Actually the majority of the church voted to leave. But the rules that were in place was a 2/3 vote was required (I think that is the number)
Clayton Bell (Dr. Nelson Bell’s son)was the pastor at that time and advocated staying within PCUSA and working to reform it from within (which probably caused a percentage of the congregation to vote to stay rather than leave), but most felt that the denomination as a whole was too far gone.
It was very unfortunate that even though a majority wanted to leave at that time it just wasn’t quite a large enough percentage to be able to leave under the rules. It was really close, something like 62% and we needed 66%, so that is why it was so heartbreaking and painful for that church at the time.
These were rules that had been put in place when the Southern Presbyterian church (I think it was PCUS?) rejoined with the Northern church in the 1970s; The Southern Presbyterian denomination was still fairly conservative, but the northern pres denom was very liberal. They had put in rules that within a certain number of years a former southern Presbyterian church could leave with its property if they decided they didn’t want to remain within the “merged” denomination, but only with a fairly high percentage of the vote - they made it a pretty high hurdle to jump over.
‘It was very unfortunate that even though a majority wanted to leave at that time it just wasn’t quite a large enough percentage to be able to leave under the rules. It was really close, something like 62% and we needed 66%, so that is why it was so heartbreaking and painful for that church at the time.
These were rules that had been put in place when the Southern Presbyterian church (I think it was PCUS?) rejoined with the Northern church in the 1970s; The Southern Presbyterian denomination was still fairly conservative, but the northern pres denom was very liberal. They had put in rules that within a certain number of years a former southern Presbyterian church could leave with its property if they decided they didn’t want to remain within the “merged” denomination, but only with a fairly high percentage of the vote - they made it a pretty high hurdle to jump over.’
I have no trouble believing the liberals in the Northern church would put impose such requirements on the Biblical conservatives so they could try to infiltrate and take over.
Thank you for the information about the Highland Park/Park Cities split. The good thing is that God brought Park Cities PCA into existence and a lot of good has come from that wonderful church.
When my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), split from the PCUS in 1973, one of its founding principles was that each local congregation would own its own property. If the PCA were to ever fall into the kind of apostasy that destroyed its corrupt parent, its congregations would be free to leave. And we would!