1850, and After
To speak of the “decline” of the Baptist witness in Scotland from 1850 onwards, may create a measure of confusion in some people's minds, for it is within that period that the numerical strength of the Scottish baptist churches begins to increase and move forward. As we should readily know, however, declension, in the scriptural meaning of that concept, is not determined by such processes, and a glance at the first chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah alone will show this to be the case. When we speak of decline, therefore, we are speaking with regards to a declining testimony within the terms of a distinctive baptist witness in Scotland, both biblically and historically. And whereas it is most difficult to determine the real first causes that sometimes end in a mass departure of a church, or grouping of churches from these things first believed among them, there are usually “steps” that are quite traceable and which it becomes us to be aware of.
First of all, and this might appear fairly hum-drum, but we cannot in any way overlook the necessity of emigration to other countries on the part of many of the earlier baptists. When we consider a church like the one at Grantown-on-Spey erecting a building to accommodate some five-hundred people (and all that space needed), and yet reduced to an almost unworkable number, the one great factor on that drastic change of circumstances is the factor of emigration.
Many places suffered during those “hard times”, and none more so of course than the Highlands of Scotland and Scotland in general. The baptists, and here the blow fell heaviest and the churches felt it. Numbers began to rise again in some areas, but it was at this point that a changing face began to appear in baptist testimony and a new breed of Scottish baptists emerge – for example, such people as had come to see the scriptural nature of baptism, or who were anti child-baptism etc. But a baptist, in the fullest understanding of that term, is made up of many other constituent parts as well as his understanding of baptism. And such people who were only baptist as far as baptism was concerned were to prove to be the foundation stones of a new-type of baptist witness that was to fall far short of the full understanding of that term.
Around this time also, there began to be a great troubling in the ranks of many of these churches over the appearance of Plymouth Brethren-ism. As Brethren Assemblies began to rise up in may areas so many “baptists” moved their allegiance and united with them. The “new teaching” of Dispensationalism was an attraction to some, and, of course, the brethren view of the ministry was very much akin to that already held, especially in some of the Scotch Baptist order of churches. Andrew Fuller had already noted the dangers of this view, whose “object”, he said, was to “annihilate the minister of the gospel; to be all teachers; to have no one paid for it ….” Therefore, the Brethren cry against a “one man ministry” proved to be a clarion call to such spirits.
However, the threat to the distinctiveness of the baptist witness didn't, of course, come from those who moved into brethren-ism, but from those who remained in the baptist churches and endeavoured to “marry” the two understandings of things into one. The lure of Dispensationalism was to prove the very thing needed to fill the gap in theology that was being left by the churches departure from “the old truths that Calvin preached ...” And whereas the older Calvinistic baptists would have seen the total impossibility of such an endeavour, the “new-style” of baptist were attracted and succumbed, - and even some of the older (though not distinctly Calvinist) baptist ministers, also ended their days in dispensationalism.
One of the most outstanding cases of this occurred in Lochgilphead in Argyll-shire, where Dugald Sinclair had ministered for many years. “Unfortunately in his later years,” we are told, “he imbibed peculiar views on prophecy … He believed that Europe was to be involved in a universal war, with Britain at its centre. America was to be excepted, and it was there that the church of Christ was to be preserved till His return. Having such firm convictions, he prepared to emigrate, and such was his influence throughout the district that about seventy members with their families accompanied him to what they regarded as the promised land.”
There were certainly tendencies abroad that were proving to have an adverse effect on the peculiar standing of a “whole” baptist faith and order.
One thing, of course, that cannot in any way be discounted in the eventual reversals of the baptist witness in Scotland is the type of men behind the formation and growth of the Baptist Union in the year 1869. There had been earlier attempts to unite the churches at “association level;” e.g. Archibald Mclean's “Sisterhood of churches,” but it was by 1869 that all things were ready for the coming together in “union” of the majority of the churches. At the earlier attempts, the Haldanes had stood apart and questioned the correctness of such a Union, but by 1869 certain other leading lights had come on the scene – men such as Francis Johnstone, William Landells, and Oliver Flett. The one thing that knitted these men together was not only their desire for Union, but the fact that they had all come to embrace what was then called “the Morisonian doctrine of the atonement.” Morison was a Presbyterian minister in Kilmarnock, and when he began to preach a “potential universalism” in opposition to the old sovereign grace truth of Particular Redemption, he drew many after him. Among that number were the first advocates and leaders of the Baptist Union of Scotland. How some other men, of widely different views from these, managed to accommodate their beliefs and practices to the new broad spectrum of baptist life that was developing, is almost impossible to say. Perhaps it was the desire for consolidation; the view that there is strength in numbers; the desire to exercise “charity”, and to “live peaceably with all men” - all these things, no doubt, played a part in the thinking of those who formed the Baptist Union of Scotland. However, with the ground underfoot so slippery, at least in places, it is small wonder that the whole body fell into the mire in the coming days.
