This is the third of four articles, based on addresses to the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) United States Summer Conference, August 2018. Alasdair Macleod, The Free Church of Scotland 1892 – the Kingship of Christ in Doctrine, The Master’s Trumpet, Vol. 12, Summer 2020.
It is taken for granted in most countries today, and especially in the USA, that church and state should be separate—the government and all its institutions must be secular. But the Word of God teaches differently, and therefore, so does the Free Church of Scotland. Christ is the “King of nations” (Jer. 10:7). Therefore the nation owes him obedience and loyalty. As Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”1Quoted in James D. Bratt, ed., Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids, 1998), 488. Consider all the implications that brings. There is no division of knowledge into “secular” and “religious” categories; all true knowledge is of God, as all of life is from God. The state is Christ’s, the Government is Christ’s, the law is Christ’s, and all are solemnly charged to obey him and to be conformed to his image. For these truths, the Free Church of Scotland stood faithful in a very difficult day.
1. The Stand
On 31 October 1900, the members of the general assembly made their way to the Free Church Assembly Hall on the Mound, Edinburgh. They found the gates locked and barred, and two policemen on duty to exclude them from their meeting place. A caretaker came and told the men the Hall was being cleaned, and when Rev J. Kennedy Cameron, the Principal Clerk, said that was not necessary, the man jeered, “You are among dirt anyway.”2John MacLeod, Banner in the West (Edinburgh, 2008), 213. There was nothing else for it; as rain poured down, the Moderator constituted the general assembly on the pavement outside, and the twenty commissioners present agreed to adjourn to a hired hall.
Behind them, hundreds of commissioners flocked down to the covered Waverley Market, departing from the Free Church. There they constituted the first general assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland. The majority had decided to enter a union with the United Presbyterian Church, and the faithful minority that remained outside was to be deprived of all the property donated over the previous fifty-seven years for the work of the Free Church. There were various differences between the churches, but the sharpest point of distinction was this: the United Presbyterians held to the separation of church and state, while the Free Church minority held to the Establishment Principle, the full, unedited version of the Westminster Confession, and the vows that upheld it. They saw that to sacrifice this truth was to break their vows, depart from their identity, and become something different than what they had been.3For the fullest account of the union from the Free Church perspective, c.f. Alexander Stewart & J. Kennedy Cameron, The Free Church of Scotland, 1843–1900 (Edinburgh, 1910), ch.vi.
2. The Doctrine
We must be clear that religious establishment is not the defining principle of the Free Church of Scotland. If we wished to define ourselves today, we probably would do so in terms of the five “solas” of the Reformation, or, at greater length, the Westminster Confession. But the church does not choose its battlegrounds. The truth to be contended for is the truth that is presently under attack.
Today, we are not defined by literal six-day creation, but we will take our stand on that point; we are not defined by opposition to the morality of same-sex relationships, but we will take our stand with Scripture; equally, in a secular age, we still confess the Kingship of Christ over the nations. Our experience in the Scottish Church has been that an assault on one part of the Confession is an assault upon the whole. So we are thankful for the stand of 1900, not just for this point, but for all the heritage of truth preserved by the tiny continuing Free Church, in the face of national declension.
But the truth is important: Christ is King of the Nations. Some may object that Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Therefore, do we have a religious life and a secular life, distinct and separate? No.
Let us reason together:
- Christ is the creator of all men—“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
- Therefore, Christ is the creator of nations—“All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name” (Ps. 86:9).
- Therefore, men are under his law, as individuals and as nations—“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21).
- Therefore, a nation must serve God—“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34).
- Therefore, the rulers of the nations are Christ’s servants, to do His will—“Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Ps. 2:10–11); “For he [the ruler] is the minister of God to thee for good” (Rom. 13:4).
- The will of God for man is summed up in the Ten Commandments—“And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone” (Deut. 4:13); “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:17).
- Therefore, these Ten Commandments are binding upon national governments.
This conclusion may not sound radical. Yet consider the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). That is addressed to the state. When godly kings reigned in Israel, then the worship of false gods was forbidden, and the worship of the true God was established. Even that was not just in a general, “non-denominational” sense; Jehoshaphat was commended when he took away the high places where the Jews were offering unregulated worship to the Lord (2 Chron. 17:6). Consider the application of this! Thou, O President and Congress of the United States, shalt have no other gods before me; thou, O Queen and Parliament of the United Kingdom, shalt not make unto thee any graven image!
