Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America

Heritage

The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America continues the Scottish Covenanter tradition — the seventeenth-century movement that bound itself by covenant to Christ's crown rights over church and nation and suffered killing times for it. Covenanter immigrants organized the Reformed Presbytery in America in 1743, and the RPCNA has held its distinct witness ever since, refusing merger after merger. From 1800 it barred slaveholders from membership, and its members ran stations on the Underground Railroad. Its institutions cluster in western Pennsylvania — Geneva College at Beaver Falls, the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh — and RCMS 2020 counted 91 US congregations.

Theological family

Westminster Calvinism with the Covenanter distinctives: the mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ over every nation and institution, historic testimony against national constitutions that refuse to acknowledge Him, and worship regulated strictly by Scripture — which for the RPCNA means the Psalms only, sung without instruments.

Who decides what

Presbyterian: sessions, presbyteries and Synod. Distinctively, the RPCNA has ordained women as deacons since 1888 — far earlier than most conservative bodies — while ordaining only men as elders and ministers.

What a first-time visitor would find

The singing is what a visitor remembers: the whole congregation in unaccompanied four-part psalmody — every song a psalm, every voice an instrument — around substantial expository preaching and reverent prayer. Psalm-singing conferences and the church's own psalter are beloved institutions.

What it has always cared about

Exclusive a cappella psalmody kept for three centuries; Christ's kingship over nations pressed as public testimony — Covenanters historically declined full political participation under an unacknowledging constitution, a practice softened over time but never renounced in principle; early abolitionism at real cost; and covenant community across generations.

Its gift to the wider church

The RPCNA kept the church's original songbook in living use — its psalters and its demonstration that congregations can sing the Psalms, all of them, from memory and in harmony, now feed a much wider psalmody revival; and its Covenanter political theology remains the sharpest standing question about what Christ's lordship means for a nation.

Commonly confused with

With other continuing Scottish bodies (the ARP, which left exclusive psalmody behind; the Free Church streams) and with the PCA and OPC generally — the RPCNA is distinguished by psalmody, the Covenanter testimony, and its unbroken separate history since 1743.

Range of views inside it

Range shows in how the political testimony is applied today — members differ on voting and civic engagement — and in local balance between heritage and outreach; doctrine and worship are uniform.

Where Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America churches are on the map

2 Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America congregations appear on The Church Map, across 2 states.

• New York — 1
• Pennsylvania — 1

Moments this body was part of

• 1831–1865 — The Underground Railroad runs through the churches

  The network that moved fugitives from slavery to freedom ran substantially through congregations: Quaker meetings and homes, AME and AME Zion churches (Harriet Tubman's church home), free Black Baptist congregations, and antislavery Congregational and Presbyterian churches. The Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters) had barred slaveholders from communion since 1800.

  Decades before the denominations could agree about slavery in their assemblies, believers across a dozen traditions were already agreeing at midnight, at the river crossings.