Doctrine matters. We live in times when all truth is under attack, especially orthodox Christian teaching. The higher courts of the church are essential to preserve truth and to ensure that the church’s ministers teach and live in accordance with sound doctrine. Ruling elders are part of the firewall that protects the sheep of today and tomorrow from error and wolves. 

Some presbyters seem to believe that entering the arena of ecclesial/denominational controversy is—to quote the military supercomputer in the prescient 1983 teen movie WarGames—“a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” In the film, the drama was supplied by the assumption that thermonuclear combat led to the mutually assured destruction of all participants.
A ruling elder’s participation in the courts of the church, though, need not necessitate mutual assured destruction, to stick with Cold War imagery. Rather, the goal is the peace and purity of the church; the hope is divinely assured edification and protection of Christ’s flock. The Great Shepherd rules the church, but he does it mediately through weak and fallible men—presbyters—who are always plural in the New Testament and in biblical presbyterian order. This means power is not concentrated in one or a few elders or (as we shall see below) in one type of elders. Weakness and fallibility (also known as the fact of total depravity) demand the plurality of elders and the accountability of courts we find modeled in Acts and the Epistles.
The fact of total depravity means the ruling elder’s service in any level of the church courts can be less than enjoyable. A newly ordained ruling elder may soon be shocked by discipline cases and thorny issues in his local church. Romantic notions of the eldership are quickly dispelled. There may be trouble enough “at home,” but a presbyterian ruling elder’s responsibilities and concerns ought not end at the local church’s property lines.
Called To Enter Into The Conflict
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door”—so said Bilbo to his nephew. One might say the same to a ruling elder sent for the first time to presbytery or General Assembly, even though attending the higher courts of a presbyterian church may not be physically dangerous—apart from hours of sitting in uncomfortable chairs! The biggest casualty is lost time for ruling elders who are usually otherwise employed in the service of occupation or family when the courts meet. There are yet more participation costs. Showing up regularly can get you tasked with more responsibilities (such as committee service) since ruling elders are often in short supply. There is a steep learning curve for most ruling elders and staying in touch with and informed about the wider church is tough for a ruling elder. Little about the church courts is familiar, especially to a new ruling elder. The rules and processes of church courts can be bewildering. And there’s controversy and conflict. The problems of other churches and pastors and disagreements about doctrine and practice are anything but pleasant.
Gresham Machen famously wrote, “In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.” The church doesn’t need men who look for fights or love to fight, but she does need ruling elders who bring common sense and practical experience to the courts…and who are willing to fight for truth and good order when needed. Total depravity means the need often arises.
Can’t pastors (teaching elders in Presbyterian Church in America parlance) be trusted to handle the affairs of the wider church? History says otherwise, and the polity of the PCA requires otherwise. The PCA has arguably the most robust principle of the parity of elders among conservative presbyterian denominations.
Read More

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

One, it is not merely a local problem, for the church is one and what happens or is tolerated in one section soon infects the others. This statement is essentially a denial of Scripture’s teaching that the church is a lump leavened by the barest amount of leaven (1 Cor. 5:6-7; Gal. 5:9). It takes – as with C.A. Briggs in the PCUSA or Robertson Smith in the Free Church of Scotland – but one bad professor or minister in one seminary or presbytery to implicate the whole church in a sinful tolerance of evil, which, once tolerated, comes to infect the whole church. The church has, as such, a duty to not tolerate bad doctrine and practice, with any failure bringing the censure of her Lord (Rev. 2:14-16, 20-23).

By Faith, the official online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), recently published a two part series of articles concerning the proposed Overtures 23 and 37, which would seek to modify the PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO) to forbid from office, amongst others, those that proclaim a homosexual identity. The article urging the rejection of the overtures was written by David Coffin, a member of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission.
