Dear J,

Last week you asked me a really difficult and embarrassing question. One that I find very difficult to answer and one that I am even ashamed to be asked. You wanted to know why it was that the Free Church was continuing to be sued by another Church who call themselves the Continuing Free Church (FCC). You had heard that the Church was being sued and that there had been mediation, which had been agreed by both parties, with the hope that the court case would be dropped. I then announced at the prayer meeting, with some degree of gratitude and gratefulness that the Free Church General Assembly Commission had accepted the terms of the mediation and we waited for the Continuing Assembly to do the same. Sadly – it was not to be. Using the usual meaningless waffle of ‘truth, righteousness and justice’ the Continuing decided to continue the case – with the result that the next days papers were full of inaccurate stories about Free Church factions going to war over property. Hence your question. I now want to answer it, not only for you but also for other Christian friends who may want to know, and for those in the Free Church who are a little confused and bemused by all this, and not least, for myself. I cannot describe how depressed and saddened I was by the news. Once again a ‘Christian’ church was behaving in a way which brings dishonour on Jesus, makes a mockery of our claims to be Christian and causes the unbelievers to blaspheme against His Holy Name.

So where do I begin? If you want the full details then I suggest you read my two earlier columns on this website (Part 1 and Part 2). However the summary version is that in 2000, after a decade of church politics and infighting the Free Church split. The reason was ostensibly the refusal of the church to discipline one of our Professors, who some wanted charged with adultery. After years of investigations (and campaigning) the Church had decided that there was not enough evidence to even hold a trial and so the matter was dropped. Or at least it should have been. But some men were so convinced of guilt that they wanted not only a trial but an execution. For them it became a matter of ‘righteousness, truth, justice’ etc and above all, a matter of personal vindication. They refused to obey the General Assembly and drop their campaign – they even went so far as to accuse the church of lying and ‘evil’. They were then suspended and went off to form their own new denomination, The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the particular case, it was, and remains, a puzzle to me that men would allow the non-existence of a personal discipline case to be the reason for schism.

But that was not the end of it. These men were extremely disappointed – around 20% of our ministers left – but they only managed to take 8% of the people (having initially claimed that they would take 50%). This split was hardly felt in most of our largest congregations but in some there was significant pain and trouble. But it got worse. Despite a personal assurance given to me at the International Conference of Reformed Churches in Philadelphia in 2001 that the FCC would not take the Free Church to court, that is exactly what happened. The FCC are taking us to court and they are claiming to be us and therefore they want all our buildings, funds etc. This may seem a little absurd to you – after all they have no members in or from our congregation St Peters, and yet they are claiming to be St Peters and claiming the building etc. Actually it is more than absurd. It is evil. They are threatening to close down the work of the Gospel in this place, and many others, because of… Actually I cannot answer because – the obvious answers are ones that I do not want to believe – revenge, pettiness, greed. The answers given – truth, righteousness and justice are ones that are so inane that one can hardly believe that even those who propound them take it seriously.

Now let me say in all of this that the Free Church was not without fault. We could certainly have handled things better. I personally do not think it is right for Christians to take one another to court and one of our congregations had certainly done that to one FCC congregation – seeking to get their building back. For that reason I was delighted to hear that our lawyers and their lawyers were encouraging mediation (although once again it was embarrassing that secular lawyers should have to tell us the blatantly biblically obvious). Having had years of experience of dealing with the mindset and mentality of some of the FCC people I had my doubts that this would work. For a number of days our representatives, and theirs, met together in Carberry Tower under the auspices of a professional mediator, in order to try and prevent this coming to court. My cynicism was somewhat overcome when we heard the news that the mediation had been successful and that proposals had been agreed by both parties, which were to be put to both church commissions so that the court case could be dropped. You can see the full details on the Free Church website in terms of the documentation but the bottom line was as follows -

The Free Church would

a) Lift the suspensions of the ministers, recognise the new church and not oppose membership of ecumenical bodies.

b) Continue to pay the pensions etc of the men who had left the church.

c) Apologise for any wrong and hurt caused to any through this dispute.

d) Set up a commission to help sort out property issues in local situations.

To this we agreed.

In response to this the FCC would drop the court case and enter into negotiations about local arrangements.

This solution (as all solutions) involved compromise and loss on both sides. However The FCC did not agree and decided to go ahead with the court case. The main reason is apparently something called the ‘right of continued protest’. Neither I, nor anyone else, are quite sure what this is. The way the system works in the Church is that if you disagree with something done by one of the Church courts you can dissent and protest to the next court. So let us say that someone in my congregation does not like something we do and they feel so strongly about it they complain to the local elders (the Kirk Session). If the Kirk Session reject their complaint they can dissent and protest to the Presbytery. If the Presbytery reject it, they can complain and protest to the Synod. If the Synod reject it then they can go to the highest court of the Church, the General Assembly. If the Assembly rejects their complaint then they can protest and appeal to God. By doing so they absolve themselves of the decision and we leave it up to the day of judgement. Obviously if they did not accept that and went back and started all over again you would end up with anarchy and chaos within the Church. However in the Free Church you can protest and disagree with the Assembly. What you cannot do is keep coming back, again and again and again, until eventually you wear everyone down and get what you want. Which is what this ‘right of continued protest’ seems to be.

