Word: mergers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...addition to the Westminster. The effect, to conservative Southerners, has been to make more ambiguous the church's basic beliefs. The committee required a stricter doctrinal vow for future clergy but also agreed that the reunited church would write its final confession of faith only after the merger. Southern conservatives agreed because they won another, far more significant compromise. The plan includes an "escape clause" that allows Southern congregations, but not Northern ones, to leave any time between 1984 and 1991, with their church properties, if they are unhappy with the merger. This clause guaranteed sufficient conservative support...
...called Northern branch has long wanted to unite with the Southern, and not one of its presbyteries (regional groupings of local churches) has voted no so far. Under the Southern church's constitution, a negative vote by only 16 of the 61 presbyteries would kill the merger. But the narrow approval in Walterboro last week raised the Southern Presbyterian vote to 35 to 7, making passage of the historic proposal virtually certain. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to be formed in June, will become the nation's fourth largest Protestant body...
...Presbyterians agree. Since 1969, when the current merger negotiations began, each church has suffered schisms as disgruntled conservatives packed up and started their own small denominations or joined other existing churches. Both Presbyterian branches have also suffered a steady drop in membership. In all, the Southern church has declined by 129,000 adherents and the Northern church by a disastrous 778,000, or one-fourth of its total membership...
...joint committee that prepared the merger plan had several delicate issues to contend with. For example, their proposal had to assure black Presbyterians that they would not be hurt by the merger. Racial tensions underlay the historic split, and the reunion would have been seriously flawed if blacks protested the agreement. Despite decades of separation and suspicion, says Taylor, "the amazing thing is that black Presbyterians are saying, 'We're going to trust you one more time.' " Another key issue was the policy of the Northern church requiring local congregations to elect women as lay elders. When...
...voting patterns so far show that a majority of Southern Presbyterians basically agree with the Rev. John M. Miller of Hilton Head Island, S.C., who argues that opposition to merger now is "a feudal expression of longing for a past that can never be." Adds Richards, 80, a patriarch of the Southern denomination: "The church is under attack in so many quarters that we can't be divided. We've got to sacrifice the things that aren't essential in order to get together." -By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by B.J. Phillips/Atlanta