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That prospectively apocalyptic year of 1666 saw the onset of the Scottish Covenanters‘ mass martyr-making under the English gallows. Three dozen or so were put to death in the aftermath of the Battle of Rullion Green. Among them, nine men — seven in Ayr, two in Edinburgh — paid with their necks on this date. The Covenanter tragedy stretches back to the first English Civil War, when English parliamentarians enlisted the aid of Scottish Presbyterians by agreeing to a covenant guaranteeing presbyterian church governance in Scotland and England. Essentially, that meant representative ecclesiastical authority, rather than top-down power from the...

The conservative Presbyterian Church in America voted Thursday to disqualify all gay men from serving in its ministry. The 1,400-400 vote to change its governing document came at the denomination’s 48th General Assembly, held this week in St. Louis. The rule change, known as “Overture 23,” will go to local church bodies known as “presbyteries” for a vote before a second round of convention balloting next year that would place the language in the denomination’s “Book of Church Order,” which governs PCA practice....

A California pastor is looking for a job after facing backlash over a church sign that affirms the biblical definition of gender and marriage. Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California, posted a new church sign in early January. The sign read: "Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not."

WEED, California, January 10, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – After an American pastor refused to bow to pro-LGBT protesters’ demands that he change his church message board, he found the sign in ruins. Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, Siskiyou County, California angered some folks when he put up a message on the marquee outside his church last week reading “Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not.”Although he normally changes his sign from week to week, Hoke said he would not take down his message until...

Unknown to the general public and ignored by the academic and foreign affairs establishments, Americans once were leaders of religion, education, and intellectual life in Pyongyang, as missionaries who created the foremost Christian community in Northeast Asia. Before the Soviet Union installed an atheist Communist regime in Pyongyang headed by Kim Il Sung, the city was the center of the Presbyterian Church in Asia, and hundreds of thousands of Korean Christians lived there and elsewhere in what is now North Korea. It was a union of Koreans and Americans that set the course that made South Korea the majority Christian...

A Presbyterian Church (USA) regional body located in California has been accused of putting a Korean congregation's effort to leave the mainline denomination to a standstill. Last year, Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church of Rowland Heights voted overwhelmingly to seek dismissal from PCUSA over the denomination's growing acceptance of homosexuality. Out of 817 votes casted in the March 2014 vote, 738 voted to leave, 74 voted to stay, and 5 votes were dismissed. Despite that, the PCUSA Presbytery of San Gabriel has not apparently finalized the dismissal as of this month, according to the Korean-American Christian publication Christianity Daily. Rachael Lee...

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African-Americans, has broken its fellowship with Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) following its recent vote to approve same-sex marriage. The Presbyterian General Assembly, the top legislative body of the PCUSA, voted last June to revise the constitutional language defining marriage. This arbitrary change of Holy Scripture is a flagrantly pretentious and illegitimate maneuver by a body that has no authority whatsoever to alter holy text. Rev. Anthony Evans, NBCI President noted: "NBCI and its membership base are simply standing on the Word...

A small congregation in New York has voted unanimously to leave Presbyterian Church (USA) following the mainline denomination's recent vote to approve gay marriage. Brighton Presbyterian Church, a 200-year-old congregation in Rochester, voted Sunday to seek dismissal from its PCUSA regional body, the Presbytery of Genesee Valley. The vote to disaffiliate came not long after a majority of presbyteries in PCUSA approved an amendment to their Book of Order defining marriage to include same-sex couples. Kerry E. Luddy, spokeswoman for Brighton Presbyterian and wife of the head pastor, told The Christian Post that the decision to leave "is not a...

On Saturday afternoon the Great Lakes City Classis (formerly the South Grand Rapids Classis), one of forty-five classes in the Reformed Church in America (RCA), approved University Reformed Church’s request to transfer to the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). As a condition of its transfer, together with all its real and personal property, University Reformed Church (URC) must pay its annual assessment for 2015 and 2016 (roughly $80,000 total) and pay an additional $200,000 so that the classis can plant another church in the area. I’ve written before about how URC voted to leave the RCA–first as an internal “discerning...

Five Illinois Churches in the Reformed Church RCA) in America have voted to affiliate with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The PCA’s Chicago Metro Presbytery met with, examined, and approved the pastors and elders of these churches during 2014. On October 15, 2014, the churches were officially approved and received by the Chicago Metro Presbytery. The Presbytery will have a special service of celebration and welcome on February 1, 2015 at 3:00 p.m.; during this service the pastors and elders will be installed. The service will be held at the First Reformed Church in Lansing, IL. Dr. Ligon Duncan,...