In his introduction Coffin says that “a book of church order is not designed to settle all the questions or controversies that may come up in the life of the church.” This is true, but it misses the point. We have before us a controversy regarding the essential nature of office and of who is to be allowed to hold it, i.e., a constitutional question. As the BCO is our constitution it is both appropriate and reasonable to seek to amend it accordingly to bring about a satisfactory resolution to the present constitutional controversy. He says further that “changes in our organic law should only be proposed and adopted when our regular order is shown to be deficient or has failed in some way.” The present order has failed, clearly: current law has not kept proud sinners out of office and has rather taken their side. He continues with a little theoretical reflection, praising “stability of law” as an essential item that “should not be disturbed except under necessity.” Again, this is agreed, and again he misses the point. We are under great necessity at present. Also, effectiveness of law is essential in any good government, for a weak government that cannot (or will not) enforce its own laws is doomed for displacement by one that will, even if it be only the hard rule of utter chaos.
Coffin titles his first section “The Overtures Lack Mature Consideration,” in which we see his first broad reason for opposing them. Lay aside the somewhat uncharitable intimation that they were then the result of immature consideration and note what he says in his first sentence here: “Our General Assembly’s care for our Constitutional order, with the consent of the presbyteries, should not be used to satisfy the demands of social media.” What about the demands of justice and of fidelity to our Lord and his word? This is not merely a matter of people using contemporary platforms to espouse their opinions: those opinions, however expressed, are well-grounded in an understanding of our present case and of our sin and danger in allowing office to those that ought not to hold it. He goes on with a little more waxing eloquent as to our theory of polity and says that what he calls “mature consideration” “cannot come at first glance, or in the urgency created by allegations stirring popular fears.” I confess I do not know what he means. First glance? This thing has been going on for years now, the first Revoice conference having been in 2018. As for urgency being bad, what, one wonders, does the he make of something like this?
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor. 5:1-5, ESV)
That is an example of excommunication conducted in absentia via letter, without any proceedings, and without appeal. We are not apostles, granted, but is it too much to say that the principle of decisive urgency Paul embodies – and the Corinthian church with him, it being the immediate agent of excommunication – is one we ought to emulate rather than one we should casually deprecate as “immature?”
TE Coffin continues by saying that “to attempt to remedy what is in the first instance a local problem, by a Constitutional change, is a violation” of that mature order he so values. There is much misunderstanding of the situation here. One, it is not merely a local problem, for the church is one and what happens or is tolerated in one section soon infects the others. This statement is essentially a denial of Scripture’s teaching that the church is a lump leavened by the barest amount of leaven (1 Cor. 5:6-7; Gal. 5:9). It takes – as with C.A. Briggs in the PCUSA or Robertson Smith in the Free Church of Scotland – but one bad professor or minister in one seminary or presbytery to implicate the whole church in a sinful tolerance of evil, which, once tolerated, comes to infect the whole church. The church has, as such, a duty to not tolerate bad doctrine and practice, with any failure bringing the censure of her Lord (Rev. 2:14-16, 20-23).
Two, this is, again, a constitutional question affecting the practice of ordination/investiture of office of the whole denomination. Three, it is no violation of Presbyterian polity to adopt constitutional measures to defend against an offense as heinous as the desecration of office by allowing it to be held by those who have no business there. Our polity and constitution are meant to defend against the church becoming corrupt. We are Protestants, after all, and our church has come into being because of the corruption of the medieval church wherewith our ancestors were associated. Four, Coffin’s objection makes the processes more important than the end for which such processes are constituted. Coffin would have us value order –or better: the laborious, tedious inefficiency that he calls careful and mature order – above the end of holiness and fidelity to Christ for which our system of government has been erected.
In his next sentence he says that such a suggested change as the dual adoption of Overtures 23 and 37 “subjects our government to frequent change driven, not by necessity, but by ephemeral concerns of parties in the church.” It is doubtful that this issue is going away any time soon. Cultural acceptance of sexual sin will not change soon, and perhaps not for many generations (if ever before Christ’s return). In addition, if it be ephemeral it will only be because we will move on to the question of allowing the next sin. The momentum of increasing infidelity is not ceased by compromising with it or waving our hands and sneering, “Oh, but that is just how one party in the church feels. They’ll be over that sentiment soon enough.” Today the controversy is about celibate but attracted; who can doubt but that tomorrow it will be about the question of actively practicing individuals who desire office?
