Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Protestant Reformed Churches in America
Abbreviation	PRC or PRCNA
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Reformed
Polity	Presbyterian
Founder	Herman Hoeksema
Origin	1924–1925 United States and Canada
Separated from	Christian Reformed Church in North America
Separations	1953 over half of the denomination left to form the Orthodox Protestant Reformed Churches
Congregations	31
Members	8,055
Primary schools	12
Secondary schools	3

The Protestant Reformed Churches in America (PRC) or (PRCA) is a Protestant denomination of 31 churches and over 8,055 members.

The PRC was founded in 1924 as a result of a controversy regarding common grace in the Christian Reformed Church. At that time the Christian Reformed Church had adopted three doctrinal points on the subject of common grace. Reverends Herman Hoeksema, George Ophoff, and Henry Danhof rejected these three points and maintained them to be contrary to the Reformed confessions of faith. Soon thereafter, when these men said they could not abide by these three points, they were disciplined through suspension, or deposition, from the ministry by their respective classes. The CRC maintained that the position of these three men was inconsistent with the Bible's teachings. The men objected to this deposition also from a church political point of view, arguing that only the consistory has the right to depose their minister, not a classis. The CRC disagreed, and these ministers, as well as their followers, were deposed by the CRC and organized into a new denomination, taking the name of Protesting Christian Reformed Churches. The denomination later renamed itself the Protestant Reformed Churches in America. Rev Hoeksema become the pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Protestant Reformed Churches grew rapidly in the following years, but in the 1950s the denomination struggled because of internal, doctrinal controversies in defense of the unconditionality of the Covenant of Grace. Hubert DeWolf become the pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, he was influenced by the theology of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Liberated), this included conditional theology. DeWolf begun to preach sermons which promoted conditional theology, because he saw the ever increasing number of immigrants that were part of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Liberated) in the Netherlands, and he believed that this could be an opportunity to grow the church. Hoeksema saw this as heresy and insisted that salvation is only for the elect, even the baptized children of believers, who were not elect could not receive the offer of salvation. DeWolf and his supporters were suspended in 1953. That year 60% of the denomination membership, the so-called "DeWolf Group" formed the Orthodox Protestant Reformed Church (OPRC). Before the schism the denomination had 6,063 members(1953)-the PRC has passed this membership mark as of 1994. The remaining 40% continued as the Protestant Reformed Church with 2,353 members. DeWolf worked for the reunion of the CRCNA. The union took place in 1961, 7 OPRC congregations were dissolved, with their members joining other Christian Reformed congregations, and four became part of the CRCNA denomination-Hope CRC in Hull, Iowa, Alamo Ave CRC in Kalamazoo, MI, Bethel CRC in Redlands, CA and Faith CRC in Grand Rapids, MI.

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