Presbyterian Revitalization in Scotland?
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JP Wallace
Puritan Board Sophomore
Simply that the Free Church's departure at it's formation from the Church of Scotland because of what they saw as irreversible corruption has been shown to be the correct one.
I'm not commenting on the Free Church's constitution then or now as such, merely their name decision to depart.
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Still travelling but search for pages, sites that relate to the formation of the Free Church, and liberalism and patronage etc. in the Church of Scotland.
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darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
Thank you SO MUCH for that link! I just got done reading the preface, which noted the need for English speakers worshipping with the French Huguenots or Dutch Reformed to have the Genevan Psalter in English so they could sing alongside the French and Dutch, and thought of my Korean mother-in-law who can't understand anything I say in English from the pulpit but will sing along with the Genevan Psalter in Korean, and also recite in Korean the Lord's Prayer and certain other parts of the historic Waldensian liturgy, which is itself based on Calvin's Strasbourg liturgy. I'm sitting in a hallway of our county courthouse outside a closed session of our county commission, and quietly sung a few verses of Psalm 2 from that four-centuries-old English translation of the Genevan Psalter.
Maybe it's my ethnic Italian blood coming out, but I think we in the Reformed world have lost a great deal by forgetting that in the Reformation era of the 1500s and 1600s, and well into the 1700s and even 1800s, a Reformed person could travel to a Reformed church in most of Continental Europe and sing from a common Psalter, use a similar liturgy, and after the Heidelberg Catechism started to be widely used, often though not always have the same catechism.
That's something we haven't ever really had in the English-speaking world. Many of my Catholic friends like to point out that when they go a traditional Catholic Mass almost anywhere in the world, they will see pretty much the same thing, whereas if they visit a Protestant church, they'll have no idea what to expect, even in the same theological tradition or (often) even in the same denomination.
They have a point today. They would not have had a point four centuries ago when most Reformed people had a shared idea of what worship, singing, and catechesis should look like.
I surely agree with you that it's hard for modern Americans to understand the level of importance of state authority in enforcing conformity among the Reformed in most of Europe, and you have a point.
But I do think there are other factors at play.
Nobody was forcing the French Huguenots, or the Italian Waldensians, or the Dutch Reformed, or the Hungarian Reformed, to use the Genevan Psalter.
The Genevan consistory had spiritual authority only in Geneva and its attendant villages. The city council's authority was also geographically limited.
The French Huguenots and Italian Waldensians were often under harassment or even open persecution by the civil authorities. The Dutch synods and civil authorities and the Hungarian synods and civil authorities adopted the Genevan Psalter because they were persuaded of its value, not because the Genevan consistory or city council had some sort of authority over them.
The Scots and English were outliers in refusing to adopt the Genevan Psalter, despite many of the English and the Scots having worshipped in Geneva itself during periods of exile.
I think there were other factors at play beyond simple lack of ecclesiastical enforcement mechanisms.
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St. Gerdt
Puritan Board Freshman
Good reading on the conflict:
The Ten Years' Conflict: Being the History of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland; Volume I:
The Ten Years' Conflict: Being the History of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland; Volume II:
Brown's Annals of the Disruption 1843:
Annals of the disruption : with extracts from the narratives of ministers who left the Scottish establishment in 1843 : Brown, Thomas, 1811-1893 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Includes bibliographical references and index
archive.org
Maybe technically an exodus rather than a split but many of the conservatives left in the FC after the FCC split of 2000 left at the 2010 decision to allow hymns, ending up mostly in the RPs.
I'm not sure if what I've quoted here is really the key part of your post, but here, I don't see why, in the Scottish context, it can't be both. Hymn singing is newly controversial in Scotland (we're talking 2010, not Isaac Watts and Jonathan Edwards and the Reveil), whereas the FC, FP, APC, FCC, and RPs have always put the focus on personal conversion. If we are talking about presbyterian revitalisation in Scotland, while these denominations are okay on personal conversion, the hymn-singing issue functions currently as a convenient index of commitment to Reformation principles and Westminster theology (i.e., the prerequisites for a healthy presbyterian church). Meanwhile, these denominations' entirely adequately clear message about the need for personal conversion is not cutting through in such a way that wider society is in any way convicted about the need for conversion or drawn to Christ. We cannot pin the totality of blame on the CoS when these other denominations are failing each in their own ways, and all (I would argue) in their disunity.
darrellmaurina
Puritan Board Junior
I think that's a fair point.
There have been times in church history that singing or not singing the Psalms has been a mark of orthodoxy, or at least of hard-core commitment versus hardly committed. Psalmsinging functioned that way in the Netherlands in the Afscheiding of the 1830s, and attendance at the evening service functions that way today among the Dutch, and attendance at the dawn prayer meeting functions that way among the Koreans. If you go to a Dutch Reformed church with low attendance at the evening service, or a Korean Presbyterian church with low attendance at the dawn prayer meeting, it usually says a lot about the spiritual commitment of the church.
There is nothing in God's Word requiring a dawn prayer meeting, but I learned long ago not to make that argument with a Korean Presbyterian unless I want to be accused of being a "typical American Christian who is lukewarm in his faith." External markers of internal piety are not things we can make into legalistic tests of faith, but they are not irrelevant if understood in their context. I'm not going to walk into certain churches without wearing dark suits, not because God requires dark clothing or requires suits, but because I don't want to offend brothers for whom, at an earlier era in their history, wearing dark clothing was a mark of modesty compared to the rich who would show off their expensive attire and expect deference to their social status.
I don't know enough about the current situation in Scotland to be able to speak authoritatively to your situation. I do know men who I trust who have been long-term faithful Reformed pastors in the United States who are now in Scotland and are horrified by what they see in the land that, for many Americans, is a land of myth and legend, and of Knox and Covenanters. Obviously on "our side of the pond," we read about how horrible things are, spiritually speaking, in Britain, but seeing things firsthand is still shocking.
In our world, Reformed people often live in places where we are a small Reformed minority among godly Baptists who love their Bibles and their Lord but don't understand some key verses. Our arguments are of a very different character than the problems of being Reformed in Massachusetts or in Scotland or some other place that was once Reformed and has now rejected not only the Reformed faith but almost any vestige of biblical belief, and actively hates God and His Holy Word.
It's hard for me to get mad at a Baptist singing "Amazing Grace" or "Come Ye Sinners" or some similar hymn. What I will do with such people is explain why the hymn says, "If you tarry 'till you're better, you will never come at all," and explain that a great traditional hymn of the faith was written specifically to teach, not just Calvinism in general, but an experiential form of Puritan piety.
Your world is very different from mine. I can see why, in your world, psalmsinging may be more crucial of a mark of Reformed commitment than it is in my world.
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