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A Brief History of the Presbyterian Church |
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The
earliest Christian church consisted of Jews in the first century who
had known Jesus and heard his teachings. It gradually grew and spread
from the Middle East to other parts of the world, though not without
controversy and hardship among its supporters.
During the 4th
century, after more than 300 years of persecution under various Roman
emperors, the church became established as a political as well as a
spiritual power under the Emperor Constantine. Theological and
political disagreements, however, served to widen the rift between
members of the eastern (Greek-speaking) and western (Latin-speaking)
branches of the church. Eventually the western portions of Europe, came
under the religious and political authority of the Roman Catholic
Church. Eastern Europe and parts of Asia came under the authority of
the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In western Europe, the authority of
the Roman Catholic Church remained largely unquestioned until the
Renaissance in the 15th century. The invention of the printing press in
Germany around 1440 made it possible for common people to have access
to printed materials including the Bible. This, in turn, enabled many
to discover religious thinkers who had begun to question the authority
of the Roman Catholic Church. One such figure, Martin Luther, a German
priest and professor, started the movement known as the Protestant
Reformation when he posted a list of 95 grievances against the Roman
Catholic Church on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. Some
20 years later, a French/Swiss theologian, John Calvin, further refined
the reformers' new way of thinking about the nature of God and God's
relationship with humanity in what came to be known as Reformed
theology. John Knox, a Scotsman who studied with Calvin in Geneva,
Switzerland, took Calvin's teachings back to Scotland. Other Reformed
communities developed in England, Holland and France. The Presbyterian
church traces its ancestry back primarily to Scotland and England.
Presbyterians
have featured prominently in United States history. The Rev. Francis
Makemie, who arrived in the U.S. from Ireland in 1683, helped to
organize the first American Presbytery at Philadelphia in 1706. In
1726, the Rev. William Tennent founded a ministerial 'log college' in
Pennsylvania. Twenty years later, the College of New Jersey (now known
as Princeton University) was established. Other Presbyterian ministers,
such as the Rev. Jonathan Edwards and the Rev. Gilbert Tennent, were
driving forces in the so-called "Great Awakening," a revivalist
movement in the early 18th century. One of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence, the Rev. John Witherspoon, was a
Presbyterian minister and the president of Princeton University from
1768-1793.
The Presbyterian church in the United States has
split and parts have reunited several times. Currently the largest
group is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has its national
offices in Louisville, Ky. It was formed in 1983 as a result of reunion
between the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS), the so-called
"southern branch," and the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
(UPCUSA), the so-called "northern branch." Other Presbyterian churches
(there are at least 8 in all) in the United States include: the
Presbyterian Church in America, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church,
the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church, with which our denomination shares a common
worship resource, The Book of Common Worship.
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