February 24 Today in OPC History

The Presbytery of New Jersey on February 24, 1979 determined to overture the 46th General Assembly to request the Committee on Ecumenicity and Interchurch Relations to argue in its negotiations toward union with any other churches that the highest court of the resulting body be limited to not more than 150 voting commissioners. In presenting the overture, clerk Richard Barker argued that the privilege and tradition of free debate in the General Assembly had been a strength of the OPC that ought to be preserved in a united body. Free debate cannot be preserved in a deliberative body of more than approximately 150 members, as shown by the history and rules of both larger and smaller ecclesiastical and civil deliberative bodies.

At the time of the overture, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was engaged in church merger talks with the Presbyterian Church in America and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod. Two years later, the 48th General Assembly, along with the RPCES, voted to accept the invitation from the PCA, but the subsequent vote of the presbyteries of the PCA failed to receive the OPC by a sufficient super majority.

Homepage Picture: Richard Barker

Picture: Members of the Presbytery of New Jersey in 1979 present at the 46th General Assembly included from top left to right, Gerry Hoogerhyde, Edward Haug, Edmund Clowney (right) talking with George Fuller, David Kiester, Lendall Smith and Richard Barker.