Free Church Research Articles

Reform, Reconstruction, Reaction: The Social Vision of Scottish Presbyterianism c. 1830-c. 1930

In 1929, after many years of consultation and compromise, the two largest Presbyterian denominations in Scotland — the established Church of Scotland and the voluntary United Free Church — were united. The Union was an impressive achievement, marking the end of the bitter divisions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Scottish Presbyterianism. In particular, it represented the healing of the wounds of the Disruption of 1843, when the national Church of Scotland had been broken up as a result of conflicts between Church and State over patronage and the Church's spiritual independence. With the Union of 1929, the leaders of Scottish Presbyterianism, and especially John White of Glasgow's Barony Church, succeeded not only in uniting the major Presbyterian Churches, but also in establishing a cooperative relationship between Church and State. The Church of Scotland, itseemed, was again in a position to assert national leadership.

‘A Victory for God’: The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and the General Strike of 1926

During the final months of the First World War, the General Assemblies of the two major Presbyterian Churches in Scotland - the established Church of Scotland and the voluntary United Free Church - committed themselves to work for the thorough re- construction of Scottish society. Church leaders promised to work for a new Christian commonwealth, ending the social divisions and class hatred that had plagued pre-war Scottish industrial society. Bound together through the shared sacrifice of the war, the Scottish people would be brought back to the social teachings of Christianity and strive together to realise the Kingdom of God. The Churches would end their deference to the laws of nineteenth-century political economy, with their emphasis on individualism, self-interest and competition, and embrace new impera- tives of collective responsibility and co-operation. Along with the healing of social divisions, church leaders also pledged to end the ecclesiastical divisions in Scottish Presbyterianism. The final months of the war brought a revival of the pre-war movement to unite the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church into a single National Church, and Scottish ecclesiastical leaders held forth to a weary nation the vision of a united National Church leading a covenanted Christian commonwealth in pursuit of social justice and harmony.

Church and Creed in Scotland. The Free Church Case 1900–1904 and its origins. By Kenneth R. Ross. Pp. xii + 412. Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1989, £27. 0 946068 30 5.

Church and Creed in Scotland. The Free Church Case 1900–1904 and its origins. By Kenneth R. Ross. Pp. xii + 412. Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1989, £27. 0 946068 30 5.

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This third installment in David Breed's intellectual biography of Ralph Wendell Burhoe focuses upon the impact of his thought on the Unitarian Universalist Association and that group's role in Burhoe's career. Dana McLean Greeley, elected president of the American Unitarian Association in 1958, was a key figure in Burhoe's eventual participation in the project, “The Free Church in a Changing World.” Burhoe's emphasis on the need for doctrine that could communicate religious wisdom in terms of science stood in tension with free‐church tradition. Nevertheless, the section of the project's final report, titled “Theology and the Frontiers of Learning,” largely accepted Burhoe's program for a new natural theology based on science. This project brought Burhoe's program to the attention of the denomination and led to the invitation in 1964 from Malcolm Sutherland, on behalf of Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, of which he was president, for Burhoe to implement his program in the new curriculum of that school. Burhoe accepted.

David Octavius Hill and the use of photography as an aid to painting

Abstract When David Octavius Hill first entered into partnership with Robert Adamson in July 1843, Sir David Brewster reported to William Henry Fox Talbot that Hill proposed ‘to apply the Calotype to many other general purposes of a very popular kind, and especially to the execution oflarge pictures representing difft. bodies & classes of individuals’.1 It is, unfortunately, not exactly clear what is meant by this, but the obvious and primary purpose of Hill's association with Adamson was his great painting of the founding of the Free Church of Scotland, ‘The Signing of the Deed of Demission ...’ (figure 1). Brewster had encountered Hill, in May, sketching during the sessions of the new Free Church, and suggested that he could use photography as an aid to capture the likenesses of the several hundred ministers and elders, before they dispersed to their homes throughout Scotland. Hill, wrote Brewster, ‘was at first incredulous’2, and may only have gone to see Robert Adamson from simple politeness. A few tr...

