Today, the Presbyterian Church in America’s “older sister” turns 90 years old.
In June 1936, in response to coercive decisions by a left-drifting mainline denomination, 34 ministers and 17 ruling elders convened in Philadelphia to establish a new Presbyterian denomination, initially concentrated in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West: the Presbyterian Church of America (note the “of”). Because they were committed to the inerrant Scriptures, the historic Christian faith, and confessional Reformed theology, conscience compelled them to this drastic step. Three years later, the new denomination became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Thirty-seven years later, in December 1973, 208 ruling elders and 179 teaching elders, sharing the biblical and Reformed convictions of their brothers in the North, convened in Birmingham to withdraw in sorrow from another left-drifting mainline denomination and establish a continuing Presbyterian church, focused initially in the South: the National Presbyterian Church. Within two years, the new church chose a new name, the Presbyterian Church in America (note the “in”).
Obviously, the OPC and the PCA are close siblings, tightly bound together not only by ancestry (ecumenical creeds, Reformation solas, Calvin and Knox) and shared confession (the Westminster Standards), but also by parallel stories of birth, infancy, and growth toward maturity.
Over the last 53 years, the OPC and the PCA have walked hand in hand as sisters, seeking to be faithful to our Bridegroom and King, Jesus Christ. Like any set of siblings, of course, our two communions have not seen eye-to-eye on all issues. Yet by God’s sovereign and patient grace, we enjoy unity in Christ that gives the world glimpses of God’s glorious truth: the Father has sent Christ into the world to save, and the Father loves us even as he loves his Son (John 17:23).
I have preached, pastored, and taught in both the OPC (19 years) and the PCA (34 years). My appreciation for the OPC goes beyond historical significance to personal ways our sister denomination has blessed me.
Meeting the Beauty of Sovereign Grace through the OPC
I “asked Jesus to come into my heart” (as we were accustomed to saying) as a young boy in an evangelical church with roots in Swedish pietism. I entered an evangelical college as a baptistic- and Arminian-leaning Christian, eager to understand more deeply what I believed and why I believed it.
At freshman orientation I met a classmate who would become a friend and roommate. He and his family had come to trust Christ through the witness of a pediatrician, Dr. Joseph Garrisi, who was a ruling elder in an OPC congregation in East Los Angeles (which would call me, years later, as its pastor). Discipled well in that OPC family, my classmate already knew what he believed and why he believed it.
His name was Greg Bahnsen. Greg relentlessly pushed me deeper into God’s Word until I discovered there that God is truly sovereign over his whole creation and graciously sovereign in salvation.
Greg introduced me to the doctrines of grace and presuppositional apologetics and told me the story of J. Gresham Machen, whose valor for truth effected the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 and the OPC in 1936. I learned that Machen’s courageous stand expressed the threefold commitment that we in the PCA treasure and strive to maintain: faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission. In fact, it was the outworking of Machen’s biblical and confessional fidelity in the sphere of world missions that precipitated the founding of the OPC (but that is another story).
I will be eternally grateful for the OPC fathers and brothers — Machen, Dr. Joe, Greg, and others — who care so deeply about God’s truth and so compassionately for people that they boldly shared the gospel of sovereign grace in Jesus.
Equipped for Pastoral Ministry through the OPC
The next item on Greg’s agenda was to persuade me to join him in studies at Westminster Theological Seminary. Roger Wagner and I joined Greg on a weeklong road trip from California to Philadelphia and back to sample Westminster’s teaching. The trip confirmed for Greg and convinced Roger and me that Westminster was God’s next step for all three of us.
Although Westminster is not a denominational seminary, in the 1970s almost every professor was an OPC minister: Cornelius Van Til was teaching apologetics; Robert Strimple and John Frame (now PCA) taught systematic theology; Richard Gaffin taught New Testament and redemptive-historical biblical theology; Edmund Clowney (later PCA) showed us how to preach Christ from all the Scriptures; C. John (Jack) Miller (later PCA) embodied bold evangelism; Harvie Conn shared his passion to see God’s gracious reign invade the city. (I gladly acknowledge, also, our PCA father and Westminster alumnus O. Palmer Robertson, whose Christ-centered exposition of the Old Testament, like Gaffin’s of the New, complemented Clowney’s redemptive-historical homiletics.)
These names likely evoke grateful memories for many PCA brothers in ministry. Our indebtedness to OPC professors at Westminster is reflected in the contributors to Festschrifts for Clowney, Frame, Gaffin, and Strimple; in the editorial labors invested by David Garner and Guy Waters to publish “Word and Spirit” (Gaffin’s shorter writings); and in PCA pulpits across the continent, as we proclaim Christ weekly.
The theological nurture that I received at Westminster Seminary in the 1970s is now available to subsequent generations from OPC professors at Westminster and other seminaries: Greenville, Mid-America Reformed, Reformed, and Westminster California. We all can be grateful for OPC ministers serving on the faculties of the confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian seminaries that enrich and equip PCA pastors, elders, evangelists, missionaries, teachers, and members.
The OPC’s Principled Ecumenicity
Founders of the OPC in the 1930s and the PCA in the 1970s concluded that — for the sake of theological integrity and missional fidelity — ecclesiastical separation had become necessary. But separatism, for its own sake, is a different matter. I thank the Lord, who loves both the purity of his church and its unity, that our painful separations from drifting mainline denominations did not provoke either the OPC or the PCA to react by swinging to an extreme of arrogant and aloof separatism.
I was ordained to pastor a tiny OPC congregation in New Jersey just months before the first PCA General Assembly convened in Birmingham. I realized I was serving in a young (37 years old) and very small denomination. News from the South signaled that the OPC’s younger sister would soon be born and that the PCA would “outweigh” her older sibling at birth and grow exponentially from there (as has happened).
I thank the Lord for granting grace to the OPC, little as it is, to reach out fraternally, winsomely, and (as needed) frankly to the wider family of Reformed churches, both in North America and around the world. Speaking truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) — neither condoning falsehood, nor wielding truth as a bludgeon, nor shutting down communication altogether — is a narrow tightwire to navigate. I rejoice that the OPC keeps trying to strike that balance, as we in the PCA do also.
I am encouraged that the OPC stays committed to principled ecumenicity through fraternal relationships with confessional Reformed denominations in North America and worldwide. Even more, I celebrate the OPC’s and PCA’s even closer collaboration in Christian education (through Great Commission Publications), chaplain endorsement, on foreign mission fields, and in other kingdom endeavors. I rejoice that our two denominations learn from each other through our respective study committee reports that address controversial issues.
Past proposals for the OPC to merge with the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod and, later, to join the PCA have not yet achieved a unity that is obvious to the watching world, the visible unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17. Yet Christ still displays his peacemaking power through the instances of OPC/PCA “communion of the saints” that take place in our congregations, presbyteries, Assemblies, and committees.
We who serve our sovereign Savior in the PCA shall be eternally grateful for our brothers and sisters who serve him in the OPC. Together we belong to the one body of Christ, are filled with the one Spirit of God, and rest in the grace of our one God and Father.
Dennis E. Johnson currently serves as assistant pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Dayton, Tennessee. He is professor emeritus of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California. Previously, he pastored Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Beverly Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, California, and as associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Escondido, California.