RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Presbyterians
Presbyterian services are regularly held with seating-accommodation for 80,558 persons, while the average attendance is only 52,103. As organized the Presbyterian Church reports 16 presbyteries, 215 congregations, with a communicant church roll of some 32,000 persons. The difference between this figure and that of the census is largely due to the fact that the church figure represents adults, while that of the census includes children and all young people as well as a considerable number whose Presbyterianism is ancestral rather than personal. The total church contributions amount to about £120,000 a year. G. D. Mathews.
VIII. In the United States and Canada.— 1. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Presbyterian Church North) : Amencun Presbyterianism as a, whole is as diverse in its origin as are the peoples who have blended to form the American nation. There are ten important denominational churches in the United 1. Sources States, designated either as Presbyan* terian or Reformed, which stand for
Varieties presbyterian principles. Of these, can Presbv- *nree are traceable to the influence of terianism. immigration from the continent of Europe; the Reformed (Dutch) Church and the Reformed Christian Church (qq.v.), both of which originated in Holland; and the Reformed (German) Church (q.v.) whose beginnings were in Switzerland and Germany. Four churches are directly connected with the Secession and Relief movements in the Church of Scotland during the eighteenth century (see above, I., 2), viz.: the United Presbyterian Church, the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (General Synod), and the Associate Reformed Synod of the South (see below, 4-7). Whatever of English and Welsh Presbyterianism there was in the colonies, and in addition the few French Protestant or Huguenot churches, combined at an early day with Scotch and Scotch Irish elements to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church (see below, 3a, 3b) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (South; see below, 2) are branches of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America; the first separating in 1810, and the second in 1861, but the first was reunited with the parent church in 1906. The youngest of the American Presbyterian Churches, the Welsh, originated in the principality of Wales (see above, IV.). These churches, however they may differ in matters of practise and worship, are substantially one in government, and all maintain the principles of the Presbyterian system p.? contained either in the Canons of the Synod ct Dort, the Westminster Confession of Faith, or tne Heidelberg Catechism. The largest and, with one exception, the oldest of the American Presbyterian churches is the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and into it have been gathered elements from all the others. Its history, concisely stated, is as follows:
The earliest American Presbyterian churches were established in New England, Maryland, Dela- IX.— 15
ware, and Virginia, and were in large part of English origin, their pastors being Church-of-England ministers holding Presbyterian views.
of'lsolated J°hn Rohinson (q-v-)> the pastor of Churches. ^e Plymouth Pilgrims while in Holland, left on record the following declaration of church principles: " Touching the ecclesiastical ministry, viz., of pastors for teaching, elders for ruling, deacons for distributing the church's contributions, we do wholly and in all points agree with the French Reformed churches." The Rev. Alexander Whitaker, who held Presbyterian views, settled in Virginia in 1611, as pastor of a Puritan congregation, and in 1630 the Rev. Richard Denton located in Massachusetts with a church which he had served in Yorkshire, England. The Virginia Puritans in large part were driven out of that colony by persecution, finding refuge in Maryland and North Carolina between 1642 and 1649; and Denton and his associates found New Amsterdam more friendly than New England. The English Presbyterian element in Maryland and the colonies to the northward was strengthened by the advent, from 1670 to 1690, of a considerable number of Scotch colonists, the beginnings of a great immigration. The earliest Presbyterians in New York were the Dutch Calvinists, who founded a church in 1628; English-speaking Presbyterians were first found in New York City in 1 643, with the Rev. Francis Doughty as their minister, though no Presbyterian church was organized there until 1717. Presbyterian churches of English origin, however, were established in Long Island, among which are to be noted Southold (1 640) and Jamaica (1656). The founders of the earliest Presbyterian churches in New Jersey, viz., Newark (1667), Elizabeth (1668), Woodbridge (1680), and Fairfield (1680), were from Connecticut and Long Island. The first Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania was that founded by Welsh colonists at Great Valley about 1685, the church in Philadelphia dates from 1698. In 1683, the presbytery of Laggan, Ireland, in response to a letter from William Stevens, a member of the council of the colony of Maryland, sent to America the Rev. Francis Makemie (q.v.), who became the apostle of American Presbyterianism, gave himself unreservedly to the work of ecclesiastical organization, and at last succeeded in bringing into organic unity the scattered Presbyterian churches in the middle colonies.
The first presbytery was organized in the spring of the year 1706. The ministers of the judicatory were seven in number, representing about twentytwo congregations, not including the 3. Colonial presbyterians of New England, Virres y- gjnja^ ^he Carolinas, and Georgia. The Church. place °f meeting was Philadelphia, Pa., and the meeting was the first ecclesiastical gathering of an intercolonial and federal character in the country. The growth of the colonies and especially the increasing number of immigrants so added to the membership of the churches that in Sept., 1716, the general presbytery constituted itself into a synod with four presbyteries. A great number of the emigrants at this period were from Scotland and the north of Ireland, and their
Presbyterian s