TEN

This sort of nuanced moral reasoning was rapidly evaporating in certain portions of the church–especially in the south. Of the fifteen who signed the protest, only four were northerners:

Regional Identification of the Protesters of 1846

Name Born Seminary Presbytery Church

Thomas H. Barr PA PTS 1838 Wooster Wayne, OH

Thomas B. Bradford ? private 1837 Philadelphia 2^nd Germantown, PA

William L. Breckinridge KY private 1831 Louisville 1^st Presbyterian, Louisville, KY

James A. Lyon TN PTS 1836 Tombeckbee Columbus, MS

Francis McFarland Ireland PTS 1820 Lexington Bethel, Augusta Co., VA

Donald McQueen ? private 1837? Harmony Sumterville, SC

William McWhorter SC private 1836 South Carolina Liberty Spring, SC

Thomas V. Moore PA PTS 1842 Carlisle Greencastle, PA

George W. Musgrave PA PTS 1828 Baltimore 3^rd Presbyterian, Baltimore, MD

Benjamin M. Palmer SC CTS 1841 Charleston 1^st Presbyterian, Columbia SC

William S. Andres ruling elder Fayetteville NC

Mark Hardin ruling elder Louisville KY

Joseph Turner ruling elder Transylvania KY

Egbert C. Vaughan ruling elder West Hanover VA

John Woodman ruling elder Iowa IA

The names of Lyon, Moore, Breckinridge and Palmer read as an honor roll of the up-and-coming generation of southern Presbyterian churchmen. Moore is a particularly interesting case, since he was northern born and bred, but in 1847 he accepted a call to the First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA, and shortly thereafter became the co-editor of the Central Presbyterian. It also bears noting that McFarland was the only elder statesman in the group. He and Musgrave were the only two ordained prior to 1830.[7] In other words, the strict constructionist perspective in Presbyterian constitutional interpretation appealed especially to the younger generation in the South.

But it is equally interesting to consider those leading southerners in attendance at the Assembly who did not sign the protest:

Leading Southerners Who Did Not Protest

Name Born Seminary Presbytery Church/Position

Daniel Baker GA UTSVA 1818 Chickasaw Holly Springs, MS

Philip Lindsley NJ Private 1810 West Tennessee President, U Nashville, TN

William S. Reid PA M. Hoge 1806 West Hanover Lynchburg, VA

William A. Scott TN PTS 1834 Louisiana 1^st Pres., New Orleans, LA

Samuel K. Talmage NJ private 1823 Hopewell President, Oglethorpe U, GA

Isaac W. Waddell GA private 1829 Cherokee Marietta, GA

John C. Young PA PTS 1828 Transylvania President, Centre College, KY

James K. Douglass ruling elder Harmony SC

Gilbert T. Snowden ruling elder Charleston SC

With the exception of William A. Scott, all had finished their studies before 1830. Three were college presidents, and as such taught moral philosophy–including political economy–which may have inclined them towards the equity argument. The older generation found the more nuanced argument of Jones and Dorrance persuasive and the strict constructionist argument of their younger colleagues less satisfying.[8][9]

This comparatively trivial episode points to a paradigm shift in southern Presbyterian constitutional thought. The debate over the spirituality of the church was a matter of hermeneutics and constitutional law. At a time when John C. Calhoun was pressing a similar line of argument in the United States Senate, the younger generation of southern Presbyterians took a particularly hard-line stand on a strict construal both of the Bible and Presbyterian church order, while older southerners and most northerners preferred to make room for the concept of equity.

1. Strict Construction and the Spirituality of the Church

The doctrine of the spirituality of the church has often been viewed as a nineteenth-century invention. Jack Maddex has claimed that southern Presbyterians were theocrats who used the spirituality of the church to ensure that the church would not speak on the matter of slavery.[10] Likewise, E. Brooks Holifield suggests that the “spirituality of the church” doctrine was “merely a protective gesture during the slavery controversy” and that in reality the “Southern churches never truly abstained from social comment.”[11] Erskine Clarke argues that Thornwell’s doctrine of the spirituality of the church was formulated to ensure that the church did not speak to the matter of slavery–much as Calhoun’s doctrine of States’ Rights functioned in the political sphere. While acknowledging that both of these doctrines need to be seen in a larger context, Clarke insists that both doctrines were used in the south, both before and after the war, as “props to racial injustice.”[12] There is certainly some truth to these claims, but these authors all regularly ignore the distinction regularly made by southern Presbyterians between what individual ministers might say and do and what the church courts might say and do. While it was used effectively in the service of southern pro-slavery ideology, the doctrine of the spirituality of the church was more complex than most historians have been willing to admit.

