The Presbyterian Church in Scotland had 4 main branches, although there were numerous sub branches with all of these groups combining and splitting at different times. These 4 main branches were :

Calvinism and Presbyterians

The Presbyterian Church theology is largely based on the ideas developed by John Calvin, who extended the ideas first proposed by Martin Luther. John Knox, a Scotsman who studied under John Calvin in Geneva, took Calvin's teachings back to Scotland. Without a detailed description of Calvinism, there are perhaps 4 key implications. The first is that Calvinism substituted the sovereignty of God for the sovereignty of the Roman Catholic Church. The second is the concept that the elect (those that are truly saved) will persevere. Thirdly, the doctrine of divine predestination, which holds that God, and God alone, determines who will be saved. And forth, that all the elect, including heathen and infants are saved (as opposed to the Catholic position that only the baptized are saved). Calvinist theology is often described by the Five Points of Calvinism:

Two key influences of Calvin that had significant implications in America were the concept of individual freedom and Bible study in the original language. Calvin believed that the Bible is the supreme authority in religious, moral and political guidance. These beliefs led to the following principles:

One merely has to look at this list to see the similarities to so many of the beliefs that are the basis of the American Constitution and of America in general, even today

In addition to the Presbyterians, other Calvinists sects included:

The Church of Scotland

Beginning with the Reformation in Scotland the official Church of Scotland has been the Presbyterian Church. It struggled, at times, to maintain its principles against attempts by the various monarchs to re-establish an Episcopal church. As described above, a key aspect of the Presbyterian Church is the election of elders by the members of the church. In general, there are three forms of church governance or polity. Episcopal polity refers to churches that are governed by bishops, who are appointed by the hierarchy of the church. In a presbyterian polity, the churches are governed by a hierarchy of councils, consisting of the session for the local church and then the presbytery, the synod and the general assembly. Members of these councils are elected by the congregations of the local churches. (Note that the Presbyterian church is not the only church that adheres to a presbyterian polity. Other churches with a presbyterian governance include the various Reformed Churches in Europe.) In a congregation polity, the local congregation rules itself and even though there may be an association with other churches, these associations do not exercise any control over the local churches. This was a key conflict between the monarchy and the Church of Scotland. The monarchs were reluctant to cede power to the church, since they could not control the church if its form of governance was presbyterian. The degree to which the Church of Scotland, at various times reached a compromise with the monarch over Church governance lead to a number of fractions of the church, the main ones being the Associate Presbytery and the Reformed Presbytery.

The Associate Presbytery

In the early 1700s the Presbyterian Church began to moderate some of its stricter teachings including moderating the view of predestination to recognize that "the atonement of Christ is universal" and is available to any person who repents. Contributing to the controversy was the Lay Patronage Act, which gave to a few large landowners the right to appoint pastors. The Lay Patronage Act was an attack on the representative, Presbyterian governance of the Church. In 1732, the Moderator of the Synod of Perth and Stirling, Ebenezer Erskine, delivered a sermon in which he condemned the evils of the Lay Patronage Act and the "moderateness, spiritual deadness and oral flabbiness" in the Scottish church. For this he was rebuked by the Synod. When the Assembly sustained the rebuke the following year, he was joined by Alexander Moncrief, William Wilson and James Fisher and entered a protest. The Assembly termed the protest Treason and expelled all four from the ministry. As a result, the four ministers formed the Associate Presbytery in 1734. The Associate Presbyterian Church was a strict conservative Church. (The Associate Presbyterian further divided in 1847 into the Burgher and Anti-Burgher churches over a dispute regarding the Burgher oath.) The Associate Presbyterians were also called Seceders. The Associate Presbyterian Church evolved into the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

The Reformed Presbytery

The first National Covenant of the Scottish Church was in 1581, which was primarily aimed at establishing the Presbyterian doctrines as opposed to those of the Catholic Church. When Charles I became King of England and Scotland in 1625, he was determined to force the Scottish Presbyterians and the English Puritans to conform to the Anglican form of church governance and worship. In 1637 Charles decreed that every Church in Scotland should use the Anglican service. The response of the Scots was a renewal of the National Covenant with some additional protests against the specific acts of Charles. In this covenant, they swore to defend the Presbyterian form of worship to the death, if necessary. Practically every citizen of Scotland signed the agreement. After Charles I was beheaded, his successor, Charles II turned out to be even worse and enacted even more drastic laws against those that did not conform to Anglicanism. The Scots responded with another National Covenant and Charles engaged in a religious was against the Covenanters, as they were called, that came to be known as the "killing time". The conflict finally ended when William and Mary assumed the throne in 1688 and the Toleration Act was passed by Parliament, which ended the persecution of those outside the Church of England.

