Growing up in the Presbyterian Church in Canada in the 1970s, I remember old timers telling mythic tales of how we once were nearly absorbed into the United Church.

Some stories were about a great man and Presbyterian minister who saved us at the 11th hour of the 1925 General Assembly in Toronto. Presbyterians were about to hand over their tradition and their identity to a union with Congregationalists and Methodists, when Ephraim Scott rose to guide the flock out of the impending darkness.

In other versions, it was the presbyters themselves who saved the day. Seventy-nine commissioners, having filed their dissent to union, paraded from College Street Church, at Bathurst and Queen Streets, where Assembly was held, to Knox Church, on Spadina Avenue. They sang praise hymns, reflected on their faith and prayed for guidance. They reconvened as an assembly of Presbyterians at St. Andrew’s on King Street.

In his 1975 book about the denomination’s history, John S. Moir wrote, “In the belief of the majority, the Presbyterian Church in Canada was passing into The United Church of Canada; in the belief of the minority, the Presbyterian Church in Canada was marching forward in enduring witness, decimated but not consumed.”

That’s who we Canadian Presbyterians were, the Lambs of God, the Burning Bush. We were the “enduring witness” — which, of course, was the title of Moir’s book.

In the end, some 70 percent of congregations voted to join The United Church of Canada. The 30 percent who continued as........

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