Duck Hill's Church of the Pilgrims: St. Andrew Presbytery's “Non-Geographic Parish" During Mississippi's PCA Realignment (1974—1982)

In 1973 fourteen north Mississippi congregations withdrew from St. Andrew Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. (PCUS), to join the movement that would become the Presbyterian Church in America. The votes were not unanimous, and some members of these congregations who wished to continue as part of the PCUS were left behind. As a ministry to these individuals, deeply committed but few and spread over a wide area, the presbytery organized a “Church of the Pilgrims" as a place of membership and support. Tiny Gillespie Memorial Presbyterian Church at Duck Hill, Mississippi, offered its house of worship for this experimental venture, and from 1974 to 1982 the Church of the Pilgrims provided a unique and stimulating mainstream witness in a corner of the South wher such would otherwise have gone lacking.