Cumberland Presbyterian Church Totally Explained

Everything about The Cumberland Presbyterian Church totally explained

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a small (less than 50,000 active members and about 800 congregations), theologically moderate Presbyterian body spawned by the Great Revival of 1800 (also known as the Second Great Awakening). As with any church holding to a presbyterian polity, individual congregations are represented by elders (who form a session to govern the local church) at presbyteries. Presbyteries, in turn, send delegates to synods. Finally, the entire structure is governed by the General Assembly. The Assembly charges various boards and agencies with the day-to-day operation of the denomination.
Despite the conservative-to-moderate nature of many Cumberland Presbyterian congregations, the denomination as a whole has a socially tolerant, even permissive tradition. Cumberland Presbyterians were among the first denominations to admit women to their educational institutions and to accept them in leadership roles including the ordained clergy. Cumberland Presbyterians were also early to ordain African-Americans to the ministry. The 1984 revision of the Cumberland Presbyterian Confession of Faith, reflecting the denomination's long-standing traditions, was one of the first inclusive confessional documents in the Reformed tradition. This Confession was revised by a broad composite of theologians of both Cumberland Presbyterian Churches.

Formation

On February 4, 1810 in the log cabin home (near what later became the town of Burns, Dickson County, Tennessee) of the Rev. Samuel McAdow, he, together with the Rev. Finis Ewing and the Rev. Samuel King reorganized Cumberland Presbytery, which had been dissolved by the PC (USA). After rapid growth, Cumberland Presbytery became Cumberland Synod in 1813 and the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination in 1829 when the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was established.

Background

The divisions which led to the formation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church can be traced back to the First Great Awakening. At that time, Presbyterians split between the Old Side (mainly congregations of Scottish and Scots-Irish extraction), who favored a doctrinally-oriented church with a highly-educated ministry; and a New Side (mainly of English extraction) who put greater emphasis on the revivalistic techniques championed by the Great Awakening. The formal split between Old Side and New Side only lasted from 1741 to 1758, but the two orientations remained present in the reunified church and would come to the fore again during the Second Great Awakening.
   At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Presbyterians on the frontier suffered from a shortage of educated clergy willing to move to the frontier beyond the Appalachian Mountains. At the same time, Methodists and Baptists were sending preachers with little or no formal training into frontier regions, and were very successful in organizing Methodist and Baptist congregations. In this situation, Cumberland Presbytery in Kentucky began ordaining men without the educational background required by Kentucky Synod, drawing on New Side precedents. This was bad enough for supporters of the Old Side, but what was even worse was that Cumberland Presbytery allowed ministers to offer a qualified assent to the Westminster Confession and only required them to swear assent to the Confession "so far as they deemed it agreeable to the Word of God." Old Siders in Kentucky Synod (which had oversight over Cumberland Presbytery) sought to discipline Cumberland Presbytery. Presbytery and synod were involved in a protracted dispute, which touched upon the nature of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Ultimately, Kentucky Synod decided to dissolve Cumberland Presbytery and expel a number of its ministers.
   The Cumberland Presbyterian denomination was made up of the expelled members of the Presbyterian Church and others in the area when Kentucky Synod dissolved the original Cumberland Presbytery. There is historical evidence in the writings of several of the founders that indicate they didn't intend the split to be permanent, and certainly didn't anticipate a long-standing separate denomination.
   In 1826, Cumberland Presbyterians established Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, in order to better train their candidates for the ministry. Although very much a frontier institution, under the presidency of Franceway Ranna Cossitt, Cumberland College was one of the first colleges in the United States to accept women as students. Ann Harpending and Melinda Barnett, for example, enrolled in the very first class.
   A replica of the Rev. Samuel McAdow's cabin now stands where the three founded the church, and a sandstone chapel commemorating the event has been erected nearby. These two buildings are two of the main attractions in the surrounding Montgomery Bell State Park. An outgrowth of "The Great Revival of 1800", also called the "Second Great Awakening", the new denomination arose to minister to the spiritual needs of a pioneer people who turned from the doctrine of predestination as they interpreted it to embrace the so-called "Whosoever Will" gospel of the new church. The Red River Meeting House in Logan County, Ky., marks the location of the revival meeting thought by some to have given rise to the first organized Cumberland Presbyterian congregation. The history, heritage, and practices in worship of the denomination is of paramount importance to many Cumberland Presbyterians. "Cumberland" came from the area's name (the Cumberland River valley); "Presbyterian" described the form of government.

