by Dr. Charles E. Quirk, Associate Professor of History, University of Iowa
First published in summer 1975 in The Journal of Presbyterian History (vol 53, number 2)
Republished with permission of Dr. Quirk and The Journal of Presbyterian History

A version formatted for printing is also available.

When the document popularly referred to as the “Auburn Affirmation” circulated early in 1924, it intensified the already serious strife existing within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Reflecting long term Presbyterian problems as well as showing clearly the marks of contemporaneous issues, the Auburn Affirma­tion focused crucial constitutional and theological questions for the Presbyterian Church. Although prepared by the liberal evan­gelical party, the statement won a measure of public and private support from ministers of other theological persuasions. But lead­ing moderates pursued a policy of caution in regard to the Auburn Affirmation at the same time that spokesmen for a group seeking to curtail Presbyterian liberties and provoke a division of the Presbyterian Church responded to the document with vigorous opposition. Within a few years of its publication, the constitutional views articulated by the Auburn paper received approval from two General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church. For several dec­ades, however, the Auburn Affirmation attracted interest and pro­voked controversy not only within the Church in which it orig­inated but also in other Presbyterian churches.

I

During the half-century following the Old School-New School reunion, several issues agitated the Presbyterian Church and con­tributed to the interpretations advocated in the Auburn Affirmation. Familiar landmarks along the route taken by the Presbyterian Church include battles over higher criticism of the Bible, confes­sional revision, reunion with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and postwar institutional enterprises.¹ These developments, along with two others described below, provide the setting for the conflicts of the crucial period of the mid-1920s.

In the latter part of the nineteenth and opening decades of the twentieth centuries, the interdenominational fundamentalist movement flourished within Protestantism.² The contributions of some prominent Presbyterians to fundamentalism include finan­cial support, major roles at conferences, and essays in publications. A suggestive expression of fundamentalism within the Pres­byterian Church occurred during the second decade of the twentieth century. Several General Assemblies, with Mark A. Matthews and Maitland Alexander playing influential parts, displayed un­easiness over the licensure and ordination practices of the Presby­tery of New York and the orthodoxy of Union Theological Sem­inary in New York City.³ Concern over theological views and ecclesiastical procedures resulted in the issuing of a five-point deliverance by a General Assembly which was reaffirmed six years later. In 1910 the Permanent Judicial Commission presented a re­port, unanimously adopted by the Assembly, not sustaining a com­plaint against the Synod of New York. But the Commission sug­gested that the Assembly issue a deliverance, a recommendation referred to the Committee on Bills and Overtures which offered a five-point declaration the following day. The adopted statement specified certain articles to be essential and necessary: the iner­rancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, the death of Christ as a sacri­fice to satisfy God’s justice, the bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the miracles performed by Jesus.⁴

The question of the authority of doctrinal deliverances by Gen­eral Assemblies became a major one during the 1920s. Appar­ently some presbyteries ignored the deliverances of 1910 and 1916. Those Presbyterians wishing to bind the church to a rigid theolog­ical system tended to rely upon broad declarations rather than in­stituting formal ecclesiastical procedures. An illustration of this tendency is “Back to Fundamentals,” a statement which appeared during the debates over intellectual and judicatory developments in New York City. Issued in 1915 by a committee under the direction of former moderator of the General Assembly Matthews, the manifesto called upon churches, officers, and church courts to defend the fundamentals of the faith.⁵ Several Presbyterian papers took exception to the declaration; one deplored the martial spirit of the document, another rejected the suggestion that the Presbyterian Church was departing from the fundamentals, and a third chastised the implying of unfaithfulness in the ministry without providing supporting evidence.⁶

During this troubled period in Presbyterian history, a theolog­ical pattern took form which proved particularly influential in the Synod of New York and among ministers educated at Auburn or Union Seminaries. A clear exposition of its content came from Henry Sloane Coffin during the controversies over the Presbytery of New York and Union Theological Seminary. Born in New York City in 1877, Coffin graduated from Yale University in 1897 and began his education for the ministry at New College, Edinburgh. While in Scotland, Coffin witnessed the union of an evangelical spirit and the practice of biblical criticism. Coffin also studied at the University of Marburg, where he participated in a seminar taught by Wilhelm Herrmann. Completing his theological educa­tion at Union Seminary in 1900, Coffin enjoyed a distinguished career in New York City as pastor and educator.⁷

In 1915 Coffin delivered an address at Union Seminary which expressed the type of convictions characteristic of the ministers who produced the Auburn Affirmation. In “The Practical Aims of a Liberal Evangelicalism,” Coffin described evangelicalism as in­cluding a conviction of redemption by God in Jesus Christ, loyalty to the authority of the Scriptures, belief in the continuing activity of the Holy Spirit, a strong sense of solidarity with Christians throughout the centuries, and descent from evangelical Protestantism. An evangelical, according to Coffin, repudiated any effort to reduce Jesus to a mere teacher and the use of any other stan­dard than the Bible as authoritative for the relationship of God and man. Liberalism served as a vehicle for evangelicalism. Loyalty to the truth bore intimate connection to devotion to Christ. Coffin rejected a radicalism which disdained the statements of the past or treated contemptuously the views of traditionalists. The goals or aims of liberal evangelicalism included offering the Gospel in a convincing manner to contemporary thinking persons. Although accepting the need to work through particular churches, Coffin deplored divisions and looked forward to a comprehensive unity among Christians.⁸ The theological perspective described by Coffin obviously differed markedly from the orientation of Presby­terians hostile to modern intellectual currents and opposed to theological liberty within broadly construed evangelical boun­daries.

The early 1920s, therefore, found the Presbyterian Church bur­dened by major unresolved questions and comprehending some sharply differing groups. Unsettled issues included the adequacy of the confessional standards and the meaning of subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the authority of the Bible and the legitimacy of higher criticism, the degree of inclusiveness of the church, and the power of deliverances by General Assemblies on theological questions. Three parties or groups competed during the theological and ecclesiastical conflicts.⁹ Militant conservatives or exclusivists sought to create and maintain a narrowly defined version of Presbyterianism. Conservatives or moderates, although possessing some theological affinity to the exclusivist group, tended to stress the corporate work of a united church. Liberal evangelicals or inclusivists championed theological tolera­tion and an emphasis upon practical Christianity. In the 1920s, the Auburn Affirmation helped to mobilize each of the parties and contributed decisively to keeping the unresolved issues before the Presbyterian Church.

II

Neither unity nor liberty were secure during the major phase of the fundamentalist controversy in the Presbyterian Church.¹⁰ Exclusivists not only called for division in public statements but also initiated ecclesiastical actions which threatened Presbyterian freedoms. Liberal evangelicals rejected the demands for separa­tion and advocated a comprehensive Presbyterian Church allowing liberty of thought and teaching.

