Two grand Presbyterian churches stand at the two ends of Uptown Mount Lebanon. But they are different kinds of Presbyterians. The one to the north was the United Presbyterian church, but it has now become Evangelical Presbyterian. This one is now Presbyterian Church (USA).
“In these days of mergers,” James Macqueen (himself one of our notable architects) wrote in the Charette in 1930, “one wonders why theological differences stood in the way of unity, and that these Presbyterians did not build one great building in this community instead of two with their attendant extra overhead involved. However, both of these two churches are worthy of a visit, as they show the great advance that has been made in Church work during the past few years…”
Southminster was designed by Thomas Pringle and built in 1928.
These quatrefoil ornaments at the top of the tower can be properly appreciated with a very long lens.
The office and education wing is done in a complementary Jacobean style. The arcade makes both a visual and a practical link to the main church.
Appropriately for a building dedicated to Christian education, the Reformation slogan VDMA—Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum (“The word of God endureth for ever,” 1 Peter 1:25)—is engraved in an open book.
We have more pictures of Southminster Presbyterian from a couple of years ago.
3 responses to “Southminster Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon”
Could be worse. If you stand on the corner of Broad and Main in Grove City, a bit north of town, you can see East Main Presbyterian and Tower Presbyterian. Originally, one was PCUS and the other UPC (the grand division of Presbyterianism that came about during the Civil War), but that ended when the denominations merged in the 80s into the PCUSA. However, both congregations continued independently. In 2012, the ECO was formed as one of the Protestant denominations that want to more or less reset the clock to 1980, but not require the more stringent measures of more conservative groups (such as the loss of female clergy and elders). Now, both of the congregations above have migrated to this body, leaving still two large, fairly empty, undifferentiated churches.
In Mt. Lebanon, at least, there’s more differentiation. The Evangelical Presbyterians were an offshoot of the UPC that took place in the very early 80’s, just before the merger mentioned above that created the PCUSA. The EP has remained considerably more conservative than the PCUSA over the course of the last 40 years.
Father Pitt is always amused to find double Methodists or double Presbyterians side by side, but it happened often—in Ingram, for example, where if you had asked the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church who owned that church across the street, he would have told you with a sneer, “Oh, those are the United Presbyterians.” (First Presbyterian in Ingram is now a Masonic hall.) Similarly with Methodist Episcopal and Methodist Protestant, various synods of Lutherans, and so on. Even today, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has full communion with Presbyterians, United Churches of Christ, Episcopalians, and a number of other groups—but not with Missouri Synod Lutherans. No quarrels are so bitter as family quarrels.
Better to say that The ELCA is in communion with the PCUSA. Folks in the PCA or Orthodox Presbyterian Church aren’t going to be reaching across the aisle any more than folks in the LCMS, even if they probably have more in common culturally and philosophically with the other conservative denominations than they do with the ones with which they share some history, but not much else.
Then there’s the Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod, who makes a point of not even praying with anyone outside of their sect.