around Madison, Wisconsin, who had seniority for that presbytery name. We took the name of Sheppards and Lapsley, and that is my presbytery at this point. There’s a lot of déjà vu right now for me in terms of all the conflict that is emerging, particularly around property issues. And I take it that this segment of the program is focused very much on that, so a good deal of what I will say relates to that. But before I start, I want to thank all of you. I have not been accused lately of being a theological fundamentalist, but I plead guilty to being a kind of Presbyterian fundamentalist. I believe in our church. I believe in the way our forebears have understood the Gospel and the Scriptures as to what the nature of the church ought to be. I am absolutely convinced that the linchpin that holds our system together is the presbytery, supported by the synod. If those don’t work, then our system doesn’t work, so I honor you and thank you for the work you do on behalf of the whole church. Déjà vu all around, but there are some significant differences. The context for what led to the breakaway and the formation of the PCA was the specter within the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) of the dreaded Northern church [United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America]. Theologically, there was great fear about neo-orthodoxy, which was the dominant theology of the day. I still remember one presbytery examination of a minister in which a pastor in our presbytery who was on his way out to the PCA got up and said, “Moderator, I cannot support the examination of this man. He sounds like a Barthian!” One of the points of major conflict was how to test theological orthodoxy. Those who ultimately ended up forming the PCA insisted that the only way to be sure we were orthodox was to limit ourselves to the Westminster documents. Our brothers and sisters in the North had this book of Confessions; the argument was that if we adopted that kind of collection of confessions, we would never be able to really determine who was orthodox and who was not. Now, there is some irony in the fear of the “Northern church,” since many of the clergy leaders in the PCA movement in the South were pastors who had come out of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Christian Reformed Church in the north and had migrated south. They were instrumental in forming the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson and other parts of that movement. Another serious issue was the role of women in the church. And then, one has to say that racial politics played a major role in the struggles that led to that division. There was a kind of subtle dynamic where it was understood, or the feeling was nurtured, that if you were liberal about race then you were probably way off to the left in your theology, and vice versa. The PCA today, in their history on their Web site, talks about us this way: “It separated from the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern) in opposition to the long developing theological liberalism which denied the deity of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy and authority of scripture. Additionally, the PCA held to the traditional position on the role of women in church office,” and you know what that is. The theological voice of that movement was a periodical called The Presbyterian Journal, published out of Weaverville, North Carolina. The real political impetus and a lot of the money for that movement came from a group called Concerned Presbyterians. One of its primary leaders was an elder in the Shenandoah Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida, named Kenneth Keyes, who was an insurance executive. This group functioned very much in the Southern church in the way that the Presbyterian Lay Committee functioned as it was formed in the North. The pressure began to build, and the thing that really turned up the heat was the General Assembly of the PCUS in Mobile, Alabama, in 1969. It was at that assembly that four major things happened. First, the assembly approved the right to have union presbyteries, which was already a movement in process. Opponents of it railed regularly that this was “reunion by the back door” and a scurrilous attempt to try to subvert those who opposed reunion. But the General Assembly agreed that those union presbyteries could exist. The second thing that General Assembly did was form a committee to study the Consultation on Church Union. It also created a committee to consider the writing of a new declaration of faith. And, finally, it established and renewed a committee for the reuniting of the Presbyterian family. When that happened, the pressure built tremendously and a number of strategies began to be employed. Much of what I say at this point is colored by my own experience in old East Alabama Presbytery where, as I said, some of the architects of the PCA schism were located. One of the leaders was an elder from Greenville, Alabama, an attorney named Jack Williamson, who is still a friend of mine to this day. But Jack believes we have gone off on the wrong road. Jack was the primary author of the new Book of Order for the PCA. They developed the strategy to create a shadow presbytery. They called it Evangel Presbytery and they located it at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. It became the anchor point for the National Presbyterian Church that was established in December of 1973 and a year later was named the Presbyterian Church of America. There is for me an interesting angle in the creation of Evangel Presbytery, in that the very creation of that presbytery was kind of a tacit recognition of our polity and how it works. There were churches who wanted to leave with their property, but who understood that, under our polity, they needed some place to be transferred. And that’s what happened. One of the things that was clear in those days, as it is now, is that there were a number of presbyteries where people sympathetic to the PCA ideas were totally dominant. Our presbytery was one of those. They controlled the nominating committee. Every year when commissioners to the General Assembly were nominated, they had a cadre of six or eight people, at least one of whom was always elected a commissioner. There was not any such thing as rotation. Those presbyteries, some of them as a second strategy, voted to say that if 75% of a congregation voted to withdraw, then they are automatically dismissed with their property. That preemptive plan by those presbyteries was struck down as unconstitutional. One reason was that it essentially removed from our polity system the role of the presbyteries and, instead, put in the hands of the congregation itself—by a vote they took—the question of whether they could withdraw from the denomination. It was also declared unconstitutional in that it preemptively prevented review by any other governing body in our system. And third, it made no provision for protecting the minority interests of people in many of these congregations who wanted to remain loyal and who wanted to still be members of the PCUS. A third strategy was employed, knowing that these presbytery decisions were being reviewed by many synods. We were going through a reorganizing