The OPC, by the grace of God, stands out as a remarkable chapter in the chronicle of church history. She is a statement against the insidious drift of mainline Protestantism, a challenge to an often misdirected and theologically weak evangelicalism, and a clear rejoinder to fundamentalism. She has been a positive, although not always consistent, testimony for Presbyterianism in the orthodox Calvinistic sense.
The authors of this book understand these things and are especially well-suited to write a history of the OPC. They know the church—John Muether because he was raised in it, and has loved and studied it; Darryl Hart because he chose it after a long journey through seminary and graduate school that included the detailed investigation of J. Gresham Machen's life and OPC beginnings. Here is sound assessment—to be sure, not without evaluation and criticism, as in all historical writing, but a valuable reading of the OPC's story meant for the church's edification, the communication of the truth, and the glory of the triune God of the Bible.
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Preface
Introduction: The History and Identity of the OPC
PART ONE: ORIGINS
1. Machen and the Crisis of Presbyterian Identity
2. The Founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
3. The Division of 1937
PART TWO: MISSIONS
4. Home Missions
5. Missions to the Orient
6. Eritrea
PART THREE: ECUMENICITY
7. The OPC and the New Evangelicalism
8. The Peniel Dispute
9. The OPC and Ecumenical Relations
PART FOUR: THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH
10. A "Full-orbed and Consistent" Christian Education
11. Worship and the OPC
12. The Social Witness of the Church
Conclusion: The OPC and the Future
The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age, by J. Gresham Machen
Sources for the Study of the OPC
To order, contact the Committee for the Historian, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Box P, Willow Grove, PA 19090-0920.