It’s a Part of Our HeritageThis month we celebrate the 192nd anniversary of the founding of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. On February 4, 1810, three Presbyterian ministers, Finis Ewing, Samuel King and Samuel McAdoo, met at McAdoo's home in Dickson County, Tennessee. They reorganized Cumberland Presbytery after it had been dissolved by the synod. Their intent was to establish a vehicle by which to address their concerns before the General Assembly, the highest governing body in the Presbyterian Church. They never succeeded, and so a new denomination came into being within the Presbyterian/Reformed family of churches.
These three ministers and others served on the then American frontier. For instance, the last Anglo death in the area by a Native American had happened a mere decade before. (I have no idea when the last Native American death at the hands of an Anglo occurred; Anglos were less scrupulous record keepers about such things.)
The issues surrounding the dissolution of the original Cumberland Presbytery and its reorganization in 1810 reached back to the 1700s. There were two, both related to the population explosion on the frontier and how the church could best respond. One was to accept ministers who could not subscribe to the old doctrine of predestination, which had been a hallmark for Scots Presbyterians. (It isn't the belief that God determines what happens. Predestination is about God's having arbitrarily chosen who would be saved through Jesus Christ.) The rejection of predestination as an essential belief of the church had its strongest advocates on the frontier. The other issue was for a temporary expedient of education for new ministers through a tutorial system, such as was practiced at the time in medicine and law. The early Cumberland Presbyterian ministers were not in sympathy to adhering to predestination and were supporters of the tutorial system of education. However, both issues were controversial among frontier Presbyterians.
From its organization, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church spread westward with the young nation. With the exception of western Pennsylvania, it never made inroads into the Eastern seaboard states-until now. Mission probes and new church developments are being established from the northeastern states to the West Coast.
Today the Cumberland Presbyterian Church is an international church, with congregations and presbyteries in the U. S., Liberia, Colombia, Hong Kong and Japan. One predominantly Native American presbytery, Choctaw, is in southeastern Oklahoma.
There is richness in the Cumberland Presbyterian heritage. They were the first Reformed body to reject predestination as essential to defining God's relationship with people. They were the first Presbyterian body to make a major revision of The Westminster Confession of Faith. And they were the first Presbyterian body in the United States, and probably in the world, to ordain women as Ministers of Word and Sacrament.
In the new millennium the church is redefining itself with a major emphasis upon cross-cultural ministry, reaching out to non-Anglos. Congregations are being developed among Africans, Hispanics, Koreans, Chinese and other racial-ethnic cultures, as well as Anglos.
By the way, the McAdoo home site is preserved by the denomination and includes a reconstructed log home and flagstone chapel. If you travel I-40, it is 40 miles west of Nashville. Look for the Montgomery Bell State Park exit. The site is within the park. You can tour it and be back on the interstate within 30 minutes. If you have time to linger, the park itself is a delight to the senses. It has a lodge and dining facilities.
It's a heritage worth celebrating.
-- Robert E Shelton