and restructuring of the synods. There was a plan to create a new synod—the Synod of the Mid-South—that would take in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama. The leaders in my presbytery, in the Mississippi presbyteries, and others in Alabama did not like that because they did not want to take the chance on having those kinds of decisions they had made reviewed by a synod where there were a lot of union presbyteries and a somewhat different ethos about a lot of this. So, they promulgated their own plan to create a new synod that would include only Mississippi and Alabama. They brought that proposal to the constituting assembly. It failed, and the Synod of the Mid-South was created. The impact of all of that was very uneven. Where presbyteries had the kind of ultimate power that I talked about, many congregations were dismissed, and that was particularly true where there was not strong synod oversight. There were some presbyteries and synods that held the line. It did not mean that no congregations were dismissed, but it did mean there were negotiations within the governing bodies about how those matters would be resolved. There were some lawsuits. Most of those lawsuits were in defense of loyal minorities in many of those congregations who wanted to remain a part of the family. One of the things I find different today, or at least I do not remember happening in the past, is the interjection of the courts immediately into a proposed decision by a congregation that would preempt and prevent the presbytery from even exercising its proper ecclesiastical function. I do not remember that happening, although it may have. That is something different, and I think in some ways it may be a reflection of changes in our culture overall more than anything else. The summary I would offer is this: Where the center held and where we were able to maintain the integrity of the PCUS, it was attributable to two things—faithfulness to our polity and, secondly, faithfulness to the ordination vows that people had taken. I want to tell you a story about part of how I got to where I am. I was ordained in 1962. When I was a pastor in North Carolina in 1964, there were kneel-ins going on all over the South, particularly by Black university students who were coming to try and worship in many churches. One of my elders came to me and said something along the lines of, “Mr. Broyles, I don’t know if you know this, but we have an action on the Session minutes that says we really think it would not be helpful if Black people came to worship here at Montpelier Presbyterian Church. The reason we gave for it at the time was that we are so culturally different and have such different educational levels, we think they would really be happier out at the Spring Branch Church out at the edge of town.” He went on, “These people that are coming now that might kneel-in at our church are probably better educated than most of our members. We still feel the way we do, but we want to give a better reason.” Well, I was a young pastor; I hadn’t even been there three years. They didn’t tell me in seminary if this is the point when you get up and say, “I will not get in the pulpit if you do this,” and finish it off or what you do. But we had a session meeting. They debated it and reaffirmed the position they had held. I asked that my vote in the negative be recorded in the minutes and the theological and biblical reasons I gave for it added as well. I left the meeting very sad, but continued my ministry. In 1965, because some of this was going on around the church, the General Assembly of the PCUS revised the Book of Church Order so that a new section was added. Section 201-5 says, “No one shall be excluded from participation in public worship in the Lord’s house on the grounds of race, color, or class.” A pastoral letter went out from the Moderator saying what the assembly had done. When I got it, I called a session meeting and said, “Brethren, I think we are out of accord with the Constitution of our church.” We had a long and terribly painful debate and discussion. Finally, one of the elders said, “I move that we rescind our previous action and announce to the congregation that we are open for worship and membership to anyone who comes.” We all caught hell for that. I announced it from the pulpit to the congregation and, after worship, elders were cornered and people were shaking their fingers at them. Ultimately, they put a whole lot of pressure on both the session and me. I did learn then that if you ever get in the place where some of the people in the congregation are trying to get rid of you, it’s better when they try to get rid of you and the session! When that vote was taken, the nine elders on the session voted eight to nothing, with one abstention, to approve the motion. There was not a one who wanted to do it. There was not a one who even thought it was the right thing to do at that point except that the General Assembly had said this is how we operate as Presbyterians. It was a lesson I’ve never forgotten. It was built on the values of the unitary nature of the church. It wasn’t just about Wagram, North Carolina. It wasn’t even about just Fayetteville Presbytery or the Synod of North Carolina or even the General Assembly. It was all of us together. It was also about that vow those elders took to be subject to brothers and sisters in the Lord. They had no doubt; they did not balk when they came up against that. Finally, they really did believe that the signs of the true Church are where the Word is properly preached, where the Sacraments are properly administered, and here’s the one we often forget—where discipline is properly exercised; discipline being for restoration and preservation, not for punishment. But it still has to be done. While I was preparing for this presentation, I was also working on a retreat for officers for one of our churches in Georgia. I came across a Scripture that I want to read. From Joshua 24:31 and following: “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel. The bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem, in the portion of ground that Jacob had bought from the children of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for one hundred pieces of money; it became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.” Some of you remember the old hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and the verse “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I’m come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.” When I was a kid I asked, “What the heck is an Ebenezer?” And finally someone explained to me that it was a pile of rocks that had meaning. The Scots understand it; they call it a cairn. All over the world there are those who know what it means. It’s only a pile of rocks, but it’s not just a pile of rocks. It’s not a pile of rocks to which people are so tied they can’t move forward; rather, every time they pass it they are reminded that they are in the lineage of Joseph and all the rest. Vernon Broyles is volunteer representative for public witness for the Office of the General Assembly.
Copyright Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). All Rights Reserved.
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