presbyteries approved the reunion in 1869 of the PCUSA. Higher criticism and the Briggs heresy trial In the decades after the reunion of 1869, conservatives expressed fear over the threat of "broad churchism" and modernist theology. Such fears were prompted in part by heresy trials (such as the 1874 acquittal of popular Chicago preacher David Swing) and a growing movement to revise the Westminster Confession. This liberal movement was opposed by Princeton theologians A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield. While Darwinian evolution never became an issue for northern Presbyterians as most accommodated themselves to some form of theistic evolution, the new discipline of biblical interpretation known as higher criticism would become highly controversial. Utilizing comparative linguistics, archaeology, and literary analysis, German proponents of high criticism, such as Julius Wellhausen and David Friedrich Strauss, began questioning long-held assumptions about the Bible. At the forefront of the controversy in the PCUSA was Charles A. Briggs, a professor at PCUSA's Union Theological Seminary in New York. While Briggs held to traditional Christian teaching in many areas, such as his belief in the virgin birth of Jesus, conservatives were alarmed by his assertion that doctrines were historical constructs that had to change over time. He did not believe that the Pentateuch was authored by Moses or that the book of Isaiah had a single author. In addition, he also denied that Biblical prophecy was a precise prediction of the future. In 1891, Briggs preached a sermon in which he claimed the Bible contained errors, a position many in the church considered contrary to the Westminster Confession's doctrines of verbal inspiration and Biblical inerrancy. In response, 63 presbyteries petitioned the General Assembly to take action against Briggs. The 1891 General Assembly vetoed his appointment to Union Theological Seminary's chair of Biblical studies, and two years later Briggs was found guilty of heresy and suspended from the ministry. Ultimately, Union Theological Seminary refused to remove Briggs from his position and severed its ties to the Presbyterian Church. In 1892, conservatives in the General Assembly were successful in adopting the Portland Deliverance, a statement named for the assembly's meeting place, Portland, Oregon. The Deliverance reasserted the church's belief in biblical inerrancy and required any minister who could not affirm the Bible as "the only infallible rule of faith and practice" to withdraw from the Presbyterian ministry. The Portland Deliverance would be used to convict Briggs of