The journalistic polemics between editors David S. Kennedy of The Presbyterian and James E. Clarke of The Presbyterian Ad­vance indicate some of the widely divergent viewpoints. Whereas Kennedy became one of the most persistent critics of the Auburn Affirmation, Clarke assisted in the formation of the document and served as a highly respected counselor to the liberal evangelicals centered in the Synod of New York. In his writings, Kennedy por­trayed Protestant liberals as rationalists, defended the infallible Bible as the sole standard of authority for Protestants, and argued that Christian experience derived from Christian doctrine. Clarke stressed the internal authority of the Holy Spirit speaking in Scrip­ture and contended that the experience of a personal faith in God provided the foundation of Presbyterianism; so long as this basis existed, differences over explanations of the central fact of Chris­tian experience need not be disturbing. The editor of The Presby­terian Advance rejected biblical inerrancy, advocated a broad sub­scriptionist position, and claimed that if certain views held by the militant conservatives were made mandatory, the Presbyterian Church would lose the allegiance of young people.¹¹

While Clarke and Kennedy argued over a host of issues, three ministers soon to be deeply involved in the controversy over the Auburn Affirmation offered important interpretations of contem­porary Christianity. In an article published early in 1922, J. Gresham Machen of Princeton Theological Seminary sharpened the terms of the debate by propounding the thesis that liberalism was opposed to Christianity, both in presuppositions and on par­ticular doctrinal questions. According to Machen, liberalism re­jected the unique authority of the Bible, denied the deity of Christ, and repudiated salvation by the grace of God.¹² Another significant analysis came from Clarence Edward Macartney, pastor of Phila­delphia’s Arch Street Church. In a commencement address at Princeton Seminary in 1922, Macartney pointed to the abandonment of Jesus Christ as the Redeemer from sin as the greatest peril facing Christianity and issued a plea for a ministry which would halt the movement of Protestant preaching away from Christian truth.¹³ Finally, Samuel G. Craig, a member of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh. contended that the main line of cleavage ran between those who were Christians and those who applied that name to themselves. Craig’s prescription for the unhealthy divergences within the evangelical churches was the creation of a situation—by conversion or voluntary departure or removal of false Christians—whereby the Christian Church would give united testimony to the Gospel.¹⁴

Macartney emerged as the Presbyterian leader of the powerful attack upon the preaching of Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Baptist who, in 1919, became the stated preacher of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City.¹⁵ In a mid-1922 sermon, “Shall the Fun­damentalists Win?,” Fosdick repudiated the effort to drive out of the Christian churches those who differed with the fundamental­ists. After offering contrasting points of view held by evangelical Christians on doctrines such as the virgin birth, the inspiration of the Bible, and the second coming of Christ, Fosdick appealed for a spirit of tolerance and of Christian liberty along with an emphasis upon the major problems confronting Christianity.¹⁶ Macartney’s forceful response, “Shall Unbelief Win?,” declared that Fosdick’s sermon disclosed the impossibility of harmony between ration­alists and conservatives.¹⁷

Macartney escalated the conflict beyond pulpit warfare by bringing the Presbytery of Philadelphia into the affair. In early October he presented a communication to the Presbytery of New York—changed a few weeks later with his approval into the form of an overture to the General Assembly—requesting action ensur­ing that the preaching in First Church would conform to Presby­terian standards. After lengthy discussion, the Presbytery adopted the overture by a 72-21 vote.¹⁸ Solid support for the action against Fosdick came from Kennedy, who speculated that the overture might result in the beneficial separation of the two groups within the Presbyterian Church.¹⁹ In an article published early in 1923, Macartney declared that an inevitable conflict awaited the Presby­terian Church due to the presence of two divergent groups within the church and that the roles played by his presbytery and Fos­dick’s congregation were quite incidental.²⁰

But other Presbyterians publicly expressed support for Fos­dick. For example, John A. MacCallum, a Philadelphia pastor, noted that reactionary forces threatened division prior to Fosdick’s controversial sermon. MacCallum suggested that Fosdick’s critics were isolated from modern thought and predicted that if men like Fosdick were silenced, the more intelligent young people would be lost to the Christian Church.²¹

In the context of exclusivist polemics and the Philadelphia overture, Robert Hastings Nichols, a professor at Auburn Theolog­ical Seminary, started the movement of liberal evangelicals which eventually culminated in the Auburn Affirmation. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1873, Nichols earned both the bachelor’s degree and the doctorate at Yale University. Following a period of study at Oxford University, he returned to the United States to pre­pare for the Presbyterian ministry at Auburn Seminary. Gradu­ating in 1901, Nichols served pastorates in his home state and in New Jersey before joining the Auburn faculty as a church historian in 1910. Twelve years later, Nichols became the Stated Clerk of the Synod of New York, a post which he held for nearly three dec­ades.²² During the struggles of the 1920s, Nichols utilized his knowledge of church history and ecclesiastical law as well as his contacts throughout the Synod of New York in behalf of the cause represented by the Auburn Affirmation.

Early in 1923, Nichols prepared a three part statement defending the liberties of Presbyterian ministers. Drawing heavily upon church history in the lengthy first section, Nichols stressed that Presbyterian ministers do not accept all the words of Confession of Faith, proposed that the Adopting Act of 1729 provided for taking exceptions to articles in the Confession, and pointed to the terms of the reunions of 1870 and 1906 as allowing for doctrinal differ­ences within the Presbyterian Church. The first part concluded with the assertion that the doctrine of the Presbyterian Church could be declared only by concurrent action of the presbyteries and the General Assembly. In the second section Nichols dealt with the vital question of the Bible. According to Nichols, the Holy Spirit rather than ecclesiastical authority was the supreme guide for Protestant ministers. Also, inasmuch as the Confession of Faith did not teach Scriptural inerrancy, Presbyterian ministers were not obligated to accept it. The paper concluded with the declaration that those who signed it did not desire liberty to go beyond the boundaries of evangelical Christianity; within these limits, how­ever, they would use their freedom to preach the Gospel.²³

Nichols sent his “proto-Affirmation” to both liberal evangel­icals and moderate conservatives and met with close friends early in April to consider the document. Whereas the liberal evangel­icals generally approved of the statement and urged its publica­tion prior to the 1923 General Assembly, leading moderates tended to express fears that the paper would provoke controversy or sug­gested that the situation in the Presbyterian Church was not ser­ious enough to warrant such a declaration.²⁴ In a sermon preached at Auburn Seminary in April, Nichols mentioned his correspon­dence with some influential ministers. Rejecting the view that theological controversy harmed the Church, Nichols claimed that an attempt was under way to enslave Christianity to scriptural literalism. Nichols summoned Christian ministers to resist this ef­fort, even if disturbance resulted, for the sake of young people and all those influenced by modern intellectual forces.²⁵ Although his paper was not published, after the 1923 General Assembly it pro­vided a basis for the Auburn Affirmation.

Some of the passages in the Auburn Affirmation relate directly to the Indianapolis Assembly, which engaged in newsworthy battles over the moderatorship, evolution, and the Philadelphia overture. Prior to the Assembly, William Jennings Bryan corre­sponded with many notable Presbyterians about the viability of his candidacy for moderator.²⁶ Bryan finally decided to seek the post, but on the third ballot he lost to Charles F. Wishart, President of Wooster College.²⁷ This disturbing defeat and his subsequent failure to receive an important committee assignment from Wishart, did not prevent Bryan from urging the Assembly to adopt a resolution against the teaching of evolution in Presbyterian educa­tional institutions. After a vigorous three-hour debate in which Bryan attacked the orthodoxy of some ministers in the Assembly, and several ministers soon to participate in the Auburn Affirma­tion movement opposed Bryan’s resolution, the Assembly adopted a mild substitute motion by a decisive margin.²⁸

But Bryan occupied the winning side on the most important question at Indianapolis. The Committee on Bills and Overtures presented two reports on the Philadelphia proposal. The majority position left the Fosdick issue under the jurisdiction of New York Presbytery. A minority-of-one report offered by a Philadelphia exclusivist, A. Gordon MacLennan, asked the Assembly to order the Presbytery of New York to take action requiring the doctrinal proclamation in First Church to conform to Presbyterian standards. MacLennan’s paper went on to reaffirm and repeat the five-point deliverance of 1910. Following a several-hour debate fea­turing Bryan and Macartney in support of MacLennan’s recom­mendation, a roll call vote revealed the acceptance of the minor­ity report by a 439-359 tally.²⁹

