August 2005 New Horizons

The Seventy-Second General Assembly

by David K. Thompson and Danny E. Olinger

The opening day of a general assembly is typically a joyful one. Commissioners are eager to renew old acquaintances and to make new friends of first-time attendees. An assembly is always an occasion to rejoice in the sweet fellowship that binds the church together in love. Such was the case when representatives from the sixteen Orthodox Presbyterian presbyteries made their way at the beginning of June to the wooded campus of Reformed Bible College, just northeast of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the host institution for the Seventy-second General Assembly of the OPC. Greeting them there were OP pastors from the area (Stephen W. Igo and Robert M. Van Manen) and volunteers from local OP congregations who handled arrangements. But with the opening gavel comes the realization that there is and should be a certain seriousness and austerity to the proceedings. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church's Book of Church Order states that the General Assembly is "the governing body of the whole church." It is charged to ... Read more

How Could I Ever Be a Pastor's Wife?

by Patricia Clawson

When my husband left the pastorate three years ago to become the associate general secretary for the Committee on Foreign Missions, I never imagined that I would miss being a pastor's wife more than anything else. You could have knocked me down with a balloon. After fifteen years at Grace OPC in Hanover Park, Illinois, I missed our dear congregation, my sister who lived nearby, my job, and even Chicago. But the hardest thing to give up was the very thing I never wanted to be-a pastor's wife. I remember when a group of ministers and elders crowded around my kneeling husband after he took his ordination vows. There was a sense of relief that the years of seminary and of summer and yearlong internships were finally over. No more macaroni dinners, typing papers all night, or graveyard shifts as a security guard. Finally my husband was fulfilling his calling ... and getting paid for it as well! While the men were busy shaking my husband's hand in congratulations, I silently wondered whether I could live ... Read more

Turning Points in American Presbyterian History
Part 8: Confessional Revision in 1903

by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, industrial development and technological progress promised to usher in an age of unprecedented opportunity for America. Northern Presbyterians, recently reunited, were prepared to serve the spiritual needs of the nation with a spirit of self-confidence. The greatest apostle of Presbyterian progress was Charles A. Briggs (1841-1913). As professor of Hebrew and cognate languages at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Briggs actively promoted higher-critical approaches to the Bible. He was also a leading advocate of Protestant church union. Both of these causes were in the interest of religious progress. "Progress in religion, in doctrine, and in life," he wrote, "is demanded of our age of the world more than any other age." But there was an obstacle that prevented Presbyterians from fully embracing the spirit of the age, and that was their rigid commitment to a theology of the past. So Briggs also went around promoting revision to the Westminster Confession ... Read more