October 4 Today in OPC History

On October 4, 1936, the congregation of Manchester Presbyterian Church in Manchester, South Dakota, voted unanimously to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church in the USA and join the newly created Presbyterian Church of America (renamed Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1939). The congregation lamented that modernism was permitted in the PCUSA while a staunch defender of the gospel such as J. Gresham Machen had been deposed from the ministry. The next summer the congregation called A. Culver Gordon to serve as its pastor. A 1936 graduate of Westminster Seminary who had been ordained at the First General Assembly, Gordon served four years before volunteering to serve as an Army Chaplain during WWII. He would be followed by pastors Melvin Nonhof (1942-57), Robert Sander (1958-67), Stanford Sutton (1967-73), and Edward Eppinger (1974-87).

Manchester Presbyterian Church would dissolve on September 23, 1987.

Picture: A. Culver Gordon