Farther along he says that “the proposals now before the presbyteries could not have been subject to serious reflection and careful deliberation in the Assembly.” A light rejoinder: could anything be as vigorously deliberated as it ought when we tried to do the whole denomination’s business in about 3 days, and that after we had canceled the previous General Assembly? This is not an objection to the measures, but to our present form and practice of General Assemblies.
He continues with this argument, saying that the overtures “were taken up by the Assembly after a very long day of deliberation and debate, late in the evening, with weary commissioners showing increasing signs of impatience with prolonged consideration” and thus he believes “the Assembly was clearly not at its best in the actions taken.” This objection is weak. When lawfully convened the actions of the General Assembly are themselves lawful and authoritative, regardless of the time of day they were decided or the physical and emotional state of the messengers. A meeting is to be assumed competent unless clearly proved otherwise. Coffin continues on this line, however, and says that “the actions on the Overtures appear to put the Assembly at odds with itself in its declaration that the Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality is biblically faithful.” This too is a rather weak objection. For a legislative body to be at odds with itself is unsurprising and it proves, not that the first act was right and the second wrong, but only that legislating and administering the affairs of a large denomination is hard for weak men wracked by the noetic effects of sin.
In his next statement the TE Coffin says, “It is instructive to note that the Ad Interim Committee could have recommended BCO changes, if any were deemed warranted.” Yes and the Assembly could have either accepted or ignored such recommendations, or, as has actually been the case now, taken action on its own without regard to the committee. Coffin seems to forget that the higher body constitutes the lesser, and that in constituting a committee an Assembly lays aside none of its rights and can do as it will with the committee and its recommendations and reports. When he then continues to say that the AIC “judged the BCO to be adequate with respect to the matters under consideration,” we can safely rejoin that the whole Assembly judged otherwise, as was its right.
Coffin further opines that “this attempt to amend the BCO is futile with respect to the controversies now troubling the PCA.” This will only be so if a) the measures do not pass; and b) future courts fail to apply the overtures rigorously and faithfully when they are adopted as part of the BCO. Coffin elaborates by saying that “it is unlikely anything in these amendments, had they been in the BCO before 2018, would have changed the ruling of the SJC in 2020-12 Speck v. Missouri.”
This is a deeply concerning statement. Suppose, as is eminently probable, that the overtures pass and charges are brought against an elder to divest him of office because he boasts of his celibate homosexual identity. Now one of the presbyters sitting to hear the case has read this article, as is also probable, and as he deliberates in his own mind he remembers this statement that the overtures are not likely to change the SJC’s opinion on such matters. So rather than vote in a way (guilty) that he thinks will lead to the accused elder appealing to the SJC, he alters his vote accordingly to put the matter to rest and save what seems to be needless hassle. In such a case what Coffin will have done by publishing this article is to have poisoned the well. He is guiltless of harm so long as his position wins out. But if it does not he may well be guilty of swaying the minds of others in how they vote in future matters related to the overtures and their application.
If we move from such hypothetical (but credible) scenarios to a more general consideration of his work, it strikes an observer as odd that someone who will probably have to judge cases arising because of the adoption of these overtures would be chosen to present the case against adopting them. A further consideration of this element of Coffin’s article will be considered in the next article in this series.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, SC. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the leadership or members of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church.

Presbyterians were founding congregations in the New World as early as the 1630s.  Denton himself had established “a Presbyterian church” in Hempstead, Long Island in 1641 even though he was preaching “to a Presbyterian congregation from the first arrival, in 1630.”

Pre-1700s Presbyterianism in America is shrouded in mystique. Some would say it didn’t exist since, true enough, there was no formal Presbytery established until 1706. Too often it is made to appear that Presbyterianism suddenly dropped into the colonies out of nowhere, starting with Francis Makemie (1658-1708). Books and lectures on the history of American Presbyterianism rarely detail what the landscape was like before the 1700s, while at the same time—sometimes—admitting there was movement and church planting going on. This is a major disservice to the pre-Makemie Presbyterians as well as to those wanting a depiction of early Presbyterianism in America.
