PCUSA vs PCA: How the Mainline and the Conservative Presbyterian Churches Differ

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The PCUSA is the mainline Presbyterian church, and the PCA is the conservative one. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was formed in 1983 when the northern and southern churches reunited; the Presbyterian Church in America left the southern church in 1973. They differ on how they hold Scripture and the Westminster Confession, on ordaining women, and on marriage and sexuality.

They are cousins, and you can hear it. Both are Reformed churches. Both are governed by elders, baptize the children of believers, and confess the Trinity. Their family tree runs back to John Calvin in Geneva and John Knox in Scotland; Presbyterian vs Protestant tells who the Presbyterians are and where they came from. And both, on the day they ordain a minister, stand the new minister before the church and ask questions out loud. The questions are where the two churches part.

The PC(USA) is the larger, with 1,019,003 members at the end of 2025, against the PCA’s 400,751 at the end of 2024. The PCA counts its baptized children as non-communing members; its communicant members numbered 313,001.

Our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations, sets any two of 23 churches side by side on 55 questions.

The PCA. Listen to the two ordination vows side by side and you will hear it.

A PCA minister is asked: “Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?” He then promises to “receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.” That confession is the Westminster Confession, written in the 1640s, with its two catechisms. The PCA’s whole constitution calls itself “subject to and subordinate to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the inerrant Word Of God.”

A PC(USA) minister, elder or deacon is asked something different: “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” Another promise is to “receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church.” Those confessions fill a whole book. The PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions holds the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Scots Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Westminster Confession and its two catechisms, the Theological Declaration of Barmen, the Confession of 1967, the Confession of Belhar, and A Brief Statement of Faith. The word “inerrant” is not in the vows. One church asks its ministers to call the Bible without error; the other asks them to call it a unique witness to Christ and God’s Word to them.

Women’s ordination divides them sharply. The PCA’s Book of Church Order names elders and deacons as the church’s ordinary offices and says: “In accord with Scripture, these offices are open to men only.” In the PC(USA)’s line, women have served as ruling elders since 1930, when Sarah Dickson was ordained, and as ministers since 1956, when Margaret Towner was ordained in the northern church; the southern church ordained its first woman minister, Rachel Henderlite, in 1965. Today the PC(USA)’s Book of Order says simply that ruling elders and deacons “are men and women elected by the congregation.”

On marriage and sexuality the PC(USA) changed its rules twice. In 2011 a majority of its presbyteries ratified Amendment 10-A, which removed the requirement that ministers, elders and deacons live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.” In March 2015 they approved Amendment 14-F, and the Book of Order now describes marriage as “a unique commitment between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.” The church’s own announcement added that nothing in it compels a minister to conduct a wedding, or a session to host one, against their judgment. In March 2025 the presbyteries approved Amendment 24-A, which took effect on 4 July 2025 and added “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to the categories the church’s constitution protects from discrimination.

The PCA’s rules have not moved. “Marriage is only to be between one man and one woman,” and its ministers may solemnize no other. A PCA minister must also “conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his descriptions of himself, and in his convictions, character, and conduct,” which rules out ordaining people in same-sex relationships.

The old names belong to churches that split and joined again between 1789 and 1983, and the war that divided the country divided the church too.

• 1789: the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the country’s first Presbyterian denomination, is established.
• 4 December 1861: southern Presbyterians form the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. After the Civil War it becomes the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the PCUS, often called the Southern Presbyterian Church.
• 28 May 1958: the northern church unites with the United Presbyterian Church of North America in Pittsburgh. The new body is the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the UPCUSA.
• 4 December 1973: teaching and ruling elders from conservative congregations leaving the PCUS meet at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and organize the National Presbyterian Church. They choose the anniversary of the southern church’s founding on purpose. A year later the name becomes the Presbyterian Church in America.
• 10 June 1983: after 122 years apart, the PCUS and the UPCUSA reunite in Atlanta as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The PCA’s founders, mostly from Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, left because they believed theological liberalism had come to dominate the PCUS. They began, by the Encyclopedia of Alabama’s count, with about 260 departing congregations and about 41,000 members.

