1. Background – Presbyterianism in NSW before the Disruption
Calvin MacKenzie
“There has never been such an irruption of heaven-defying infidelity, throughout the professed Christian world, as there is at this moment, both on the continent of Europe and in our fatherland. The inspiration of Holy Scripture is now formally denied and ridiculed by a large proportion of the intellectual classes of society; the miracles both of the Old and of the New Testaments are regarded as the myths and fables of a semi-barbarous and credulous antiquity; the divinity of Christ and His resurrection from the dead are treated as the exploded doctrines of an ill-instructed age, and man himself is represented as a mere material organisation in no way superior, either in his origin or his destiny, to those of the beasts that perish.”
So commented John Dunmore Lang in 1868 as he noted the spirit of declension behind the increasingly broad interpretation of doctrines that had been held sacrosanct in the Presbyterian Church since the Reformation. The increasing influence of higher criticism and so-called scientific discovery concerning the origin of man, in the second half of the nineteenth century, provide the background against which this paper will briefly combine key events in the historic, Australian Presbyterian timeline, together with some of the factors that led inexorably to the formation of the first Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland congregation in Australia in 1911.
Our focus will not permit an exhaustive discussion of every circumstance related to every division with which Presbyterian churches seem sadly to be afflicted. It is to be noted, however, that the history of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales (NSW) has involved no less controversy than that of the Church in Scotland, although smaller in scale and without immediate connection to the rich, Reformation heritage of the Church in Scotland. In the interests of brevity, I am confining this paper to events in NSW, fully aware there is much of a relevant, parallel nature we could examine from other states like Victoria and, to a lesser extent, South Australia.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, orthodox Presbyterianism gradually gained a foothold in the religious landscape of the Australian colonies. Factors militating against a more rapid establishment of Presbyterianism were: firstly, the proportion of Presbyterian convicts transported was fewer than 5% of the total, mostly comprising Anglicans and Roman Catholics and, secondly, the immigration of Scottish Presbyterians did not gather pace until after 1824, when the indefatigable John Dunmore Lang made the first of nine voyages back to Britain to procure ministers, probationers and Christian free settlers. Of the early Presbyterians, the Assistant Surgeon Dr Thomas Arndell, was perhaps the most notable; he arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and settled on land adjacent to the Hawkesbury River, 60 km from Sydney. There he became associated with the Presbyterian free settlers led by elder James Mein, who arrived in the Coromandel on 13 June 1802 and settled in the Ebenezer district nearby.
John Dunmore Lang was the first ordained Scottish Presbyterian minister to arrive in NSW, on 23 May 1823. However, it was not until 1832 that the first Presbytery was established, comprising John Dunmore Lang, Sydney (by this time a Doctor of Divinity); John McGarvie, St Andrew’s Scots Church, Sydney; John Gregor, minister of Maitland; John Cleland, minister of Portland Head and Pitt-town; and Kirkpatrick Dickson-Smythe, minister at Bathurst. The earliest official record of a meeting of this Presbytery seems to be that of 2 November 1837. It was held in St Andrew’s Church, Sydney.
During the absence of Lang in Britain in 1837, the Presbytery applied to the Legislative Council for a “Temporalities Act”, which was passed on 9 September 1837. It was entitled, “An Act to regulate the temporal affairs of Presbyterian Churches and Chapels connected with the Church of Scotland in the Colony of New South Wales”. Under this Act, the Church of Scotland recognised the Colonial Presbytery, giving it legal standing and the sole authority to pay a salary to its ministers.
It is useful to remember that the Presbytery in NSW was still under the authority of the Established Church of Scotland, in what was essentially a “mother / daughter” relationship at this time. Between 1823 and 1840, 27 ministers of the colonial Church had originated in Scotland; five came from Ireland and just one from England.
The Church of Scotland was subject to the interference of the state, encroaching on the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church. One major problem was the way ministers were appointed to parishes – known as “patronage”. The contentious and unscriptural Patronage Act was passed by the British Parliament during Queen Anne’s reign, in 1712; it became such a cause of contention and controversy that on 5 December 1733 the eminent Ebenezer Erskine, together with Alexander Moncrief, James Fisher and William Wilson, seceded and constituted the first meeting of the Associate Presbytery – their response to having been thrust out of the Established Church because of their opposition to patronage. These men became known somewhat disparagingly by their opponents as the “Marrow men” – because they held as scriptural the fundamental Christian doctrines outlined in Edward Fisher’s publication, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which was annotated by Thomas Boston.
