The ARP Church sponsors missionaries internationally through World Witness. The ARP Church is affiliated with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council and shares a common theology with other conservative Presbyterian denominations. It holds to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. The church does not ordain women as ministers or elders, though it does permit local sessions to determine whether to ordain women deacons. Having been originally formed by a merger of two denominations holding to exclusive psalmody, this was the practice of the ARP Church until 1946, when its synod allowed for the use of hymns other than the Psalms; each congregational session has right of discretion concerning the matter of music in worship. At the 207th General Synod, a new ARP psalter was approved for use in the denomination to encourage the increased use of Psalm singing in public worship. In 1837 the church established an academy for men in Due West, S.C., which in 1839 became Erskine College, the first four-year church-related college in that state. Erskine Theological Seminary, established as Clarke and Erskine Seminary in 1837, is the professional school of Erskine College; it was incorporated into Erskine College when the latter was founded two years later. The Seminary became a separate but associated school in 1858 and was reincorporated into the College in 1925. Erskine merged with the Due West Female College in the first decade of the 20th century. Erskine became the first private denominational school in South Carolina to allow women instructors at that time. Since its inception, Erskine has provided training for students of the ARPC as well as other denominations. Recent years, however, have witnessed ARP ministers graduating from other seminaries. Along with other Presbyterian churches, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church uses the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism and the Shorter Catechism as subordinate standards. In its 1990 "Purpose Statement", the church declared that "we express our desire to continue to be a Presbyterian and Reformed church, committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the Bible as the Word of God." It listed some of its core commitments as:   The ARPC takes a conservative view of the Bible, officially stating that "the Bible alone, being God-breathed, is the Word of God written, infallible in all that it teaches, and inerrant in the original manuscripts."