Subdenominations

Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America, a primarily African-American denomination, split from the primarily white Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1874. Relations between the two groups have for the most part been very cordial, and many of the CPCA ministers have trained at Memphis Theological Seminary. A reunion attempt on the part of both denominations failed to win approval in the late 1980s. The African American church wanted equal representation on all boards and agencies, feeling that otherwise they'd be swallowed up by the larger white church. The joint commitment drafting the plan of union agreed and made such a stipulation in its reporting to the General Assembly. However, many in the white, rural, southern-based church were not willing to cede that much power, and balked at the plan. No other plans for union have been attempted.
It remains what many in the church today view as a great historical tragedy that in the 21st century these very small denominations with such a close heritage have not found a way to come together across racial lines. However, the two denominations share a Confession of Faith and cooperate in many common ministries.

Upper Cumberland Presbyterian Church

The Upper Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a small denomination which broke off from the Cumberland Presbyterian church over issues of membership in the National Council of Churches and the use of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The Upper Cumberland Church has no institutions of higher learning so some candidates of for the ministry from this denomination have trained at Bethel College.

Ordination of Women

In 1889, Cumberland Presbyterians were the first body in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition to ordain a woman as a minister, Louisa Mariah Layman Woosley. It is interesting to note that a relatively conservative body, Nolin Presbytery, ordained Woosley while a relatively liberal body, Kentucky Synod, opposed her ordination and instructed the presbytery to remove her from the ministerial roll.

Partial union

By 1900, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was the third largest Presbyterian or Reformed body in the United States and was rapidly growing. After making revisions to the Westminster Confession in 1903, Presbyterian Church (USA) (the so-called "Northern" denomination) proposed reunification with the CPC. The Cumberland Presbyterian General Assembly voted by a significant majority for the union in the 1906 meeting. As a result, a large number of Cumberland congregations re-entered the PC(USA) in 1906 and those who remained in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church felt somewhat antagonistic towards the PC(USA) for generations afterward. Over the years, the bitterness subsided but has never entirely been forgotten. However, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America held concurrent 2006 general assemblies in Birmingham, Ala. in celebration of 300 years of Presbyterianism in North America, and the confessional differences between the denominations have largely disappeared.

Schools and institutions

Prior to the 1906 partial union, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church placed a great deal of emphasis on education and sponsored 22 colleges and universities. All but one united with the Presbyterian Church. The denomination now maintains a single four-year liberal arts college, Bethel College, located in McKenzie, Tenn. Recently, the denomination has related to this institution through a covenant agreement, forgoing direct ownership and control. The denomination also operates a seminary, Memphis Theological Seminary, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Cumberland Presbyterian Center, also located in Memphis, houses other church boards and agencies. The denomination maintains a Children's Home in Denton, Texas. The Historical Foundation of the CPC and the CPCA maintains its library and archives at the Cumberland Presbyterian Center in Memphis.
In recent years, the denomination adopted an alternate educational route to ordination of ministers, known as the Program of Alternate Studies. PAS, as it became known, was intended to serve persons embarking on a second vocation but not as an alternate a seminary education. However, a larger and larger percentage of candidates for the ministry are being allowed by their presbyteries to choose this non-seminary route to ordination, prompting a debate over what many in the church regard as a lessening of educational standards. At the present rate, the number of Cumberland Presbyterian clergy ordained without a seminary degree will surpass seminary-trained clergy within a few years.

Demographics and culture

Cumberland Presbyterian congregations may be found throughout the U.S. as well as in several foreign countries (Japan, Hong Kong, Colombia, etc.) but are primarily located in the American South and border states, with strong concentrations in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, southern Illinois, Arkansas, and Texas. Many of those congregations are located outside major metropolitan areas, in small towns and rural communities. The majority of those churches founded in towns and cities in the 19th century joined in the union with the PCUSA in 1906 after the General Assembly voted to unite with that body. However, so did a fair number of the country churches, who were likely served at the time by pastors with relatively greater theological training, which would have been required by the mainstream Presbyterian tradition for admission to the ministry.
For the most part, the CPC's constituency and theology resembles that of the United Methodist Church, appealing mainly to long-established families with revivalistic religious tastes and generally conservative cultural dispositions, derived chiefly from the agricultural orientation of most of its historic territory, the Upper South. Although explicit fundamentalism and liberalism are rare in the CPC, neither are entirely absent, and recent trends in the denomination seem to be moving it further to the right. This conservative thrust has probably been generated in response to the strong competition the CPC faces in most of its locales for a lower-to-middle-class constituency from groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, charismatic or Pentecostal faiths, and newer non-denominational fellowships.

Notable Cumberland Presbyterians

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