It is perhaps better to see it as a nineteenth-century version of an ancient Christian doctrine, with roots in Augustine’s vision of the city of man and the city of God. In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo distinguished between the earthly city and the heavenly city. Writing to defend the Christian church against claims that it sabotaged the Roman Empire, he insisted that the heavenly city “is on pilgrimage in this world.” While it cannot compromise its religious claims, it seeks peace with the earthly city “so far as may be permitted without detriment to true religion and piety.”[13] This distinction between the two cities played an important role in defining the relationship between church and state for the next fifteen hundred years.

The doctrine of the spirituality of the church has medieval roots as well. While Pope Gregory VII also may have had designs on temporal lordship, many of his reforms emphasized the spiritual nature of the church. In the eleventh century, it had become common for bishops and other ecclesiastics to be invested with their office by kings and princes. Gregory VII insisted that since the church is a spiritual body, only the church could invest men with spiritual authority.[14] The medieval church exercised significant temporal power, but the seeds of the distinction had been sown.

The Reformed churches renounced the exercise of temporal power, but remained closely allied to the state. Scottish Presbyterians, in particular, jealously guarded the “spiritual independence of the church” against the English to resist state encroachment on ecclesiastical prerogatives.[15] But for the Scots, as for most Christians since the days of Augustine, the state was supposed to support and encourage the church, even to the point of enforcing church discipline.

The question for Old School Presbyterians was how to adapt this vision of the spirituality of the church to their disestablished denominational status in the United States. Certainly its defenders claimed that they were simply articulating a traditional Presbyterian doctrine, purified from centuries of Constantinian influence. They argued that they were merely being more consistent than their forefathers.[16]

But consistency also meant redefining documents originally written under an establishment system. American Presbyterians had altered the Westminster Confession to make denominationalism a matter of confessional orthodoxy, but that one explicit change now forced a reinterpretation of other parts of that confession, such as: “Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”[17] In Scotland, the national Kirk spoke on many issues that would be considered purely “civil affairs” in the United States, simply by virtue of its established position.

But since their confession plainly permitted it, even those who defended the strict spirituality of the church allowed for a certain amount of social and political action. The civil government was unlikely to ask the Presbyterian General Assembly for advice, but the route of “humble petition” was still open. Therefore when the Presbytery of Baltimore brought a resolution to the 1852 General Assembly encouraging the religious rights of United States citizens traveling abroad–especially in Roman Catholic countries[18]–Stuart Robinson, who would become one of the leading advocates of the spirituality of the church, offered a substitute that would emphasize the aspect of petition. Rejoicing in the “increasing intimacy of intercourse between the several nations of the earth,” and hopeful that such communication would promote “universal peace,” Robinson suggested that such intimacy required “special attention to the terms of intercourse between the citizens of various nations.” In particular, since “freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religious worship,” were not only “essential and inherent rights of American citizens” but were also “extended by the American people to citizens of all nations without restraint, it is but just and equal that this privilege should be extended to our citizens by all nations between whom and our country treaties and amity and commerce exist.” Therefore Robinson argued that the Assembly should petition the president of the United States that all “treaties with foreign nations” should include “provision made for securing to the American citizen travelling or resident in foreign countries, the right to profess his faith, and worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.”[19]

This resolution, however, was fiercely contested, and barely escaped a motion to table the whole subject by a vote of 78-82. New York and South Carolina found themselves oddly allied against southwestern strict constructionists and the northwest.[20] But many, like one Mr. Thompson deemed the whole project inexpedient.[21] Churches should not interfere in matters of state. Stuart Robinson insisted that his substitute followed the confession in bringing a humble petition. “He wished to test the principles of the Papal nations,” to see if they would be willing to give foreign Protestants religious freedom.[22] Nonetheless, Professor Nicholas Murray of Washington College, Pennsylvania, opposed it, warning the church to keep the door closed on agitating subjects. After considerable debate the Rev. Dr. Samuel Beach Jones moved that it be given to a committee to report back to the 1853 Assembly. In reply the Rev. Isaac M. Cook of western Pennsylvania urged immediate action. “He was ashamed of the extreme caution exhibited by the Presbyterian Church on this subject. It made his Scotch blood boil and tingle to his finger ends.”[23] Finally, the Assembly agreed to give the paper to a committee consisting of ministers William Swan Plumer, Samuel Beach Jones and Alexander T. McGill, along with ruling elders Robert C. Grier (a justice on the United States Supreme Court) and Humphrey H. Leavitt (a judge from Steubenville, Ohio).

