Ортодоксальная пресвитерианская церковь: История и современность.

Confessional Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) is a confessional Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States, with additional congregations in Canada, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), who objected to the rise of Liberal and Modernist theology in the 1930s. The OPC is considered to have had an influence on evangelicalism far beyond its size.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church was founded in 1936, through the efforts of John Gresham Machen. Machen (formerly a PCUSA minister) had a longstanding distrust of liberalism in Christianity, as typified by the Auburn Affirmation. He and others founded Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 in response to a liberal re organization of Princeton Theological Seminary, and in 1933, Machen formed the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, due to concerns around tolerance of liberal theology on the Presbyterian mission field. Machen's efforts were met with opposition. In 1935, the PCUSA General Assembly deemed Machen's Independent Board unconstitutional, and gave the associated clergy an ultimatum to break their ties with it. When Machen and seven other clergy refused to disavow the Independent Board, they were suspended from PCUSA ministry. In 1939, after PCUSA filed a lawsuit against the fledgling denomination for its name choice, the denomination adopted its current name, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It also publishes a journal called Ordained Servant (E ISSN 1931 7115). Since its founding, the OPC has produced numerous influential figures, including Scottish theologian John Murray, American theologians Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Edmund P. Clowney, Loraine Boettner, and Meredith Kline, historian D. G. Hart, and presuppositional theologians Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen.

At the 2023 General Assembly, the OPC reported 584 ministers and 32,720 members.

In the early 1970s, the General Assembly commissioned a 'Report of the Committee on Problems of Race', which stated that the OPC was a "largely white" denomination, due to losing "the allegiance of blacks during the ecclesiastical discrimination against blacks in the post civil war period" and ecclesiastical "neglect" of minority groups. The report recommended more outreach to minority and urban areas. As of 2019, there is one black minister in the OPC. The OPC also has at least 6 Asian ministers, 3 Middle Eastern ministers, and 8 South American ministers.

OPC ministers have a variety of political views. Carl Trueman, an ordained minister in the OPC, has authored Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative (pub. 2010). Greg Bahnsen was also a key figure in the Christian Reconstructionism movement, with an emphasis of applying God's law to contemporary civil and legal matters.

The 39th General Assembly, meeting in 1972, adopted a statement on abortion that included the affirmation that "voluntary abortion, except possibly to save the physical life of the mother, is in violation of the Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13)."

In 2006 2007, a study committee formed by the General Assembly created a report that concluded that "the church should never turn its back on fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, whether they are legally or illegally in the country. We should be willing to see to the spiritual and physical needs of anyone who comes to the church." The report nonetheless recommended that illegal immigrants repent of their illegal activity.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has a Presbyterian polity. The offices of the church and corresponding duties can be found in the OPC Book of Church Order.

A Session consists of the ministers and ruling elders of an individual congregation. The duties of the Session include overseeing public worship, the administration of Baptism and The Lord's Supper, the addition, removal, and discipline of members, and keeping records of membership

All of the members of local congregations and its ministers are organized by geography into a regional church, and the presbytery serves as its governing body. The duties of the presbytery include overseeing evangelism and resolving questions regarding church discipline. The presbytery also takes candidates for ministry under its care, and examines, licenses and ordains them. It also, if necessary, can remove a minister.

The OPC's General Assembly is the supreme judicatory, and as such, it is to resolve all doctrinal and disciplinary issues that have not been resolved by the sessions and presbyteries. The other duties of the General Assembly include organizing regional churches, calling ministers and licentiates to missionary or other ministries, and reviewing the records from the presbyteries. It also arranges internship training for prospective ministers, and oversees diaconal needs. At least one congregation allowed women to serve as unordained deaconesses, but that congregation has since closed.

There are 38 mission works and eight active foreign mission fields in the OPC today: in China, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Quebec, Uganda, Ukraine, and Uruguay. One of the OPC's goals is that "indigenous Reformed churches be established which will provide fellowship and instruction, and make the gospel known in its own culture and in others". The OPC's Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension also serves to help sustain and plant congregations in the United States and Canada. Their duty is to aid presbyteries in planting congregations, finding pastors, purchasing property and church buildings, and assisting home missionaries.

In 1975, the OPC became a founding member of the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). Through NAPARC, the OPC enjoys fraternal relations with the PCA, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, the Reformed Church in the United States, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the United Reformed Churches in North America, the Canadian and American Reformed Churches and several other confessional Continental Reformed and Presbyterian Churches in the United States and Canada. The OPC is also a member of the International Conference of Reformed Churches (ICRC), which includes Reformed & Presbyterian denominations from across the globe. Outside NAPARC and ICRC, the OPC has relations with the Africa Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Church in Japan, the Presbyterian Church in Japan and the Presbyterian Church of Brazil.