The Presbyterian Church (USA), abbreviated PCUSA, is a Mainline Protestant denomination in the United States. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States. Its theological roots lie primarily in the Scottish Reformation, particularly going back to the reforms done by the Calvinist reformer and minister John Knox of Scotland. Now known for its generally liberal stance on doctrine, the Presbyterian Church (USA) was established with the 1983 merger of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, whose churches were located in the Southern and border states, with the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, whose congregations could be found in every state."Presbyterian Church (USA)," *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, accessed [insert date], https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presbyterian-Church-USA
The church maintains a Book of Confessions, a collection of historic and contemporary creeds and catechisms, including its own Brief Statement of Faith. It is a member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The similarly named Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is a separate denomination whose congregations can also trace their history to the various schisms and mergers of Presbyterian churches in the United States. Unlike the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA) supports the ordination of women and affirms same-sex marriages. It also welcomes practicing gay and lesbian persons to serve in leadership positions as ministers, deacons, elders, and trustees.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, reporting 1,013,080 (2025) active members and 17,742 ordained ministers (including retired ones) in 8,432 congregations at the end of 2024. This number does not include members who are baptized but not confirmed, or the inactive members also affiliated. For example, in 2005, the Presbyterian Church (USA) claimed 318,291 baptized but not confirmed members and nearly 500,000 inactive members in addition to active members. In 2025, Pew Research Center estimated that 0.8 percent of US adults, or approximately 2.11 million people, self-identified with the PC(USA). Its membership has been steadily declining over the past several decades; the trend has significantly accelerated in recent years, partly due to breakaway congregations. Average denominational worship attendance dropped from 748,774 in 2013 to 435,567 in 2025.
History
Origins Presbyterians trace their history to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The Presbyterian heritage, and much of its theology, began with the French theologian and lawyer John Calvin (1509–1564), whose writings solidified much of the Reformed tradition that came before him in the form of the sermons and writings of Huldrych Zwingli. From Calvin's headquarters in Geneva, the Reformed movement spread to other parts of Europe. John Knox, a former Roman Catholic priest from Scotland who studied with Calvin in Geneva, took Calvin's teachings back to Scotland and led the Scottish Reformation of 1560. Because of this reform movement, the Church of Scotland embraced Reformed theology and presbyterian polity. The Ulster Scots brought their Presbyterian faith with them to Ireland, where they laid the foundation of what would become the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Immigrants from Scotland, England and Ireland brought Presbyterianism to North America as early as 1640, the first of whom was the Rev. Richard Denton, who had preached in Halifax, England until finding it necessary to leave England after excommunication by the Church of England. He would establish the first Presbyterian church in all North America in Hempstead, New York, and a New York state historical marker confirms the fact. Immigration would remain a large source of growth throughout the colonial era. Another source of growth were a number of New England Puritans who left the Congregational churches because they preferred presbyterian polity. In 1706, seven ministers led by Francis Makemie established the first American presbytery at Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania, which was followed by the creation of the Synod of Philadelphia in 1717.
The First Great Awakening and the revivalism it generated had a major impact on American Presbyterians. Ministers such as William and Gilbert Tennent, a friend of George Whitefield, emphasized the necessity of a conscious conversion experience and pushed for higher moral standards among the clergy. Disagreements over revivalism, itinerant preaching, and educational requirements for clergy led to a division known as the Old Side–New Side Controversy that lasted from 1741 to 1758.
In the South, the Presbyterians were evangelical dissenters, mostly Scotch-Irish, who expanded into Virginia between 1740 and 1758. Spangler in Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century (2008) argues they were more energetic and held frequent services better attuned to the frontier conditions of the colony. Presbyterianism grew in frontier areas where the Anglicans had made little impression. Less educated white people, and Black people, were attracted to the emotional worship of the denomination, its emphasis on biblical simplicity, and its psalm singing.
Some local Presbyterian churches, such as Briery in Prince Edward County, owned slaves. The Briery church purchased five slaves in 1766 and raised money for church expenses by hiring them out to local planters.
After the United States achieved independence from Great Britain, Presbyterian leaders felt that a national Presbyterian denomination was needed, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) was organized. The first general assembly was held in Philadelphia in 1789. John Witherspoon, president of Princeton University and the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, was the first moderator.
