"The Continent" | February 27, 1919

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Your Savings and Their Investment

Will Address Fathers and Sons

Cincinnati—Cincinnati Presbytery, through its committee on education is arranging for a father and son dinner in the Church of the Covenant on March 7. Dr. W. O. Thompson, president of Ohio State University, is to make an address.

Keep Him Busy—Rev. Jesse Halsey, pastor of Seventh church, who saw two years of service with Dr. Grenfell, on the Labrador, and who has recently returned from a year of Y.M.C.A. service in Russia, has delivered nearly a hundred addresses since his return.

Give Auto to Pastor—Rev. A. L. Wilson, of Cincinnati Wyoming Church, who spend some months at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, and later became engaged in “hut” work in Cincinnati, has recently been presented with a new automobile by his men members, who said they were tired of seeing him go about with “Lizzie.” The ladies of the church gave Mrs. Wilson a camping outfit.

151st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church

The 151^st annual General Assembly was held in Cleveland, Ohio May 25-31, 1939. Ruling Elder Sam Higginbottom of Allahabad Christian College in India was elected Moderator, and the Rev. Dr. Jesse Halsey of Cincinnati, Ohio, was appointed Vice-Moderator.

The Auburn Affirmation

from Wikipedia

The Auburn Affirmation was a document dated May 1924, with the title "AN AFFIRMATION designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America," authored by an eleven-member Conference Committee and signed by 1274 ministers of the PCUSA. The Affirmation challenged the right of the highest body of the church, the General Assembly, to impose the Five Fundamentals as a test of orthodoxy without the concurrence of a vote from the regional bodies, the presbyteries. In 1910, 1916, and again in 1923, the General Assembly declared that every candidate seeking to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church ought to be able to affirm

1. Inerrancy of the Scriptures
2. The virgin birth (and the deity of Jesus)
3. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement
4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus
5. The authenticity of Christ's miracles

The Auburn Theological Seminary history professor, Robert Hastings Nichols, proposed to challenge this procedure of repeatedly affirming additional standards of orthodoxy, besides the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith - which were the only standards of orthodoxy officially recognized by the church. The Affirmation denounces that procedure of affirming the Fundamentals in the General Assembly as a contradiction of the history and polity of the Presbyterian Church. It was drafted and signed by a writing group, primarily Nichols and Henry Sloane Coffin, with the original intention of presenting it to the General Assembly of 1923. After events of the Assembly that year appeared to indicate that their thesis would be favorably received by moderates, Coffin suggested that the Affirmation should be signed by ministers before being formally made public; and in accord with that advice it was circulated for signature in preparation for the General Assembly of 1924. Although the Affirmation did not officially come from Auburn Theological Seminary (at that time located in Auburn, New York), the name "Auburn Affirmation" has been attached to the document from the beginning, because of Nichols' influence as the originator of the idea.

The Auburn Affirmation was the culmination of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, which by 1924 had been a conflict of more than thirty years within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It is generally regarded as signalling a turning point in the history of American Presbyterianism, because it garnered the support of both theological traditionalists and liberals. Besides the 1274 signatories, the document as submitted claimed the support of "hundreds of ministers who agree with and approve of the Affirmation, though they have refrained from signing it."

The Affirmation has six sections that can be summarized as:

1. The Bible is not inerrant. The supreme guide of scripture interpretation is the Spirit of God to the individual believer and not ecclesiastical authority. Thus, “liberty of conscience” is elevated.
2. The General Assembly has no power to dictate doctrine to the Presbyteries.
3. The General Assembly’s condemnation of those asserting "doctrines contrary to the standards of the Presbyterian Church" circumvented the due process set forth in the Book of Discipline.
4. None of the five essential doctrines should be used as a test of ordination. Alternated “theories” of these doctrines are permissible.
5. Liberty of thought and teaching, within the bounds of evangelical Christianity is necessary.
6. Division is deplored, unity and freedom are commended.

Referring to the Five Fundamentals as "particular theories", the Affirmation's argument is succinctly summarized in two sentences:

Some of us regard the particular theories contained in the deliverance of the General Assembly of 1923 as satisfactory explanations of these facts and doctrines. But we are united in believing that these are not the only theories allowed by the Scriptures and our standards as explanations of these facts and doctrines of our religion, and that all who hold to these facts and doctrines, whatever theories they may employ to explain them, are worthy of all confidence and fellowship.

Partly due to the acceptance of the Auburn Affirmation, Presbyterian traditionalists who found themselves displaced because of it went on to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. This church maintains the older standards, such belief in the five essential doctrines (listed above) and the inerrancy of the bible; these are the minimum requirements for membership in an OPC congregation and ordination for its ministers.

Modernists in the Presbytery

from Two Assembly Previews by Thomas R. Birch
The Presbyterian Guardian
June 10, 1941

FOR those Bible-believers who have elected to remain in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., the 153rd General Assembly, meeting in St. Louis from May 22nd to 29th, presents no bright ray of hope. These lines are being written as the assembly opens, and a bureaucratic big-wig has just nosed out an Auburn Affirmationist in the moderatorial race, no foe of Modernism has lifted his voice against the corporate unbelief of the denomination's boards and agencies, and the air is filled only with a frenzied enthusiasm for church union and for the mass-production of resolutions on the subject of war.
We confess that we are appalled when we consider that, for the first time in the history of the church, the general assembly received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper from the hands of an Auburn Affirmationist, retiring Moderator William Lindsay Young. The ugly and unadorned fact is more powerful than any editorial comment we could make about it.