But what does this have to do with a civil secular court? The FCC are asking the court to determine what the constitution of the Free Church is. They are stating that the right of continued protest is a fundamental part of our constitution (although you will not find it in any one of our constitutional documents!) and they want the court to recognise that and to declare that they are the true Free Church. For anyone with any sense of history it is quite astonishing, that those who claim to be the heirs of the Disruption (where the Evangelicals left the Church of Scotland precisely because they were not prepared to accept that the State had the right to determine who the church should employ and what the church was), should claim to be defending the church by asking the civil court to determine an issue of doctrine and church discipline!

Are you still with me? Or has that ‘short’ explanation caused you to lose the will to live! Let me tell you that it really depresses and embarrasses me. So much so that there was no way I could say anything on Sunday (I did however mention it at the prayer meeting). I mean when you are faced with new people in church, new students from a non Free Church background, unbelievers from a secular background, how on earth can you even begin to contemplate explaining the parallel universe of ‘rights of continued protest’ and the actions of those who in the name of ‘truth, righteousness and justice’ deliberately ignore and disobey the bibles clear teaching that Christians are not to take one another to court? By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another! Is refusing a mediation process and taking a brother to court, love?

I am so ashamed for the gospel. I see the desperate need of people around me. I see the heartache, the pain, the confusion, the lostness of the sheep without a shepherd. And then I see those who profess to be undershepherds fighting each other, rather than looking for the lost, caring for the flock and obeying the great shepherd. How do I answer the oft repeated charge that you put two Scots Presbyterians on a desert island and you will end up with two separate churches? How do I respond to the accusation that religion is just about money – when in our newspapers over the next few weeks there will be the unseemly sight of Christians taking other Christians (whom they ‘love in the Lord’) to court in order to get money and buildings?

So, what can be done? Firstly, in order to rescue the name of the ‘Reformed’ faith and to take the cynicism of those of us who have come to believe that its exponents and self proclaimed custodians, have at best become a clique and at worst a sect, let our brothers and sisters in other Reformed churches and organisations (the ICRC, Affinity etc) use their influence to persuade the FCC that a court case costing hundreds of thousands of pounds and incalculable harm to the gospel in Scotland, is not the way forward. And if the FCC will not listen to them then let the wider Reformed community discipline them.

Secondly we must recognise that this is once again just a distraction of the devil. We have a work to get on with – the work of the Lord – and we must get on with it. There is no need to despair. We did not seek this court case. We do not want it. And there is nothing we can do to prevent it. We will just have to see what happens.

If, as I fully expect (although one never knows with secular judges), we ‘win’ (can there be any winners in this farce?) then equally we must get on with the work. It is not a secular court which will or can declare that we are ‘good and faithful servants’. The Day will tell.

But what if we ‘lose’? There is something in me that would almost like us to lose. Indeed sometimes I think that I would like to walk away from the whole thing – give the FCC the buildings and money. I must admit that losing our church building would be a heavy price to pay (perhaps the FCC would be ‘generous’ and allow us to hire it – although one suspects that the games they play of being a ‘significant’ world, historical church would result in St Peter’s being too much of a prize for them). But we have the people and we have the gospel. Forgive me but there is something inside that says it would be a release (as well as a farce) for a civil court to declare that we were no longer the Free Church. We might be set free! What do I mean by that? Well, let me put it this way. I have had years and years of pettiness, church courts, ministers playing at amateur lawyers, campaigns, gossip etc. There is no way that I ever want to go back to that (and sometimes I fear that we have not yet got rid of that mentality). The irony is that the FCC are demanding that in order for the court case to be stopped we should have to be reunited on their terms. Forgive me for saying this but I would sooner walk away from the Free Church than return to what we had in the 1990’s. There is no going back to that distortion of Christianity – we need to move forward. I would rather get out of the ‘miry clay’ and ‘leap over walls’. The slough of despond may suit some temperaments but it is not for me! I want the Free Church to be, as our Moderator said at the Assembly, truly free. In fact I am thinking of starting a new movement – instead of the TR’s (Truly Reformed) I am going to have the TF’s (Truly Free) or perhaps the TFR’s (Truly Free and Reformed). Free to get on with the work of the gospel, with Christ as the head of the Church, the bible as our source of authority instead of tradition, personality and personal feeling; and mutual love, respectability and responsibility characterising our meetings and church governing bodies.

For far too long the ‘Reformed’ movement in this country has been befogged in the grip of a legalism, joylessness and pettiness which has crippled and scarred us. There have been, and continue to be, occasional shafts of light in the gloom but these are nothing compared with the glorious light of God that should shine out from the truths of the Reformed (aka Biblical) faith. For too long in Scotland ‘reformed’ has signified deformed and distorted. It is time for us to be revived, renewed and restored. It is time for the Church to be ‘Re-formed’ so that the nonsense of Christians taking one another to court in the name of Jesus will never be able to be justified.

May God grant that that day would come soon. And may it begin with you and me.

Your Pastor

David

PS – I thought the following from McCheyne was very apposite – it was written at a time when the Church was being taken to court - “If our Church is to fall under the iron foot of despotism, God grant that it may fall reformed and purified; pure in its doctrine, government, discipline and worship; scriptural in its spirit; missionary in its aim, and holy in its practice; a truly golden candlestick; a pleasant vine. If the daughter of Zion must be made a widow, and sit desolate on the ground, grant her latest cry may be that of her once suffering, now exalted Head: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”.

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