J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

The gentlemen in control of the ecclesiastical machinery of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. seem to be rather difficult to please.

When we were in that church these gentlemen told us that if we did not agree with their policy we ought to get out. Certainly that was the general impression that was given as to their attitude. “If you do not like our Board of Foreign Missions,” they said in effect, “you have a perfectly good remedy; you can simply withdraw from our church and be in a church whose agencies you can conscientiously support.”

Well, we have now done as they desired. We have withdrawn from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

One would think that they would rejoice in this solution. One would think that they would rejoice in getting rid of the “troublemakers” at last. They might conceivably state, in recording our departure, that we have departed under sentence or under charges; but surely the departure itself would have to be recorded, and recorded with satisfaction on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities.

Very different is what has actually happened. We are put down in the recently published Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. with asterisks or other marks of distinction opposite our names to indicate the divers penalties of suspension from the ministry, temporary suspension, or deposition purported to have been inflicted upon us. Now the strange thing is that in many of these cases the dates of the purported infliction of the penalties, as shown in the Minutes, are not only subsequent to the time when we severed our connection with the church purporting to inflict them, but also subsequent to the time when we united with another religious body, The Presbyterian Church of America. Moreover, we continue to receive summonses to appear before these judicatories and notices of their meetings, exactly as though we were still members of them.

One may well wonder just exactly what the theory is on the basis of which these strange things are done. Is the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. some kind of penal institution in which people are kept against their will? We formerly had a different notion regarding it. We thought it was a purely voluntary organization in which a man remained just so long as he could conscientiously do so. But apparently we were wrong. Apparently there is written up above the doors of this church the words: “Leave liberty behind, you who enter here. You may enter or not as you please, but once having entered you remain forever.”

But stop a minute. Is it really true that on this theory a man may choose even whether he will enter this church or not, to say nothing of getting out? That may well be doubted. On the contrary, the next step will logically be for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to place people on its rolls entirely without any volition on their part. Any citizen may awake some fine morning to find himself enrolled as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.—perhaps because in accordance with some “religious trade agreement or monopoly with respect to the Protestant religion” (see the last issue of THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN, p. 261) it may have been determined that he belongs in the “Presbyterian U.S.A.” sphere of influence rather than in the church to which he innocently thought he belonged. Well, why not? Is there any really essential difference between putting a man on a church roll against his will and keeping him there against his will when he has definitely stated that his connection with that church is at an end? We confess that we can detect none. One of these two things seems to us to be just about as preposterous as the other.