Presbyterianism in the United States and Canada in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

This chapter traces the history of Presbyterians in the United States and Canada from the turn of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. It considers the predecessor denominations to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as well as the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, ECO (Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians), Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in America, and the Presbyterian Church in Canada, among others. It investigates theological, liturgical, missional, and educational developments in these denominations and analyzes conflicts over biblical authority and interpretation, confessionalism, communism, civil rights, sexuality, marriage, ordination, race, and the role of women in the church. The theological movements examined include confessional conservatism, evangelicalism, feminist theology, fundamentalism, liberalism, and neo-orthodoxy. Significant institutions noted include Erskine Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Knox College, Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in New York, Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and Westminster Theological Seminary.

The Accidental Modernists: American Fundamentalism and the Canadian Controversy over Church Union

This article looks at confessional family resemblances between the fundamentalist controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the church union controversy in Canada. These resemblances have been obscured by focusing on the doctrinal dimensions of the former and the socio-institutional features of the latter. The role of the prominent American fundamentalist J. Gresham Machen in the transformation of Canadian unionists into modernists sheds light on the underlying tensions that sparked the two controversies, as well as the distinctive dynamics of the resistance to church union that shaped the confessional identity of both the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada after 1925.

The Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Pope: One denomination's struggle with its confessional history

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), a subordinate standard of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, makes harsh, even offensive, statements about the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. This paper explores how The Presbyterian Church in Canada has sought to balance the confessional nature of the church with its changing views of the Roman Catholic Church. Choosing not to amend the Westminster Confession of Faith, the church has adopted explanatory notes and declaratory acts to help Presbyterians understand the Confession in a new time.