When Darius, King of Persia, was brought to repentance, he commanded that all the peoples of his empire worship the one true God (Dan. 6:25–26). This was the fruit of his repentance. The conclusion of Scripture is plain: Kings, and by extension modern nation states, should support and uphold the true church of Christ, legislatively and financially. Further proof is found in Isaiah 60:3, “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” Nations shall be saved! And further in the same chapter, verse 10, “And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee;” And verse 16, “Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.” Kings shall nourish the church; we have seen instances of this in church history, and we await greater fulfillments yet to come!
A Scriptural example of this principle in action is found in Ezra 1, where King Cyrus made provision for the Jewish priests; similarly, Artaxerxes in Nehemiah 2. As the Lord commands rulers in Psalm 2, “Kiss ye the Son.” If a New Testament text is desired, consider Revelation 11:15, “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” Here is hope for the future of the church of Christ!
Consider then the implications of the doctrine:
- The state should take the whole Law as its basis for legislation.
- The state should uphold the true church of Christ, morally, financially, and legislatively.
- The state should require a clear confession of faith from the church, and demand consistency with it.
- This is not a basis for persecution: the state can restrain public blasphemy and heresy as punishable offences. But there is no thought crime in biblical civil law, and a household can do as it wishes behind closed doors.
Some may object that it is unfair or an imposition on conscience to propose that the state support one “denomination” as the national church. But that is untrue. A rightly constituted national church on a solid confessional basis is one with a right to command the loyalty of all Christians who profess the truth of the Scriptures. Conscience, as Knox famously told Mary, Queen of Scots, must be enlightened by the Word of God, and the truth of Scripture is plain and evident (a vital Reformation principle). Others may object that this principle undermines the principle of the freewill offerings of the people supporting the church. Quite the contrary, however, this merely extends the principle to people collectively, that is, nations.
3. The Controversy
Where then did the call for separation of church and state originate? In Scotland, it was given a telling name, “New Light.” Its source was the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, which rejected authority and the truth of Scripture and taught human reason as the way to discern truth. At its worst extremes, the Enlightenment promoted atheism and rebellion against established authority, as in murderous chaos of the French Revolution. The doctrine arose first in Scotland among secession churches, and in 1847, the various New Light groups came together as the United Presbyterian Church, committed to “voluntaryism.”4John W. Keddie, Preserving a Reformed Heritage (Kirkhill, 2017), 27–9.
The danger of this thinking was its insistence that religion can exist in a special category. The state will make provision to teach sums, but not Scripture, reading, but not repentance, French, but not faith in Christ as the way of salvation. As though we can have normative truth in “secular” subjects, but mere subjective opinion in religion. The state would provide a school, hospital, police station, and telephone exchange, but not a church—everything, except the one thing needful.
It was soon proposed that the Free Church and the United Presbyterians must unite. This call resulted in the First Union Controversy (1867–73). The Constitutionalists successfully resisted the proposed union as a sacrifice of vital principle. But it was a warning of what was to come. The trend in the Free Church was towards loosened doctrinal exactitude, and one minister commented grimly, “I dare say, death will have a great deal to do among us before the set time for union comes.”5Quoted in Stewart & Cameron, Free Church of Scotland, 49. One by one, the older Constitutionalist leaders died, and were not replaced: Begg, Kennedy, Martin, the Bonars, Moody-Stuart.
Meanwhile, the call for disestablishment of the Church of Scotland became a major national political issue, energetically promoted by leaders of the dominant Liberal party, and was for a time a very serious possibility. The leaders of the majority party in the Free Church felt they had caught the national mood, and became ever more bold in their demand for national disestablishment. By the time of the Second Union Controversy (1896–1900), there was little effective opposition. The overwhelming majority acceded, and when union was finalized in October 1900, just twenty-seven ministers stood outside, while 1100 went into the United Free Church. But many thousands of people, especially in the Highlands and the major cities, stood with them, and even on the South African mission field, thousands of native converts remained outside the union.
