Where now?
At the time of writing, the evangelicals are, unfortunately, still in disarray and disunity, in spite of hollow assurances of underlying Christian unity. There is a strange irony in the fact that an avowedly Christian website titled “Christians Together” (an oxymoron?) over a period of months in 2012/13 published a number of scathing and sometimes even poisonous comments about the Church of Scotland, mainly by members of other traditions or by discontents who have left the Kirk and wanted to claim a monopoly of the high moral, spiritual and Biblical ground for themselves.
Such comments did the writers no credit and certainly do not advance the Kingdom of God. They did, on the other hand, feed into the hungry jaws of spiritual pride. There has been a large supply of the latter commodity. It is not, of course, in any way confined to evangelicals. To me, it is one of the worst kinds of pride.
Some of the comments in “Christians Together” {20} and in the popular press certainly did not make for pleasant reading. It seemed as though much of the evangelical church had followed the lead of contemporary society in that debates on important issues apparently cannot be carried out unless accompanied by mud-slinging and aggressive personal insults. And if Christians cannot behave with minimal courtesy towards one another, what credibility can they expect in the so-called real world?
The comments made through the Church of Scotland offices and the Presbytery of Glasgow have been generally milder, although tinged perhaps with more than a degree of complacency.
Much more helpful, were the comments made by the retiring Moderator, Very Rev John Chalmers, at the 2015 Assembly when he said:
“I am not speaking to one side or another of the theological spectrum. I am speaking to both ends and middle. It is time to stop calling each other names, time to shun the idea that we should define ourselves by our differences and instead define ourselves by what we hold in common - our baptism into Christ, our dependence on God's grace, our will to serve the poor and so on."
There is a story (probably apocryphal) that one night there was a knock on the door of a certain Scottish manse. When the minister answered the door, he found one of his parishioners standing there, somewhat the worse of alcohol.
“Minister,” he said, “I’ve come to speak to you about the schisms in God’s Kirk.”
“Well”, said the minister, “you can come back and speak to me about that when you’re sober.”
“Minister,” replied the parishioner, “when I’m sober I won’t be caring much about the schisms in God’s Kirk.”
I confess that I have a certain degree of sympathy with the drunken parishioner’s viewpoint. Scottish Presbyterianism has a woeful history of strife and division and we do not seem to learn many lessons from the past.
In recent times, even the smaller strict Presbyterian traditions, the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church (who, to outsiders seemed as alike as Tweedledum and Tweeddledee) have had their splits, including spats and lawsuits over property. It would be funny if it was not so sad and pathetic.
There is now also a new (non-Scottish) kid on the block – the International Presbyterians (“IPs”). The particular origins of this organisation are in the work of Francis and Edith Schaeffer who went to Switzerland in 1948 as highly respected missionaries from the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the USA. In Scotland the IPs have already included Trinity Church Aberdeen (formed by a secession of the former minister and a majority of the congregation of Aberdeen: High Hilton) and the new modestly titled Highland International Church in Inverness. The British headquarters of the International Presbyterians are in Ealing, London.
There had even been talk of forming yet another Presbyterian denomination in Scotland to accommodate those who wished to leave the Church of Scotland. We really do need another Presbyterian denomination like we need a hole in the head. Anyone wanting to join a Presbyterian Church in Scotland already has a choice of eight different models. Surely that is more than enough?
Meanwhile, the Free Church of Scotland, in its new all singing all dancing model, temporarily suspended its familiar role of a nagging and carping harridan in respect of the Kirk and substituted that of a seductive siren, calling on men (and I mean only men) who want to leave the ministry of the Church of Scotland to come and join its ranks.
How well the Free Kirk could, in practice, have adjusted to an influx of ministers, who had enjoyed a remarkable degree of personal freedom in the Church of Scotland, is (perhaps fortunately) untested. And how well former Kirk ministers would adjust to the tight and controlling culture of the Free Kirk and its more rigid adherence to the Westminster Confession is also uncharted water. Certainly, they would find the attitude towards women to be rather different and they might perceive that taking on a degree of alien cultural baggage is a price they would rather not pay.