This decision by the General Assembly provoked strong neg­ative reactions from liberal evangelicals. At the Assembly, William P. Merrill, pastor of Brick Church in New York City, presented an official protest eventually endorsed by eighty-five commissioners which, among its grounds, argued that the action attempted to im­pose doctrinal tests different from or in addition to those em­bodied in the Constitution.³⁰ Coffin issued a strong statement de­claring that Fosdick’s removal would necessitate his own, inas­much as he shared Fosdick’s interpretation of the Gospel. Coffin forcefully rejected the five points as essential in the form adopted by the Assembly.³¹ A few days later, Merrill sharply criticized the action of the General Assembly, charging that it “. . . said what was not true, did what was not fair and attempted to put a yoke on our necks which I, for one, will never bear.”³² Clarke stated that the Assembly’s action could not alter the Confession or place addi­tional requirements upon men who accepted the Confession but were unwilling to accept all parts of the deliverance.³³ President George B. Stewart of Auburn Seminary suggested that the ten­dency of some Assemblies to erect extra-confessional requirements should not be approved by men who had caught the Au­burn spirit, a spirit of dedication to Jesus Christ and the Church coupled with liberty of interpretation of the Scriptures and Presby­terian standards.³⁴ The decision by the Indianapolis Assembly clearly challenged the theological and constitutional assumptions of the liberal evangelicals and endangered the unity of the Pres­byterian Church.

III

Within two weeks of the adjournment of the 1923 General Assembly, five upstate New York ministers began the organiza­tional effort which resulted in the formation and publication of the Auburn Affirmation. The group consisted of Nichols, Philip S. Bird of Utica, and three Buffalo pastors, George A. Buttrick, Samuel V. V. Holmes, and Murray Shipley Howland. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1874, Howland, like Nichols and Coffin, graduated from Yale University. After studying at Auburn Seminary and the University of Berlin, Howland completed his education for the Presbyterian ministry at Union Seminary in 1900. He served churches in New York City and Syracuse before moving to the pas­torate of Buffalo’s Lafayette Avenue Church in 1912.³⁵ Howland participated actively in the consideration of the paper prepared by Nichols and he fought against the exclusivist forces on the floor of the Indianapolis Assembly. Throughout the controversies of the mid-1920s, Howland carried a large share of the leadership re­sponsibilities for the liberal evangelical party.

Howland and the other New Yorkers invited sixty-eight min­isters to attend a meeting in Syracuse on June 19. Acknowledging the disturbing effects of the Assembly’s action against First Church, the letter stressed the prospective damaging results of an effort to erect a new creed, a creed unacceptable to many minis­ters and one which would prevent most well educated young men from going into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. The letter underlined the urgency of an early meeting to develop plans for informing the Presbyterian Church of the views of ministers com­mitted to liberty and preparing an action program in presbyteries looking ahead to the next General Assembly.³⁶ Thirty-three min­isters and one ruling elder attended the Syracuse meeting and about twenty others sent expressions of approval. Four committees presented recommendations acceptable to the group, including­ the establishment of a Conference Committee, launching of a financial campaign to meet Committee expenses, and the forma­tion of a document for signatures and publication. The Syracuse men elected seven ministers to the Conference Committee and authorized those selected to appoint additional members. Howland, Nichols, and Bird received the positions of chairman, secre­tary, and treasurer, respectively, of the new organization.³⁷

Following the Syracuse meeting, the Conference Committee concentrated upon preparation and publication of the Auburn Affirmation and related material, in addition to planning for the 1924 General Assembly. Eventually the Committee consisted of eleven ministers, most of whom were Auburn or Union graduates. Treasurer Bird raised about $3,500, the bulk of which came from some fifty ministers in the Synod of New York. Following its in­ception in Syracuse, the Committee met four times prior to the Grand Rapids Assembly, once at Auburn Seminary and the other times at Brick Church in New York City. During the intervals be­tween meetings, Nichols corresponded not only with members of the Conference Committee but also with other interested Presby­terians and, along with Howland, guided the work of the organiza­tion of liberal evangelicals.³⁸

The document which expressed the views of the New Yorkers developed gradually. Nichols’ early 1923 declaration provided a firm basis upon which to build. The Syracuse conference pro­duced two papers which received revision. Then a draft for criti­cism circulated in late September and, following further changes, the leadership of the Conference Committee completed the Au­burn Affirmation in mid-December. In the process, several Presby­terian ministers contributed decisively to the statement and others, including a few who did not sign it, offered important sug­gestions.³⁹ The Conference Committee, therefore, prepared its paper in a deliberate manner with extensive sharing of ideas at each major stage.

An examination of the document in its various forms indicates a basic continuity with Nichols’ statement along with some signif­icant additions. The features remaining constant from his “proto-­Affirmation” include the historical-constitutional argument for liberty, a clearly-stated opposition to the theory of scriptural in­errancy, a stress upon the requirement of concurrent action by presbyteries and the General Assembly for the authoritative dec­laration of doctrine, and an assertion that the liberty claimed re­mained within evangelical limits. From the Syracuse conference onward, the emerging document expressed objection to the 1923 Assembly’s action in regard to First Church as well as opposition to the doctrinal deliverance on constitutional grounds. The two major sections ultimately removed first appeared in the revision of the Syracuse papers, namely, a passage calling upon the Chris­tian church to discover unity in a living faith in Jesus Christ with liberty of interpretation allowed in secondary matters, and a quo­tation from a brief doctrinal statement recently adopted by the United Free Church of Scotland.

Four significant additions occurred following revision of the Syracuse material. First, in the criticism draft the document re­ceived its official title, “An Affirmation,” and then the published version added a statement indicating the intention of protecting the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church. Second, also at the criticism draft phase, the paper gained a preamble which, after making reference to the actions of the 1923 Assembly and continual efforts to bring about the division of the Presbyterian Church and curtail freedom, affirmed acceptance of the Confes­sion and the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, loyalty to the Presbyterian Church, and announced that the declaration sought to maintain the church’s faith and unity as well as protect Presby­terian liberties. Third, a highly important post-criticism draft addi­tion followed a paragraph opposing the deliverance of the 1923 General Assembly for constitutional reasons. This section, part of which was printed in bold-faced type, offered a theological state­ment distinguishing between facts and doctrines on the one hand and theories on the other, concluding with an assertion that ac­ceptance of the former entitled Presbyterians to trust and fellow­ship.⁴⁰ The other important addition also came after the circulation of the criticism draft and similarly received prominence by the type set. In the sixth and concluding section, the document re­jected division of the Presbyterian Church and expressed the hope that readers would regard it as a plea for unity and freedom grounded in the Scriptures and Presbyterian standards, rather than as a statement from a theological faction.

The arrangement of the sections and the tone of the document also changed. In its Syracuse and revision forms, the paper started with the First Church objection, then dealt with the 1923 As­sembly deliverance, moved into historical and constitutional mat­ters, and concluded with a statement on the limits of the liberty claimed. But in the criticism draft and published version, legal and historical defenses of liberty came before doctrinal discussion. Along with changes in order which placed prominence upon an interpretation of Presbyterian law and history, the language be­came somewhat less assertive, and positive declarations received stress rather than statements of objection.

In light of the long and complicated process of formation, the Auburn Affirmation obviously was a composite document. Sev­eral parts of the paper, however, may be credited to one or more ministers with a high degree of confidence. Nichols was responsible for the conception of the statement. Also his pre-1923 Assembly paper contributed substantially to the historical-legal emphasis and, along with Howland and Stewart, Nichols bore major re­sponsibility for revisions. Clarke proposed the rearrangement of the material, the development of positive assertions of loyalty, and a rewording of the section on the liberty claimed. About two dec­ades after the publication of the Auburn Affirmation, Nichols credited Coffin for a large share of the controversial theological section and the title. But apparently Howland and Nichols, along with perhaps Stewart, also contributed to the theological passage, and Stewart suggested the two word official title with the remain­der of the title coming from Coffin.⁴¹ The popular title originated in exclusivist circles soon after the document’s publication.