Dr. Herbert Booth Smith of Los Angeles, California, and Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin of New York City were the only two moderatorial candidates mentioned prior to the opening of the assembly. There was little to choose between them. Dr. Smith might, it seemed, lose out to Dr. Coffin, for the latter possessed one qualification for election which each year becomes more important. Dr. Coffin is, in short, a signer of the Auburn Affirmation, which denies the doctrine of plenary inspiration and holds as mere theories, which mayor may not be believed, the doctrines of the virgin birth, the substitutionary death of Christ, His bodily resurrection and His miracles. For other facts about Dr. Coffin, see the article, "Modernism's Coffin," by the Rev. Robert B. Brown, in THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN for April 25th.

Dr. Smith, pastor of the second largest church in the denomination, is a member of the Permanent Judicial Commission-the body that brought in the Christ-dishonoring decisions of the Syracuse Assembly in 1936, which ordered the ecclesiastical executions of those who could not bow before
the iniquitous 1934 mandate. This seemed likely to give him a slight advantage over his rival. On the other hand, Dr. Coffin, as president of modernist Union Seminary, New York, for the past fifteen years, was sure to give him a stiff battle. It was impossible to forecast the outcome.

But Dr. Smith, nominated by Princeton's Charles R. Erdman who stressed his candidate's "orthodoxy"
and the "genuineness" of his Presbyterianism, won the gavel on the third ballot by a comparatively microscopic margin. There were 404 commissioners who wanted the Auburn Affirmationist candidate, and 461 who preferred Dr. Smith.

It is worth noting, also, that Affirmationist Coffin was nominated by Affirmationist Jesse Halsey, and that a dark horse who was scratched after the second ballot was Affirmationist William R. Farmer of Pittsburgh, Visiting Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Seminary in 1937-38.

Church union, that hardy perennial of previous assemblies, will again come under the spotlight. Serious wooing of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (the Southern Church) and of the Protestant Episcopal Church has been going on for some time, along with a mild flirtation with the United Presbyterians and the Methodists. The Southern Church is the only one that offers much hope of early nuptials, and it is likely that serious troth-plighting will occupy the current assembly. The Southern
Church, quite plausibly, has entertained some doubt as to the doctrinal soundness of its neighbor, and last year those doubts were strengthened by the refusal of the Northern assembly to adopt an overture reaffirming, in substance, the five points of the 1923 assembly which the Auburn Affirmation so effectively denies. This year conservatives and Modernists have lovingly linked arms and declared
their united hope that the assembly will adopt an overture from the Presbytery of Cedar Rapids, designed to assure the Southern Church that the Northern denomination is oh so
sound and that together they could be just one big happy family. Because of its tremendous significance, no matter which way the vote goes, we reprint the entire overture:

• Whereas, The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., has deemed it wise to declare itself in a "didactic, advisory and monitory" manner concerning the essential truths involved in the ordination vows to which ministers and elders subscribe; and
   
• Whereas, The doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. are substantially identical with our standards, and
• 
  Whereas, It is the hope and prayer of cur denomination that these two great branches of the Presbyterian Church might once again be organically united in the service of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and
   
• Whereas, We believe that this will be a denominations together,
   
• Therefore, The Presbytery of Cedar Rapids, meeting in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, on April 28 and 29, 1941, respectfully overtures the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., meeting in St. Louis, Mo., in May, 1941, to declare that it regards the acceptance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Scriptures, and of Christ as very and eternal God, who became man by being born of a virgin, who offered Himself a Sacrifice to satisfy Divine justice and reconcile us to God, who rose from the dead with the same body with which He suffered, and who will return again to judge the world, as being involved in the ordination vows to which we subscribe.

. . . The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. is proceeding with great caution on the matter of union, and has exhibited none of the frantic eagerness shown by its Northern neighbor. We hope that a continued thorough investigation of the doctrinal condition of the latter denomination will eventually lead the Southern Church to abandon the entire project.

AUBURN AFFIRMATIONISTS PROMINENT IN AGENCIES; GENERAL ASSEMBLY ROLL

THE BOARD OF PENSIONS: Jesse Halsey

from The Presbyterian Guardian, May 18, 1936, p. 86.

The Social Gospel

The Social Gospel was not intended only for America and Europe. It is applicable wherever there are men and women. The work of the missionary is an illustration of its message as truly as are improved tenements and municipal reform in our great cities.

But we cannot limit our thought of missions to Christian work in foreign lands, important and extraordinary as that now appears in the light of great transformation through which Asia is passing. There are missionaries on the American continent who are equally heroic exponents of the gospel.

There is the work among the Eskimos and the Indians; the ministration of Doctor Grenfell to the fishermen on the coast of Labrador, which extends across the entire range of social activities, business, home life, disease, mechanics, religion.

Vastly wider in influence is the work of Christian missionaries on the frontier of America and Canada. In point of self-sacrifice and willingness to endure privation for the sake of others, the lives of such missionaries are in no wise second to those of the missionary in foreign lands. Any person who has visited our great Northwest, and has seen how the Sunday-school worker and the missionary pastor have built up their churches and carried over the spirit of the gospel into every form of life, will realize how much our country owes to their efforts. Our missionary work among the foreign-speaking populations in America has been of importance not only religiously, but politically. No better training in the American spirit could be given the newly arrived immigrant than that given by Protestant churches. In a new world facing a new life under new conditions, the new settler, whether he be of American or foreign descent, needs the message of the gospel to enable him to withstand the temptations which spring up all too quickly.

from The Social Gospel by Shailer Mathews, Dean of the Divinity School, University of Chicago, 1910