The Auburn Affirmation is a document dated May 1924, with the title ''"AN AFFIRMATION designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America"'', authored by an eleven-member ''Conference Committee'' and signed by 1274 ministers of the
PCUSA. The ''Affirmation'' challenged the right of the highest body of the church, the
General Assembly
A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company.
Specific examples of general assembly include:
Churches
* General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presby ...
, to impose the ''
Five fundamentals'' as a test of orthodoxy without the concurrence of a vote from the regional bodies, the
presbyteries.
History
In 1910, 1916, and again in 1923, the General Assembly declared that every candidate seeking to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church ought to be able to affirm
#
Inerrancy of the Scriptures
# The
virgin birth (and the
deity of Jesus)
# The doctrine of
substitutionary atonement
Substitutionary atonement, also called vicarious atonement, is a central concept within Western Christian theology which asserts that Jesus died for humanity, as claimed by the Western classic and paradigms of atonement in Christianity, which r ...
# The bodily
resurrection of Jesus
The resurrection of Jesus () is Christianity, Christian belief that God in Christianity, God Resurrection, raised Jesus in Christianity, Jesus from the dead on the third day after Crucifixion of Jesus, his crucifixion, starting—or Preexis ...
# The authenticity of
Christ's miracles
The
Auburn Theological Seminary
Auburn Theological Seminary, located in New York City, teaches students about progressive social issues by offering workshops, providing consulting, and conducting research on faith leadership development.
The seminary was established in Auburn, ...
history professor,
Robert Hastings Nichols, proposed to challenge this procedure of repeatedly affirming additional standards of orthodoxy, besides the
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
and the
Westminster Confession of Faith
The Westminster Confession of Faith, or simply the Westminster Confession, is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it becam ...
- which were the only standards of orthodoxy officially recognized by the church. The ''Affirmation'' denounces that procedure of affirming the ''Fundamentals'' in the General Assembly as a contradiction of the history and polity of the Presbyterian Church. It was drafted and signed by a writing group, primarily Nichols and
Henry Sloane Coffin
Henry Sloane Coffin (January 5, 1877 – November 25, 1954) was president of the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the General Assembly, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the Unit ...
, with the original intention of presenting it to the General Assembly of 1923. After events of the Assembly that year appeared to indicate that their thesis would be favorably received by moderates, Coffin suggested that the ''Affirmation'' should be signed by ministers before being formally made public; and in accord with that advice it was circulated for signature in preparation for the General Assembly of 1924.
The Affirmation
Although the ''Affirmation'' did not officially come from Auburn Theological Seminary (at that time located in
Auburn, New York
Auburn is a city in Cayuga County, New York, United States. Located at the north end of Owasco Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in Central New York, the city had a population of 26,866 at the 2020 census. It is the largest city of Cayuga County, the ...
), the name "Auburn Affirmation" has been attached to the document from the beginning, because of Nichols' influence as the originator of the idea.
The ''Auburn Affirmation'' was the culmination of the
Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which by 1924 had been a conflict of more than thirty years within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It is generally regarded as signalling a turning point in the history of American Presbyterianism, because it garnered the support of both theological traditionalists and liberals. Besides the 1274 signatories, the document as submitted claimed the support of "hundreds of ministers who agree with and approve of the Affirmation, though they have refrained from signing it."
Content
The ''Affirmation'' has six sections that can be summarized as:
#The Westminster Confession of Faith is not
inerrant. The supreme guide of scripture interpretation is the Spirit of God to the individual believer and not