Memory, Nostalgia and Repentance

A few years ago vehement opposition to the idea of further European cooperation and integration came from an unusual quarter. The Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly used the occasion of his moderatorial address to warn of the dangers to Protestantism posed by the existence of the European Economic Community. He was particularly concerned to warn the church that the Roman Catholic Communion was perhaps more dangerous to the Protestant polity at that time than at any other point in recent European history. In his view the Common Market was nothing more or less than the foreign policy of an imperialist papacy. He pointed out that, at that time, Catholicism was the religion professed, at least nominally, by the majority of inhabitants of the Community, that the founding document was the Treaty of Rome and that large numbers of the Community’s officers were associated with Christian Democratic parties which were closely linked with the Catholic Church.The speech caused some embarrassment to his co-religionists and was widely reported in the press. Many people immediately assumed it was nothing other than the theocratic ravings of a small and paranoid body and dismissed it out of hand. However, it cannot be denied that many of the founding fathers of the pan-European movement were clearly influenced by Catholic social teaching and motivated by a strong desire to ensure not only the prevention of another European war but also the promotion of reconciliation amongst former enemies. The vocabulary of European integration was often theological in tone and conveyed the resonance of Roman juridical formulae.

Orduighean: A Dominant Symbol in the Free Church of the Scottish Highlands

In this article I describe and interpret the Protestant ceremony of church communion called Orduighean, which has been made significant as a dominant symbol by the Free Church of the Scottish Highlands. Orduighean is a condensed representation of several themes and events in Highland social life and culture; I present examples of its multiple uses and meanings in a crofting village on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. A brief discussion of the political, economic, linguistic, and cultural history of the Scottish Highlands is also provided to show how Orduighean acquired its significance as a dominant symbol.

The Relationship Between Established Protestant Church and Free Church: Hermann Gundert and Britain

The present-day exchange of British and German research into church history can hardly be described as flourishing. Very seldom are historical topics from the other country ever investigated. This even applies to those areas where the paths of German and British church history have met. One notable exception is Professor Reginald Ward, who has not only striven to establish contacts with German church historians, but has also himself published a number of works on German church history. It is therefore only fitting to express appreciation of such amicable relations through the years by a study of German-British history. The scope for such a study embraces the fields of Pietism, Methodism, and the revival movement.

Motivations of a Political Activist: John Clifford and the Education Bill of 1902

In any consideration of Baptists, John Clifford stands out as an imposing figure. His long life covered a span of eighty-seven years (1836-1923) and was filled with significant achievements.1 Not only did he attain great recognition as a leader among Eng lish Baptists, but Clifford gained high status within the ranks of Baptist leaders throughout the world. He was one of the prime movers in the founding of the Baptist World Congress and served as its first president. Just as Clifford functioned as an out standing leader within his own denomination, he received rec ognition for his qualities of leadership within the larger Protestant Free Church movement as well.2 He was a great churchman involved in the great religious issues of his day; but he also was a citizen (in the authentic sense of that word) and exerted extensive moral leadership far beyond the realm of in

Eternal Loss

The most interesting article to come to my notice recently from the religious press appeared in the August 1988 issue of Life and Work, the monthly record of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This issue was largely devoted to the jubilee of the Iona Community, and the Editor had the excellent idea of inviting an assessment of the Community’s achievement from Donald MacLeod, the professor of systematic theology at the (dissenting) Free Church College in Edinburgh. Perceptive, astringent, humorous, always controversial, sometimes (as has been remarked in subsequent correspondence) a little unfair, this article had the supreme merit of puncturing complacency and, at the same time, making important constructive suggestions.Writing of what he sees to be the Community theology, Professor MacLeod says that ‘it has room for the Incarnation but not for the Atonement, and simply cannot bring itself to summon individuals (including the poor) to repentance. Terrified of proselytising, it refuses to evangelise.’ While such a tendency may characterize those who have been touched by the emphases of the Iona Community, it may be said that in the Christian world at large we have to reckon with a passionate renewal of traditional, even fundamentalist, Evangelical teaching. But what gives Professor MacLeod’s remark its peculiar point is the fact that it is addressed sympathetically to those whose theological sophistication may have immunised them against serious engagement with the themes of, for instance, A.M. Toplady’s classic hymn Rock of Ages:

