Maintaining Our Distinctive Testimony
The following resolution made by the Synod in 2013, a full 120 years after the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church, made use of a statement of the 1975 Synod setting out its position vis-a-vis other Churches in Scotland:
The Synod . . . desires to state that in terms of its Constitution, this Church has taken up a separate position from other Churches in Scotland in order to maintain a testimony to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures as the Word of God and in order to adhere in its practice to that Word as its supreme standard, and to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is based upon the Scripture, as its subordinate standard. This separate position is justified because, and only as long as, it is necessary.
Accordingly, conduct giving the impression that there is no obstacle to association with other Churches undermines the necessity for a separate position and is therefore inconsistent with loyal adherence to the Free Presbyterian Church, and is consequently disapproved of by this Church.
The Synod is deeply conscious of the necessity to preserve unity in the Church itself, since true love to one another is a distinguishing characteristic of the Church of Christ, and it prays that the whole Church will be given grace to walk together in the Spirit, maintaining, in humility, loyalty to the heritage we have received.
The Synod would further re-affirm the separate position from other denominations in this land taken up in 1893 by this Church, and maintained by the grace of God during the past eighty years. The Synod would accordingly call upon our people everywhere to remain loyally and firmly attached to the full-orbed testimony of Divine Truth among us, and to wait patiently upon the Lord, who will yet arise to plead the cause which is His own.