2
August 1935 A.D. Brace
for Heavy Rolls, Shipmates: Philadelphia
Presbytery & Stewart-Thompson Trial
Archivist.
“August 2: The Stewart-Thompson Trial (1935).”
This Day in Presbyterian
History. 2 Aug 2014. http://www.thisday.pcahistory.org/2014/08/august-2-3/.
2 Aug 2014.
August 2: The Stewart-Thompson Trial (1935)
LAYMEN, BEWARE !
On August 2, 1935, the session of Harriet Hollond
Memorial Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, voted to place on trial two of its
members, Miss Mary Weldon Stewart and Murray Forst Thompson, Esq., “because of
their refusal to resign from the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign
Missions.”
On September 9, at 8 o’clock P.M., the session met in the
church “for the presentation and reading of the charges and specifications and
to deliver a copy to the accused.”
This action has evoked great interest.
It marks the first time in many years that a woman has
been brought to trial in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Furthermore, the defendants are only unordained communicant members of the
church; and the nature of the charges filed against them is intensely
interesting since neither Miss Stewart nor Mr. Thompson has taken any
ordination vows which (however erroneously) could be made the basis of a charge
of an offense.
When the Presbytery of Philadelphia referred their cases
to the session of Holland Church, Miss Stewart and Mr. Thompson issued a joint
statement in which they said:
“We desire to make plain our reasons for not obeying the
mandate of the General Assembly. That mandate was unlawful and
unconstitutional because the Assembly sought to bind men’s consciences in
virtue of its own authority and because it sought to deal with an organization
which is not within the church. That mandate was un-Presbyterian and
un-Christian because it condemned members of the church without a hearing and
without a trial.
“No real Christian could obey such a command, involving
as it does implicit obedience to a human council and involving also the
compulsory support of the Modernist propaganda of the Board of Foreign Missions
of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. This whole issue involves the
truth and liberty of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The question is
whether members of a supposedly Christian church are going to recognize as
supreme the authority of men or the authority of the Word of God, whether they
are going to obey God rather than men. We refuse to obey men when we
believe their commands are contrary to the Bible. We are thus taking our
stand for the infallible Word of God, and in doing so, we plant ourselves
squarely upon the Bible and the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the
U.S.A.”
This proceeding against lay members of the Independent
Board in obedience to the unconstitutional action of the General Assembly
should make it perfectly plain that the liberty of the rank and file in the church
is threatened just as much as that of ministers and other office-bearers.
THE TRIAL ITSELF
The first session of the Stewart-Thompson trial was
characterized by a series of legal errors on the part of the session which was
trying the case. For example, before the court was properly constituted
it decided to go into executive (secret) session.
For a while it seemed that the entire procedure would end
in confusion. It is rather difficult, you see, to try two lay members of
the church whose sole “sin” is their refusal to compromise with Modernism!
But at last the charges and specifications were read, and
the court adjourned to meet again on September 23.
[Biblical
Missions, 1.9 (September 1935) 3-4.]
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