Heresy Trial

The Heresy Trial

In May 1893, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church served as the site of a major heresy trial.  In that year the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, meeting for the first and only time in Washington, convened at New York Avenue.  The principal agenda item was the heresy trial of Charles Augustus Briggs, Professor of Biblical Theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  Professor Briggs, one of the foremost Old Testament scholars of his day, challenged the stance of Biblical inerrancy taken by much of the denomination at that time, what Briggs labeled "bibliolatry".  For example, he wrote, "In every department of Biblical study we come across error."  Professor Briggs maintained that "reason is a fountain of divine authority no less savingly enlightening than the Bible and the Church."

The General Assembly, whose majority reflected the strict conservatism of much of the denomination of that day, concluded that Professor Briggs' views did not conform to the Presbyterian Confessions of Faith and sustained the guilty verdict previously reached by the New York City Presbytery.  Brigg's Presbyterian ordination was suspended.  Within five years, he had been ordained as an Episcipalian priest, and Union Seminary had withdrawn as a seminary of the Presbyterian Church.

Information from Sydney F. Ahlstrom.
A Religious History of the American People.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972
and from Randall Balmer and John R. Fitzmier.
The Presbyterians.  Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.