Chapter 5: The Broadening Church in the USA - PCA Historical Center

The Broadening Church In the U.S.A. 193There can be little doubt that interdenominational fundamentalismand dispensationalism made a heavy contribution to thisstate of affairs, which greatly weakened the cause of those whoappealed to the Confession and the distinctively PresbyterianConstitution of the Church. This factor—oddly coupled with ageneral feeling of denominational loyalty, especially to thechurch organization—is of incalculable significance in explaininghow the Broadened Church came to be.The years of the Broadening Church were truly what oneof its foremost advocates has called „a period of theologicalindifferentism.‟ 113 It was also a period when this indifferentismbecame dominant in the Church. However, although thisbroadened church was controlled by a coalition of modernistsand indifferentists, it still had many fundamentalists in it.It remained to be seen what would become of them. Whatcourse of action, if any, would they pursue? Would theBroadened Church be broad enough for them? What, ultimately,would be their relationship to this broadened andever broadening church?Would the Broadening Church in the U.S.A. eventuallysplit to produce a new beginning? Shortly before B. B.Warfield‟s death, J. Gresham Machen had one last conversationwith the man he had come to admire above all others:In the course of the conversation I expressed my hope that to endthe present intolerable condition there might be a great split in theChurch, in order to separate the Christians from the anti-Christian propagandists.„No,‟ he said, „you can‟t split rotten wood.‟ His expectationseemed to be that the organized Church, dominated by naturalism,would become so cold and dead, that people would come to see thatspiritual life could be found only outside of it, and that thus theremight be a new beginning.‟ 14To Warfield the Broadening Church was „rotten wood.‟ Thetruthfulness of his prophecy and the fate of his expectation isthe story of the Presbyterian Separatist Movement.113. A. C. Zenos, Presbyterianism in America, 1937, 100. We shall return tothis book in Chapter 6.114. Stonehouse, 310.The History Behind the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, pp. 152-193.