The United Free Church (“UFC”), hardly a major player on today’s ecclesiastical stage, was in a Covenant relationship with the Church of Scotland. It was known at an early stage that the UFC was far from happy about 2(d). The UFC is as much of a mixture as the Church of Scotland when it comes to ecclesiastical polity. However, in recent years, it has tended to return more strongly to its evangelical roots.
As a result of the 2015 outcome the UFC General Assembly regretfully agreed to take steps to bring the Covenant with the Church of Scotland to a close as there was “a fundamental difference between our two denominations, not only on same-sex relationship but on how we regard and interpret scripture.” More positively, it was stated that, even with the ending of the Covenant, it would still be possible for local cooperation to take place, formally or informally, between the two denominations. In other words, they were standing their ground but, unlike the Free Church of Scotland, they wished to remain on reasonably amicable terms. The UFC has sometimes served as a place of refuge for malcontents from the Church of Scotland. It too will probably welcome any refugees from the Kirk with open arms.
It is not original for me to suggest that all this reorganising and rushing from one denomination to another is about as productive as reallocating the cabin accommodation on the Titanic. I trust this does not sound too cynical. People believed that the Titanic could not possibly sink but everyone knows the end of that story. It was a tragedy in every sense of the word. But we can forget that the tragic sinking of that great ship was actually a bitter memorial to human pride. To run from one denomination to another is a negative witness, irrespective of whoever may be the most theologically sound.
At the end of the day, some people will have moved denominations. The church as a whole will have been further fragmented. In spite of some churches reporting growth, there is actually no real sign of overall growth in committed church-going people across Scotland. So called growth is frequently no more than malcontents moving from one church to another. And, of course, people will go to the places where people go. Birds of a feather flock together.
It is painful for me to say so, but I see a great deal of the wrong kind of pride in much of the Christian church today, not just in Scotland. I would go further and say that the finger points especially at the evangelical wing of the church, much of which seems to be obsessed with very worldly issues such as numbers, buildings, equipment, power, control and money. These evangelical churches have to succeed. In fact, they also have to be seen to succeed. If they do not, there is a presumption that something must be wrong. Is there enough prayer? Is the Word not being proclaimed faithfully enough? I suggested earlier that there was a belief in the 1970’s that if the Gospel was effectively proclaimed by this new breed of keen young Scottish ministers, all would be well. Yet that did not happen across the board. The expected time of refreshing and revival did not come; or if it did, we somehow managed to miss it.
Now, some men and women have left the comfort and relative security of the Church of Scotland and gone elsewhere, sometimes at real personal sacrifice, as in the case of St George’s Tron. Has it been worth it? Those who have done so will firmly say “yes”, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they? In a very real sense they simply cannot afford to fail. A loss of face would be the greatest loss of all, far greater than the loss of the building. I was interested to see that the minister of the breakaway Tron congregation in Glasgow is already reporting a ten per cent rise in his congregation since leaving the Church of Scotland. Make of that what you will.
The other side of the coin is that not only do the breakaway congregations have to succeed but the Church of Scotland, in turn, has to be seen to fail. God, in the eyes of the breakaways, cannot possibly bless either the theologically compromised Kirk or even those evangelicals who choose to remain in its service.
The fact remains that divisions have been created now that will not easily be healed in this generation. The ministers and congregations who have broken away will certainly expect to be vindicated in the eyes of both God and man (especially the latter). They will not easily maintain open fellowship with their Church of Scotland colleagues, whatever may be said to the contrary.
To me, it looks as though the process we are going through in some ways mirrors the Disruption of 1843, although in other respects it is very different.
Scholars and historians still disagree as to whether the Disruption, ostensibly over the issue of a congregation’s right to call a minister of their own choosing, was actually necessary. Many people believed that it was intolerable that the final choice of a minister rested with a patron, often a local landowner who was frequently an absentee and with little interest in the Kirk. Necessary or not, the Disruption happened and a very large number of ministers and elders “went out” to form the Free Church of Scotland.
