I was talking recently with a good friend in the ARP Church and he told me some wonderful news. First, a little background. The ARP church is the oldest presbyterian body in the country. They are composed of a merger that took place in 1882 in Philadelphia of two Scots-Irish presbyteries (“Ulster Scots”). The Associate Presbytery (“Seceeders”) and the Reformed Presbytery (“Covenanters”) both at different times left the Church of Scotland for various reasons. When they arrived in the US, the issues that kept them apart were not issues in the states. So they merged and formed four regional Synods; the Synod of the South as it was called is all that is left of the original denomination with roughly 35,000 strong. They have a college and seminary in Due West, SC.
The denomination like many in the times had a brief love affair with liberalism that supposedly ended in the late 1980’s. Presbyterians more to the right would still have issue with the ARP position that the local church determines whether or not they will ordain women deacons, but not elders. The EPC, which uses the same 1903 version of the Westminster Confession that the ARP church does, takes that one step further. Some congregations in the EPC have female deacons AND elders and in some presbyteries, there are women who serve as teaching elders. But alas, I digress . . .
Recently at the ARP General Synod, the Synod by a large majority moved to ammend the Form of Government to state explicitly that the denomination affirms Scriptural Inerrancy. That may not mean much to many of you, but I was part of that bunch for seven years and inerrancy was touchy, depending on who you talk to; in fact, it’s one of the issues that drove many an ARP student to Reformed Theological Seminary rather than to Erskine (the ARP seminary). But to hear that this has happened means that this puts the ARP denomination squarely in the conservative reformed camp and an honest member of NAPARC. Kudos to the work of good churchmen and all praise to the Holy Trinity for what appears to be a timely act of Providence. The world may yet be saved by the Scots once more!