Not all American Presbyterians participated in the creation of the PCUSA General Assembly because the divisions then occurring in the Church of Scotland were replicated in America. In 1751, Scottish Covenanters began sending ministers to America, and the Seceders were doing the same by 1753. In 1858, the majority of Covenanters and Seceders merged to create the United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPCNA).
19th century In the decades after independence many American Protestants, including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists, were swept up in Christian revivals that would later become known as the Second Great Awakening. Presbyterians also helped to shape voluntary societies that encouraged educational, missionary, evangelical, and reforming work. As its influence grew, many non-Presbyterians feared that the PCUSA's informal influence over American life might effectively make it an established church.
The Second Great Awakening divided the PCUSA over revivalism and fear that revivalism was leading to an embrace of Arminian theology. In 1810, frontier revivalists split from the PCUSA and organized the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Throughout the 1820s, support and opposition to revivalism hardened into well-defined factions, the New School and Old School respectively. By the 1838, the Old School–New School Controversy had divided the PCUSA. There were now two general assemblies each claiming to represent the PCUSA.
In 1858, the New School split along sectional lines when its Southern synods and presbyteries established the pro-slavery United Synod of the Presbyterian Church. Old School Presbyterians followed in 1861 after the start of hostilities in the American Civil War with the formation of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. The Presbyterian Church in the CSA absorbed the smaller United Synod in 1864. After the war, this body was renamed the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) and was commonly nicknamed the "Southern Presbyterian Church" throughout its history. In 1869, the northern PCUSA's Old School and New School factions reunited as well and was known as the "Northern Presbyterian Church".
20th century to the present
The early part of the 20th century saw continued growth in both major sections of the church. It also saw the growth of Fundamentalist Christianity (a movement of those who believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible as the fundamental source of the religion) as distinguished from Modernist Christianity (a movement holding the belief that Christianity needed to be re-interpreted in light of modern scientific theories such as evolution or the rise of degraded social conditions brought on by industrialization and urbanization).
Open controversy was sparked in 1922, when Harry Emerson Fosdick, a modernist Baptist minister who was pastoring a PCUSA church in New York City, preached a sermon entitled "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" The crisis reached a head the following year when, in response to the New York Presbytery's decision to ordain a couple of men who could not affirm the virgin birth, the PCUSA's General Assembly reaffirmed the "five fundamentals": the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the vicarious atonement, the inerrancy of Scripture, and Christ's miracles and resurrection.D.G. Hart & John Muether Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism (P&R Publishing, 2007) pg. 192 This move against modernism caused a backlash in the form of the Auburn Affirmation – a document embracing liberalism and modernism. The liberals began a series of ecclesiastical trials of their opponents, expelled them from the church and seized their church buildings. Under the leadership of J. Gresham Machen, a former Princeton Theological Seminary New Testament professor who had founded Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, and who was a PCUSA minister, many of these conservatives would establish what became known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. Although the 1930s and 1940s and the ensuing neo-orthodox theological consensus mitigated much of the polemics during the mid-20th century, disputes erupted again beginning in the mid-1960s over the extent of involvement in the civil rights movement and the issue of ordination of women, and, especially since the 1990s, over the issue of ordination of homosexuals.
Mergers
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was joined by the majority of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, mostly congregations in the border and Southern states, in 1906. In 1920, it absorbed the Welsh Calvinist Methodist Church. The United Presbyterian Church of North America merged with the PCUSA in 1958 to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA).
Under Eugene Carson Blake, the UPCUSA's stated clerk, the denomination entered into a period of social activism and ecumenical endeavors, which culminated in the development of the Confession of 1967 which was the church's first new confession of faith in three centuries. The 170th General Assembly in 1958 authorized a committee to develop a brief contemporary statement of faith. The 177th General Assembly in 1965 considered and amended the draft confession and sent a revised version for general discussion within the church. The 178th General Assembly in 1966 accepted a revised draft and sent it to presbyteries throughout the church for final ratification. As the confession was ratified by more than 90% of all presbyteries, the 178th General Assembly adopted it in 1967. The UPCUSA also adopted a Book of Confessions in 1967, which would include the Confession of 1967, the Westminster Confession and Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Second Helvetic and Scots Confessions and the Barmen Declaration.Hart & Meuther, p. 217