scottsburgpc.org - Family History

Our Family History
of Faith

We are a part of the historic Judeo-Christian Church and our foundational vision and beliefs seek to be rooted in Scripture and the Trinitarian faith of the Church through time. Therefore we hold to the most basic beliefs of the Church catholic found in the the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
(The basic symbols of the Christian faith can be found in the seal of the Presbyterian Church to the right.)

On the Christian family tree we are a part of the historic protestant branch originating in Geneva, Switzerland, formed by John Calvin, a French scholar and preacher. Our Christian tradition is committed to a Reformed perspective on all of life. One of the key tenants of the Reformed tradition is that our beliefs and practices are reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God (Christ and Holy Scriptures).

Furthermore we believe that the inner spiritual life is not only essential to the faith but that it must have with it a disciplined mind and an obedient heart that responds to God in service to our neighbors, expressing God’s work of faith, hope and love to all.

As Presbyterians in the USA we descend from the Reformed churches in Europe, particularly Scotland and Ireland. However the early Church in the colonies also incorporated other Reformed congregations, such as the French Huguenots, Welsh Methodists, English Presbyterians (now called the United Reform Church), Hungarian Reformed, Czech Brethern, and Waldensians from Italy.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) was established in 1706 in Philadelphia and aided in the shaping of the Declaration of Independence and our country’s form of government.

(Pictured to the right, the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, a signer on the Declaration of Independence. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, 21% were active Presbyterian Christians).

As the country grew, so did the need for new congregations and ministers. Seeing a dire need for missionaries in the western frontier of Indiana, the Presbyterian Church worked with the united Congregational churches and developed a plan that both hoped would be the solution to their western dilemma. It came in the form of the 1801, Plan of Union. It allowed for the exchange of clergy as the need arose.

(Pictured to the right is Indiana Presbyterian Church.)

About 1805, a traveling minister, the Rev. Thomas Cleland, was sent to the Vincennes, Indiana area after settlers and the territorial Governor, who was Presbyterian, requested a minister. (The Governor was William Henry Harrison, later US President.)

The first congregation was chartered in 1806 and named the Indiana Presbyterian Church. Thus in 2006, the Presbyterian Church in the USA celebrated the 200^th year of Presbyterian Christian mission and ministry in Indiana.

Throughout the years before statehood 11 horseback missionaries traveled to Presbyterian settlements for periods of up to four months each. During this time, the Rev. Isaac Reed, a licensed Congregational minister was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church as an evangelist and spent nine years as a circuit rider, busily founding Presbyterian churches among the Scots-Irish settlements. In his 1828 book, Christian Traveler, he states that he traveled over 18,000 miles in his years as circuit rider in Indiana.

It was in a similar response to a number of Presbyterian immigrants and pioneers in our area that the First Presbyterian Church of Scottsburg was organized in 1899 with eighteen members, and pastored by two abolitionist Presbyterian ministers.

Ever since 1902 the congregation’s sanctuary has stood in the heart of Scottsburg on the northeast corner of McClain Avenue and Washington Street. (Picture to the left is from the 1902 dedication.)