Dissing America’s 250th

Presbyterians were central to founding America. Sadly, they are now much faded, and the chief Presbyterian denomination is specifically refusing to recognize America’s 250^th.

At their current General Assembly, the 1-million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) rejected a thoughtful resolution to honor America’s birthday.

Not uncoincidentally, the PCUSA also reported losing another 27,000 members in 2025, taking it down to 1,019,003. Sixty years ago, its predecessor bodies numbered over 4 million. In 2026 it will almost certainly fall below 1 million members for the first time since the 19^th century.

Instead of lamenting the membership loss, the PCUSA news service celebrated that the  2.6% loss was “significantly lower rate of loss than in recent years, when the average annual loss of the previous 10 years was 4.6%.”

Hooray.

It also headlined that the denomination “remains a denomination of more than 1 million members,” even though that will no longer be the case after 2026 numbers are tabulated.

The PCUSA is the theologically liberal Mainline Protestant version of Presbyterianism. The conservative Presbyterian Church in America, which emerged in the 1970s, has over 400,000 members. The conservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church has 34,000 members.

It’s reasonable to ask if the PCUSA will functionally exist a decade from now, beyond endowments and buildings. Its demise, and the demise of Mainline Protestantism, which was long the chief religious pillar of America, can only be lamented.

Mainline Protestantism theologically liberalized early in the 20^th century, which included losing interest in evangelism, which never bodes well for a religious group’s future. Its leftist politics from the 1960s onwards never represented most members, nor does it now. The collapse of denominational loyalties in American religion now compounds the struggles of old-style denominations like the PCUSA.

As literal founders of America, Mainline Protestantism’s hostility to the American project is baffling, revealing, and tragic.  An overture asked the PCUSA General Assembly to commemorate “the vital role of the Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Tradition in the American Revolution of 1775-1783, including 12 Presbyterians and 13 Congregationalists among the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, representing the largest religious group within the 2.5 million inhabitants of the 13 colonies at the time.”

It also advocated that Presbyterians:

Educate and advocate for the enduring principles rooted in Reformed Christianity: reverence for God, the author of liberty and equality for all those created in God’s image; self-government on a democratic and representative basis as we have in our churches; respect for individual conscience based in the Holy Spirit’s ability to speak to all, thus giving all the right to speak and vote; accountable government and limits on the powers of any individual or interest in or on that government; a high view of public service opposed to corruption and self-enrichment; checks and balances on power based in a realistic understanding of human sin and self-interest; fair taxation; appropriate regulation; a covenantal view of reciprocal responsibilities; and a positive understanding of government to serve the common welfare and common defense, not just a “necessary evil;

And:

Encourage congregations and presbyteries to consider the application of these principles in the current governmental practices of the United States, and to hold public informational events including elected officials, educators, and faith leaders;

The call for commemorating America’s 250^th was not a jingoist celebration:

Support the accurate researching and teaching of all aspects of our history, including—as honest patriots—the failures of our nation to live up to its ideals with regard to women, Native Americans, African-Americans, and various immigrant groups: Propaganda cannot be allowed to re-write history in the accurate teaching of the participation of representatives of the reformed traditions that, though their faith informed their participation in the formation of the governmental structure of the United States, their intention was not to create a “Christian Nation” but to form a nation in which all faiths could be practiced freely without fear or favor;

The PCUSA General Assembly legislative committee superintending this proposal advised against it because it “risks sanctifying a narrative that binds the Church’s witness to a national origin story rooted in conquest, exclusion, and the erasure of Indigenous peoples, particularly women and gender expansive persons.”

Also, the committee was concerned that the “the overture also risks elevating American identity in unhealthy ways.”  And “at this moment, the church needs to be living into our interconnected global identity, with humility as Reformed Christians.”

One commissioner critiqued the resolution, explaining: “This is not our country. We stole it from women, from Two‑Spirit people and from others.” General Assembly commissioners agreed, rejecting the commemoration proposal by 361-108.

Reformed Christians, like the PCUSA, should appreciate that human depravity is not limited to the United States of America. Slavery existed universally for millennia, and the first comprehensive declaration against it was in America with the Germantown Quaker Petition of 1688. Vermont became the first territory in the world to outlaw slavery in 1777.

For millennia universally women were not the social and legal equals of men. The women’s rights movement began in America with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

As to the conquest of native peoples, humanity has waged conquest among each other for millennia, with the strong displacing or subjugating the weak.  Perhaps Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas gets credit for first rejecting the universal practice in the 1500s. The modern consensus that aggression, conquest, and colonialism are wrong certainly owes much to political developments in the United States, chiefly the Declaration of Independence of 1776, with its understanding that all peoples should self-govern.

Of course, all these principles that Americans assume are still contested today around the world. Although not technically illegal, slavery still endures in Africa and elsewhere. Women are legally second-class citizens in many societies, especially in Islamic ones. And actors like Vladimir Putin claim the right to invade, conquer, subjugate, and eradicate whole nations.

Of course, the PCUSA General Assembly has little to say about these challenges. It did denounce white Christian Nationalism:

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) repudiates the ideology and practices of white Christian nationalism in all its forms and affirms the PCUSA’s historical support for disestablishment of religion as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Christian nationalism is a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian identity with U.S. civic life and national identity. It asserts that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should continue to be governed according to what its proponents see as Christian values or biblical principles. “Nationalism” emphasizes the importance of a “homeland” with a shared ethnic identity among its citizens. Christian Nationalism becomes “white” when it suggests that those of northern European ancestry are inherently more capable, intelligent, moral, and able to lead — and are thus the only “true Americans” and “true Christians.”

This is fine, but what does the PCUSA offer as a positive alternative to white Christian Nationalism? Only national deconstruction, grievance, and despair. Shouldn’t churches be builders and not deconstructionists of society?

No matter. Few even of the remaining PCUSA members will heed these General Assembly resolutions. They have not in decades. They instead focus on their own local church and lives as Christians, instructed by other resources they self-collate. Denominational authority in American Christianity has gone the way of the dodo.

But the tragic self-immolation of the PCUSA and other Mainline Protestant denominations is a grievous loss to Christianity and to America. There are no institutional successors. But we should still celebrate what Presbyterians and other Mainline Protestants accomplished in founding and sustaining America and its unique liberties for most of its history.