So the short name “PCUSA” has meant two churches: the old northern church before 1958, and the reunited church since 1983.

In the same basic way, by elders in a ladder of assemblies, with two real differences.

The first is the number of rungs. The PC(USA)’s councils “are sessions, presbyteries, synods, and the General Assembly.” The PCA’s courts “are church Sessions, Presbyteries, and the General Assembly”; it has no synods.

The second is property, and it matters most when a congregation wants to leave. In the PC(USA), all property held by or for a congregation “is held in trust nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” The PCA says the opposite: its churches may “hold, own and enjoy their own local properties, without any right of reversion whatsoever” to a presbytery or the General Assembly, and the church as a whole promises “never to attempt to secure possession of the property of any congregation against its will.” That promise remembers the PCA’s own beginning. Its founders had planned how to leave the PCUS without losing legal possession of their church buildings.

Higher assemblies have real authority in both. Both let them hear appeals from lower ones, and in the PC(USA)’s words, “the larger part of the church, or a representation thereof, shall govern the smaller.” The PCA adds that a higher court’s review “shall not be so exercised as to impinge upon the authority of the lower court.” Neither church has bishops over its congregations.

Yes. People who are not PC(USA) members “are welcome and may participate in the life and worship of this church,” its Book of Order says, and “the invitation to the Lord’s Supper is extended to all who have been baptized.” If you are a baptized PCA member, you may take Communion at a PC(USA) service.

The other way round depends on the session. The PCA’s Directory for Worship lets the minister invite “all those who profess the true religion, and are communicants in good standing in any evangelical church,” or only those the session has approved. The same directory says it is proper “to give a special invitation to non-communicants to remain during the service.” A PC(USA) visitor is welcome to worship, and the invitation before the Supper will say who may receive it.

Membership and office are where the rules part. A woman ordained an elder in a PC(USA) church could not serve as an elder in the PCA. Whole congregations change denominations too: in 2025, twelve PC(USA) congregations were dismissed to other denominations.

Three smaller churches give their own answers to the question of what a conservative Presbyterian church should be.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) was founded in 1936, which it describes as “a testimony to the Bible when its authority was denied.” It holds the Westminster Confession and its catechisms, as the PCA does, and is 37 years older than the PCA.

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) was formed in 1981 by pastors and church leaders from two major Presbyterian denominations who were troubled by growing theological liberalism. Its motto is “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.” It counts women’s ordination among the non-essentials, leaving the question to each congregation for elders and deacons, and to the presbyteries for ministers.

ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians was formed in January 2012 at a conference in Orlando, by pastors and congregations leaving the PC(USA). It is theologically conservative and ordains women; its Essential Tenets affirm “that men and women alike are called to all the ministries of the Church.”

More than their arguments would suggest. Both churches keep the Westminster Confession, the PCA as its single standard and the PC(USA) as one of twelve. Both baptize believers and their children; PCA churches reported 5,541 infant baptisms in 2024. Both stand in the Calvinist family of doctrine. Calvinism vs Presbyterianism shows how Calvin’s teaching and Presbyterian government fit together, and which denominations are Calvinist sets the Presbyterians beside the other Reformed churches.

Both are ruled by elders meeting in sessions, presbyteries and a General Assembly, a pattern both take from the New Testament, where Paul left Titus in Crete to “ordain elders in every city” (Titus 1:5). The ancient creeds beneath that common ground are the subject of a free course, Christianity: What Christians Have Believed for 2,000 Years.

And before the questions that divide them, both churches ask the same thing first. Every PC(USA) officer is asked, before any other vow: “Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church, and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?” The Westminster Confession, which the PCA holds, says it in older words that both churches still keep: “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”

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• Reformed vs Protestant
• Presbyterian vs Baptist
• Methodist vs Presbyterian
• Lutheran vs Presbyterian
• Presbyterian vs Catholic

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