The Auburn Affirmation represented a striking contrast to the statements of militant conservatives. Whereas the exclusivist group demanded theological uniformity, the inclusivist’s declara­tion advocated liberty and diversity within evangelical boundaries. Machen, Kennedy, Macartney, and others of similar views called for division of the Presbyterian Church, but Nichols, Howland, Clarke, and their associates appealed for a unified Church. The Philadelphia-Princeton group employed the language of warfare, but the New Yorkers used the rhetoric of peace. Militant evangelicals championed biblical inerrancy unlike the liberal evangelicals who rejected the concept as unscriptural, non-confessional, and even harmful to the authority of the Scriptures. Exclusivists ex­alted the unilateral power of the General Assembly, whereas in­clusivists stressed the joint responsibility of presbyteries and the General Assembly. One party tended to ignore or explain away the significance of reunions, but the other relied upon these historical precedents in its defense of liberty. Given the quite opposite as­sumptions and interpretations, the crucial question in the first part of 1924 concerned the reaction of the various groups within the Presbyterian Church to the statement prepared by the Confer­ence Committee. Would an appeal for liberty based upon Presby­terian history and law, firm declarations of loyalty, and pleas for unity and peace attract broad endorsement and disarm exclusiv­ists in the polemical climate of the mid-1920s?

IV

During the months in which the Auburn Affirmation took shape, the Conference Committee sought to acquire endorsements from ministers beyond the Syracuse group. After considerable de­liberation, the Committee decided to seek 150 signers from various geographical areas. By announcing that only a limited number of signatures were requested, the Committee hoped to avoid sub­jecting its document to a numerical test from the opposition as well as providing a justification for later publication of any sur­plus signatures. During the last two months of 1923 members of the Committee approached prospective signers. By December 27 the Committee not only had reached its goal but possessed a sur­plus of about two dozen subscribers.⁴² The efforts of the Commit­tee resulted in a rather impressive list of signers. Many of the en­dorsers served well-known local churches and some, including Henry van Dyke, moderator of the General Assembly of 1902, and William H. Black, a former Cumberland Church leader, enjoyed church-wide prominence.⁴³

While the acquisition of signatures proceeded, the leaders of the Conference Committee scheduled the release of the declaration for early in January 1924. But public remarks by some sup­porters of the Auburn Affirmation led to an outbreak of premature newspaper publicity in mid-December.⁴⁴ Then, The New York Herald scooped its competitors by printing the document one day prior to the January 10 release date.⁴⁵ A final set of difficulties oc­curred with two Presbyterian weeklies, The Presbyterian Banner and the Herald and Presbyter, both of which required negotiations before publishing the statement.⁴⁶ Despite these complications, the Committee’s paper received considerable press attention. The daily press, especially in New York, provided substantial coverage of the text and the list of signers, and occasionally solicited reactions to the document from local or nationally-known Presby­terians.⁴⁷ Two important secular periodicals dealt with the doc­ument at length, and religious periodicals tended to display spe­cial interest.⁴⁸

Five major weekly papers served the Presbyterian Church in the mid-1920s.⁴⁹ Men directly involved in the Auburn Affirmation edited two of the papers. Nolan Best, the ruling elder at the Syra­cuse conference and one of the sources of undesired publicity in mid-December, led The Continent, a paper published in Chicago although edited in New York City, with a circulation of about 21,600. Clarke’s paper, The Presbyterian Advance, published in Nashville, estimated approximately 7,000 subscribers. Both papers carried complete material on the Auburn Affirmation and editorialized favorably, stressing its clarity and usefulness in rejecting the call for division of the Presbyterian Church and noting the presence of liberals and conservatives among the signers. During the ensuing controversy over the statement, the inclusivist jour­nals replied to some of the attacks from exclusivists and issued occasional messages of praise and promotion.⁵⁰

The Presbyterian Banner, a Pittsburgh weekly with a circula­tion of about 7,800, expressed a moderate conservative viewpoint. When the Conference Committee finally secured publication of its document, editor George M. Hunter stated that his paper pub­lished the Auburn Affirmation as church news and not as an en­dorsement and went on to deplore controversy.⁵¹ During the suc­ceeding months, The Presbyterian Banner simply ignored the bitter conflict surrounding the views published by the Conference Committee.

Although a cautious silence characterized moderate conserva­tives, the militant conservative papers made known in almost every issue their negative reactions to the Auburn Affirmation.⁵² The Presbyterian, published in Philadelphia under Kennedy’s di­rection, reported a circulation of about 10,700, and F. C. Monfort’s Cincinnati-based Herald and Presbyter claimed about 10,000. The Philadelphia paper paid careful attention to the identity and num­ber of signers. Kennedy and his editorial associates expressed surprise and even anguish over some of the ministers who en­dorsed the Auburn Affirmation, explaining that these signers did not realize the document’s implications. A campaign to increase the number of signers deeply disturbed The Presbyterian. When the total mounted to almost 1,300, Kennedy jeered at the Confer­ence Committee of the meager results. Yet he contended that the increase disclosed a critical defection within the ministry and, prior to the 1924 General Assembly, he expressed an inability to understand how the Presbyterian Church could ignore the signers of the Auburn Affirmation without losing its integrity.⁵³ Monfort’s response to the signers closely resembled that of the Philadelphia controversialist, as did his analysis of the contents.⁵⁴ Monfort’s major contribution to the debate over the document did not lie in his appraisals, rather, apparently Monfort first used in print and repeatedly employed the title by which the document became popularly known.⁵⁵

Several Presbyterian exclusivists mentioned earlier quickly disclosed their hostility toward the Auburn Affirmation. Respond­ing to a request from a New York City paper, Bryan dispatched a lengthy telegram describing the document as the correct manner of informing the church of conflicting views. But Bryan then launched into a general repudiation of the effort of a minority of modernists to capture control of the Presbyterian Church. Bryan asserted that modernists must submit to majority rule or establish their own institution. Machen portrayed the statement as a deplor­able effort to obscure the proclamation of two completely different religions from Presbyterian pulpits, with the naturalistic religion represented by Fosdick and some of the signers of the Auburn Affirmation. Macartney chastised the document’s language and logic, noting that many of the signers graduated from Union Theological Seminary—the source of rationalistic ideas damaging the Presbyterian Church—but he also suggested that the list con­tained the names of evangelicals who had been misled.⁵⁶

Gaining some distance in time from its publication did not lead exclusivists to alter their negative assessments of the Auburn Affirmation. Macartney issued two highly critical statements in mid-February. In an editorial in The Presbyterian, the Philadelphia pastor referred to the Affirmationists as “nullifiers,” and con­tended that rather than being interested in the Constitution the signers really wanted freedom to assault basic truths from inside the Presbyterian Church.⁵⁷ Speaking at a rally at Pittsburgh’s First Presbyterian Church where Alexander served as pastor, Macart­ney articulated Machen’s thesis of two irreconcilably different religions. Directly referring to the Auburn Affirmation, he de­fended the view that the General Assembly alone was the final interpreter of Presbyterian law and argued that the Presbyterian creed permitted only a single theory for each of the five disputed points.⁵⁸

Machen equaled Macartney in his scorn for the liberal evan­gelicals’ paper. In an address at Moody Bible Institute, Machen attacked Fosdick and the Auburn Affirmation as well as lashing out at those who sought neutrality in the conflict. The Princeton scholar regarded the Auburn document as a modernist procla­mation and found absurd its confusion between New Testament fact and interpretation.⁵⁹ Writing for the Philadelphia exclusivist weekly, Machen held that the Auburn Affirmation challenged Christianity’s basis in historical facts and destroyed the signif­icance of the creed by claiming liberty of interpretation.⁶⁰

