J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Freedom in the Presbyterian Church: Dr. Machen’s Protest in the Presbytery of New Brunswick

[The following is the text of the protest offered by Dr. J. Gresham Machen concerning the action of the Presbytery of New Brunswick in amending its rules providing for the examination of ministers and candidates as to their willingness to support the Board of Foreign Missions. An account of the meeting is found in the news pages.]

PROTEST

I DESIRE, very respectfully, to record my dissent from and protest against the action of the Presbytery of New Brunswick in inserting the following additional paragraphs in the rules of Presbytery: In Article 7—Ministers:

“A member of another Presbytery, or a minister from any other ecclesiastical body, seeking membership in the Presbytery, shall be examined as to his willingness to support the regularly authorized Boards and Agencies of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., particularly the Board of Foreign Missions. A record of this examination shall be made in the Minutes of Presbytery.”

In Article 8—Candidates:

“All candidates seeking licensure or ordination shall be examined as to their willingness to support the regularly authorized Boards and Agencies of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., particularly the Board of Foreign Missions. A record of this examination shall be made in the Minutes of Presbytery.”

My reasons for making this protest are, in part, as follows:

1. In requiring that candidates for licensure, ordination or transfer shall be examined not merely as to their fitness for their ministerial function but as to their willingness to perform certain future acts, and in requiring that this examination shall be recorded, this action of Presbytery requires of candidates for licensure, ordination or transfer a pledge additional to the pledges required in the “Constitutional Questions” contained in the Form of Government. It is thus to all intents and purposes adding another question to those Constitutional Questions. Such addition can lawfully be made only by an amendment to the Form of Government, passed by a majority of all the presbyteries in the regular way.

2. The Form of Government, Chapter XIV, amended in 1932, sets forth subjects in which candidates are to be examined. Those subjects concern the candidate’s fitness, but they do not include any examination regarding his willingness to perform future acts. The omission is clearly significant. It shows that the only pledges regarding future acts to be required of candidates for the ministry are those that are found in the Constitutional Questions. The addition of another pledge is not justified, therefore, by the sections on examinations any more than it is justified by the section containing the Constitutional Questions.

3. In requiring of candidates for licensure, ordination or transfer an examination as to their willingness to support the Boards and Agencies of the Church, particularly the Board of Foreign Missions, this action is practically making support of the Boards to be a tax necessarily involved in loyal membership in the Church or at least in this Presbytery. But as a matter of fact support of the Boards is, according to Presbyterian law, not a tax but purely a freewill offering. That appears in several ways.

(a) There is nothing in the Constitution of the Church requiring support of the official Boards and Agencies on the part of the ministers. Since there is no such requirement in the Constitution, the establishment of such a requirement by the Presbytery of New Brunswick is plainly unconstitutional.

(b) Certain positive pronouncements of the General Assembly confirm this conclusion. While these pronouncements have merely informatory and not strictly legal force, their informatory force, especially because of the occasion on which two of them at least were made, is very great.

(1) When the Board of Foreign Missions was established as the Board of the combined church at the time of the union between the Old School and New School bodies, a concurrent resolution of the two Assemblies expressly stated that while the churches should be encouraged to sustain the one set of Boards for Home and Foreign Missions and other religious enterprises of the Church they were free to cast their contributions into other channels if they desired to do so (DIGEST, 1930, Vol. ii, p. 38).

(2) In the report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Missions, approved by the Assemblies of 1869, reporting to the united Assembly of 1870, which report was adopted by the Assembly and is found on pp. 44-46, Minutes of 1870, it is said:

“Equally free and responsible directly to Christ are all Christian people, in deciding through what agencies they will do their share of work for Missions.”

Also in the Minutes for the year 1870, page 39 in the Report of the Committee on Conference with the American Board, it is said:

“That the time has now come when an effort should be made, as far as may be consistent with the fullest liberty of individuals and churches, to concentrate the counsels, the energies and contributions of the whole united Church in the work about to be carried on by our Foreign Mission Board” (italics ours).

(3) The General Assembly has held that there is no such thing as an obligatory assessment in the Presbyterian Church, even regarding a thing like mileage for Commissioners to the General Assembly (DIGEST, 1930, Vol. i, pp. 477-479, No. 3, No. 4). All giving is voluntary. But if a minister sustains this examination required by the Presbytery of New Brunswick his giving to the Boards is no longer voluntary. In order, therefore, that he may enter into this Presbytery he will have been required to assume a radically different attitude toward the whole nature of the support of the Boards from that which is prescribed in the Constitution of the Church.

(4) Persons who declare their willingness to support the Boards and Agencies of the Presbyterian Church, in accordance with the plain intent of this action of Presbytery, are binding themselves either to conduct which is contrary to common honesty or to conduct which is an evasion of the responsibilities of a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. If a minister who has obtained his entrance into the Presbytery of New Brunswick by declaring his willingness to support the Boards and Agencies becomes convinced that the Boards and Agencies are unfaithful to their trust, two courses of action are open to him. In the first place, he may continue to support the Boards and Agencies in accordance with the pledge which has been exacted of him by Presbytery, despite the fact that he knows those Boards and Agencies to be unfaithful. That course of action is contrary to common honesty. Or, in the second place, being no longer able conscientiously to support the Boards and Agencies, he may withdraw from the ministry. That course Continued on Page 8.