Introduction to Free Christianity
'To make Christianity comprehensive in its design, to open its benefits to all’, Thomas Falconer
Historical notes on inclusive or Free Christianity in England
by Dr Roger Booth, November 2004
Introduction
Religious institutions tend to fragment. The tendency is not peculiar to Christianity, for the adherents of Islam, Judaism and Hinduism have also been fissiparous. The ground of schisms is not often ethical standards, for they are usually shared by the different groups- the cause is more frequently divergence of doctrine or style of worship. However, within Christianity there have been from early times liberal individuals or groups who, disturbed by the dissensions between sects, have urged their militant fellows to submerge their doctrinal or liturgical differences beneath their common allegiance to the teaching of Jesus.
This reduced concern over doctrine, through stress on following the teaching of Jesus, places ethics or right behaviour as the main aim of many liberal Christians. But is a particular doctrinal belief about the status of Jesus or about the atoning effect of his death, to be preferred because it sanctifies or makes more compelling his teaching? For example is the avowal of Jesus as God or his death as redeeming sin more helpful to the daily observance of his teaching than the assessment of him as a great human prophet, and of his death as a supreme self-sacrifice? If the teaching emanates from God, it presumably carries more weight than the word of the prophet however great.
Yet ethics can surely be divorced from belief, and the teaching of Jesus can be followed because the follower considers it, through its virtuous content, to be a desired way of life, whatever the status of the teacher.
We will trace the history of these Christians of the past in order to encourage Christians of the present to follow their eirenic example, for ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. But first we consider the attitude towards raising or razing religious barriers demonstrated by Jesus, the Founder. For the followers of a Master truly follow only when they repeat his example in word or act.
Jesus
To evaluate the approach of Jesus towards religious barriers, we must examine the influences upon him of his Jewish faith as evidenced by the Hebrew Scriptures. The Torah was primarily nationalistic and exclusive. It dictated a sharp division between Israel as the people chosen by God, and others. The Mosaic covenant was made between God and the people of Israel (Exodus 24.3-8), and the ordinances of its law were addressed to the Israelites. They were extended in some instances to the ‘ger’, the non-Jew who permanently resided in Israel; beyond this exception, the law was no concern of the Gentile. Association with foreigners was condemned by the eighth century prophets (cf. Isaiah 2.6) and by Nehemiah, and intermarriage with them was also disapproved from early times (Exodus 34.16; 1 Kings 11.1,2) and violently prevented by Nehemiah (12.23-28). Even the Samaritans were not permitted to assist in the re-building of the Temple (Ezra 4).
The prophets did express a hope that the peoples would come to Zion but acceptance of the covenant was to be a condition of their accession. However, Isaiah 56 does illustrate an inclusive element in Jewish thought - foreigners and eunuchs, both of whom were excluded from the assembly of the Lord, are to be welcomed provided they keep the sabbath and hold fast the covenant, for ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ (vv.3-7).
Although, as we shall see, Jesus was in a few recorded instances influenced by the attitudes of his ancestral faith, his generally inclusive approach was probably the product of his own original thinking. His inclusivity is shown clearly in two Marcan stories where he seeks to include the under-privileged whom others would turn away from his fold. At 10.13-16 he was indignant when the disciples rebuked those who were bringing children that he might touch them. At 10.46-52 people try to stop a blind beggar approaching him - Jesus calls and heals him. It may be noteworthy that Jesus calls him even though they differ in belief - he calls Jesus ‘Son of David’, while Jesus is anxious to disclaim warlike Messiahship. At Mark 9.38-40 Jesus includes within his goodwill an exorciser who was using Jesus’ name in his exorcisms but ‘was not following us’. Jesus refuses the disciples’ request to forbid him.
Sometimes, however, Jesus’ inherited attitude to Gentiles did erupt. In Matthew’s version of the mission charge he adds from his own source M, ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ (10.5). Admittedly, this may have been only a practical assessment of the available resources. This same restriction of activity to the Jews is shown at Mark 7.24-30, but is over-ridden in the end by his all-embracing goodwill. There a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician, begs Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. Jesus demurs, saying, ‘Let the children first be fed for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ She replies that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. Jesus is impressed with this reply, and the daughter is cured.
Although referring to Gentiles as dogs (cf. Matthew 7.6), Jesus does not deny the entitlement of Gentiles to his ministry, but rather stresses the prior claim of his own people.
Jesus is not always reluctant to use his powers for the benefit of Gentiles, even Romans. At Matthew 8.5-13 we read how Jesus healed at a distance the slave of a Roman centurion at the request of elders whose synagogue the centurion had built. Jesus was so impressed by the faith of the centurion that he uttered perhaps his most universalistic logion in the Synoptics - ‘I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…….’ (v.12).
