Anyone from Valdese, NC or a member of a Waldensian Presbyterian Church or otherwise familiar with t
I'm trying to track down information about this group on the assumption that it is more than a single congregation? I've found plenty on the Waldensian Methodists.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Funny I worked for Waldensian Bakeries for 7 years based out of Valdese. They were a tight group at the time with a private owner. It was a shame that when I got saved years after my work days with that company I learned about them and there religious heritage. Sorry can't help, but that name gets me excited,
blessings,
tim
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Kevin Purcell serves as Pastor of High Peak Baptist Church near Valdese. I will send him a link to this thread, in case he has not seen it. It is a beautiful little town with a striking mural on one of the buildings as you enter town from the North.
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Yep, Valdese is named for this group. There is a large Presbyterean church in town called Waldensian Presb. Church. We also have a museum and a live outdoor drama during the summer time that shows the heritage of the group. We also have a museum that has a lot of info. It has been a few years since I've been, but my best recollection is that they came from Italy seeking religious freedom and settled here because it was much like their home area of Italy. The Prebytereans in the area took them in and that is why the church was founded as a Presbyterean church.
Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
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That name rings a bell but I couldn't track it down. A similar group/name was in the area east of San Antonio Texas, escaping religious persecution in the mid-1800s.
For anyone wanting to know the connection between Napoleon, chocalate and the Waldensians: http://dallasfood.org/2011/02/gianduia-gianduja-nutella-part-6/
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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This is an old thread, but since it was reactivated (or edited) in November 2024, I'm replying.
There are two Waldensian churches left in North America. The Valdese NC church gets more attention, but actually the older one is in Monett, Missouri. It's celebrating its 150th anniversary, and a bit less than a decade ago, it finally left the PC(USA) due to the denomination's liberalism and is working to recover its Reformed heritage. Their pastor is a Covenant Seminary graduate who was originally ordained in the PCA.
I don't know the details but the Valdese church apparently had a split a number of years ago and the majority decided to remain in the PC(USA).
There used to be many more Waldensian churches in Italian immigrant communities in the United States — two in New York City, two in Chicago, one in Rochester, NY, one in Galveston, Texas (which used to be a major center of Italian immigration), the Missouri and North Carolina churches, and several others scattered in various locations such as Pennsylvania and Delaware that don't seem to have ever joined either the Northern or Southern Presbyterians, and as a result were lost to history. Those are the ones I know about; the records of the American Waldensian Society may well have more.
Most of these Waldensian churches died during or following World War II due to anti-Italian sentiment and the failure of the churches to make the necessary transition to the English language. The last remaining Waldensian church in the US, other than Monett and Valdese, was in New York City and died back in the 1980s.
The Latin American Waldensian synod is doing better and has a functioning though small denomination centered in the Italian immigrant community in Argentina and adjacent countries to its north. Of course, there's also the main synod back in Italy.
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I responded above but wanted to clarify a few specific items for both MJ Smith and Kevin Purcell.
Actually, both the Monett and Valdese churches were founded by Waldensians with direct ties to Italy, not originally as Presbyterian churches. The Monett church was begun by an Italian Waldensian pastor who had studied in the Free Church of Scotland's seminary — at that point the Free Church had extensive mission work in Italy and Wylie, the author of the main book from the 1800s still in print on Waldensian history, was a professor at that seminary — and went to Latin America as a missionary organizing Waldensian churches. Due to the political chaos and uproar in that era, he left with a number of Waldensians who, after the Civil War, were given free land by a railroad company to settle in what was then a thinly populated area west of Springfield, Missouri, that became the town of Monett. The Valdese church's history is that a group of Waldensians without a pastor bought land in rural western North Carolina, began a church, and were contacted by Congregationalists from the North who sent an Italian woman to help them teach English to their second generation. The Valdese church eventually decided to join the Southern Presbyterians rather than the Congregationalists. Eventually the Valdese church raised enough money that they were able to get the Italian synod to send them a pastor straight from Italy. The Monett pastor, who had studied in a very conservative Presbyterian seminary, joined the Southern Presbyterians a number of years after his church was organized rather than trying to organize a Waldensian synod in the US, as the Waldensians had done in Latin America.
A number of the later Waldensian churches in the US were started as Presbyterian mission projects.
The "Waldensian Methodists" in Italy have that name because of a merger of the very old Waldensian Church with a much smaller and much newer Methodist group that dates only to the 1800s. It's not that Waldensians in Italy are Methodists and in America are Presbyterians, but rather than in Italy a small Methodist group asked to merge with the Waldensians and in the US, the Waldensians were very small and most but not all Waldensian churches chose to become Presbyterian.
Hope that helps.
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