For over two decades Craig criticized the contents and directly attacked several of the signers of the Auburn Affirmation. Within a few weeks of its publication, Craig presented a critique of the document’s brief theological creed. Although expressed in scrip­tural language, Craig argued that the creed required interpretation in light of the denial of certain articles as essential and in view of the assertion that the signers regarded those who held to the facts as worthy of trust no matter what theories might be accepted. Following an examination of each phrase in the theological sec­tion, Craig pronounced the verdict that the creed opposed both Presbyterianism and Christianity.⁶¹ In another analysis, Craig took strong exception to the Auburn paper’s explicit rejection of bib­lical inerrancy. Craig sought to defend inerrancy, employing among his arguments, the familiar Princeton apologetic that al­leged errors must be proven to exist in the original manuscripts.⁶²

The question of the Bible along with other theological prob­lems and constitutional issues received considerable attention from the editor of The Presbyterian. For several months Kennedy seemed obsessed with the Auburn Affirmation. In his first pub­lished reaction, Kennedy described the document as the most serious declaration thus far presented in the controversy, a paper which drew a line of division between the Presbyterian Church and a small group of ministers. From Kennedy’s perspective, the Au­burn Affirmation really asserted that the Presbyterian Church lacked authoritative government and a formal doctrinal system. A week later, Kennedy claimed that it represented an attack upon the very center of Christianity and that it advocated a new religion. Assessing its theology as Ritschlian and its constitutional position as bolshevistic, Kennedy proposed that the document disclosed the necessity of choosing loyal commissioners for the 1924 Gen­eral Assembly. On the constitutional issue, Kennedy contended that Presbyterian ministers must be loyal to the entire Constitu­tion and if a person could not accept the doctrine and govern­ment of the Presbyterian Church, then the only liberty available consisted of freedom to depart. As for theological questions, the Philadelphia journalist claimed that Ritschlians rejected the in­errancy of Scripture, opposed logic, and leaned toward pragma­tism.⁶³ For Kennedy, denial of inerrancy represented the founda­tion of the conflict. He totally rejected the view that inspiration was restricted to matters of faith and practice or that the Bible only contained God’s word. Kennedy also expressed amazement that the signers of the Auburn Affirmation claimed that the Scrip­tures did not assert inerrancy.⁶⁴

The leaders of the Conference Committee regarded the attacks upon their document as lacking in ability and heavily dependent upon personal abuse and misrepresentation. Unwilling to engage in a regular exchange of arguments, Nichols and Howland decided to challenge only some of the most significant distortions, seek­ing thereby to influence the readers of the militant conservative papers.⁶⁵ Three months after the publication of the Auburn Affir­mation, while repeated attacks flowed out of Cincinnati and Phila­delphia, Nichols characterized the response of the two papers:

They were going to dismiss it with contempt, but they can’t leave it alone. It has an awful fascination for them. The fact is that we hit them between wind and water with the first issue, and ever since they have been running around and chattering about it.⁶⁶

Not all of the major arguments against the positions taken in the Auburn Affirmation, however, came from exclusivists. A mod­erate conservative, J. Ross Stevenson, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, quickly contributed a review of the doc­ument’s constitutional positions. According to Stevenson, the pro­vision in the Adopting Act for declaring scruples covered only the question of the powers of the civil authorities and did not extend to matters of doctrine. From Stevenson’s viewpoint, the deliverance of the 1923 General Assembly harmonized completely with the provisions of the Adopting Act. Responding to the defense of liberty on the grounds of reunions, Stevenson contended that the resolution of past differences resulted not from subordinating them to fidelity to Jesus Christ and cooperative work but by mutual acceptance of Presbyterian standards, Finally, Stevenson advocated the plenary power of the General Assembly on the grounds that the original Synod possessed full authority and that the Assembly, as the successor to the Synod, possessed the right to declare necessary and essential doctrines.⁶⁷ The constitutional interpretation expressed by Stevenson and other opponents of the Auburn Affirmation presented the Presbyterian Church with quite opposite views of Presbyterian law and history. A few years later, the reports of the Commission of Fifteen generally supported the positions in the Auburn Affirmation.

Well before the public discussion of the document, the Confer­ence Committee considered publication of additional signatures. The Committee decided to request the original signers to solicit more names, with the understanding that publication would occur around May 1 in order to demonstrate the strength of the views expressed in the Auburn Affirmation to the forthcoming General Assembly. About 150 signatures were received from ministers who responded favorably to the publication of the statement in Jan­uary. Also, the Committee benefited from campaigns among min­isters in the Synod of New York along with alumni of Auburn and Union Seminaries. And the Committee encouraged public support by enclosing a signature card in a mailing of supplementary material. The aggressive efforts resulted in a total of about 1,000 signatures by the end of March.⁶⁸ Early in May the Conference Com­mittee published a booklet containing the document with 1,274 signatures and some related material.⁶⁹ Prior to the meeting of the General Assembly inserted lists disclosed twenty more signers and one withdrawal. Twenty-one signatures reached the Com­mittee too late for publication. Nichols appraised the work to in­crease the number of endorsers as successful. He anticipated a favorable effect on the Assembly, assured that in addition to those who signed it, many other Presbyterian ministers agreed with the spirit and substance of the Auburn Affirmation.⁷⁰

V

Although the origins of the Auburn Affirmation are the pri­mary concern of this study, it seems appropriate to conclude with a discussion of the later uses of the document and some general­izations.

The critical years for the Affirmationists occurred from 1924-1927.⁷¹ Although exclusivists thoroughly controlled the General Assembly of 1924 and the Auburn Affirmation was presented to the Assembly by overture and memorial, no action was taken on it. This surprising outcome was used by Affirmationists and some commentators as evidence of the legitimacy of the positions espoused and the rightful place of the signers within the Presby­terian Church, whereas opponents of the document and its sub­scribers tended to lament the no-action stance of the 1924 Assembly. In the years immediately following, the Auburn Affirmation remained a live issue in the polemics between liberal evangelicals and militant conservatives. When division of the Presbyterian Church seemed quite possible because of actions taken at the 1925 General Assembly, a Commission of Fifteen was established to examine the unrest within the Church. Dominated by moderates, the Commission presented analyses and recommendations which were adopted by the Assemblies of 1926 and 1927. The reports defended unity and toleration, repudiated the major arguments and some of the tactics of the exclusivists, and generally agreed with the constitutional points expressed in the Auburn Affirma­tion.⁷²

Interest in the Auburn Affirmation, however, did not cease with the acceptance of the reports of the Commission of Fifteen. Critics continued to strike out at the document and its signers, and to comment on the failure of the 1924 General Assembly to take action, whereas a few men not involved in the Auburn Affirmation movement published dispassionate studies.⁷³ For about a dec­ade, Machen and his followers kept the statement before the Pres­byterian Church not only with published broadsides but also by an unsuccessful effort to bring the Affirmationists in the Presbytery of Philadelphia to trial for heresy in 1934.⁷⁴ But with the departure of the Machen group, anti-Affirmationism subsided within the Presbyterian Church. In The Orthodox Presbyterian Church the document continued to be used as major evidence of doctrinal de­fection and apostasy in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.⁷⁵

The Auburn Affirmation also became a significant source of conflict within two other Presbyterian churches, especially in the setting of merger discussion with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. In the Presbyterian Church in the United States, anti­-Affirmationism received forceful expression by opponents of re­union such as William Childs Robinson, L. Nelson Bell, and Chalmers W. Alexander. References to the Auburn Affirmation were regular features in The Southern Presbyterian Journal. On the other hand, leaders of the Presbyterian Church in the United States favoring reunion offered generally sympathetic explana­tions of the statement.⁷⁶ Likewise, the discussion of union in the mid-1950s produced controversy over the Auburn Affirmation within the United Presbyterian Church of North America.⁷⁷