The correspondence of the committee reveals that none of the members wanted to do much work, and the report was generally referred to as “Dr. Plumer’s Report on the Rights of Conscience.” Leavitt wrote to Plumer (the chairman), that he had “taken it for granted, that he and the other clerical members would prepare the report.” While generally favorable to taking some action on the rights of conscience, he admitted that he had not thought about the subject, and was not likely to have time for a few months.[24] A few months later he admitted that he was still too busy to think, but agreed to “affirm the argument and conclusions you recommend.” He noted that Congress was considering a bill on the subject, but doubted that it would do much good. “It is not likely that the Papal Governments will consent to any treaty provision exempting foreign Protestants from their intolerant and bigoted church polity. Still, it will be well for our country to let the world know the position she occupies in relation to the subject, and the rights she insists on in reference to her citizens.”[25]

Grier (the supreme court justice) apologized that he was so accustomed to hearing arguments on both sides before coming to a conclusion, that he was reluctant to give an opinion. “I should like to examine treatises on the law of nations, how far any nation has a right to enforce toleration of their peculiar creed, in case of their own citizens choosing to reside in another country, when such creed is not tolerated to its own citizens.” His main hesitation with the Robinson report was that “as a general rule, no nation has a right to compel another to believe in toleration as a religious dogma, or practice it as a political principle.” Further he wondered “how far a merely ecclesiastical body, wholly dissevered from the State can with propriety interfere, as such, with the action of the government (either by petition or remonstrance) on a subject, which though affecting rights of conscience, yet, in this respect may be classed as political.”[26] The ruling elders on the committee–both deeply involved in American politics–were reluctant to see the church get involved.

The ministers, however, urged immediate action. Alexander T. McGill was convinced of the value of the petition. “As a Church, we are bound to see that our people have the word and ordinances of God freely secured to them, wherever they travel, and wherever they reside.” The secretary of Foreign Missions, the former U. S. Senator Walter Lowrie, frequently traveled to Washington to “so influence and move the government, as to secure protection to our missionaries.” Therefore it was equally appropriate for the Assembly to communicate directly with the government. “The aim of our Assembly, in this matter, is not to school the powers that be, or even to invest their policy with a moral character and religious accountability, but to deal with it as policy; averring that the churches of this country have as much right to reciprocal privilege in the oversight of their children abroad, as the banks of our country have to an equitable and free control of their deposits abroad; or the merchants of their cargoes abroad, where similar immunities are guaranteed to the foreigners here.” But he also demurred from being involved in the writing of the report and promised to support the chairman.[27]

Plumer’s report to the 1853 General Assembly sided with McGill, and urged “that it is every way just and equal that American citizens residing abroad should be free to profess their religious convictions, and to worship God without any hindrance or molestation whatever.” Further, it declared that the Assembly approved of the provisions of the recent treaty with Uruguay which provided for mutual religious rights for citizens of both countries, urging the United States government to apply the same principles to other countries as well. Asking the members of the church to communicate their desire for such treaties to the government, the General Assembly also sent a copy of these resolutions to the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.[28]

After Plumer gave his report, Dr. Robert Baird advocated its adoption, mentioning that President Millard Fillmore and Secretary of State Edward Everett were both in favor of the principle. The real opposition, he suggested, came from Roman Catholics: “Rome was well aware that her interests would be the loser by any change.”[29]

Once again, it was a ruling elder who objected to church involvement in politics. Kensey Johns, Chancellor of Delaware, agreed with the principles of the report, but he “thought it a dangerous interference with the affairs of the government. He was opposed to anything like a coupling together of the church and State.”[30] He insisted that the church, in its corporate capacity had no business speaking on political matters. “By attempting this, we encroach at once upon that sacred principle of our Constitution–the perfect separation between Church and State.” If the advocates of the report were concerned about Rome, then they should reconsider their actions. “In every Popish country the very first step of Rome was to get the supremacy over the civil power. . . . We had no more right to memorialize Congress as an Assembly, than Congress had to memorialize us as a General Assembly.”[31] Johns contended for a fundamental principle that “No civil court could interfere with our action as an ecclesiastical body, nor could we, as such, with the action of Congress.”[32]

