Both New York Presbytery's decision and this Plea make explicit a motive that was an important factor in the reunion of 1869 and that was to become increasingly prominent in the first half of the twentieth century—the subordination of unresolved theological differences to the necessities of cooperation for the successful prosecution of the Church's work. It implied a shift in emphasis in the Calvinistic doctrine of the Church. Following the dominant patterns of American life, there was an increasing tendency to think of the Church as a kind of business corporation chartered to do the Lord's work. The subordination of questions of truth—though only of those regarded as "unessential" —to efficiency of operation carries a recognizable suggestion of pragmatism. It is interesting that Presbyterians —who did not formally hold the tenets of the pragmatistic philosophy at all—were implying a more pragmatic doctrine of the Church at just about the time that Peirce and James were formulating the philosophy of pragmatism. The philosophy and the ecclesiology were products of the same forces in American life.
This Plea, with its pragmatic objectives, meant, too, that a third party was emerging, between the party demanding theological innovation and the party resisting all theological innovation —a third party composed of those who might or who might not incline personally to one or the other of these more extreme positions, but who were resolved to transcend ideological differences in united action. To this party the Church's future, for more than half a century at least, was to belong. In an increasingly confusing, pluralistic culture such a program held promise of maintaining out ward unity and efficiently conducting large enterprises.
This conception of the Church did not pass unchallenged. Three months after the appearance of the Plea Dr. William Brenton Greene, Jr., professor-elect at Princeton Seminary, wrote in quite opposite vein against what he called "Broad Churchism." He saw three parties in the Church: those who agreed more or less with Dr. Briggs and desired to see the case dismissed ; those who did not agree with Dr. Briggs and desired to see the case decided against him; and a third party consisting of those "who, while they do not agree with Dr. Briggs, would still have the appeal [i.e., of Dr. Briggs's prosecutors] dismissed, on the ground that the Presbyterian Church should be broad enough to include him." He argued against this type of "Broad Churchism." "It would mean, as Dr. Briggs has said that he desires and intends, the end of denominationalism. . . . Would this, however, be for the advantage of Christ's cause ? . . . The broader a church
becomes, the fewer and the less definite must be the truths to which it witnesses."
