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The Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America is a historically African-American denomination.
History
The history of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America is the story of people who followed the witness of John Calvin in the Protestant Reformed tradition called Presbyterianism. It is a story that affirms the worth of all that are Cumberland Presbyterians in the African-American experience. It is an historical account of love, faith and determination. The people called Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America believed that they were serving God and that God would welcome their service and dedication. Like all human stories it has had its moments of failure, frustration and futility.
It is also a divine story that shares how God uses strengths and weaknesses, faith and "faithfulness", vision and blindness to accomplish His divine purpose as a group of African-American people assembled themselves together and built a denomination. [1]
In the pre-Emancipation days, whites and their slaves usually belonged to the same congregations though separate seating was common. Many congregations attempted to maintain a statistical record of slave memberships. The General Assembly Minutes of 1859 and 1860 reveal that many presbyteries included in their reports to the General Assembly some information about the black memberships including: the number of ministers, licentiates, candidates, congregations, communicants and other details. A report in the 1872 assembly indicated there were 20,000 blacks connected to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at this time.
The denomination was formed after African-American delegates to the May 1869 General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church asked for assistance in organizing a separate body for African Americans, allowing them to become more independent and self-reliant, develop their own clergy and other leaders, and maintain their own church buildings, all with financial support from the parent denomination. The new church was organized in May 1874 as the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church.[2] It later was known as the Second Cumberland Presbyterian Church before assuming its current name.
Organization and Membership
Denominational headquarters are located in Huntsville, Alabama. There are more than 100 congregations, which are organized into 15 presbyteries and four synods, in Alabama, Kentucky (States), Tennessee and Texas.[3] Membership is primarily concentrated in Alabama, Tenessee and Texas, but the church extends north to Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit.[2][4]
The Doctrinal Statement and Theology
Through its doctrinal statement known as the Confession of Faith, the church can verify at different stages what it believes about the sovereignty of God and of God's love in Christ amid the continuing crises of human existence. The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries devised confessional statements in an attempt to recover the authentic biblical witness to the world. These documents affirmed the primacy of the Scripture and provided a framework for formal doctrinal standards. Those standards are referred to as doctrine or doctrinal statements that set forth and teach what a denomination believes to be true about the way of salvation, the Christian life, and the nature of the church.
Realizing the existence of many differences in interpretation among genuine Christians of both denominations, the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, found it necessary to put in writing the origination of the doctrinal statment and theology of the denomination.[6] The two denominations continue to share a Confession of Faith and cooperate in many common ministries. Many CPCA ministers have trained at Memphis Theological Seminary - a Cumberland Presbyterian Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee.
References
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