But Johns’ objection found little support. Ruling elder Thomas Montgomery of Kentucky agreed that the church should not interfere in civil matters, but argued that since this was a moral and religious question, involving the rights of conscience, the church should speak.[33] The Rev. Dr. John McDowell of Philadelphia expressed his surprise with Johns’ argument, pointing to the Confession’s statement that the church courts–as well as individuals–have the right of petition. The Rev. Dr. George Junkin, president of Washington College in Virginia protested against the Chancellor’s position, insisting that it was no infringement of the separation of Church and State to memorialize Congress. The memorial was adopted and recommended to religious journals for publication.[34] The Old School press hailed the Assembly’s decision as a triumph of proper principle. The Southern Presbyterian rejoiced that Johns stood “virtually alone” in his opposition,[35] and delighted in the passage of Plumer’s report.[36]

It is not particularly surprising that the Old School was able to unite around a petition to Congress urging religious freedom for Protestants traveling in Roman Catholic countries. Broad support could be found to counteract Roman Catholic “tyranny.” But in domestic matters, the Old School was increasingly divided as to the proper limits of church authority.

2. The Boards Controversy

During the 1850s these debates swirled around the Boards of the church. In the 1810s-1830s, the Presbyterian Church had established agencies to promote domestic missions, foreign missions, ministerial education, and religious publication. These boards resembled the presbygational “American” Boards, except that they reported to the General Assembly and worked directly through the Presbyterian system of church courts.[37] As a strict constructionist interpretation of scripture and church order gained influence, some Old School Presbyterians questioned whether the church had any business creating such agencies.

Not surprisingly, Robert J. Breckinridge originated the strict constructionist criticism of the boards. No sooner had he cast out the New School than he sought to exorcise the remnants of “congregationalist” influence in the Presbyterian Church. In 1840 he published A Village Pastor’s “Hints on the Agency System,” which proposed eliminating permanent agents from the General Assembly’s boards. Fearing the creation of a new “order of clergy” he argued that the church should rely upon the efforts of pastors and elders to foster proper notions of “systematic benevolence,” rather than the “new measures” approach of the agents, who merely “manufacture, then exhibit public opinion.”[38] Breckinridge went a step further that fall and argued that ecclesiastical boards were too much like voluntary societies in form and function, giving too much power to a few people not directly accountable to the church–but to a “board” with no real responsibility. Directing his anger against the Philadelphia/New York corridor that dominated the boards, he argued that “these boards, with other nominal ecclesiastical operations, are all so located and filled, that in truth, the Presbyterian church is managed, through these contrivances, by about two or three dozen persons--in all its great practical operations. Their efficient managers are as absolute a hierarchy as exists upon the face of the earth.”[39] Throughout the discussions of the Boards, regional jealousy and suspicion played a significant role.

The Old School maintained four boards: Foreign Missions, Domestic Missions, Publication, and Education (focused on ministerial education). Each board had 80-120 members elected in four classes for four-year terms. While the boards drew members from all over the country, only members from the Philadelphia-New York area attended meetings regularly. Indeed, including such positions as trustee of the General Assembly, Director of Princeton Seminary, and Trustee of Princeton Seminary, Breckinridge pointed out that eight men served on all, or all but one of these seven boards:

Ministers

Cornelius C. Cuyler pastor of Second Presbyterian, Philadelphia

Henry A. Boardman pastor of Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia

John McDowell pastor of Central Presbyterian, Philadelphia

William W. Phillips pastor of First Presbyterian, New York City

Ruling Elders:

Matthew L. Bevan Philadelphia merchant

Solomon Allen New York bookseller

James Lenox New York merchant

Alexander Henry Philadelphia merchant

Source: BLRM 6.10 (October, 1840) 448.

Objecting to the centralization of power in the hands of a few, Breckinridge urged the church to develop small standing committees with different men, “thoroughly Presbyterial, in reality as well as in name.” Objecting to the system of allowing persons to buy “honorary” memberships in the board as reeking of congregationalism, and to the practice of appointing long lists of vice presidents as a means to attract big money, Breckinridge called for reform in fund-raising by the Old School.[40] Encouraged by Breckinridge’s support, “A Village Pastor” chimed in, urging presbyteries and sessions to take the lead in benevolent work, so as to make agents and boards irrelevant to the life of the church.[41] James Blythe, vice president of Hanover College in Indiana, agreed. Agents generally only visited wealthy congregations–creating class divisions within the church.[42]