Most recently, a resurrection of the Auburn Affirmation took place during the process of re-examination of the confessional po­sition of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Scholars within and outside the Church called attention to the bearing of the Auburn Affirmation on the question of confessional revision and the relationship of the theological assertions of the document to the interpretations espoused in The Confession of 1967.⁷⁸

Several observations appear warranted from a review of the events and arguments of the half-century following the publication of the Auburn Affirmation. First, the long controversy over the document reveals the difficulty of being a confessional church when one important segment of the ministry regarded the Westminster Confession of Faith as an inadequate doctrinal statement, and another group of ministers wanted to maintain the traditional standards and protect the Bible from higher criticism, and a third party sought to minimize confessional and biblical problems by concentration upon the program of the Church. Second, whereas the constitutional arguments of the document received general acceptance within a few years of its appearance, the theological concerns won vindication several decades later. The historical-legal foundation of the Auburn Affirmation helped to keep the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. open for eventual confessional renewal. Third, although the advocacy of historical and constitu­tional interpretations take up most of the space in the Auburn Affirmation, critics have tended to grant or deem unimportant the assertions about Presbyterian law and history and to concentrate instead upon the briefer theological component. But, with a few exceptions, opponents of the Auburn Affirmation did not move beyond the framework established by the earliest critics. Fourth, the Auburn Affirmation sought to maintain unity as well as freedom. In the mid-1920s the Affirmationists were an endangered minor­ity. Within a decade, the most vigorous anti-Affirmationists either departed from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. or remained as an alienated faction possessing a limited influence. Critics from within the tradition of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. pointed to the Auburn Affirmation as justification for withdrawal or disaffection, whereas those in other Presbyterian churches por­trayed the Auburn Affirmation as a major piece of evidence against merger.

The Auburn Affirmation responded to issues of long duration in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and to the immediate threats of curtailment of liberties and division in the mid-1920s. Under the leadership of Nichols and Howland, a dedicated group of liberal evangelicals prepared a statement which presented a strong case for both freedom and unity. Nichols’ labor on the doc­ument caused a neglect of his responsibilities at Auburn Seminary. But a director of the Seminary reportedly assured Nichols that “…it was more important to make church history than to teach it.”⁷⁹

NOTES

¹ The most valuable guide through the period is Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), pp.1-124. Some of the major developments are discussed from a different perspective in the essay by Paul Wooley, “American Calvinism in the Twentieth Century,” American Calvinism: A Survey, ed. Jacob J. Hoogstra (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1957), pp. 40-63. For a detailed treatment of the issues considered in the present article, consult my dissertation, “The ‘Auburn’ Affirmation: A Critical Narrative of the Document Designed to Safeguard the Unity and Liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1924” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1967). A post-doctoral grant from the University of Northern Iowa made possible additional research in libraries and historical societies in several eastern and midwestern cities. The private papers of Presbyterian leaders such as William Jennings Bryan, Henry S. Coffin, Charles R. Erdman, Clarence Edward Macartney, Robert E. Speer, and Henry van Dyke are of little direct value in the study of the Auburn Affirmation, but the newspaper and periodical liter­ature is abundant and useful.

² During the past decade or so, Ernest R. Sandeen is responsible for the most important interpretations of fundamentalism. Some of his earlier studies are in­cluded in Sandeen’s major work, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and Amer­ican Millenarianism, 1806-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Of particular interest to students of Presbyterian history is the perspective offered by George M. Marsden, “The New School Heritage and Presbyterian Fundamentalism,” Westminster Theological Journal, 32 (May, 1970), 129-47.

³ The New York Times covered the story in detail; for instances, see 15 April 1913, p. 5; 18 April 1913, p. 6; 14 April 1914, p. 3; 9 June 1914, p. 6; 13 April 1915, p. 7; 1 May 1915, p. 13; 25 May 1915, p. 9; 11 April 1916, p. 8; 4 May 1916, p. 4.

⁴ Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (hereafter cited as GA Minutes), 1910, pp. 272f.

⁵ The Presbyterian, 22 April 1915. pp. 18f., 27.

⁶ The Presbyterian Advance, 29 April 1915, pp. 4f.; The Continent, 29 April 1915, p. 529; The Presbyterian Banner, 22 April 1915, p. 6.

⁷ For a study of Coffin’s life, see Morgan Phelps Noyes, Henry Sloane Coffin (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964); also, consult a volume of essays honor­ing him upon retirement, Reinhold Niebuhr, ed., This Ministry (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945).

⁸ The Practical Aims of a Liberal Evangelicalism (n.p., n.p., n. d.); The New York Times, 19 May 1915, p. 8. For an exposition of a similar type of theology by another Presbyterian later to become involved in the Auburn Affirmation move­ment, see the articles and editorials by James E. Clarke, for example, The Presby­terian Advance, 27 October 1921, pp. 3f.

⁹ A brief description of the three parties is provided in Loetscher, p. 119. For a suggestive probe into the nineteenth century moderates, see James H. Moorhead. “Henry J. Van Dyke, Sr.: Conservative Apostle of a Broad Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 50 (Spring 1972), 19-38.

¹⁰ A valuable discussion at the time of the conflict by a major participant is Robert Hastings Nichols, Fundamentalism in the Presbyterian Church (Auburn: The Jacobs Press, 1925).

¹¹ For representative statements by the two editors, see The Presbyterian, 27 October 1921, p. 3; 12 January 1922, pp. 6f.; 4 May 1922, p. 3; and, The Presby­terian Advance, 8 December 1921, pp. 3f.; 26 January 1922, pp. 3f.; 25 May 1922, pp. 3f.; and a major series entitled “Shall We Encourage Disruption?” published between 4 January and 22 February 1923

¹² “Liberalism or Christianity?” The Princeton Theological Review, XX (January, 1922), 93-117. Machen developed the thesis in Christianity and Liberalism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923). For a recent analysis of the Princeton Seminary polemicist. consult C. Allyn Russell, “J. Gresham Machen, Scholarly Fundamentalist,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 51 (Spring 1973), 41-49.

¹³ “The Heroism of the Ministry in the Hour of Christianity’s Peril,” The Prince­ton Theological Review, XX (July 1922), 361-74. Macartney is the subject of a use­ful study also by C. Allyn Russell, “Clarence E. Macartney-Fundamentalist Prince of the Pulpit,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 52 (Spring 1974), 33-58.

¹⁴ “Genuine and Counterfeit Christianity,” The Princeton Theological Review, XXI (January 1923), 1-41.

¹⁵ For an account of Fosdick’s experience in the Presbyterian pulpit, see John B. Macnab, “Fosdick at First Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 52 (Spring 1974), 59-77.

¹⁶ The Christian Century, 8 June 1922, pp. 713-17.

¹⁷ The Presbyterian, 13 July 1922, pp. 8ff., 26, and 20 July 1922, pp. 8ff.

¹⁸ Presbytery of Philadelphia, “Minutes,” 2 October 1922 and 16 October 1922 (MS in the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia); The New York Times, 18 October 1922, p. 1; The Presbyterian, 26 October 1922, p. 6.

¹⁹ The Presbyterian, 26 October 1922, p. 8.

²⁰”For the Faith: The Philadelphia Overture,” The Presbyterian, 15 February 1923, pp. 8f., 26.

²¹ The New York Times, 10 December 1922, IX, p. 16.

²² General Biographical Catal6gue of Auburn Theological Seminary 1878-1918 (Auburn: Auburn Seminary Press, 1918), p. 272; The New York Times, 20 July 1955, p. 27; The Chapel Bell, XXXIV (Winter 1956), 2f.