To correct this problem it will be helpful to consider the earliest and most active Presbyterian in the New World’s infancy.[1] The Reverend Richard Denton (1603-1662) was a dwarfish, one-eyed Cambridge Puritan whom Cotton Mather boasted “could sway a congregation like he was nine feet tall.”[2] Historian Alfred Nevin says, “In the history of early Presbyterianism in this country the name of Richard Denton should have a permanent and prominent place.”[3] Unfortunately, this has not been so. One would be hard-pressed to find any mention of Denton in the more recent treatments of American Presbyterianism, despite the Presbyterian Church of America claiming he was “the first Presbyterian on this continent,”[4] which is the same conclusion drawn by Nevin.[5] In Denton’s day, he was well-known enough to be included in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, where he is described as follows:
Among these clouds was our Pious and Learned Mr. Richard Denton, a Yorkshire Man, who having watered Halifax in England, with his fruitful Ministry, was a Tempest then hurried into New-England, where first at Weathersfield, and then at Stamford, his Doctrine dropt as the Rain, his Speech distilled as the Dew, as the small Rain upon the tender Herb, and as the Show’rs upon the Grass.[6]
Earlier in the Magnalia, Mather describes Denton as “a highly religious man with strong Presbyterian beliefs…His well-accomplished mind, in his lesser body, was an Illiad in a nutshell. I think he was blind of an eye, yet he was not the least of the seers of Israel; he saw a very considerable portion of those things which eye hath not seen. He was far from cloudy in his conceptions and principles of divinity.”[7]
Who Was Richard Denton?
Richard Denton was born in England in 1603. Upon graduating from Cambridge in 1623 he ministered at Coley Chapel, near Coley Hall, in a small town north of Manchester.[8] “Here he remained seven years, when, finding the times hard, the bishops at their height, and the Book of Sports on the Sabbath-day insupportable, he immigrated with a numerous family to New England.”[9] The Memoirs of the Rev. Oliver Heywood provide us with a fuller description of Denton’s decision to leave England for the New World:
He was a good minister of Jesus Christ, affluent in his worldly circumstances, and had several children. He continued here about seven years; times were sharp, the bishops being in their height. In his time came out the book for sports on the Sabbath days. He saw he could not do what was required, feared further persecution, and therefore took the opportunity of going into New England.[10]
Even though “the chapel at Coley was enlarged” under Denton, the vexations of impure worship finally drove him off the continent.
Presbyterians were founding congregations in the New World as early as the 1630s.[11] Denton himself had established “a Presbyterian church” in Hempstead, Long Island in 1641 even though he was preaching “to a Presbyterian congregation from the first arrival, in 1630.”[12] He is also found preaching “from time to time to a small group of Puritans” in New York City.[13] Once upon American soil, Denton proved not everyone’s cup of tea (pun intended). The “strong Presbyterian beliefs” spoken of by Mather seem to have riled the Independents and Anglicans on more than one occasion. After migrating to the New World with John Winthrop and Sir Richard Saltonstall, Denton had tried to settle down in Watertown, Massachusetts: “but the firmness of his convictions—his Presbyterian opposition to the oligarchic rule of the New England Divines—again led him to depart to Hempstead.”[14]
Dutch ministers John Megapolensis and Drisnis mentioned in a letter to the Classis of Amsterdam, dated August 5, 1657, that “when he began to baptize the children of parents who are not members of the church, they rushed out of the church.”[15] Ten years prior, while at Hempstead, a conflict over Presbyterian polity “caused some twenty-five families, led by Mr. Denton, to make another move.”[16] They didn’t travel far, however, stopping within the Colony of New Haven in a place called Stamford. In Stamford, “He followed Presbyterian forms, but not without protests.”[17] Among other things, “Mr. Denton’s uncompromising democracy, or Presbyterianism, came in conflict with the New Haven rules that none but church members should vote in town meetings.”[18]