As the eighteen-hundreds progressed and began to run out, the strains of Liberal theology began to sound quite clearly from the pulpits of the Scottish Baptist churches. The 1894 Presidential address before the Annual Assembly of the Union was an open invitation to throw over any of the vestiges of the old things that remained, and as the 20th century dawned and developed, the modernism and rationalism of the age became a tolerable thing within the baptist churches of Scotland. In that same year – 1894 – George Coats, one of the new-style baptists, prepared a booklet entitled, “An Ideal Baptist Church.” From this, it is easy to see the desired road that some envisaged. He advocates kneeling in worship and responses; the chanting of hymns and psalms; and “a uniform dress” - i.e. “robes” - for all the choir members, men, women, and boys. Some of these suggestions were introduced in his own church and, of course, the desire for “novelty” in worship goes on unabated in the Scottish baptist churches till this day.
It is a far cry from the old baptist view of the worship of God, for example, with regards to the singing of “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” In the older days, when the people were obliged to learn a new “tune” by the mere repetition of the singing of it, it was considered irreverent to sing the actual words of the psalm or hymn in question. On such occasions, therefore, an opportunity was taken to instruct in some points of nature, and so, they used to sing in learning manys a common-metre tune:
“The moon has but a borrowed light, A faint and feeble ray; She owes her beauty to the night, And hides herself by day.”
By the 1930s, then, the horse and carriage of modernism was in full gallop. One or two cases of blatant Unitarianism were uncovered, and the Baptist Theological College in Glasgow was held up to great suspicion in the eyes of some evangelical souls within the Union. It was the College that was the bone of contention in a major debate and upheaval within the Union in the 1940s. A minister by the name of John Shearer sounded a warning bell, likening the whole drift of things to the Downgrade Controversy in which Spurgeon had been involved in some sixty years before. Mr Shearer published one or two booklets on the subject, called for the amalgamation of “evangelical” baptist churches, and endeavoured to sustain an evangelical college for the right instruction of young men for the ministry. However, the hold of the Union on the churches was fairly total, and the majority of the people, more or less, accepted the status quo as set forth by the “denominational leaders,” and, as always, the cracks were papered over to the satisfaction of most. This policy has prevailed in the Union until the present day, and most of the divisive issues – such as ecumenism in the more recent days – have found their acceptable nitch within the denominational structure.
At the present time, then, the general position of the Baptist Union of Scotland is:
1. Doctrinally Arminian: the general emphasis in preaching is on the “free will” and ability of man to contribute to his own salvation by an act of faith produced by his own will. Even this, however, maybe an overstatement of the case, and in many areas of Scottish baptist life the position is more or less doctrinal-less.
2. Theologically indifferent: a wide spectrum of theological opinion prevails, neo-evangelicalism is uppermost, Modernism is tolerated and is clearly pronounced in some ministries and churches.
3. Entertainment orientated: the “robed choirs” etc. which George coats envisaged in 1894, didn't take a great hold on the Scottish spirit, but the same latent desire of the human heart to “ornament” the worship of God finds more than ample fulfilment in the average baptist church's complement of choirs (without robes,) trios, duets, solos, cantatas, banjoes and bugles – etc. etc.
4. Ecumenically committed: The Baptist Union of Scotland is a full member of the Scottish Churches Council, and the British Council of churches. Both of these bodies have within their leaderships men who are completely “radical” in modernist theology; they both advocate a total “world religion” composed of all views, and the Baptist Union of Scotland makes its contribution to the upholding and progress of both Councils.
These elements of Baptist Union life in Scotland are general and are meant to be read in that way. There are sincere and devoted believers within the churches, and some aspects of general baptist life as opposed to some characteristics in other denominations is by far the most desirable. However, from what those “founding fathers” of the faith held and preached and practiced as the gospel of God's redeeming grace to sinners, there is a great gulf fixed, and we would earnestly look for such a movement from God in our day as would draw many back to the best of what baptist life and witness means.
(Next edition – a Heritage to Follow.)