²³ A manuscript later used in the formation of the Auburn Affirmation seems 10 be the paper prepared by Nichols; see R. H. Nichols Papers (henceforth des­ignated NP), II, 30. The Roman numerals refer to the reel and the Arabic numerals to the section within the reel of a microfilm copy of the NP used in the research. The originals of the NP are deposited in the Rare Book Department, Union Theo­logical Seminary Library, New York. James Hastings Nichols authorized investigation of the NP and their microfilming. The general content of the statement may also be reconstructed from comments in letters to R. H. Nichols.

²⁴ For illustrative reactions from liberal evangelicals, see Henry S. Coffin to Robert Hastings Nichols (hereafter shortened to RHN), 2 March 1923, and 3 April 1923, NP, 1,5; D. F. Pickard to RHN, 29 March 1923, and 7 April 1923, NP, I, 9; Murray S. Howland (abbreviated MSH) to RHN, 31 March 1923, and 5 April 1923, NP, I, 6. The following letters from well-known midwestern ministers suggest the views of moderates: John Timothy Stone to RHN, 30 March 1923, NP, II, 24; Cleland B. McAfee to RHN, 2 April 1923, NP, II, 24; Henry Chapman Swearingen 10 RHN, 3 April 1923, NP, I, 9.

²⁵ “Christianity Against Jewish Legalism and Scriptural Literalism,” Auburn Seminary Record, 19:1(1923), 18-23; The Christian Work, 12 May 1923, pp. 588ff.

²⁶ Bryan’s exchanges on the moderatorial question are available in General Correspondence, 1923, 37, William Jennings Bryan Papers, Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress.

²⁷ The New York Times, 18 May 1923, p. 1, and 19 May 1923, p. 5; The Presby­terian Advance, 24 May 1923, p. 9. For Bryan’s account of the Assembly, clearly expressing his displeasure with the voting for moderator, see an undated typed manuscript, Folder 1919-1925; Speech, Article and Report File, 49, Bryan Papers.

²⁸ GA Minutes, 1923, pp. 211f.; The New York Times, 23 May 1923, pp. 1, 4; The Presbyterian Advance, 31 May 1923, pp. 8f.

²⁹ GA Minutes, 1923, pp. 252f.; The New York Times, 24 May 1923, p. 1; The Presbyterian Banner, 7 June 1923, p. 30.

³⁰ GA Minutes, 1923, pp. 338f.; The New York Times, 25 May 1923, p. 10; The Presbyterian Advance, 31 May 1923, p. 23.

³¹ The New York Times, 25 May 1923, p. 10. Soon thereafter the New York City pastor expressed his willingness to participate in an aggressive movement with Nichols; Henry S. Coffin to RHN, 29 May 1923, NP, I, 5.

³² The New York Times, 28 May 1923, p. 1.

³³ The Presbyterian Advance, 31 May 1923, p. 4.

³⁴ “Auburn Seminary at the General Assembly,” The Chapel Bell, III (15 June 1923), [4].

³⁵ General Catalogue of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York 1836-1908 (New York: n.p., 1908), p. 382; Who Was Who in America, III (Chicago: The A. N. Marquis Company, 1960), 423.

³⁶ A copy of the invitational letter dated 7 June 1923, is in NP, I, 2.

³⁷ A list of those invited to the Syracuse conference is in NP, I, 1. For the names of those attending and others indicating support as well as an account of the meet­ing, see [Minutes of the Syracuse Conference, 19 June 1923], NP, I, 2. Also, consult The Post Standard [Syracuse], 20 June 1923, p. 6.

³⁸ Minutes of the meetings are collected in NP, I, 2. Financial records of the Conference Committee are in NP, IV, 17 and 18.

³⁹ Letters relevant to the composition of the document are scattered throughout the NP, but of particular usefulness are the exchanges between RHN and MSH in I, 6, and RHN and James E. Clarke in I, 4. Also, following the Assembly of 1924, Clarke sent a short sketch of the formation process to the Secretary of the Confer­ence Committee; consult Clarke to RHN, 7 June 1924, NP, III, 9. Clarke’s sum­mary, “A Brief History of ‘An Affirmation’”, is in NP, I, 1. The basic formal papers disclosing the development of the statement are in NP, I, 1 and 2. For the pub­lished text, see copies in the Presbyterian Historical Society; and Maurice W. Armstrong, Lefferts A. Loetscher, and Charles W. Anderson, eds., The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History (Philadelphia: The West­minster Press, 1956), pp. 284-88.

⁴⁰ For a quotation of the theological declaration, see Loetscher, p. 118.

⁴¹ Of special importance in the contemporaneous statements about responsi­bility for the authorship of the Auburn Affirmation are the following letters: MSH to RHN, 11 January 1924, NP, I, 6, and RHN to Boyd Edwards, 21 January 1924, NP, I, 5. For later specific discussions of authorship, consult the contribution by Nichols to Niebuhr, p. 49, and the subsequent sharing of recollections by the two leaders of the Conference Committee: [MSH] to RHN, 22 May 1945, and [RHN] to MSH, 10 June 1945, NP, III, 12. Additional brief published references to the composition of the document include an address by Paul S. Heath, The Chapel Bell, XXXVI (Summer 1958), 7, and Henry S. Coffin, A Half Century of Union Theological Seminary 1896-1945 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), p. 166

⁴² Among the many documents and letters relating to the obtaining of signa­tures, the following are of particular significance: [Minutes of the Conference Committee], 1 October and 12 November 1923, NP, I, 2; RHN to MSH, 25 October, 4 December, and 27 December1923, NP, I, 6; James E. Clarke to RHN, 26 November and 30 November 1923, and RHN to Clarke, 1 December 1923, NP, I, 4.

⁴³ For an investigation of the characteristics of the original signers and those added prior to the General Assembly of 1924, see my article, “A Statistical Analysis of the Signers of the Auburn Affirmation,” Journal of Presbyterian History, XLIII (September 1965), 182-96.

⁴⁴ For details about publication plans, the following letters are helpful: RHN to Alexander MacColl, 4 January 1924, NP, II, 22; MSH to RHN, 4 January 1924, and RHN to MSH, 19 November 1923; 22 December 1923; 27 December 1923; NP, I, 6. For illustrations of the early publicity, see New York Tribune, 18 December 1923, p. 1; Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 December 1923, p. 1; The New York Times, 19 December 1923, p. 1.

⁴⁵ 9 January 1924, p. 4. Concerning the violation of the release date, see a copy of a letter from MSH to members of the Conference Committee, 19 January 1924, NP, I, 6.

⁴⁶ The following letters indicate some of the problems associated with two of the major Presbyterian weeklies: RHN to MSH, 17 January 1924; 18 January 1924; 1 February 1924; NP, I, 6; Jesse Halsey to RHN, 23 January 1924, NP, II, 28.

⁴⁷ To sample the newspaper coverage, consult The New York Times, 10 January 1924, p. 4; The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 January 1924, p. 2; The Ohio State Journal [Columbus], 10 January 1924, p. 2.

⁴⁸ Time, 21 January 1924, pp. 18f.; The Literary Digest. LXXX (2 February 1924), 32f.; The Christian Work, 19 January 1924, pp. 72, 84f., 95; The Churchman, 19 January 1924, pp. 15f., 29ff.; The Christian Century, 31 January 1924, pp. 132, 151.

⁴⁹ The circulation figures for the Presbyterian papers are drawn from N. W. Ayer and Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer and Sons, 1924), pp. 226, 806, 917, 923, 988.