Jesus’ inclusiveness thus encompasses not only those of his own race who are impeded in approaching him, but also Gentiles and even Samaritans who, though of similar faith heritage, worshipped in a different Temple at Gerizim and used a different version of the Hebrew Scriptures; they were despised by the Jews as a mixed race. Yet John reports at 4.1-30 how Jesus converses with a Samaritan woman at length. And at Luke 9.52-55 he rebukes the disciples who desire revenge on Samaritans who had stopped their way.
Jesus’ inclusive influence is discernible in the decision of the Council of Jerusalem at Acts 15. The issue at the Council was whether it was necessary for converted Gentiles to be circumcised and observe the law of Moses in order to be members of the Jesus-group. Was non-Jewishness to be an excluding factor? The decision pronounced by James was that these Gentiles should not be troubled except that they should abstain from certain defiling things - idols, unchastity, murder and things strangled (i.e. not slaughtered in the kosher manner). The spirit of the decision was that the minimum impediment should be placed upon their acceptance into fellowship
Creedal Requirements
Before long, however, Christian inclusivity went into decline. Rules of faith and then detailed statement s of belief (creeds) began to be imposed as conditions of baptism into membership. The essence of these creeds concerned the status, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus. The rigour expanded from the initial rule of faith, ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12,3), to the simple assertions of the Apostles’ creed, to the complexities of the Athanasian. Whereas in the Apostles’ creed belief is declared in ‘Christ Jesus, his only son, our Lord’ and his birth, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and coming judgeship are recited, in the creed of Nicaea his status is elevated to ‘God of God…….of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made’, and in the Quicunque Vult (the Athanasian creed) the precision is strict - ‘Equal to the Father , as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood. Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ: One: not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God.’
Yet the earliest requirements for initiation into the Jesus-group were simple enough. Although Acts 8.37 is considered to be a scribal addition, it is very early and indicates the probably original form of baptismal belief required. To Philip’s permission for the eunuch to be baptised if he believed with all his heart, the eunuch replied, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God’. This was not a confession of Jesus’ divinity , but rather that Jesus was very close to God. The belief conditions for membership escalated, however, as mentioned, and in adult baptism in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer assent to the whole of the Apostles’ creed is required, following much earlier practice.
Richard Baxter
The founder of inclusive or Free Christianity in England is generally acknowledged to be Richard Baxter (1615-1691). Originally conformist to the Church of England, he was ordained by the Bishop of Worcester in 1638, and for 16 years was the parish minister at Kidderminster. Even at this early stage by a ‘steady discouragement of party spirit……he acquired an extraordinary moral influence over his people.’ Briefly during the Civil War he was a chaplain in the Parliamentary army, but although he praised the enlightened tolerance of Cromwell, he remained loyal to the national church.
At the restoration of monarchy and bishops in 1660 Baxter was acknowledged as leader of the English Presbyterians. He was offered the bishopric of Hereford, which he refused on grounds of conscience, and was made by Charles II a member of the Savoy Commission for reforming the Book of Common Prayer. Although he laboured indefatigably to achieve amendments to that Book, which would permit Presbyterian clergy (and Independents who wished) to remain in their vicarages, his hopes of a comprehensive national church were dashed by the bishops who would agree few alterations to the Book as put forward by them. The intransigence of the bishops led to about 2,000 Presbyterian incumbents leaving their livings because they were unable in conscience to sign the ‘assent and consent’ to everything in that Book; it also commenced the personal persecution of Baxter for the next 25 years.
These English Presbyterians might well have been called Anglican Puritans, for they were Puritans who wished, within the national church, to return to the purity of the early (New Testament) church, as opposed to those Puritans who wished to establish that purity in ‘gathered’ congregations outside the Anglican church, and were thus called ‘Independents’. The Presbyterians, as their name suggests, desired a move towards the church government by elders which they found in the New Testament, although they were willing to settle for a reformed system of bishops (episcopacy). However, they are the ancestors of the inclusive (Free) Christians because under the influence of Baxter and others they came to place great value on the freedom of the individual to reach his own decision on religious matters. ‘Parliamentary’ Presbyterianism in the sense of Scottish Presbyterianism with its layered system of church government which was accepted by Parliament in return for help from the Scottish Army in the Civil War, never gained a secure foothold among the English.
Baxter was also a member of a group called the Reconcilers, and this description fits him admirably for he used all his influence to find some way of ‘comprehension’ which would lead Presbyterians and Independents into the national church. ‘Look on all particular churches as members of the universal,’ he said in 1659, ‘and choose the best thou canst for thy ordinary communion…But deny not occasional communion with any (though accused by others) further than they may force thee to sin or than they separate from Christ.’ Ahead of his times, he even found hope for non-Christians - ‘I can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion which doth but bring him to the true love of God and to a heavenly mind and life; nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth him.’ In his effort to avoid tests which would act as barriers to his Master’s fold, he led a movement for the Reduction of Essentials or Fundamentals, and would require only acceptance of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments for entry to the Church of Christ.
