NR #1995-046: For Immediate Release Presbyterian Church in America Asked to Take Stand Against "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" Document by Frank Smith, Editor, PCA News Distributed by United Reformed News Service (May 25, 1995) PCA/N - Pacific Northwest Presbytery, reacting to the document "Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium," has overtured the 1995 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America to adopt a statement reiterating its commitment to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The overture, which was adopted at the April 28 meeting of presbytery, states that "at the very heart of the gospel lies the crucial doctrine of Justification by Faith by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ," and notes that "the official Roman Catholic doctrine is a perversion of the biblical gospel of justification sola fide [by faith alone]." The overture also proposes that co-belligerency with Roman Catholics in "social and political endeavors" is acceptable for PCA members and recognizes that God has "his loved ones in many communions whose doctrine we find unbiblical, even heretical, in important ways." Further, it admits that Protestants are guilty of the theological deterioration of Christianity. The proposal quotes at length from J. Gresham Machen's "Christianity and Liberalism." Machen, founder of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, was the theological champion of the conservatives in the northern Presbyterian Church USA in the modernist-fundamentalist struggle in the 1920's and 1930's. The point of the quotations is that Christ alone is the Saviour, and that there can be no compromise on that. Editor's Note: PCA News is an independent source of news on the Presbyterian Church in America operating under the auspices of Affirmation PCA, Somers, NY. Cross-References to Related Articles: [No related articles on file] Contact List: Dr. Paul Gilchrist, Stated Clerk * Presbyterian Church in America 1852 Century Place, Suite 190, Atlanta GA 30345 * O: (404) 320-3366 Rev. Robert S. Rayburn, Stated Clerk, Pacific Northwest Presbytery 620 South Shirley, Tacoma, WA 98465 * O: (206) 752-7601 * H: (206) 572-6953 Dr. Frank Smith, Editor, PCA News Box 47, Somers, NY 10589-0047 * O: (914) 232-0546 * H: (914) 248-8776 * E-Mail: AffirmPCA@aol.com ------------------------------------------------ file: /pub/resources/text/reformed: nr95-046.txt .