Old School-New School Controversy
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The Old School-New School Controversy was a schism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America which occurred from 1837 to 1870. As a result of the Plan of Union of 1801 with the General Association of Connecticut, the Presbyterian Church agreed to work with Congregationalist missionaries in western New York and the Northwest Territory to further the work of Christian evangelism. This resulted in new churches being formed with either Congregational or Presbyterian forms of government, or a mixture of the two, supported by older established churches with a different form of government. It also resulted in a difference in doctrinal commitment and views among churches in close fellowship, leading to suspicion and controversy.
The controversy reached a climax at a meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia in 1837 in which representatives of several church synods, those of Western Reserve, Utica, Geneva, and Genessee, were refused recognition as lawfully part of the meeting. These and others who sympathized with them departed and formed their own General Assembly meeting in another church building nearby, setting the stage for a court dispute about which of the two General Assemblies constituted the true continuing Presbyterian church. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided that the Old School Assembly was the true representative of the Presbyterian church and their decisions would govern.[1]
After three decades of separate operation, the two sides of the controversy merged in 1870 to form again a united Presbyterian church.
Prominent members of the Old School were Ashbel Green, William Latta, Charles Hodge, William Buell Sprague, and Samuel Stanhope Smith.
Prominent members of the New School were Albert Barnes, Henry Boynton Smith, Erskine Mason, Nathan Beman, George Cheever, and Thomas McAuley.
- ^ Commonwealth v. Green, 4 Wharton 531, 1839 Pa. LEXIS 238 (1839).