The board that got the least criticism was the Board of Foreign Missions. Foreign missions were the sacred cow of nineteenth-century evangelicalism. While other boards and organizations came under fierce attack, Old School foreign missions remained largely immune. One of the few who dared to criticize the board, predictably, was Breckinridge–and his criticism used the excuse of anti-Catholicism to justify itself. Walter M. Lowrie, a Princeton graduate serving as missionary in Macao, China, wrote in the Missionary Chronicle that Roman Catholic missionaries had the advantage in Hong Kong over Protestant missionaries, who were generally young and inexperienced, lacked sufficient funds, and were “cramp[ed]. . . by instructions,” from mission agencies, “which. . . if they venture to go beyond them, reprove them for acting too independently.”[43] Breckinridge commented that the root of the Protestant problem lay in the organization of its missions boards. “Our testimony against all these ecclesiastical corporations has been considered purely theoretical, if not visionary: but here is a practical testimony from one of their own missionaries.” Breckinridge argued that if foreign missions were handled at the presbyterial level, then such cramping instructions would be eliminated. “How much better to carry out the true laws and ordinances of God’s house, than to pick up at second hand the devices of a close corporation under the laws of Massachusetts.”[44]

A. Thornwell and Smyth

In the fall of 1840, the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia debated the system of church boards. Led by James Henley Thornwell (at that time the young pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina), the minority condemned the policy “of conducting benevolent enterprizes by a system of Boards, and permanent agencies, as unpresbyterian, unscriptural, and dangerous.” After some debate, however, the synod voted 53-7 (with five abstentions) in favor of the board system.[45] While only a handful supported him, Thornwell was convinced that Breckinridge was correct that the board system contravened scripture and Presbyterian polity.

In April of 1841 Breckinridge’s Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine published “A Calm Discussion of the Lawfulness, Scripturalness, and Expediency of Ecclesiastical Boards.”[46] The author (later revealed to be Thornwell) argued that the boards lacked divine warrant and should therefore be scrapped. Suggesting that in the excitement of the New School controversy, the Presbyterian church had “overlooked the inherent evils of the system itself,” he insisted that the board system involves “a practical renunciation of Presbyterianism.”[47] Presbyterian polity only recognized the offices of elder and deacon, but the secretaries and agents of the boards were neither. Likewise, Presbyterians had long utilized committees, but the boards did not report to the General Assembly like a committee. “They are confidential agents--acting upon their own suggestions and their own views of expediency and duty, without pretending to wait for positive orders from the General Assembly. They are clothed with plenary power to act and do as to them shall seem most advisable in all matters embraced in the general subject entrusted to their care.”[48] Thornwell suggested that the boards should be replaced by “benches of deacons, commissioned only to disburse funds under the direction of the spiritual courts.”[49] Rather than lord it over the church, such committees would serve the church.

Benjamin Gildersleeve was first to reply. He pointed out that Thornwell’s claim that the officers of the boards were new offices was false. The American boards (the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Home Missions Society, the American Education Society, etc.) were perhaps guilty of creating new offices, but not the Presbyterian boards. A Presbyterian board was not an ecclesiastical court but directly subordinate to the courts of the church. “Can it license? Can it ordain? Can it even locate a Missionary within the bounds of any Presbytery without its consent?” Gildersleeve insisted that the boards acted merely as agents of the church courts. As such they might overstep their bounds, and so “all their transactions should be subjected to a rigid scrutiny.” But that possibility did not warrant their elimination.[50]

In October, Thomas Smyth (pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the leading contributor to Gildersleeve’s Charleston Observer) also weighed in to defend of the boards.[51] Having recently watched the Charleston Union Presbytery divide from the Old School out of its extreme pro-slavery mania, Smyth noted that “the tendency of the human mind is to extremes.”[52] Smyth saw this extremist attitude manifested in Thornwell and Breckinridge. If the work of missions and ministerial education were to be carried out upon the national and international scale that lay before them, the Presbyterian church would need a stronger organization than the traditional system of church courts would allow. The church needed a “permanent body of some kind, entrusted with discretionary powers. . . . If, therefore, as is admitted, the church is imperatively required to carry forward these enterprizes, then are some ecclesiastical bodies separate and distinct from the ordinary courts of the church not only occasionally and for a short term indispensably required.”[53]