To the Disruption fathers, the sky was the limit. Churches sprang up here, there and everywhere. (Well, not quite everywhere. With some honourable exceptions, they tended to spring up in areas where the new congregations could afford to pay their way.) At least one entirely new University (New College) was planned. The new thrusting and ambitious Free Church virtually became the Liberal Party in Scotland at prayer. It was also to be an important agent in the rise of the new and growing middle class in nineteenth century Scotland.
To be fair, many ministers and their families, suddenly without church, manse and stipend in 1843, did suffer very considerable privation. Equally, many people gave of their means sacrificially. Some historians view the Disruption as a noble act, where people were willing to stand up for what they believed. I would not want to poor-mouth anyone who is prepared to sacrifice what for s/he believes to be right. However, noble or not in its intentions, I believe that the Disruption was one of the worst events that ever overtook the Kirk in Scotland.
The Disruption led to an unpleasantly competitive attitude and effectively quenched the Holy Spirit. The Free Church looked at the Kirk and attempted not only to mirror what it did but always to go at least one better.
When in 1874, patronage – the ostensible cause of the Disruption – was removed by Parliament, the Free Church perversely was far from pleased. It seemed now that there was really nothing left over which to be divided from the Church of Scotland. Yet divided is what they were to remain for many years to come.
Traces of this competitive outlook still mar some parts of church life in Scotland to this very day. Spiritual pride effectively postponed full reunion for roughly 50 years.
In 1900 most of the Free Church chose to unite with the United Presbyterians, with whom they actually had far less in common than the Church of Scotland, to form the United Free Church. The fact that the Free Church and the United Presbyterians were uneasy bedfellows was demonstrated starkly when the conservative remnant of the Free Church that had stayed out of the Union were awarded title to all the property belonging to the pre-1900 Free Church in a celebrated House of Lords case.{21} The continuing Free Church was unable to use much of this property and, failing agreement between the two churches, a parliamentary commission was set up which led to the passing of the Church of Scotland Act 1905. This commission reallocated property more realistically between the two churches. It is fair to say that the continuing Free Church was treated generously; some might say over-generously.
In 1929, the majority of the United Free Church united with the Church of Scotland. As with the Union of 1900, a minority (known popularly as “Continuers”) elected to stay out. Nevertheless, in 2015 we seem to have as many Presbyterian denominations as ever.
However, there are important differences between the Disruption and the fragmented, muddled and chaotic situation that we find today.
Some of my brother ministers have suggested that the Kirk is in a real crisis, which brings me back to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter.
I respectfully disagree. To me, the Kirk is in a mess rather than an actual crisis. The mess does not only affect the evangelicals (traditionalists). It involves everybody. The more liberal (revisionist) part of the Kirk is not generally thriving or growing either. Its spokesmen tend to present themselves as wishy-washy and self-satisfied as well as considering themselves to be the “true” historic Church of Scotland. In public, they seem to be in denial that the Kirk is facing any real problems. Their motto might well be “Keep taking the tablets”.
It is fair to say that the revisionists are not split, as is the case with the traditionalists, but then they were scarcely united in the first place. Judging by some of the anodyne comments made by the more liberal Moderators in recent years, there are some revisionists who believe in so little as to leave nothing about which it would be worthwhile differing. Yet people who call themselves liberal can also vary greatly without showing the same outward signs of disunity as do the evangelicals or traditionalists.
I have known people who think of themselves as liberal and yet, in practice, are surprisingly conservative and even “evangelical”, who read the Bible at least as frequently (sometimes more so) as many of the card-carrying evangelicals. At the other end of the spectrum, are those of a very radical viewpoint who seem to believe passionately in next to nothing and seem to me to be more like humanists than followers of Jesus Christ.
In between, there are many well intentioned and faithful people who are largely untaught and unsure of what they actually think and believe. All this shows how unhelpful and unfair it can be to slap labels on people.
This mess is not something new. It is simply that it is becoming more noticeable.