In recent years several books have appeared with little more than the year as their titles. Most recently Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a New York Times bestseller bearing the title 1929 which focuses on that year’s stock market crash. In 2022 Volker Ulrich published Germany 1923. In 2008 Mike Rapport wrote 1848: Year of Revolution. Particular years are often remembered for specific events or developments considered to be of important, and sometimes transformative, significance. It has been suggested that with the revolutions that took place in eastern and central Europe in 1989 that year might be one of those years that will be remembered as others have.
In 1930 Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman published a book titled 1066 and All That, a humorous and satirical look at British history in which the claim is made that “History is not what you thought. It is what you remember. All other history defeats itself.” Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
What was happening in the Presbyterian Church a hundred years ago in 1926? And might we see any threads that run through the fabric of Presbyterianism in the Southwest from then to now? The United Presbyterian Church (aka “the Northern Presbyterian church”) was in the midst of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. Meeting in Baltimore, its General Assembly heard a report from a commission appointed the previous year whose purpose was to consider the division within the church and to see if any kind of resolution of reconciliation could be reached. The previous year heightened the controversy with the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee at which Presbyterian elder and three-time Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan testified for the prosecution, defending the fundamentalist perspective. While several issues were at stake, the principal one had to do with the nature and authority of Scripture.
This schism led to J. Gresham Machen’s departure from Princeton Seminary to Philadelphia where he established Westminster Seminary and the founding of the denomination that became known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Princeton Seminary was reorganized and became the flagship of northern Presbyterianism (Union Seminary in New York had departed from the northern denomination when fundamentalists charged some of its professors for heresy (e.g., Charles Briggs and Arthur Cushman McGiffert).
What was going on in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS, or “the Southern Presbyterian church”)? In May of 1926 Highland Park Presbyterian Church was organized. Its first pastor was W. A. Alexander of Mobile, Alabama. From 1932-37 the pulpit was filled by Thomas W. Currie who was also serving as president of Austin Seminary.
Other churches in the current Synod of the Sun that were organized in 1926 included First Presbyterian Church in Pampa, Texas, First Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Arkansas, and Grace Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Meeting in Pensacola, Florida the 1926 PCUS General Assembly elected James W. Skinner as its moderator. At the time Skinner was the founding president of the Texas-Mexican Industrial Institute for Boys in Kingsville, Texas (now the Presbyterian Pan American School). Before that call he served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Brownsville, Texas.
The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy that plagued the northern church did not escape the southern church. While J. Frank Norris was leading the fundamentalist, dispensationalist cause in the Southern Baptist Church in Texas (he was pastor of First Baptist Church in Fort Worth 1909-1952), in 1925 Presbyterians saw the establishment of a rival seminary in Dallas that espoused similar views. In fact, the pastor First Presbyterian Church in Dallas, William M. Anderson, Jr., persuaded leaders of this movement not only to locate the seminary in Dallas, but offered his church’s facilities to host the seminary until it had its own campus. Lewis Sperry Chafer was the school’s first president and Anderson was its first vice president. The school certainly became a challenge, both theologically and geographically, to the PCUS seminary in Austin.
Since 1926 the fabric of the Presbyterian church has torn apart due to various divisions often over similar issues that dominated the church in the 1920s. (The PCA in 1973, the EPCA in 1981, and ECO in 2012). The theological tension between fundamentalism (or related issues) and modernism has been a thread that has been characteristic of Presbyterian life even after the 1983 reunion between the northern and southern branches.
Maybe 1926 will not be one of those “memorable” years like 1848 or 1929 or even 1989. While history may not repeat itself, Mark Twain is right in that it often seems to rhyme. As we make history today, we do at least do well to acknowledge and try to learn from our past. The prophet Isaiah exhorts us, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn” (Isaiah 51:1).
Church struggles and flaws have been part and parcel of the church from the very beginning. The miracle is that God continues to call and use frail and imperfect people to proclaim the good news of the gospel that in Jesus Christ God has shown his faithfulness and love not because of who we are, but in spite of ourselves and all our fights, divisions, and screwups.
The Presbyterian Historical Society of the Southwest exists to “stimulate and encourage interest in the collection, preservation, and presentation of the Presbyterian and Reformed heritage” in the Southwest. If you are not a participating member of the Society and would like to become one, the annual dues are $20 per individual and $25 per couple. Annual institutional and church membership dues are $100. Checks may be made out to PHSSW and sent to:
PHSSW – 5525 Traviston Ct., Austin, TX 78738.
Payment can also be made online at the PHSSW website: www.phssw.org.