Turning to Thornwell’s proposal of a bench of deacons, Smyth insisted that such a plan could not possibly work. Deacons did not have the authority to give moral direction to the operation, and the scheme provided no way to deal with the “thousand contingencies which may arise during the course of every year.”[54] Smyth reminded his readers that the Boards had been established precisely because the Assembly had found that standing committees had insufficient authority to act. Further, Smyth denied that the boards usurped the power of the presbyteries. Pointing to various regulations governing the boards, he showed that the boards were designed to be the servants of the presbyteries. The Board of Education could only fund candidates approved by the presbyteries, and the Missions Boards could only send missionaries approved and ordained by the presbyteries.[55]

In conclusion, Smyth turned to Thornwell’s central argument: the claim that boards were unscriptural. Smyth agreed. The board system “cannot be deduced from [the scriptures] by necessary inference.” But that does not mean that it should therefore be eliminated as mere human invention. After all, “if it could be made to appear the wisest means to secure an end which the scriptures do make necessary, and for securing which no exact system of means is there provided in detail, it might be expedient and proper.” But then again, Thornwell’s own proposal was equally unsupported by scripture. “The scripture teaches us that deacons were instituted as officers of particular churches and for the single purpose of taking care of the poor, and of distributing among them the collections which were raised for their use. . . . To make deacons, then, the officers of Presbyteries and Synods, is to create new officers unknown to scripture, and to constitute benches of deacons for the purpose of disbursing funds for missionary and other operations. . . is nevertheless to assign to them duties not given in the word of God.” Ironically, Thornwell’s proposal was burdened with precisely the same theoretical problems as the board system that he attacked.[56]

Thornwell replied that Smyth had missed the point. The development of ecclesiastical boards was merely symptomatic of “a general decline of all true religion.”[57] Boards appealed to the natural sympathies of man, not to the faith of the saints. “Unlike the ordinances of God which thrive by opposition and flourish amid reproach, these sickly creatures of human benevolence and folly can accomplish nothing without the treasures of Egypt at their feet; and will attempt nothing until the great and mighty men of the earth are duly consulted, flattered and cajoled.” Insinuating that they resembled the “Jesuits of Rome,” he argued that “if they were more spiritual, they would have fewer friends among the enemies of God.”[58] Arguing that his system depended upon faith and renounced the power of the world, Thornwell insisted that “we must abandon all the expedients of human wisdom, which in spiritual matters, ever has been and ever will be folly.”[59] Thornwell insisted that his plan–and only his plan–remained consistent with the standards of the church. Smyth had claimed that God had given a certain amount of discretionary power to the church. Thornwell, on the contrary, insisted “that the word of God was a perfect rule of practice as well as of faith, and that the church has no right to add to it or to take from it.”[60] Where Smyth claims that the church had general principles, Thornwell insisted that the church had specific laws.

Part of Thornwell’s concern was that South Carolina churches might be required to finance abolitionist missionaries: “Under the system of Boards, the churches in South Carolina may be supporting a man sent out by a Presbytery denouncing them as unchristian and hypocritical–a Presbytery that would silence all their ministers and excommunicate all their members.” Therefore Thornwell argued that all mission work should be done at the presbytery level–perhaps allowing synods to assist “as all the Presbyteries in the same Synod are personally known to each other.”[66]

But together with his principled arguments, Thornwell also leveled personal attacks against Smyth. Besides the “Jesuit” comment (one of the nastiest names a Protestant could employ), Thornwell noted that “the reviewer” gloried in being a moderate–and he reminded his readers what the Moderates in Scotland stood for: laxity in doctrine and subservience to civil domination of the church.[67] So when Breckinridge offered Smyth an opportunity to reply, he demurred, claiming that the personal references were growing too heated.[68]

B. Missions and Slavery in South Carolina

While Thornwell did not design his view of the spirituality of the church in order to defend slavery, Thornwell’s particular application of that doctrine to the boards of the church was explicitly used in order to ensure that southern money and manpower were not perverted to northern abolitionist ends. South Carolina’s Harmony Presbytery (where Thornwell’s views took root most quickly) had a foreign missionary connected with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, John Leighton Wilson.[69] When the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions was founded in 1838, Wilson decided to remain with the American Board because he wished to remain in western Africa and he did not want to divide the mission. Further, even though the ABCFM came under fire for having a slaveholder as a missionary, the American Board had defended him, and he remained confident in its support.[70]

But with Thornwell’s vision of presbyterial missions in view, Harmony Presbytery considered asking Wilson to drop out of the ABCFM. The presbytery appointed the Rev. John C. Coit to chair acommittee to correspond with Wilson.[71] In the summer of 1843, the committee published a ten-part letter to Wilson, written by Coit, in the Charleston Observer.[72] The strategy of the committee was unique in Old School history. Old School committees regularly waited for the approval of the church court before publishing its work. But this committee published its letter in the region’s weekly newspaper before sending it to Wilson and before the presbytery approved it. While the letter was nominally addressed to John Leighton Wilson, it was plainly directed to the membership of the Presbyterian church in South Carolina and Georgia.