Ultimately, the contention and disquiet over patronage led to the historic event in Scotland, on 18 May 1843, that came to be known as “The Disruption”, when 450-500 ministers from a total of some 1200, led by the highly respected Evangelicals, Chalmers, Gordon, Cunningham, Guthrie and Candlish amongst others, solemnly walked away from the Established Church – leaving their manses, salaries and, in many instances, their congregations, to form the Free Church of Scotland. This Church, while holding to the establishment principle, held likewise to the view that the state had no right to interfere with the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church of God, recognising God alone as the great Head of the Church. William Cunningham, in his peerless Discussions on Church Principles, puts it most succinctly: “The Church and the State are two distinct societies, each supreme in its own sphere, and neither dependent on the other in respect to jurisdiction or authoritative control”.
Although this Scottish disruption was yet six years hence, the NSW Presbytery experienced its own mini-disruption in 1837 when Lang, having just returned from a voyage to Britain to escort another eight ministers and four probationers to NSW, found, to his dismay, that he could not settle them quickly in spheres where they could do most good and have their right to a salary recognised by the state, through the Presbytery. This came about because, in 1833, a Declaratory Act was passed by the Church of Scotland defining her attitude towards ministers of the Church in the Colonies, authorising them to form themselves into Presbyteries, but claiming “a certain jurisdiction over them”. According to the terms of this Act, only ministers settled in charges could be admitted as members of presbyteries, and only on the certification of the Moderator of the Presbytery could the salaries of Presbyterian ministers be paid.
On 11 December 1837, Lang and the recently-arrived ministers who supported him organised themselves into a separate body of ten ministers and one ruling elder which they called the “Synod of New South Wales”. It comprised three Presbyteries: Sydney, Windsor and the Hunter Valley. They elected Lang as the first Moderator. The standards of this new body were essentially those of the Church of Scotland, with this major difference: that it alone held supreme authority over all connected with it and it would not tolerate any appeal from its jurisdiction to any “Church or Churches beyond seas”. This division was not of long duration, however; the Presbytery and Synod were reunited almost three years later, on 3 October 1840, as the “Synod of Australia in connexion with the Established Church of Scotland”. Just two years thereafter, Lang, even more strongly attached to “voluntaryism”, separated from this body and remained – mutually and, it would appear, with some ill-feeling – unattached to any Presbyterian denomination for the next eight years.
Footnotes for Free Presbyterian Church in Australia:
1. The full title of this paper was: The establishment of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Australia against a background of Presbyterian decline in the mid to late 1800s. The paper was given to the Australia and New Zealand Youth Conference in 2012.
2. J D Lang, The Characteristics of the Present Age Identical with Those of the Age Immediately before the Flood, Brisbane, 1868, p 9.
3. James Cameron, Centenary History of the Presbyterian Church in NSW, Sydney, 1903, p 7.
4. M D Prentis, The Scots in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2008, p 48.
5. Cameron, Centenary History, p 9.
6. C A White, The Challenge of the Years – A History of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of NSW, Sydney, 1951, p 9.
7. M Prentis, “The Presbyterian Ministry in Australia, 1822-1900: Recruitment and Composition”, in Journal of Religious History, vol 13, no 1, June 1984, p 58. Cited in Peter Barnes, Theological Controversies in the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, 1865-1915 – The rise of Liberal Evangelicalism, New York, 2008, p 16.
8. For an interesting history, consult James Begg, The history of the act of Queen Anne, 1711, restoring church patronage in Scotland: with a List of the Patrons, Edinburgh, 1840.
9. Thomas M’Crie, The Story of the Scottish Church, Free Presbyterian Publications reprint, 1988, pp 465-474.
10. Peter Bayne, The Free Church of Scotland, Her Origin, Founders and Testimony, Edinburgh, 1893, p 301.
11. William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles – Popish, Erastian and Presbyterian, reprinted Edmonton, 1991, p 210.
12. C A White, The Challenge of the Years – A History of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of NSW, Sydney, 1951, p 8.
13. Cameron, Centenary History, p 10. These men were: J D Lang, John Dougall, G Anderson, James Fullerton, Hugh R Gilchrist, Cunningham Atchison, Robert Blain, Robert Stewart, M Colquhoun, and William McIntyre. The ruling elder was James Smith, of Scots Church, Sydney.
14. The belief that religious institutions – the clergy, parishes etc – should be maintained by voluntary contributions rather than by state aid.
15. Peter Barnes, Theological Controversies, p 39.