The Committee of Nine and Evangelicalism

Danny Olinger and John Muether join Camden Bucey to speak about the early history of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the forces within the young ecclesiastical body desiring broader influence throughout the culture.

J. Gresham Machen gathered a broad coalition of “fundamentalists” in leading a charge against modernism at Princeton Theological Seminary and then throughout the Presbyterian Church (USA). After many within this coalition were pushed out or left to form what would become the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, different agendas arose. A significant event—involving what would come to be known as the Committee of Nine—at the 1941 and 1942 General Assemblies would set the tone for the future of the young church.

For further study:

• Hakkenberg, Michael A. “The Battle over the Ordination of Gordon H. Clark.” In Pressing toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, edited by Charles G. Dennison and Richard C. Gamble, 329–50. Philadelphia: Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986.
• Woolley, Paul. “Discontent!” The Presbyterian Guardian 13, no. 14 (July 25, 1944): 213–14.
• Minutes from the ninth General Assembly of the OPC (the reports of the committee begin on p. 28)

Participants: Camden Bucey, Danny Olinger, John Muether