⁵⁰ For illustrative reactions to the document in the liberal Presbyterian press, see The Continent, 10 January 1924, pp. 39f., 59f.; 24 January 1924, pp. 102f.; 14 February 1924, p. 197; 22 May 1924, p. 651; The Presbyterian Advance, 10 January 1924, pp. 4, 6f., 15; 20 March 1924, pp. 3f.; 15 May 1924, p. 3.

⁵¹ The Presbyterian Banner, 17 January 1924, pp. 5, 8f. The Pittsburgh paper belatedly printed the list of signers, 31 January 1924, p. 21.

⁵² A different appraisal of the response of the exclusivist group is given in Loetscher, p. 120.

⁵³ The Presbyterian, 17 January 1924, p. 8; 31 January 1924, p. 7; 27 March 1924. p. 5; 15 May 1924, p. 12.

⁵⁴ Herald and Presbyter, 23 January 1924, p. 4; 26 March 1924, p. 4; 23 April 1924, p. ⁴; 14 May 1924, pp. 3f. For typical comments about the contents of the Auburn Affirmation, see 16 January 1924, pp.  3f.; 6 February 1924, p. 3; 21 May 1924. p. 4.

⁵⁵ For examples, consult Herald and Presbyter, 16 January 1924, p.  4; 23 January 1924, pp. 4, 8; 26 March 1924, p. 4. It is unclear if Monfort and other com­mentators used Auburn in reference to the Seminary or the City. In correspon­dence, Nichols consistently stressed that the document was not issued by Auburn Seminary; for instances, see RHN to Thomas F. Watkins, 29 February 1924, NP, II, 25: RHN to Robert E. Speer, 16 April 1929, NP, III, 16.

⁵⁶ “For the reaction of Bryan as well as the views of some other prominent Presbyterians, consult The World [New York], 10 January 1924, p. 3; Machen’s attack is in The New York Times, 10 January 1924, p. 4; Macartney’s analysis ap­peared in two Philadelphia papers: The Evening Bulletin, 10 January 1924, p. 2, and The North American, 11 January 1924, p. 3.

⁵⁷ 14 February 1924, p. 4.

⁵⁸ The Presbyterian, 14 February 1924, pp. 6-9.

⁵⁹ “Honesty and Freedom in the Christian Ministry,” Moody Bible Institute Monthly, XXIV (March 1924), 355ff.; The Christian Century, 14 February 1924, p. 217.

⁶⁰ “The Parting of the Ways—Part II,” The Presbyterian, 24 April 1924, pp. 6f. For Machen’s draft of a formal reply to the Auburn Affirmation, see Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Company, 1955), pp. 366ff.

⁶¹ “The Brief Creed of the Affirmation,” The Presbyterian, 31 January 1924, pp. 6f.

⁶² “The Testimony of the Scriptures to Their Own Trustworthiness,” The Princeton Theological Review, XXII (April 1924), 303-25.

⁶³ For illustrative rebuttals by Kennedy, see The Presbyterian, 10 January 1924, p. 12; 17 January 1924, pp. 6-9, 12; 13 March 1924, p. 5; 20 March 1924, p. 3.

⁶⁴ Kennedy’s concentration upon the inerrancy question may be seen in The Presbyterian, 17 January 1924, p. 8; 24 January 1924, p. 5; 6 March 1924, p. 3; 13 March 1924, pp. 3f.; 17 April 1924, pp. 4f., 15 May 1924, p. 5.

⁶⁵ For letters to the hostile papers, consult Herald and Presbyter, 30 January 1924, p. 4, and The Presbyterian, 7 February 1924, pp. 71.

⁶⁶ RHN to MSH, 16 April 1924, NP, I, 6.

⁶⁷ ”The Adopting Act of 1729 and the Powers of the General Assembly,” The Princeton Theological Review, XXII (January 1924), 96-106. Clarke offered an in­terpretation quite different from that of Stevenson in an article distributed with the financial support of the Conference Committee, “The Papal Doctrine of the Infallibility of Church Courts,” The Presbyterian Advance, 27 March 1924, pp. 3f.

⁶⁸ The following items are particularly helpful on the question of additional en­dorsements: RHN to J. Frederick Fitchen, jr., 4 January 1924, NP, I, 5; RHN to MSH, 17 January 1924; 28 January 1924; 23 February 1924; 2 April 1924; NP, I, 6; [Min­utes of the Conference Committee], 12 February 1924, NP, I, 2; RHN to Henry S. Coffin, 4 March 1924, NP, I, 5; and a copy of a letter signed by six alumni addressed to Auburn Seminary men, 25 March 1924, NP, II, 24.

⁶⁹ An Affirmation designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presby­terian Church in the United States of America with all signatures and the Note Supplementary (Auburn: The Jacobs Press, 5 May 1924). For illustrative newspaper coverage of the second issue of the statement, consult The World [New York, 5 May 1924, p. 11; Syracuse Herald, 5 May 1924, p. 1; Buffalo Evening News, 5 May 1924, p. 32.

⁷⁰ Among the letters expressing Nichols’ assessment are RHN to James E. Clarke, 11 March 1924, NP, I, 4; RHN to MSH, 28 March 1924, NP, I, 6; RHN to Everitt K. Taylor, 11 April 1924, NP, I, 12; RHN to Edward Duffield, 16 April 1924, NP, I, 11; RHN to Walter S. Davison, 19 May 1924, NP, II, 26.

⁷¹ For a discussion of some of the major developments, see Loetscher, pp. 121-36.

⁷² GA Minutes, 1926, pp. 62-87, and 1927, pp. 58-86; The New York Times, 1 June 1926, p. 1, and 28 May 1927, p. 18.

⁷³ As an example of the strong attacks, see Gordon H. Clark, “The Auburn Heresy,” Christianity Today, V (April 1935), 259ff. For different appraisals, consult James H. Snowden, “What is the Auburn Affirmation?,” The Presbyterian Banner. 14 June 1934, pp. 2, 9f., and John V. Stephens, An Affirmation (Cincinnati: privately published, 1939).

⁷⁴ The New York Times, 13 October 1934, p. 9, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 November 1934, p. 2.

⁷⁵ For example, consult Murray Forst Thompson, The Auburn Betrayal (Phila­delphia: Committee on Christian Education, n. d.).

⁷⁶ The abundant negative literature may be illustrated by W. C. Robinson, “The Liberal Attack Upon the Supernatural Christ,” The Southern Presbyterian Journal, V (1 May 1946), 4ff. For the other side, see Ernest Trice Thompson, “Is the Northern Church Theologically Sound?,” Union Seminary Review, XLII (January 1931), 109-34, and Walter L. Lingle, “The Auburn Affirmation,” The Presbyterian Outlook, 8 April 1946, pp. 6f.

⁷⁷ For conflicting judgments, see Gordon E. Jackson, “Concerning the Auburn Affirmation,” The United Presbyterian, 25 November 1956, pp. 9f., and John H. Gerstner, Jr., “What is Wrong with the Auburn Affirmation?,” The United Presby­terian, 16 December 1956, p. 15, and 23 December 1956, pp. 20f.

⁷⁸ On the important question of Presbyterians and confessions as related to the Auburn Affirmation, consult the paper by Leonard J. Trinterud, GA Minutes, 1965, p. 314; for a suggestive assessment of the content of The Confession of 1967 and the doctrinal assertions of the Auburn Affirmation, see James Hastings Nichols, “A Presbyterian Confession of Faith,” Christianity and Crisis, 17 May 1965, p. 108; as an example of an unfavorable interpretation, consult Edmund P. Clowney, Another Foundation: The Presbyterian Confessional Crisis (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1965), pp. 5f. The text of The Confession of 1967 is in GA Minutes, 1967, pp. 731-40.

⁷⁹ RHN to MSH, 19 January 1924, NP, I, 6.

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