Arthur Franklin Perkins was born in 1887 in Appleton, Wisconsin. His early life was spent in farming, where he showed above average skills in management and leadership. In 1915 he was converted at an evangelistic meeting at the Hickory Corners Methodist Church. Soon afterward, he felt called to the ministry. Lacking college training, he applied to the Moody Bible Institute. He, his wife Marie and their three children moved to Chicago in order for him to study at Moody. Perkins was ordained by the Winnebago Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. on September 12, 1922. He served at the North Milwaukee Presbyterian Church for almost four years before taking a position as the Field Director for the Winnebago Presbytery. As Field Director, he oversaw new churches and small rural churches throughout the northeastern quadrant of Wisconsin. He held this position for seven years, and was repeatedly praised for his efforts.
Perkins’ theological outlook was shaped by Fundamentalism. This led him into conflict with a growing Modernist contingent in the Winnebago Presbytery. In 1931 the Modernists attempted to remove him from his position as Field Director. Their efforts were thwarted by the Ruling Elders of the Presbytery, but the majority of ministers in the Presbytery favored Modernism.
In 1934, Perkins and several of his friends started a summer camp for young people on Crescent Lake, near Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The purpose of the camp was to offer low-cost camp opportunities for the youth of the rural churches. All of the board of directors were fundamentalists, and would not tolerate any modernism being taught to the campers.
The Modernists in Winnebago made efforts to discourage the ministers from supporting the Crescent Lake Bible Camp, forbidding them from being involved in the project. Perkins and thirteen others refused to comply to the Presbytery’s mandate. Charges were brought against Perkins, and he was prosecuted and convicted by the Presbytery in 1935. His conviction and censure of suspension were appealed to the Synod of Wisconsin and to the General Assembly of the PCUSA. Both courts upheld the ruling of the Winnebago Presbytery, though each altered the length of his censure.
On June 11, 1936, Arthur Perkins attended the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (later renamed the OPC). He was enrolled as a ministerial member of the new denomination. After returning to Wisconsin, he renounced the jurisdiction of the PCUSA at a special meeting of the Winnebago Presbytery.
Perkins’ organizational abilities were well used in starting a new congregation in his home town of Merrill, Wisconsin. The Community Presbyterian Church of Merrill held its first service on June 21, 1936. Perkins was also instrumental in the beginning of the Presbytery of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. He was appointed to be the convener of the new Presbytery, and on July 30, 1936 the first meeting of the new body was held in Perkins’ living room in Merrill. He was elected to be the first moderator, and the chairman of the Home Missions Committee.
Perkins developed a close friendship with Dr. J. Gresham Machen during 1935 and 1936. Their experiences of judicial discipline by the PCUSA were remarkably similar, and the two men sympathized with and supported each other.
Having been trained at the Moody Bible Institute, Perkins was a Dispensationalist. He corresponded with Machen about the question of Dispensationalism, and whether he would be welcome in the new denomination. Machen believed that Perkins did not imbibe in the more serious errors of the Scofield Reference Bible, as wrote to Perkins that he didn’t believe that Perkins was truly a Dispensationalist.
After being installed as the Pastor of the Community Presbyterian Church in early September of 1936, Perkins suffered a nervous breakdown. He was under the care of a sanatorium in Macon, Missouri for two months. In late December he transferred to the Mendota State Mental Hospital in Madison Wisconsin. He died on December 29, 1936 and was buried at the Hickory Cemetery near Hickory Corners, Wisconsin on January 1, 1937.