United Presbyterian Church of North America
| United Presbyterian Church of North America | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Calvinist |
| Polity | Presbyterian |
| Origin | May 26, 1858 Pittsburgh |
| Merger of | Northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanter and Seceder) and the Associate Presbyterian Church (Seceders) |
| Merged into | The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1958) |
| Congregations | 839 in 1957 |
| Members | 257,513 in 1957 |
| Ministers | 996 in 1957 |
The United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPCNA) was an American Presbyterian denomination that existed for one hundred years. It was formed on May 26, 1858 by the union of the Northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanter and Seceder) with the Associate Presbyterian Church (Seceders) at a convention at the Old City Hall in Pittsburgh. On May 28, 1958, it merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) at a conference in Pittsburgh to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA).
It began as a mostly ethnic Scottish denomination, but after some years it grew somewhat more and more ethnically diverse, although universally English-speaking, and was geographically centered in Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, areas of heavy Scottish and Scotch-Irish settlement on the American frontier. Within that territory, a large part of its adherents lived in rural areas, which amplified the denomination's already highly traditionalist worldview.
The founders of the Associate Presbyterian Church of North America, nicknamed the "Seceders", were direct immigrants from Scotland, and reflected the numerous quarrels and divisions which rent Scottish Presbyterianism. Even after the Scot Seceders had made their peace with other elements in the mother country, American Seceders retained their separate identity until 1858, when most of them united with much of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to form the United Presbyterian Church of North America.
Historian William L. Fisk traces the history of the Associate Reformed Church in the Old Northwest from its formation by a union of Associate and Reformed Presbyterians in 1782 to the merger of this body with other groups to form the United Presbyterian Church in 1858. It became the Associate Reformed Synod of the West and remain centered in the Midwest. It withdrew from the parent body in 1820 because of the drift of the Eastern churches toward assimilation into the larger Presbyterian Church. The Associate Reformed Synod of the West maintained the characteristics of an immigrant church with Scotch-Irish roots, emphasized the Westminster standards, used only the psalms in public worship, was Sabbatarian, and was strongly abolitionist and anti-Catholic. In the 1850s it exhibited many evidences of assimilation. It showed greater ecumenical interest, greater interest in evangelization of the West and of the cities, and a declining interest in maintaining the unique characteristics of its immigrant past.
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