January 17 Today in OPC History

On January 17, 1938, the Committee on Foreign Missions appointed the Rev. and Mrs. Henry W. Coray of Harbin, Manchoukuo as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of America (renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1939).

Mr. and Mrs. Coray were the first missionaries sent out by the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1934. As a result of that appointment the name of Mr. Coray was erased from the roll of Lackawanna Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. on the pretense that he had, by accepting the appointment, “declared himself independent”—a fact which he emphatically denied. Complaint against this action was dismissed by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of Pennsylvania and the action of the synod was sustained by the Syracuse General Assembly.

The resignation of Mr. and Mrs. Coray as missionaries of the Independent Board was mailed from Harbin, Manchoukuo, on December 2, 1937, to be effective as of January 1, 1938. Their application to the church committee was sent at the same time.

In a letter to the general secretary of the committee Mr. Coray said; “We are persuaded that, in view of what seems to us to be a definite drift from the Board charter and from the original design of those who organized the Board, we can no longer remain under the Independent Board, though we wish our friends in the Board well.”

Picture: Henry, Elizabeth, Andrew and Donald Coray