Replies

On the other hand, most Southern Baptist congregations own their property individually. They can withdraw without losing the building, nor would they lose control of their bank accounts.

I don't know of any church properties owned by the SBC. I am aware of provisions that if a local Baptist (general, not SBC) should happen to close, the title is supposed to revert to the local conference which the closed church belonged to. Unless an evangelical or other Baptist church is willing to form and take over the property. But the conference is not generally interested in owning any local properties. It's so contrary to historic Baptist principle.

The SBC does have a strong church-building program. They take donations of materials for building a church and there are literally thousands of Southern Baptists who will assemble a construction crew to help build it at no cost to the congregation.

For Southern Baptists, local ownership of church property is so important that they will give their vacation time to help build and give money/materials. This helps to prevent a takeover by a liberal leadership.

Miss Marple, you didn't mention the holding of pensions by the denomination. This is a very powerful tool used by the liberals to control the clergy. You should review the details of how the Presbyterian clergy tolerated the liberalization of their denomination by the libs granting them a pension and then threatening to withhold it if they would not agree to liberalize their theology and policy. Machen, the last real Presbyterian, separated himself from the mainstream and created the Orthodox Presbyterians over this matter. There were many other Presbyterians who knew Machen was right but they wouldn't take a stand and jeopardize their pension. So ended the great and stalwart mainstream Presbyterian church in America, not with a bang but with a whimper. I found an online history book that described what happened to the Presbyterians in detail and I'll search it out again if you would like to look at it. Perhaps OPie still has a link to it.

Miss Marple, you didn't mention the holding of pensions by the denomination. This is a very powerful tool used by the liberals to control the clergy. You should review the details of how the Presbyterian clergy tolerated the liberalization of their denomination by the libs granting them a pension and then threatening to withhold it if they would not agree to liberalize their theology and policy. Machen, the last real Presbyterian, separated himself from the mainstream and created the Orthodox Presbyterians over this matter. There were many other Presbyterians who knew Machen was right but they wouldn't take a stand and jeopardize their pension. So ended the great and stalwart mainstream Presbyterian church in America, not with a bang but with a whimper. I found an online history book that described what happened to the Presbyterians in detail and I'll search it out again if you would like to look at it. Perhaps OPie still has a link to it. ~~ GWB

Good Post from GWB; a little "fast and dirty" as a summation but accurate in great part. I'd mention, in addition to Pastoral pensions, the matter of Church Titles -- not merely the extraneous billions of dollars in "real estate holdings", in which Presbyterians are not generally as wealthy as Episcopalians anyway, but rather the actual Worship Sanctuaries (the "church building") of the Congregation itself. In the Mainline Presbyterian Church, these Titles are owned by the Denomination. Leave the Denomination, and not only does the Parson lose his Pension -- but the entire Church is quite literally "out on the street"!

Take the Rivermont Presbyterian Church, the largest Church in Lynchburg VA aside from Jerry Falwell's 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist mega-church -- incidentally, both of which I attended very-irregularly during my "wandering years" (I was not a covenanted Presbyterian at the time) prior to joining the OPC. I think Rivermont's covenanted Membership runs about 4,000 (or more) -- far and away the largest Presbyterian Congregation in their Mainline Presby USA regional presbytery. The Congregation had discussed seceding from the Mainline Presby USA denomination for years, but always they faced an unpleasant choice -- leave the Denomination, and the Denomination keeps the church building: Suddenly they're begging the local High School to rent out their basketball gym and a few thousand folding chairs every Sunday Morning, and hoping the ACLU doesn't bust them for using "State Property". At initial glance, this reticence may seem "materialistic", but there's another way to look at it: how'd you like to be the Elder who has to tell a Presbyterian Widow that the $100,000 endowment her husband left to the Church for the expansion of the Church Library's section on Biblical Creationism, has just become the sole possession of the National Denomination's "Committee for the Invention and Advancement of Imaginative New Heresies"?? Not very palatable.

