Guide to the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions Collection

The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions was formed by seven ministers and members of the PCUSA in 1933 "to carry on truly Biblical and truly Presbyterian Foreign Missionary work." Formation of this board continued a divisive movement in the PCUSA which five years earlier had resulted in establishment of the independent Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. The 146th General Assembly (1934) ordered those members of the PCUSA who had joined the Independent Board to resign from that board and directed their respective presbyteries to take disciplinary action against them if they refused to do so.

Those ministers who did not resign from the Independent Board were tried by their presbyteries. On their appeal of the decisions of their presbyteries, hearings by their synods followed, and appeals of those decisions were heard before the Judicial Commission of the General Assembly. In every case the decisions of the lower courts were confirmed unanimously by the Supreme Judicatory of the Church. Each of the courts--Presbytery, Synod and General Assembly-- declared the issue "in no case and in no sense doctrinal." The General Council of the PCUSA stated that the matter was never a controversy between "fundamentalists" and "modernists" as those connected with the Independent Board had contended, and that the decision was "no victory for either but a triumph of constitutional government."