That Denton was Presbyterian is hardly debatable. In the same 1657 letter to the Classis of Amsterdam mentioned above, it is stated that “at Hempstead, about seven Dutch miles from here, there are some Independents; also many of our persuasion and Presbyterians. They have also a Presbyterian preacher, named Richard Denton, an honest, pious and learned man.”[19] The History and Vital Records of Christ’s First Presbyterian Church of Hempstead, Long Island, New York tells us “Denton had been educated in Cambridge University, where the principles of Presbyterianism had been instilled into his mind firmly and aggressively.”[20] We saw above that Mather painted him as “a highly religious man with strong Presbyterian beliefs.” In Long Island, Denton went to work building up both the colony and congregation of Hempstead. Nevin states a whole colony of Presbyterians came with him from “the old country, and followed him till their final settlement on Long Island.”[21]
Nevin reports there was an entire “Presbyterian tree planted by the hand of Richard Denton”[22] in Long Island, going so far as to call Long Island “a Presbyterian colony” under Denton’s leadership, a fact also preserved by colonial records.[23] Two of Denton’s sons, Nathanael and Daniel, “with a number of their Presbyterian brethren,” not only formed a colony in the village of Jamaica in 1656 but “as might be expected, they immediately established religious worship.”[24] A memorial of the inhabitants of Jamaica, signed by Nathanael Denton, states: “This town of Jamaica, in the year 1656, was purchased from the Indian natives by divers persons, Protestants, dissenters, in the manner of worship, from the forms used in the Church of England, who have called a minister of our own profession to officiate among them.”[25] Thus religious services were taking place since at least 1656, but more importantly for the history of American Presbyterianism, it can be demonstrated these religious services were Presbyterian. On March 24, 1663, Rev. Zachariah Walker was assigned to the parsonage built the year before, and
from this date to the present day there is a clear record of every minister who has served the church, together with the time of their service. George McNish, the eighth pastor, was one of the original members of the Mother Presbytery of Philadelphia. That this church has always been a Presbyterian church there seems no room for doubt. It is so denominated in all the records where it is named. It has had a bunch of ruling elders from time immemorial.
Historian Leonard J. Trinterud states that although the Presbyterian beginnings under Richard Denton “failed to develop into churches of Presbyterian order, the Hempstead church did contribute to the founding, at Jamaica, Long Island, of what was probably the first permanent Presbyterian church in the new world.”[26]
The latest major book written on American Presbyterianism confirms that “an organized Presbyterian congregation was established on Long Island by 1662 (Jamaica Church), and there were other Presbyterians throughout New York.”[27] The governor of New York reported in 1678 that of all the religious groups on the Island, “Presbyterians and Independents [are] most numerous and substantiall.” On November 25th, 1700, John Hobbert was “ordained according to ye Rule & way of the Presbyterian way, & it is the unanimous mind of the towne that he be ordained accordingly.” In 1702 there were more than a hundred families at the church. It was “the mother church of other churches in the vicinity” and contributed families to the First Presbyterian Church in New York City and Hopewell, New Jersey. Thus, Nevin concludes that “Richard Denton was one of the very first Presbyterian ministers in the country, and the Church of Jamaica, Queen’s County, New York, is the oldest existent Presbyterian Church in the United States.”[28] Such historical records leave no doubt regarding the prowess of Presbyterianism in pre-1706 America, and specifically as it flourished through the labors of Richard Denton.
Denton’s Death and Legacy
Another letter from the Rev.’s John Megapolensis and Drisnis dated October 22, 1657 claims, “Mr. Richard Denton, who is sound in faith, of a friendly disposition, and beloved by all, cannot be induced by us to remain, although we have earnestly tried to do this in various ways.” They mention Denton going to Virginia “to seek a situation, complaining of salary, and that he was getting in debt,” but he had since returned. Eventually Denton would return to England “because of his wife who is sickly will not go without him, and there is need of their going there on account of a legacy of four hundred pounds sterling lately left by a deceased friend.”