“How can you call yourself a Christian, let alone a minister?!” I get asked that question frequently and the questioner is hostile more often than not. Still, I like to answer it if I believe the questioner is sincere. Though I self-identify as a Christian and I am an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I raised eyebrows a few years ago when I posted an article on my website about how my personal beliefs don’t align with those of most Presbyterians. For example, I believe that: - Religion is a human construct - The symbols of faith are...

Members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have voted to make the 1.8-million-member, 10,000-congregation denomination the largest Protestant group to formally recognize gay marriage allow same-sex weddings. The Presbytery of the Palisades in New Jersey cast the necessary 86th vote Tuesday night to establish that a majority of the church’s 171 regional presbyteries now support an amendment to the church constitution that redefines marriage, the Associated Press reported. “Marriage involves a unique commitment between two people, traditionally a man and a woman, to love and support each other for the rest of their lives,” the church’s Book of Order will read,...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Iran & David Duke Salute Presbyterian Church USAPosted By Ryan Mauro On February 24, 2014 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 81 Comments If the Iranian state media and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke salute your church’s work, your church is doing something wrong. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has published a new pamphlet that makes the case against Zionism and therefore, the premise behind Israel’s existence.The Presbyterian Church (USA) has formidable influence. Its website says it has over 2 million members and 10,000 congregations in the United States. The church’s Israel-Palestine Mission network...

Presbyterian churches are teaching that their Jewish neighbors are inherently racist and prone to abusing the rights of others. That’s the key message of PCUSA’s new congregational study guide, “Zionism Unsettled.” Released by its Israel-Palestine Mission Network, the guide “explores the theological and ethical exceptionalism of Jewish and Christian Zionism, which have been sheltered from open debate despite the intolerable human rights abuses rooted in their core beliefs.” To be clear, this is no mere attack on Israeli policies, but rather on the very legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise. PCUSA has theologically resurrected the UN’s infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism”...

A delegation of 14 leaders from the Presbyterian clergy, a church that in the past supported boycotting Israeli products manufactured in Judea and Samaria (Shomron), arrived last week to visit Israel. The visit was organized by the America-Israel Friendship League (AIFL); the delegates’ goal was to discover Israel personally and to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Representatives from the Presbyterian Church, which has an estimated six million followers, visited the Soda Stream factory, which is located in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. They spoke to representatives from the management and several employees. While some United States-based religious groups, such as...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Presbyterian leaders want the U.S. to end aid to Israel unless the country stops settlement expansions in disputed Palestinian territories. Delegates of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted Friday to support the call during the church's general assembly in Minneapolis. The measure passed with 82 percent of the vote. ...

Responding to a recent document released by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that attempted to clarify the denomination's stance on debated issues, conservative Presbyterian leaders say the arguments are irrelevant. "We think there is an unfortunate but clear distinction between what is on paper and what is the working theology of the denomination," said the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh and co-moderator of the New Wineskins Association of Churches – a network of dissident Presbyterians. PC(USA)'s stated clerk, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, and General Assembly Council executive director, Linda Valentine, addressed a...

Would Jesus Eat at McDonald's? Saturday 11th Aug 2007 by David Paulin The intellectual elite of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have in recent years joined ranks with the radical left. Its members vilify Israel, apologize for Islamic terrorists, and cheer on the Palestinian cause. Now, these Presbyterians have another villain: the Big Mac. America’s most famous hamburger is emblematic of the dark underbelly of globalization, according to David Hadley Jensen, an associate professor of something called “constructive theology” at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. On top of that, McDonald’s and its iconic burger are even at odds with...

(Austin) - UT journalism associate professor Robert Jensen has found himself at the center of many debates. This time, the conflict lies over his religious beliefs and membership in a local church. The Presbyterian church he has been attending since last December was reprimanded Friday for admitting him as a member. St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church was told by the Mission Presbytery, the regional governing body of 157 Presbyterian churches in South and Central Texas, that the acceptance of Jensen into membership was "irregular." Furthermore, it was "void" because Jensen has said in the past he doesn't believe in God. "I...

The group named heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, communications giant Motorola, military contractor United Technologies and electronics manufacturer ITT Industries - all of which supply the Israel Defense Forces . . . The Church also listed international banking conglomerate Citigroup, which was cited in April by The Wall Street Journal for "having moved substantial funds from charities later seen to be fronts funneling money to terrorist organizations," including "funds [which] ended up as payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers" . . . The 2.5 million-strong church, the ninth largest in the U.S., represents most U.S. Presbyterians.