While on a private visit to Scotland, I was able to spend two days at the Assembly of the Free Church (Continuing) in Edinburgh, Scotland. My brother, John W. Keddie, served as moderator this year. My main reason for being present was to visit with the family on the occasion of this honor. Specifically, I was to speak at the moderator’s reception, it being a tradition that Christian relatives and friends regale the company with suitable revelations of the moderator’s life and character, even back to childhood! In the U.S., we might call this a “roast.” I learned a few things myself from the friends of 40 years ago who spoke on that evening. Seeing I was there already, it seemed appropriate to bring a word of greeting to the assembly itself, which I duly did at their invitation on the following day.

The Free Church (Continuing), as its name suggests, claims to be the “continuing” Free Church after a split in A.D. 2000, in which some 30 ministers and a number of elders were suspended sine die from office by a motion in that assembly, without charges or a trial. Their “crime” had been to insist that the cases of sexual harassment brought by a number of members of the church against a prominent seminary professor be heard in the courts of the church. Needless to say, bringing libels against these ministers and elders would have been equivalent to trying the professor, so they were thrown out by a motion and a majority vote. They “continued” to meet as the highest court of the church elsewhere that night and have done so ever since.

There are 30 congregations in Scotland, comprising some 1,700 members and adherents (774 communicants and 882 adherents, of whom 229 are baptized children). There are 19 ministers in pastoral charges, and a further 19 who are retired. In addition, there is a presbytery in the U.S. (with ministries in Washington, D.C., Winder, Ga., Greenville, S.C., Detroit, Mich., and St. Louis, Mo.). There is also a congregation in Canada (Smiths Falls, Ont.) and another in Australia (Adelaide), both under the oversight of the committee on home and foreign missions. Seven men minister overseas. The church employs a full-time home mission worker, who supports outreach activity all over the country in conjunction with local congregational evangelistic programs. The FCC operates a seminary in Inverness. Two students recently graduated and now serve in the pastorate, with three others expected to complete their work before the year’s end. Total income in the Scottish congregations for 2007 was equivalent to $2.4 million.

The division of 2000 continues to cast a large shadow over the FCC. The FCC raised an action in the Court of Session (Scotland’s highest court) to secure its rights in the property held by the undivided Free Church. This essentially failed, but it did not settle the position of properties presently occupied by FCC congregations. In spite of an undertaking given to the ICRC in Pretoria in 2005 that the majority FC would not institute legal action against the FCC, an action has now been raised in the Court of Session to secure the property occupied by an FCC congregation in the Isle of Skye. While some FCC congregations have built new churches and acquired properties to which they have clear title, many continue to operate under the threat of legal action for properties they have continued to use.

The assembly itself, held May 19–22, was a most amicable affair. The sense of tradition was pervasive throughout. The moderator and the clerks were attired in Geneva gowns, and most ministers in clerical collars. Each sederunt [session of court] opened with the assembly officer emerging from a side room to declare loudly, “Moderator,” whereupon all stand up, the moderator sweeps into the hall to assume the chair, bows to the delegates on three sides, and all sit down, ready for the opening exercises of worship. Motions are voted on by the drum roll of well-shod feet on the floorboards. When an amendment is proposed, the movers and seconds of the original motion (the “deliverance”) and the amendment stand at the front and each motion is voted upon by a show of hands. Any who wish to speak must come forward and sit in the front row, which is reserved for the purpose. The moderator greets fraternal delegates one at a time and invites them to speak, after which he responds so as to highlight some specific point they have made. The moderator’s family and guests sit in a side pew, with any floral bouquets serving to mark the end of the pew, rather than adorning the platform as is our practice.

The overwhelming sense, however, was of something common to the faithful churches in the British Isles, namely, that of ministering—cheerfully, to be sure—under the ever-gathering clouds of indifference in the culture and apostasy in the broad church. Biblical gospel ministry in Scotland is, so to speak, fighting for every inch of ground. A few days before the assembly, my brother and I walked some miles around the streets of Edinburgh, where we were born and brought up. Two sights brought home something of the spiritual decline in our homeland. At the Covenanter Memorial in the Grassmarket, where many martyrs were put to death in the 17th Century persecutions, a drunk was sprawled over the memorial, unconscious, while two other men were arguing over a bottle of booze. A few paces away, in George IV Bridge, stands the former Martyrs RP Church, where William H. Goold, the editor of The Works of John Owen, ministered in the 19th Century. It is now a bar entitled “Frankenstein’s”—self-consciously conveying a satanic theme in a place where once the gospel was proclaimed.

Scotland bears all the marks of a dying culture—much increased in this world’s goods, but having nothing but emptiness and vanity and the prospect of a lost eternity. A new Reformation is needed in the churches and a mighty revival of God’s Spirit in the culture as a whole. Let us pray for our brethren in the Free Church (Continuing), even as we also pray and support the ministry of our own Reformed Presbyterian witness in Scotland.