Whatever the motivations and intent behind secretive caucus groups, the reactions within the PCA follow a similar pattern: widening tribal differences, amplifying arguments between perceived camps, and breaking affinities into parties. 

Every Christian ought to heed Paul’s warnings to “have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths” (1 Timothy 4:7) and not to be found in “quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20). Thus, we must be especially cautious when approaching a subject such as “Secret political caucuses” in the history of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

My aim in this post is to present a brief history of secret political caucuses in the PCA with only what can be sourced and deduced from information that is openly accessible. Because secret organizations are secret, this topic is difficult to study, and subject to vain speculation.

In the History of the PCA, we can be certain of the existence of three major organizations that have influenced the creation and the history of the PCA up to the present day. Here are the relevant criteria for evaluating whether or not an organization is a secret political caucus:

1. confidentiality in communication between participants,
2. confidentiality either over the group’s existence, its nature, its membership, and/or over the matters and strategy discussed to achieve its polity-related goals,
3. an ideological ethos or goal,
4. an agenda to accomplish its goals by staffing denominational agencies and committees, and
5. a strategy to accomplish those goals by coordination of votes in the courts and committees of the Church.

We begin our study with an organization that has influenced how people in the PCA have viewed such groups Though antedating the PCA itself, this organization was undeniably a catalyst for the creation of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

The Fellowship of St. James

The Fellowship of St. James was a secret organization that functioned in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS – the old Southern Presbyterian church that was the origin of the PCA) during the middle of the 20^th Century. Most secondary sources relay the following basic details: The Fellowship was the brainchild of Ernest Trice Thompson, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. This organization was committed to broadening the theological tent of the PCUS, to working more ecumenically in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, and to eventually merge with the more liberal Northern Presbyterian Church.^[1]

In 1963, the Fellowship was revealed and a group named the “Concerned Presbyterians” organized against it, publishing their first “Bulletin,” raising the alarm:

“Very few laymen are aware of the fact that over the last 15 years there has been a secret organization in our Church working quietly behind the scenes to gain control of the political machinery of our denomination. This group, composed mostly of ministers, called themselves the Fellowship of St. James. This relatively small but determined group influences and seeks to control the various agencies of the courts of our Church. In recent years they have succeeded in electing enough men of their choosing to enable them to control many of the important committees of the various Church courts and to have effective majorities on the governing bodies of many of the boards, agencies, and other institutions of the church.”^[2]

In his history of the PCA, Sean Lucas reproduces the counter conclusion of Dr. Peter Hobbie, a professor at Presbyterian College and defender of Dr. Thompson, that the Fellowship was a dinner party and “they were largely focused on the work of the Presbyterian of the South, which later became the PO [ed: Presbyterian Outlook]. That they discussed denomination politics there is little doubt. But their work was no secret – it was evident in the editorial policy of the PO.”^[3] PCA Historian Frank J. Smith received a correspondence from Ernest Trice Thompson himself insisting “We were all active churchmen, but we didn’t draw up goals or plans for the church courts.”^[4]

So was the Fellowship of St. James not a secret political caucus? Certainly, since we know about it today, the Fellowship of St. James did not remain secret about its existence. However, it undoubtedly began in secret, its membership was not public, the methods of the group were not publicized, and history only knows about it because it was revealed in 1963 and publicly recorded in the Bulletins of the Concerned Presbyterians. That a group called “The Fellowship of Concern” would form later with many of the same actors, to do what the Fellowship of St. James was said to do in private is also curious. And while they worked in and were largely in agreement with the “Presbyterian of the South,” which became the “Presbyterian Outlook,” the Fellowship was suggested as the means to accomplish goals in a confidential and organized way apart from the activities of the Presbyterian Outlook. Ultimately, Frank Smith notes: “Half a century from now when closed archives are opened the exact nature of the group will be more obvious.”^[5]

We see with the Fellowship of St. James another feature of such organizations in Presbyterian History, and that is the cross-pollination between the group and public faces. This cross-pollination becomes especially evident once the existence of the secret group has been made public. After the Fellowship of St. James was made public, soon a public face named the “Fellowship of Concern” enabled a measure of legitimacy for members who desired a public voice in addition to the private planning and coordination in the courts of the church.

The Concerned Presbyterians were in turn denounced as alarmist, and were condemned by PCUS presbyteries in Tennessee and Texas. [citation needed] The Concerned Presbyterians were easier targets for formal critique, largely due to being public with their concerns. Meanwhile, while the Fellowship of St. James remained shrouded in much secrecy. This fact frustrated many conservatives who believed at certain points they were the majority, yet they did not control policy or the polity of the PCUS, and their protests against such machinations of a secret group were met with condemnations of their concerns rather than investigations into the secret group.

The Concerned Presbyterian response to an organized secret society was to organize and leave the PCUS on the belief that the administrative machinery of the denomination was hopelessly lost to a small but well-organized caucus. Eventually, Concerned Presbyterians would make up one of the four major groups founding the PCA

The Vision Caucus—“Partisanship in the PCA”

The first two decades of the PCA’s existence were not without strong disagreement between elders in the Church. There is little evidence of formal organized factions in the first fifteen years of the Church’s history. Soon, however, two competing visions for the PCA emerged. Some elders developed concerns that the denomination was not consistently living up to its confessional positions. Others believed the PCA’s original goal was to be a big tent of conservative and orthodox evangelical Christians who allow for a diversity of ministry approaches (and a certain latitude of theological conviction).

In 1987, Founding Fathers Paul Settle and Jim Baird invited fifty people in the PCA to spend time together to discuss and understand “genuine differences.”^[6] The event was not to be repeated, and instead many “big steeple people” formed a new Caucus that Frank Smith called “The Vision 2000 Caucus,”^[7] Paul Settle termed the “Vision Caucus,”^[8] and others have referred to it as the “Original Vision Caucus.” Participation was by “invitation only.”^[9]

Paul Settle was obviously distressed that the efforts at open discussion were rejected for secret politicking, as he remarked in his History of the PCA: “Partisanship reared its ugly head.” The level of direction and organization was not known until 1991, when the Presbyterian Advocate printed a copy of the Caucus’s slate of candidates for agencies and committees in the PCA.^[10] It became evident now that the Vision Caucus, in the words of Settle, “composed and circulated a list that identified some men on the Nominating Committee’s slate as undesirable. Then they arranged to have their own picks placed in opposition to those they deemed unfit.”^[11]

While many knew that the Vision Caucus existed, the methods, membership, and efforts were secret, giving it enough in common with the Fellowship of St. James to prompt conservative elders to form a public group in response. This group was conspicuously named “Concerned Presbyterians.” The name was obviously chosen to assert the parallel these men saw between the Fellowship of St. James and the Vision Caucus.

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