Eventually, in 2001, Rivermont decided to secede from the Mainline Presby USA denomination anyway, consequences be damned... I believe the final straw was the 213th General Assembly's vote in favor of recommending that the Presbyteries eliminate the "fidelity and chastity" provision from the constitutions of the Presbyterian Church. Will wonders never cease, I was amazed shortly thereafter when it was reported that the Denomination would allow the Rivermont Congregation to KEEP their $5 million+ Worship Sanctuary. Had the National Denomination (in the face of a virtually Unanimous secession vote on the part of Rivermont) deigned to show them Christian Mercy, and let them keep the "house" which they had built upon the Rock??

Well, apparently not so charitable as all that. I later came to understand that the "inside story" was that Rivermont was made to pay $1.5 Million in "ecclesial arrears" -- or some such horse-puckey -- as the price of secession (pure Blackmail; Rivermont was not "in arrears", they were the financial sugar-daddy of the entire Regional Presbytery). Basically (from what I understand), Rivermont ended up having to go into a Legal "mexican standoff" against the National Denomination, and the Denomination backed down and decided to "settle out-of-court" for 30 cents on the dollar.

A steep price for Rivermont to pay for an Investment which the Congregation, not the Denomination, had already paid off 100%; but that's the price of bucking the Liberals. You know, those nice Christian Socialists who "don't care about filthy lucre", and all.

Gary North's excellent book, referenced by GWB, is available online for free, here:

CROSSED FINGERS: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church ~~ by Gary North

Purely as a matter of Baptist-Presbyterian academic interest, I note in passing that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church has incorporated two substantive changes which differentiate us from 19th Century American Presbyterianism.

Both changes are (arguably) Baptistic in character.

THEONOMY: The OPC incorporates the 1903 Revision of Westminster Article XXIII (Of The Civil Magistrate), which permanently rejects the Anglican Establishmentarian theory of a State Church in favor of the Baptist Disestablishmentarian theory of a separation between the functions of Church and State (in fact, this is the only 20th-Century revision retained by the OPC; all other 20th-Century Revisions have been rejected).
ECCLESIOLOGY: The OPC incorporates the Baptistic commitment to congregational, not denominational, ownership of Local Church Property. What does the OPC National Denomination own? They own the National Denomination headquarters in Philadelphia, that's what. The Local Worship Sanctuaries are owned by the Local Church. The National Denomination still enjoys the Canon Law power over the Local Churches to define Communion (to permit or exclude them from calling themselves "Orthodox Presbyterians"), but the Local Churches are not financially enslaved to the Denomination if they come into disagreement.

So we OPC-ers must acknowledge our debt to the Baptists (or, together with Baptists, acknowledge our mutual debt to the Bible) in overcoming these Old Presbyterian deficiencies. Does this mean that the Baptists have all the right answers?

Well, I dunno about all that. I think that the diligent Baptist will find that many of the better Baptist Scholars endorse the Presbyterian theory of "multiple-elder" governance for the Local Churches, and not the "single-pastoral" model which is all-too-prevalent in many Baptist churches -- sheesh, even Jesus Christ had His under-shepherds. And I further suspect that, given the ongoing (and successful) Reconquista of the Southern Baptist Confession by the orthodox-calvinist "Founders' Movement", traditionalist Baptists like GWB may soon have reason to envy the OPC's Canon Law authority to define communion:

vehemently reject

Res Ipsa Loquitur

YOU'RE NOT BAPTISTS!!

I suspect that Baptists and Presbyterians still have much to learn from eachother (Indeed, as I admit, the OPC has adopted a small amount of "baptistic" thinking already). Maybe we have to -- John Calvin himself married a Baptist; and while, after 500 years, we still have our disagreements, it is in no way a vainglorious exaggeration to say that Presbyterian Calvinists and Reformed Baptists remain the only two Confessions to consistently uphold the essentials of the Reformed Faith.

Ever the Odd Couple; ever the Reformed. (grin)

best, OP