With the ABCFM withdrawing from the South and looking increasingly abolitionist to southern Presbyterians,[73] Coit’s letter adopted Thornwell’s emphasis on local control. Coit asked Wilson whether “it is not impossible to maintain your ecclesiastical relations with this Presbytery while you continue in connection with the ABCFM?” He declared that the presbytery would supply the entire funding for the mission if Wilson dropped all ties to the ABCFM.[74] Arguing that affiliating with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions would only take a half step towards a biblical model,[75] he echoed Thornwell’s case for direct presbyterial supervision of foreign missions in order to properly form and receive churches according to presbyterian church order.[76] The letter concluded with an ultimatum: “If the Presbytery should sanction the doctrine of this letter, and you should be of a contrary mind, you can unite with a Presbytery where you will find sympathy, but you could not abide with us. But remember that we have warned you in the name of the Lord, and we beseech Him to vouchsafe to incline your heart to his holy testimony.”[77]

Before Wilson even received this letter, Benjamin Gildersleeve responded with an attack on its logic. According to presbyterian church order, a presbytery consists of all ministers in a given district. Gildersleeve wondered how, on a strict construction of the constitution, “the jurisdiction of a Presbytery can be so extended as to embrace congregations in remote parts of the world.” After all, if notice of presbytery meetings must be given within ten days to all ministers, then that would include Mr. Wilson in Western Africa. Thornwell and Coit might believe their system to be more presbyterian, but it directly contradicted the requirements of the Presbyterian constitution. Further, he suggested that if the presbytery worried that unsound presbyteries might be sending out heretical missionaries, then it should not want presbyteries operating foreign missions, since it was far easier for a single presbytery to become unsound than for the entire General Assembly. If committees were acceptable, despite the lack of biblical warrant for them, then boards were equally acceptable, “for a Board is nothing but a Committee with specified powers appointed for a limited time, and all their acts subject to the review and control of the body appointing them.”

In conclusion, Gildersleeve concluded that Harmony Presbytery was acting inconsistently with its rhetoric. If so convinced of the “deformity” of the Boards, and “their evil tendency, and their anti-Presbyterianism, and their hostility to the Scriptures,” that it would call them the “abomination of desolation,” then it should “secede from the Church which supports such a monster as Boards–and set up for themselves another fragmentary body under the style of ‘the very latest Reformed Presbyterian Communion.’”[78]

In November, the presbytery refused to approve the letter to Wilson 6-9 (with three abstentions–including Wilson’s uncle, William E. James).[79] The presbytery instead affirmed 12-5 the right of the General Assembly to conduct foreign missions, although “convinced that there are many irregularities and improprieties in the present mode.”[80] The following spring, Harmony Presbytery approved a more moderate letter, urging Wilson to rely entirely upon his presbytery but without issuing any ultimatums.[81]

More than a year later (not surprisingly, given the difficulties of communication between western Africa and South Carolina), Wilson replied to his presbytery. Wilson pointed out that the presbytery had ordained him for the particular work of the ABCFM in western Africa, and the fact that it had changed its mind did not alter either his or its obligations. The ABCFM had been faithful to its obligations. Pointing to the failure of various synodical attempts at foreign missions, Wilson declared: “I duly appreciate your kindness to me, and I honor your zeal for the cause of Missions, but I cannot refrain from the conclusion that you have proposed an enterprise, the cost of which you have not counted.” No presbytery had the time or the resources to devote to the questions and concerns of a foreign missions field.[82] Replying to some of Coit and Thornwell’s concerns regarding schools and printing presses under church control, Wilson pointed out that if the church surrendered these, the Roman Catholics would quickly overwhelm Protestant missions. Wilson could not help but point to the irony of the result, that Roman Catholics might be victorious through the use of schools and printing presses–the same instruments that the Reformed churches had utilized so effectively during the Reformation.[83]

Plainly the issues were much larger than slavery. But the abolitionist sympathies of the American Board, and southern fears of a growing anti-slavery movement in the northern-controlled Presbyterian Board certainly played a significant role in the desire for local control over missions and education. After all, once the southern church had its own General Assembly, southerners had little difficulty entrusting the entire oversight of missions and education to the Assembly–even turning the seminaries over to Assembly control (something strenuously resisted during the antebellum era).[84]