Denton arrived back in England in 1659, although he left behind a quiver of children who would in turn have big families. “The men were active in the local militias fighting the Indians and they developed excellent military experience that prepared them for officer commissions when they moved to the Virginia frontier.”[29] Upon his death in 1660, Denton’s tombstone in Yorkshire would bear the following inscription: “Here lies the dust of Richard Denton. O’er his low peaceful grave bends the perennial cypress, fit emblem of his unfading flame. On earth his bright example, religious light, shown forth o’er multitudes. In heaven his pure rob’d spirit shines like an effulgent flame.”
Denton’s unyielding stance for Presbyterian polity and his unswerving zeal to see it implemented in the New World calls for a reiteration of our initial point: the history of the Presbyterian church in America begins in the wilderness of the 1630s, not Philadelphia in 1706. For those who would dissent, the following must be weighed: without the pioneering efforts of early Presbyterian ministers like Denton, would there have been a presbytery in 1706? The data above has given us the answer.
Ryan Denton is the Pastor of Lubbock Reformed Church in Lubbock, TX.

[1] Walter C. Krumm, “Who Was the Reverend Richard Denton,” New York Genealogical and Biological Record, Vol. 117 (New York, NY: New York and Geneological and Biographical Society, 1986), 163-166.
[2] Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana : or, The ecclesiastical history of New-England, from its first planting in the year 1620. unto the year of Our Lord, 1698. In seven books … by Mather, Cotton. 1663-1728, Vol. 1 (Hartford, 1853), 398.
[3] Nevin, Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian church in the United States of America: including the Northern and Southern Assemblies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian encyclopedia publishing co., 1884), 182.
[4] Krumm, “Who Was the Reverend Richard Denton?”, 163-166.
[5] Nevin, Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian Church, 182: “Richard Denton was one of the very first Presbyterian ministers in the country, and the Church of Jamaica, Queen’s County, New York, is the oldest existent Presbyterian Church in the United States.”
[6] Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, vol. 1., 182.
[7] Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, vol. 1., 182.
[8] In those days the chapel was commonly called “St. John of Jerusalem.”
[9] “Richard Denton,” Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Ed. Robert Harrison, Vol. 14 (https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Denton,_Richard ), last accessed: April 21, 2023.
[10] Memoirs of the Rev. Oliver Heywood, B.A. (Rev. Richard Slate, 1827), 20.
[11] David Koch, “Long Island Presbyterians: Our Puritan Beginnings” (pcusa.org).
[12] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 182.
[13] Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition: A Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 23.
[14] http://longislandgenealogy.com/firstPresHempstead/July1922.htm
[15] J. Franklin Jameson, “Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664” (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909).
[16] Ed. John Dean Fish, “History and Vital Records of Christ’s First Presbyterian Church of Hempstead, Long Island, New York” (longislandgeneology.com), last accessed: April 21, 2023.
[17] Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition, 23.
[18] Ed. Fish, “History and Vital Records…Hempstead, Long Island.”
[19] Jameson, “Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664.”
[20] “History of Our Church,” Christ’s First Presbyterian Church, Hempstead, NY (www.Cfpcny.com/history), last accessed: April 21, 2023.
[21] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 183.
[22] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 183.
[23] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 183.
[24] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 183.
[25] Nevin, Encyclopedia, 183.
[26] Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition, 22.
[27] Nathan P. Feldmeth, S. Donald Fortson III, Garth M. Rosell, and Kenneth J. Stewart, Reformed and Evangelical across Four Centuries: The Presbyterian Story in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2022), 145.
[28] Not only does Nevin claim to have “verified by personal examination of the authentic sources here mentioned,” but he also lists the following sources: Thompson’s History of Long Island; Woodbridge’s Historical Discourse; Onderdonk’s History of Queen’s County; McDonald’s Church History; New York State Documents History; Moore’s Early History of Hempstead; Jamaica Town Records. Such accounts show us that there is a Presbyterian “history” in America already underway long before 1706.
[29] Josephine C Frost, ed., Records of the Town of Jamaica, Long Island, New York: 1656-1751 (Brooklyn, NY: The Long Island Historical Society, 1914), 1:20.
Related Posts: