Report to the Presbytery of Carlisle Feb. 25, 2014

Francis Makemie: The Calling to be Connected Together.

            Take a moment with me, please, to review some of the history of our church. To begin at the beginning we must ponder a small group of rugged, devout and irascible pastors who first gathered in Philadelphia in 1706 for the first organized meeting of the first Presbytery in the United States. Francis Makemie was the driving force; he called and organized the meeting. The pastors were all immigrants from England, Scotland or Ireland. An early history of that era describes them, “They were almost wholly destitute of property; and the people to whom they ministered, being like themselves in poverty, and struggling for subsistence in a wilderness land, could contribute but a pittance to the support of their pastors.”^[1] The bold tenacity of these first Presbyterian leaders and their faithful congregations are both remarkable. With strong ties to the theological, ecclesiastical and ethnic traditions of their native lands these Presbyterians, nonetheless, claimed a new freedom and planted a new church in this new land. Our new church was Presbyterian in its heart and American in its soul. It was a new thing.

            The great theological divisions within Protestantism which were now an intimate and centuries old aspect of the history of the England, Scotland and Ireland were all imported to America and our new church. The ethnic differences and the power of theological convictions became boundary lines and soon also, theological controversies in this new land. Henry Wood, in an early history of the Presbyterians, sees a constant wavering between, on one hand, “jealousies, alienations and strifes” and, on the other hand, “correspondence and union”.[2] From the first days of the new Presbyterian mission enterprise in America a new and unique church organization was created which was, nonetheless, inspired by its English, Scottish and Irish forbearers.[3]

The first Presbytery meeting included seven ministers representing both Presbyterians and Congregationalist Churches, and several churches where that distinction was blurred.[4] Francis Makemie was there under the sponsorship of the London Fund, a group of British Presbyterians sponsoring missionary work in America. The London Fund also sponsored two missionaries to accompany Makemie, John Hampton, an Irishman and George McNish, a Scotchman. These three missionaries joined Jedidiah Andrews, John Wilson, Nathaniel Taylor and Samuel Davies who were already at work in Pennsylvania and Delaware in the spring of 1706 when the first meeting of a Presbytery in America was called.[5] The Rev. Jedediah Andrews was the first pastor of the first church in Philadelphia.[6] These seven ministers who gathered voluntarily as the first Presbytery are themselves a metaphor for American Presbyterianism. American Presbyterianism has always been both encouraged and stressed by the mixing together of different flavors of Reformed heritage. Professor Charles Briggs, in historical reflection on this first gathering written much later in 1885, concluded about this first Presbytery: “It was a happy union of British Presbyterianism in its several types. It was an interesting combination. Makemie, the Scotch-Irishman; Hampton, the Irishman, and McNish, the Scotsman, sustained by funds provided by the Presbyterians in London; uniting with Puritan missionaries from New England in organic union in a classical Presbytery. (Here is my punchline, quoting Professor Briggs.) We have here in miniature the entire history of American Presbyterianism. It was a broad, generous, tolerant spirit which effected this union.”[7]

            Why did Francis Makemie and the other six ministers gather and create that first Presbytery? Certainly they each had a lot of other work to do with their congregations, and planting new congregations. The truth is that these pastors each had a powerful and spiritual calling in Christ to be connected together. I believe an essential question we each need to ponder today, in an era of stress and strain in our church, is whether or not you are called to be connected together. I would like to ask each session of each of our congregations to spend a few moments considering this question: Are we called to be connected? Are we called to be connected with other Presbyterian congregations who, in fact, will have practices and convictions very different than our own? Are we called to be connected in and through the Presbytery and what do we believe is the purpose and the benefit of those connections? This calling is where it must all begin.

            The presbytery cannot function and, I would say, cannot exist if the churches in our midst do not know themselves to be deeply and spiritually called to be connected together. We can deal with a vast diversity of practices and convictions, we can accept massive differences in style, and perspective and approach, we can manage our financial and demographic downsizing if we are called to be connected together. It is very important that your session be brutally honest about this question. If you are convinced that you truly are not called to be connected with other Presbyterians congregations through the presbytery then you need to be true to that. Or if you discern that there are behaviors, values, or convictions that you simply cannot be connected with then you need to true to that. Are we called to be connected? This calling is our starting point; it was so for Francis Makemie.   

---

[1] Ashbel Green, A Historical Sketch or Compendious View of Domestic and Foreign Missions, 14.

[2] Wood, Henry. The Presbyterian Controversy, with Early Sketches of Presbyterianism. Louisville: N.H. White, 1843, 25.

[3]Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 129. Briggs concludes: “At the opening of the eighteenth century there was no strife between the Scotch and Irish Presbyterians and the Puritans of England and America, but only the most hearty sympathy and co-operation.” See here also the text of a “letter of thanks from the Provincial Synod of Glasgow to the Rev. Dr. Mather in New England, dated 1700.”

[4]Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 127.

[5]Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 140.

[6] Wood, Henry. The Presbyterian Controversy, with Early Sketches of Presbyterianism. Louisville: N.H. White, 1843, 26. Rev. Andrews was a “Congregational Presbyterian. That church was sixty four years without any ruling elders, though under the care of the Presbytery.”

[7] Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 140.