During the killing time, the Covenanters separated themselves from the official Church of Scotland, which was under the Control of Charles and organized themselves into local societies. They continued the societies even after the Toleration Act because they continued to feel that Presbyterianism was now established by the will of the king instead of by divine right. These societies eventually formed the Reformed Presbytery in 1743, lead by the Reverends Thomas Nairn and John Macmillan.

The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP)

The Scots Irish who immigrated to America beginning in the 2nd quarter of the eighteenth century brought with them the two versions of the Presbyterian Church that were dominant in Northern Ireland, the Reformed Presbyterians and the Associate Presbyterians. In Philadelphia in 1782 these two churches merged to form the Associate Reformed Synod. Not all of the Associate and Reformed Churches joined the new Synod, but it did include churches in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, North and South Carolina and Georgia. The Associate Reformed Presbytery of the Carolinas and Georgia was created in 1790 with headquarters in Abbeville, SC. In 1803 it was divided into 4 Synods: Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New York and Scioto) and one General Synod with headquarters in Philadelphia. In 1822 the Synod of the Carolinas was granted separate status as the ARP Church of the South. Today only the Synod of the Carolinas remains as the ARP church, the other 3 synods having merged into the United Presbyterian Church in 1858. Today, the ARP church has 10 Presbyteries in North America. They are Canada Presbytery, the Presbytery of the Northeast (Northeastern United States), Virginia Presbytery (Virginia and West Virginia), First Presbytery (North Carolina), Catawba Presbytery (Eastern South Carolina), Second Presbytery (Western South Carolina and Georgia), Florida Presbytery, Tennessee-Alabama Presbytery (Eastern Tennessee and Alabama), Mississippi Valley Presbytery (Arkansas, Missouri, Western Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi), and Pacific Presbytery (Washington, Oregon, and California).

The Presbyterian Church in America

In America, the Presbyterian Church has essentially two historical roots. One, the Presbyterian Puritans of New England including Scots and Ulster Scots Presbyterians who were primarily associated with the Church of Scotland and immigrated to New England in the 17th century. This group also included French Huguenots and French, Dutch and German Reformed Church members who did not form churches of their own in America. This group eventually became the Presbyterian Church in the US. The other root was primarily derived from the Associate (Seceders) and the Reformed (Covenanters) Churches that had separated from the Church of Scotland in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. The largest of this group was the Scots Irish who began to emigrate in large numbers from Northern Ireland in the second quarter of the 18th century and eventually became the United Presbyterian Church. These two branches again merged in 1983 to become the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The Second Great Awakening (or the Great Revival) was a period of great religious activity with widespread Christian evangelism and conversions between 1790 and 1840. Named after the first Great Awakening, which occurred in the 1730s and 1740s in the American Colonies and the United Kingdom. During this period, the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians sent ministers to the frontier areas of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as other states, to conduct revivals. There were many conversions and the church membership grew significantly. The Baptist and Methodists were much more successful than the Presbyterians, in large part because they were able to provide more ministers. W. M. Gewehr, historian of the first Great Awakening described the reason for the lack of appeal of the Presbyterians was: "Presbyterianism, 'with its intellectual demands of an elaborate creed' and its high standards of education for its ministry, was at best restricted in its appeal. It was never able to reach and to stir the common folk as the Baptists did." The Presbyterians required that their ministers be college educated and therefore had great difficulty in the frontier areas in recruiting suitably qualified candidates. In 1802, the Cumberland Presbytery in Tennessee (of the Presbyterian Church in the USA) began licensing as pastors, men with little or no education in order to meet the demand for ministers. As a result, the Cumberland Presbytery was ousted in 1809 and in 1810 formed the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Dickson County, Tennessee.

The Presbyterians were also less popular because they were outspoken critics of slavery, whereas the Methodists and Baptists were much more compromising on this issue. The conflict over the issue of slavery resulted in splits between the North and South in all of the major protestant sects that had large congregations in the South. In 1845, the Methodist Episcopal Church South split off from the main Methodist Church and the same year the Southern Baptist Convention was formed. In 1861, the Presbyterian Church in the US, often called the Southern Presbyterian Church, was formed. Thus there were essentially four Presbyterian Churches in the South: the Presbyterian Church in the US, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian and the Reformed Presbyterian Church (the later two, although not formed as a result of the conflict over slavery, were primarily southern churches).

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