The Nonconformist and the Roman Catholic Church

THIS article surveys the attitude of the Nonconformist, the best-known Free Church journal of the Victorian age, to the Roman Catholic Church. It was not necessarily representative of Dissenting opinion in general; indeed there is plenty of evidence that a good number of leading Nonconformists looked on it with disfavour; but clearly it represented one strand, and an important one, in the outlook of Victorian Nonconformity.

Die vrye kerk: Enkele opmerkings oor die herkoms en inhoud van die opvatting

The free church: Some comments on the origins and contents of this idea.In 1859 fifteen members of the then established Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk in the ZAR notified the Synod of that church that they were relinquishing their membership of the said church to form their own free church. Thus the first Afrikaans free church was formed. In this study the history of the idea of the free church is traced to independentistic tendencies in English puritanism which found its way to the Dutch Nadere Reformatie. From there the idea was carried forward by the Moravians and implanted in the European Réveil. Within the climate, created by the Réveil, the 1834 schism took place in the Netherlands. From this Dutch free church the idea was brought to the ZAR. The contents of the idea are briefly examined and contrasted with the idea of the established church based on the covenant.

Ancestors and protestants: religious coexistence in the social field of a Zambian community

This essay explores the coexistence of the ancestor cult and the Presbyterian Free Church as constituent elements of the ritual and ideological field of Yombe society in northern Zambia. It takes the position that these two religious expressions may be appropriate to the experiences, consciousness, and actions of individuals as they pursue personal interests and social goals in situations of rapid social change. The uneven penetration of capitalism is taken as conducive to ritual coexistence and as providing the setting for exploring changing patterns of gender relations and stratification in the rural community of Uyombe.

‘The Miser of Headingley’: Robert Arthington and the Baptist Missionary Society, 1877–1900

A gravestone in a Teignmouth cemetery displays the following inscription: Robert ArthingtonBorn at Leeds May 20th, 1823Died at Teignmouth Oct. 9th, 1900His life and his wealth were devoted to the spread of the Gospel among the Heathen.That unassuming epitaph bears testimony to one of the most remarkable figures in the story of Victorian missionary expansion. The missionary movement from both Britain and North America depended for its regular income on the enthusiasm of the small-scale contributor, but the munificence of the wealthy was essential to the financing of special projects or the opening up of new fields. The role of, for example, the jam manufacturer William Hartley as treasurer of the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, or of the chemical manufacturers James and John Campbell White in providing much of the finance for the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia Mission, is relatively well known.

Book Review: A History of the Free Churches

Book Review: A History of the Free Churches

Burning with the Fire of God: Calvinism and Community in a Scottish Fishing Village

