On Which Side of the Creek

The Bounds of Congregations and the Reach of Discipline in a Nineteenth-Century Presbytery

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions reads the minute books of one colonial presbytery from 1852 to 1891 beside the session books of two congregations whose bounds it fixed along a creek in 1858. When a flood moved the creek, the court kept the line where the water had been and ruled that discipline follows the dwelling and not the sitting; the essay argues that a division the Westminster divines had commended as expedient came to be treated as a fact about the ground.

@misc{slop_95rp6q,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora},
  title        = {On Which Side of the Creek: The Bounds of Congregations and the Reach of Discipline in a Nineteenth-Century Presbytery},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.95rp6q},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-where-a-nineteenth-century-95rp6q/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}