C. The Response of the Boards

Nonetheless, the criticisms of Breckinridge, Thornwell, and others, guaranteed that secretaries and agents of the boards would go out of their way to assure the church that the boards were servants of the presbyteries, not their masters. In 1845 the Watchman of the South published a sketch of the history and the purposes of the Board of Education, explaining that the General Assembly had first tried to depend entirely upon the presbyteries, but the vast frontier portions of the church were so destitute of ministers that another agency proved necessary. By 1831, under the supervision of John Breckinridge (R. J.’s brother) the Board “had taken the work almost entirely out of the hands of the Presbyteries, and managed it by its own agency, with an ability and power seldom if ever surpassed.” But the church feared to see such power centralized and saw the need of the “wisdom and watchfulness of the Presbyteries.” Therefore the Assembly had required the presbyteries to “select, supervise and judge the beneficiaries of the board.” The Board of Education depended entirely on each presbytery to supervise ministerial training. “The Board of Education is only her organ, guides its operation by her wisdom, and submits every question touching her interests to her own jurisdiction.”[85]

But throughout the 1840s and early 1850s, the question of the boards festered. Few agreed with Thornwell that the boards contravened scripture or the church’s constitution. Rather, complaints arose about practical problems–usually centralization of power in the Philadelphia-New York corridor or inadequate General Assembly oversight.[86] Virtually every General Assembly saw minor controversy over one or more boards–and virtually every General Assembly overwhelmingly decided the case in favor of present practice. Some Old School newspapers grew so weary of the constant sniping that they refused to publish any but the most serious attacks on the practices of the boards. Inevitably, dissidents charged a cover-up. Most Presbyterians, though, remained convinced that the boards functioned well.[87]

3. Variations on the Spirituality of the Church

Thornwell’s distinctive view of the church did not take root immediately. As president of the College of South Carolina from 1852 to 1855, he had perhaps more influence in the state than the church. By the end of the 1840s, outside of Harmony Presbytery, Thornwell had made only a few converts.[88] As late as 1845 even his own Charleston Presbytery listened more to Thomas Smyth and Benjamin Gildersleeve, along with Aaron Leland and George Howe, the professors at Columbia Theological Seminary. Only Benjamin Morgan Palmer, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia was of like mind with Thornwell. But slowly this changed. Gildersleeve departed for Richmond to edit the combined Watchman and Observer in 1845, leaving the deep south with no Old School periodical. In 1847 Thornwell and Palmer started the Southern Presbyterian Review, a monthly theological journal designed to provide a forum for their distinctive vision of the church. Through its pages the Thornwellian vision began to move the minds of the South.[89]

Shortly thereafter, a weekly newspaper, the Southern Presbyterian, started in Milledgeville, Georgia, under the editorial charge of Washington T. Baird. Since the seminary and the quarterly were in Columbia, Georgia Presbyterians thought it proper to have the newspaper alongside the synodical college of Oglethorpe. After the return of the Charleston Union Presbytery (which was independent from 1839-1852), however, Baird and the Southern Presbyterian moved to Charleston, where Thomas Smyth became something of an associate editor.[90] Neither Baird nor Smyth had much sympathy for Thornwell’s views, and the Southern Presbyterian remained a firm supporter of the boards throughout its first decade.[91]

Indeed one contributor to the Milledgeville weekly complained that many of the articles in Thornwell’s Southern Presbyterian Review were “feeble and worthless,” and while a Georgia respondent thought this too harsh, he did agree that at least on the subject of denominational education the SPR was not “in accordance with the views of the great majority of Presbyterians in our land, and with the sentiments of our Presbyteries, our Synods, and our General Assembly.” When one leading minister wrote an article on parochial education, the SPR “violently opposed [it], and had it not been insisted on, would not have been given to the public through the pages of that Review.”[92] In contrast to such editorial censorship, Baird’s Southern Presbyterian vowed “never [to] degenerate into the organ of any clique or party, in or out of the church. It shall be catholic in its spirit, and be devoted to the edification, and not the distraction, of the great body of believers.”[93] For his part, Thornwell stayed aloof from the Southern Presbyterian. When Baird published a list of “special contributors” who had pledged to write frequently for the paper, it contained the honor roll of South Carolina and Georgia ministers, but not Thornwell.[94]