The village of Ferryden, Scotland, has 800 people and two Presbyterian churches. The larger one, the Established Church of Scotland, is state-supported, the smaller one, the United Free (Continuing) Church, is not. Supporters ofthe latter regard members of the former as traitors, yet the doctrinal differences between them may at first seem rather small to an outsider. As one Ferrydener said, one kirk, ye stand to sing and sit to pray; in the other, ye sit to sing and stand to pray. To understand how a small village can sustain two churches and why feelings about them run so high, we must look not at the formal differences in doctrine?what they might mean to an outsider considering attendance?but rather at their symbolic meaning for the people of Ferryden. In doing so, we find that this meaning derives from the social transformation of the community from a homogeneous fishing village to a divided, partially suburbanized dormitory for people perceived by the fisherfolk as incomers. The two churches come to stand for this division. In a previous article (Nadel 1984), I argued that the Ferryden fisherfolk clung to their occupational identity despite its stigmatization by outsiders, and despite their dependence upon new forms of work, because without it they would lose their most precious possession: the sense of belonging to a community. In short, fisherfolk identity has become a way of staking a moral claim upon the home of their ancestors. Here I investigate the process by which Ferryden fisherfolk (and Scottish fisherfolk, more broadly) of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used both the dissenting Free Kirk and revivalism for social and psychological advantage and as a means for social change. In doing so, they elevated their own perception of what fisherfolk identity meant, giving it a gloss of respectability and virtue that it had never had before. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Scottish fishing commu? nities were reputed to be strongholds of paganism and the Established Church appeared to little hold over their lives. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the fisherfolk came to be known for fervent religiosity, adhering to different Christian sects of varying doctrinal and ritual strictness (Anson 1974:47). In fact, the fisherfolk ofthe northeast have been described as apt to embrace every new form of religion on offer (Fraser 1983:22). Revival movements were especially popular in the 1850s, 1870s, and the 1920s. They were often inspired by itinerant missionary preachers from other parts of the English-speaking Protestant world, including Ulster, England, and the United States, but were frequently led by local men who had undergone sudden and

The foundation and early years of the Aberdeen centre of the royal Scottish geographical society

Abstract The early years of the Aberdeen Branch of the RSGS reveal certain features of the Society's character which should not be overlooked. Both the academics and townsmen associated with the Branch were much affected by imperialist concerns such as the position of the Free Church Mission in Central Africa. The roles of the politician Lord Aberdeen and the Free Churchman George Adam Smith are notable; both were influenced by the scientist‐evangelist Henry Drummond. Aberdeen had its modest share in the emergence of the “new geography”.

A Free Church in a Free Society: The Ecclesiology of John England, Bishop of Charleston, 1820–1842, a Nineteenth-Century Missionary Bishop in the Southern United States. By Peter Clarke. Hartsville, South Carolina: Center for John England Studies, 1982; distributed by Attic Press, xviii + 561 pp. $24.95 cloth; $15.95 paper.

A Free Church in a Free Society: The Ecclesiology of John England, Bishop of Charleston, 1820–1842, a Nineteenth-Century Missionary Bishop in the Southern United States. By Peter Clarke. Hartsville, South Carolina: Center for John England Studies, 1982; distributed by Attic Press, xviii + 561 pp. $24.95 cloth; $15.95 paper.

John Locke's Legacy of Religious Freedom

Historically, in many parts of the world, neither the priest nor the prince has been willing to remain confined to his designated realm if dominance of the other's affairs seemed possible. A moderated form of this inclination may be seen in John Locke's advocacy of religious freedom. As Professor Kessler notes here, Locke wants to establish the secular authority's supremacy over the churches, albeit, without enabling the government to use religion in a scheme of oppression. He would limit religious freedom to forms of worship that have no destabilizing political consequences. He hoped the free churches would teach civic virtue and promote civil peace. But his theory also has the purpose of making Christianity itself more compatible with the modern state.

Self-Denial and the Free Churches: some literary responses

The ascetic ideal found in wandering holy men in the east and in the self- and world-denying vows of regular clergy and laity in the middle ages came down to English nonconformity through puritanism. Bunyan’s pilgrim, like Benedict and Francis was passing through a temporary and evil world. Their attitude to life was that of the Sermon on the Mount, on the lips of the shepherd lad: ‘I am content with what I have,Little be it, or much.‘Wesley blended the high Anglican discipline of Jeremy Taylor and the Oxford Holy Club with his field evangelism and exhorted his Methodists to ‘Gain all you can; save all you can; then give all all you can.’ The gain was to be without doing harm to anyone. The Methodist was ‘to despise delicacy and variety, and be content with what plain nature requires.’ He was to ‘waste no part of it … in costly pictures, painting, gilding, books; in elegant rather than useful gardens.’ The Methodist was to avoid sensuality, curiosity and vanity. Wesley’s sermon on ‘The use of money’ is regularly quoted and is required reading for every Methodist preacher.