The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is a Protestant denomination, the second largest Presbyterian church body in the United States after the Presbyterian Church (USA). The PCA professes a strong commitment to evangelism, missionary work, and Christian education. The church declares its goal to be "faithful to the Scriptures, true to the reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission." The origins of the PCA lie in a re-alignment of American Presbyterianism, which since the Civil War had been divided along North-South lines (the UPCUSA and the PCUS, respectively). Movement towards a national merger (which occurred in 1983) had begun to take shape by the early 1970s, and was accelerated by the decision of many dissident congregations (generally conservative) to withdraw from the PCUS. In December 1973, delegates from 260 congregations (primarily from Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina) that had left the Presbyterian Church in the United States gathered at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in suburban Birmingham, Ala., and organized the "National Presbyterian Church." After protest from a UPCUSA congregation of the same name in Washington, D.C. [1], the denomination adopted its present name in 1974. According to the PCA's official website, it "separated from the PCUS in opposition to the long-developing theological liberalism which denied the deity of Jesus Christ and inerrancy and authority of Scripture." Additionally, the PCA maintained a conservative position regarding the matter of women in church offices, excluding them. Less explicitly stated, though likely also influential, were opposition in some quarters to the civil rights movement and support of the U.S. conflict in Vietnam. The mid-1970s witnessed the PCA's first significant acquisition of congregations outside the South, when several conservative UPCUSA churches in Ohio and Pennsylvania joined the PCA. This move was precipitated by a case regarding an ordination candidate denied by the Pittsburgh presbytery because of his refusal to support women's ordination to either the ministry or eldership (a decision upheld by the UPCUSA General Assembly). More significantly numerically, though, was the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod merging with the PCA in 1982. The RPCES had been formed in 1965 by a merger of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, General Synod. The latter body maintained a direct historical tie to the Scottish Covenanter tradition. The RPCES brought two important things: a more nationally-based membership, and a college and theological seminary, the latter of which the PCA did not officially have up to that point, relying instead on independent evangelical institutions such as Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss. Also that year and in 1983, on the eve of the UPCUSA's and PCUS' merger into the current Presbyterian Church (USA) (or PCUSA), several PCUS churches that had originally decided to remain loyal in 1973 opted to defect to the PCA. A clause in the Plan of Union between the two mainline bodies allowed dissenting PCUS congregations to refrain from joining the merger and to join the denomination of their choosing. These moves laid the foundation for a body that has engaged in aggressive evangelistic work, most notably in church planting. Especially since the late 1980s, the PCA has focused its efforts toward establishing congregations in suburbs of fast-growing metropolitan areas, particularly in the South and the Western U.S. As with American Presbyterianism generally, its chief constituency is Euro-American, belongs to the middle or upper-middle class, and places a high premium on personal discipline and family life.