The trials of the continuing Free Church were difficult. J. Kennedy Cameron commented later that tabling the protest before a hostile assembly was the hardest thing he ever had to do.6J. Kennedy Cameron, Scottish Church Union of 1900 (Inverness, 1923), 45. When the minority withdrew to a side room of the hall to continue the general assembly and elect a moderator, they were pursued by scornful hecklers. On the day of the union, they found themselves locked out. Thereafter, they all received threatening letters demanding that they remove themselves from their manses and churches. Many congregations were again left worshipping in the open air. The Disruption of 1843 had been a great national movement, but the continuing Free Church felt themselves to be just a handful standing against the tide.7G. N. M. Collins, The Heritage of our Fathers (Edinburgh, 1976), 108–10.
But a remarkable reversal was to come. The legal case that resulted over the property failed twice in the Scottish courts, but at last was appealed to the House of Lords, which was at that time the supreme court of the United Kingdom for civil matters. The seven law Lords gave their verdict in 1904, and decided by a majority verdict of five to two, to recognize the Free Church minority as the legitimate continuation of the 1843 Free Church and legitimate owners of its entire property. A vital point of principle had been established in British civil law, which stands to this day: funds donated for a particular trust could not be appropriated for a different trust.8For the full details of the case, c.f. Robert Low Orr, ed., The Free Church of Scotland Appeals, 1903–4 (Edinburgh, 1904). The decision created a huge national sensation. The United Free Church was predictably outraged and complained vociferously that the Free Church could not manage the trust. This was, in fairness, undeniable: the pre-1900 Free Church had owned far more property than the continuing minority could possibly utilize. As a result, the government stepped in, and a royal commission was appointed by act of Parliament to divide the property between the United Free and the continuing Free Churches. The Free Church did not receive every property they requested, and were particularly disappointed to lose New College and the Assembly Hall of the old Free Church. However, they did receive churches and manses for most of their larger congregations, and were compensated for the loss of the national buildings by the grant of the former Free Church Offices on The Mound, which became the location for the Free Church College of the twentieth century.9For a full academic study of the case, c.f. Kenneth R. Ross, Church and Creed in Scotland: The Free Church Case 1900–04 and its Origins (Edinburgh, 1988).
It was a remarkable vindication of the despised minority. The Lord had preserved the testimony of the Free Church of Scotland, that Christ is King of the nations. We must hold this principle in the present day. Let us note that we have a solid and consistent basis of principle for demanding that the government observe the Law of God. We can oppose the building of kingdom halls and mosques with absolute consistency. We can demand the Ten Commandments, not just as a decoration on a courthouse wall, but as the basis for Law in Congress and in the state legislatures, the first and second tables alike. We can and indeed should vote, and engage in political discourse and contention, in all things seeking the advance of Christ’s Kingdom.
No area of life is merely “secular;” your employment is done to His glory, your recreation is enjoyed to His glory, your family time is shared to His glory. Let us make it our aim in all we do, like Enoch of old, to walk with God. Here is a vision for the future: to see the will of God done in earth, as it is in Heaven.
Footnotes
- 1Quoted in James D. Bratt, ed., Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids, 1998), 488. ↩︎
- 2John MacLeod, Banner in the West (Edinburgh, 2008), 213. ↩︎
- 3For the fullest account of the union from the Free Church perspective, c.f. Alexander Stewart & J. Kennedy Cameron, The Free Church of Scotland, 1843–1900 (Edinburgh, 1910), ch.vi. ↩︎
- 4John W. Keddie, Preserving a Reformed Heritage (Kirkhill, 2017), 27–9. ↩︎
- 5Quoted in Stewart & Cameron, Free Church of Scotland, 49. ↩︎
- 6J. Kennedy Cameron, Scottish Church Union of 1900 (Inverness, 1923), 45. ↩︎
- 7G. N. M. Collins, The Heritage of our Fathers (Edinburgh, 1976), 108–10. ↩︎
- 8For the full details of the case, c.f. Robert Low Orr, ed., The Free Church of Scotland Appeals, 1903–4 (Edinburgh, 1904). ↩︎
- 9For a full academic study of the case, c.f. Kenneth R. Ross, Church and Creed in Scotland: The Free Church Case 1900–04 and its Origins (Edinburgh, 1988). ↩︎
