Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
Seal of the General Assembly of PCUSA
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Mainline Reformed
Polity	Presbyterian polity
Associations	Plan of Union with the Congregational churches of New England (1801–1837) United Foreign Missionary Society (with the Reformed Church in America and the Associate Reformed Church, 1817–1826) Federal Council of Churches (1908) Interchurch World Movement (1918–1920) United Andean Indian Mission (1946)
Origin	1789 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Branched from	Church of Scotland and Irish Synod of Ulster
Separations	Springfield Presbytery (1803) Cumberland Presbyterian Church (separated 1810, reunited in part 1906) New School Presbyterians (separated 1838; reunited 1869) Presbyterian Church in the United States ("Southern Presbyterians" - separated 1861) Orthodox Presbyterian Church (separated 1936)
Merged into	United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1958)
Congregations	8,351 in 1957
Members	2,775,464 in 1957
Ministers	10,261 in 1957

The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) was the first national Presbyterian denomination in the United States, existing from 1789 to 1958. In 1958, the PCUSA merged with the United Presbyterian Church of North America, a denomination with roots in the Seceder and Covenanter traditions of Presbyterianism. The new church was named the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It was a predecessor to the contemporary Presbyterian Church (USA).

The denomination had its origins in colonial times when members of the Church of Scotland and Presbyterians from Ireland first immigrated to America. After the American Revolution, the PCUSA was organized in Philadelphia under the leadership of John Witherspoon to provide national leadership for Presbyterians in the new nation. In 1861, Presbyterians in the Southern United States split from the denomination because of disputes over slavery, politics, and theology precipitated by the American Civil War. They established the Presbyterian Church in the United States, often simply referred to as the "Southern Presbyterian Church". Due to its regional identification, the PCUSA was commonly described as the Northern Presbyterian Church. Despite the PCUSA's designation as a "Northern church", it was once again a national denomination in its later years.

Overtime, traditional Calvinism played less of a role in shaping the church's doctrines and practices—it was influenced by Arminianism and revivalism early in the 19th century, liberal theology late in the 19th century, and neo-orthodoxy by the mid-20th century. The theological tensions within the denomination were played out in the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy of the 1920s and 1930s, a conflict that led to the development of Christian fundamentalism and has historical importance to modern American Evangelicalism. Conservatives dissatisfied with liberal trends left to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936.