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When the now-named Orthodox Presbyterian Church was formed in 1936, a defining issue was the nature of church power. The Presbyterian Church in the USA constitutionally held that all church power is wholly moral and spiritual, and that only ministerial (bound in service to Christ) and declarative (bound to the Word of God). However, in the trial of J. Gresham Machen, the PCUSA turned aside this Protestant principle known as the spirituality of the church. In its place, the PCUSA made its councils the final interpreter and arbiter in doctrine and in life, the equivalence of which is the Roman Catholic position that the final authority is the voice of the church speaking through the papacy and its councils.
Consequently, Orthodox Presbyterians have always taken seriously the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. In his stimulating book Empowered Witness (Crossway, 2024), Alan Strange, professor of church history at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, does not focus on how the PCUSA abused the nature of church power in its prosecution of J. Gresham Machen, but rather plows fresh ground. Strange staunchly defends the mission of the church as spiritual, but he does so acknowledging the abuse of the spirituality of the church that took place with slavery in America.
The book essentially divides into three parts: the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, slavery and the spirituality of the church in the nineteenth century, and the spirituality of the church and politics today. In the opening section, Strange lays out his thesis that the mission of the church is to proclaim the gospel to the nations. What the church is not to be is another political, social, or economic institution. This is not to say, however, that the prophetic voice of the church should be muzzled against injustices such as abortion, racism, and the abuse of power; rather, the church must know that its primary purpose is declaring God’s Word and ministering to the spiritual welfare of those in and out of the church.
Knowing that many today believe that the spirituality of the church contributed to a horrible defense of slavery in the nineteenth century, Strange spends most of the book examining the mediating stance by Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge both before and after the Civil War. Of particular interest for Strange is Hodge’s position on the decision of the 1818 General Assembly to uphold the deposing of George Bourne, who had insisted that all slaveholders be excommunicated. Hodge approved of the actions that assembly took. He did not believe that the Bible taught that slaveholders were sinners worthy of excommunication as Bourne did. But Hodge agreed with the declaration passed by the assembly that stated:
We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ.
In Strange’s judgment, the 1818 assembly showed forth a proper commitment of the gospel and the spirituality of the church. The assembly in its righteous statement called for slavery’s demise without precisely dictating the political steps to end slavery.
This was not the case, however, with the 1861 General Assembly. Convening in Philadelphia on May 16, thirty-three days after Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter, this gathering of presbyters had a much more political tone. At the assembly, Gardiner Spring put forth resolutions, which were subsequently passed, that the Presbyterian Church express its devotion to the Union and its loyalty to the federal government. Although Hodge was an enthusiastic Lincoln supporter and Union man, he protested the adoption of the resolutions, arguing that such political matters should not be put before the church.
Four years later, when the war ended, the 1865 General Assembly declared that those Southern ministers and presbyteries that sought entrance back into the Presbyterian Church must declare whether they aided the rebellion against the United States and whether they held that the church’s mission was to conserve the institution of slavery as the Confederacy maintained. Hodge protested that the councils of the church in mandating these oaths were denying a ministerial view of church power and promoting the Roman Catholic view that councils held the ultimate power. Hodge said, “The popish doctrine of the infallibility of church courts does not suit Americans” (82).
In the closing part, the spirituality of the church and politics today, Strange states that part of the difficulty for the church is that what is “properly spiritual” and what is “purely political” is not easily distinguished. Added to this in culture is the current postmodern zeitgeist that crowns politics and makes everything political. Strange writes, “To one who regards everything as politics, Hodge’s conviction that the church ought not to pursue purely political ends simply reflects a naïve failure on his part to recognize how political all his convictions were” (113).
But Strange understands, like Hodge before him, that the church is not an institution like other worldly institutions. The church is a body created and possessed by the Holy Spirit. The calling of the church is to gather and perfect believers by the means of grace empowered by the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that difficult matters before the church are simply dismissed with an appeal to the spirituality of the church. Each situation must be thought through in light of the church’s calling and the nature of church power. For Strange, leading with the spirituality of the church in theological conversations and actions can have a “salubrious effect” in how the church both distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world.
The author is editor of New Horizons.
Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church, by Alan D. Strange. Crossway, 2024. Paperback, 168 pages, $17.99.
© 2024 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
