Synod Resolutions

Assisted Suicide

The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, met in Glasgow on 22nd May 2025, places on record its most decided protest at the United Kingdom Government’s permitting, by way of a Private Member’s Bill, endeavours to introduce assisted suicide on to the statute book.

1. The Synod protests against the discussions to introduce a law which will permit assisted suicide of the terminally ill. Such a law would be diametrically opposed to God’s law which forbids all murder. The Sixth Commandment requires all lawful endeavours to preserve life, and forbids the taking of one’s own life, and all that leads to it.

2. Such a law will pressurise vulnerable people who feel they are a burden to others to commit the sin of self-murder instead of prolonging their lives through palliative care. The legislation will bring the guilt of facilitating murder upon those who assist such people in ending their own lives.

3. The experience of other nations, such as Canada, Belgium and Holland, show that even with initial safeguards limiting the scope to the terminally ill, other treatable medical and mental health conditions eventually come to be included.

4. The Synod firmly holds to the Biblical view that suicide is a grievous sin and will inevitably incur God’s wrath against our once highly favoured nation.

Abortion

The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, met on 22 May 2025, places on record its most decided protest at the continuing slaughter of unborn infants flowing from the Abortion Act 1967.

1. During the past 57 years there have been in excess of 10.5 million abortions carried out in the UK. These appalling abortions have been, and are being, done under the eye of the Most High and Holy God who hates and must punish sin, including that of murder.

2. We regard abortion as the express violation of the solemn commandment of God, “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13). The life of an unborn infant is a gift of God, bearing His image: “I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth” (Ps 139:14,15).

3. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the United Kingdom is a signatory, guarantees the right to life. Our unborn children are living human beings whose lives are being destroyed in the United Kingdom at the rate of 3550 every week, or 507 each day.

4. The Synod notes with concern that, inevitably, the high rate of abortions is contributing to the growing decline in birth rates, which have fallen to a record low. This situation, with all its damaging consequences, is unlikely to be reversed until the Abortion Act is repealed.

5. The Synod protests at the slackening of the safeguards by the officially sanctioned use of self-administered medical abortion at home to destroy the child in the early part of pregnancy.

King’s Visit to the Late Pope

The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, met at Glasgow on 22nd May 2025, places on record its clear protest at the visit of His Majesty

the King and Her Royal Highness, Queen Camilla, to the late pope at the Vatican in April 2025.

The Synod takes the opportunity to remind respectfully His Majesty of the teaching of the Word of God and the lessons of history with regard to the evil and danger posed to religious and civil freedoms by Roman Catholicism. The Word of God teaches that the pope, and whole system of the papacy, is the embodiment of the Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Apart from any other consideration, the pope’s claim to be the head of the Church is utterly inconsistent with the sole headship of the Lord Jesus Christ over the Church, which He purchased with His own blood (Westminster Confession of Faith, 25:6). History informs us that wherever Roman Catholicism has obtained sufficient power, it has sought to subjugate Kings and Queens and all their citizens to her rule, and has persecuted to the death the true followers of Jesus Christ.

The Synod therefore maintains its long-held conviction that such visits to the pope are contrary to the coronation oath of our Protestant King, inconsistent with His role as Defender of the Faith, and prejudicial to the Protestant religion established by law in the United Kingdom.

Capital Punishment and Lax Sentencing

The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, met at Glasgow on 22nd May 2025, places on record its protest at the horrific increase of violent knife crime, and the related failure to inflict capital punishment, or in its absence, genuine life-sentences, upon convicted murderers:

1. The Synod notes with growing concern the high number of murders committed nationally, and in particular, the increase in violent knife crime, which has soared over the past ten years. The tens of thousands of stabbings each year, including hundreds of murders, are a shame to our land and are evidence of divine judgment upon us for our rejection of the only living and true God, and our despising of His Word.

2. The Synod protests at the failure of the State to uphold capital punishment, the God-appointed sentence for those who are guilty of shedding the blood of their fellow men, and where there are at least two or three witnesses, as the following scriptures, of perpetually binding force, make clear: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man” (Genesis 9:6); and, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death” (Deuteronomy 17:6). A

return to capital punishment would act as a deterrent to murder in the first place, prevent murder by re-offenders, and partially solve the problem of over-filled prisons. The blood of innocent men and women, not avenged by capital punishment, will be avenged on the nation by God Himself: “Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land” (Joel 3:19).

1. The Synod further protests at the light sentences handed out to those who are convicted of murder, with relatively few “Whole Life Orders” imposed, and many permitted to go free on parole after only 15 or so years. In the absence of capital punishment, murder should be punished with life imprisonment. Lax sentencing has the tendency to lessen the seriousness of the crime in the eyes of the nation, and to encourage the committing of it. Therefore, we call upon the Prime Minister and Members of Parliament to do all in their power to re-introduce capital punishment, or in its regrettable absence, to enforce full-life sentences upon those convicted of murder.

2. The Synod points out that the rejection of the God of the Bible, and His Word, both as to law and gospel, are the ultimate source of the violent crime in our land. When the binding influence of the moral law summed up in the Ten Commandments, the reality of an eternal punishment of sin in hell, and the power of the gospel to make men holy, meek and loving, are despised, denied and opposed, then the inevitable result will be an irrepressible rise in violence and all other wickedness. Such violence has ever been the hallmark of an increasing godless society, as it was in the days prior to the flood which destroyed the old world in Noah’s day: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11).

Protestant ViewLord High Commissioner

The website of the Free Church of Scotland announced before the meetings of the Church’s General Assembly that “Lady Elish Angiolini LT DBE PC KC FRSE, the first female Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, has been appointed by the King to be His Majesty’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 2025.

“The Lord High Commissioner is the Sovereign’s personal representative to the annual General Assembly. She attends on behalf of the Sovereign and this year will make a speech to the General Assembly.

“The Lord High Commissioner first addressed the General Assembly in

1. The position has a reduced role within proceedings, largely maintaining a symbolic connection between the secular and sacred through the adherence to the Establishment Principle by the Free Church.”

What we are not told here is that Lady Angiolini is a Roman Catholic. One assumes that the visit to the Free Church General Assembly actually took place, but one has to ask what a Roman Catholic would have to say to a Protestant body that would be spiritually helpful. And it cannot be said that, for the Free Church General Assembly to listen to a Roman Catholic, strengthens adherence to the Establishment Principle.