The Latitudinarians
Also in the seventeenth century but in a quieter vale than Baxter’s the Latitudinarians ploughed a similar eirenic furrow. Prominent among them were Lucius Carey Falkland (1610-1643). John Hales (1584-1656) and William Chillingworth (1602-1644). Possibly through their influence, in 1631 the Satanae Strategamata, written in 1565 by Giacomo Aconcio , a convert to Protestantism, was re-printed; he pleaded for ‘a tolerance broad enough to unite all sects into a single church, holding doctrines that all Protestants own’, and ‘ignored as non-essential the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, and other hotly disputed doctrines.’
Falkland thought it possible to make room within the national church for wide differences of dogmatic opinion, and Hales declared, ‘I do not yet see that……..men of different opinions in Christian religion, may not hold communion in sacris, and both go to one Church.’ Surely the bond of fellowship between Christians should be devotion to Jesus, not adherence to doctrinal formulae. Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, expressed this approach in his Irenicum, 1662, ‘The unity of the Church is that of communion, and not that of apprehension; and different opinions are no further liable to censure than as men by the broaching of these do endeavour to disturb the peace of the Church.’
Both the Latitudinarians, and the Presbyterians ejected from their vicarages in 1662, thoroughly disliked subscription to articles of belief. Referring to the Savoy Conference Richard Baxter said, ‘We would have had the brethren to have offered to Parliament, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue, as essentials of fundamentals which at least contain all that is necessary to salvation; and whereas it is said ‘a Socinian or a Papist will subscribe all this’, I answered, ‘so much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be a matter of our concord.’ .’
In the nineteenth century the Latitudinarians were known as Broad Churchmen. Thomas Arnold in his Principles of Church Reform (1833) explained that their desire was for a ‘church thoroughly national, thoroughly united, thoroughly Christian, which should allow great varieties of opinion, and of ceremonies and forms of worship, according to the various knowledge, and habits, and tempers of its members, while it truly held one common faith, and trusted in one common Saviour and worshipped one common God.’ He believed that all Dissenters, but not Quakers or Roman Catholics, should be admitted to the National Church; the parish churches should be the centres for all worship, with varying times for liturgical and non-liturgical services.
Regarding Unitarians he wrote, ‘it seems to me that in their case an alteration of our present terms of communion would be especially useful. The Unitarian body in England consists of elements the most dissimilar; including many who merely call themselves Unitarians, because the name of unbeliever is not yet thought creditable, and some also who are disgusted with their unchristian associates, but cannot join a church which retains the Athanasian Creed.’
The Broad Church valued Christian behaviour more highly than the holding of correct Christian doctrine. Dean Stanley in 1883 supported a liberal theology which ‘insists, not on the ceremonial, the dogmatic, or the portentous, but on the moral side of religion.’
The English Presbyterians
Baxter’s Reduction of Essentials was the matrix from which developed the later Presbyterian promotion of free enquiry in religion. This facilitates the holding of many different views within the same congregation. James Martineau in 1888 contrasted the habit of mind of Unitarian leaders such as Lindsey and Priestley who imported from their previous orthodox denominations the expectation that their new theology required a new creed - ‘They did not observe that the very people they joined, had insensibly passed through the whole distance between their old and their present theology, without any breach of the communion of worship or disturbance to the continuity of their history. There is no doubt some difficulty in resuming the name ‘English Presbyterianism’ after having allowed it to fall into disuse. But every suggested alternative is attended, I think, with more serious difficulty.’ Nevertheless the alternative of ‘Free Christian’ was, in fact, adopted to succeed ‘Presbyterian’ as the name for this Baxterian Christianity which seeks to embrace all who follow the teaching of Jesus but without restricting private judgment on doctrinal issues.
The ejected Presbyterian ministers of 1662 had been ‘unwilling nonconformists’ and for some years had hoped for comprehension within the national church Thomas Belsham dreamt in 1820 of a national church possessing ‘no doctrinal test but the profession that Jesus Christ is a teacher come from God, that he died and rose again, and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain everything necessary to faith and practice.’
James Martineau and J.J. Tayler were advocates of this Presbyterian comprehension. They formed in 1867 the ‘Free Christian Union’ whose purpose was a catholic or comprehensive union on the basis of spiritual rather than doctrinal affinity (see The New Affinities of Faith. A Plea for Free Christian Union by James Martineau (London, 1869)). Apart from Unitarians and some other Noncomformists the main support came from Broad Churchmen , including Henry Sidgwick, the Cambridge philosopher, and C. Kegan Paul. Martineau wrote in a letter, ‘Unless some witness is soon borne to the possibility of separating the religious life, not indeed from doctrinal conviction, but from concurrence in doctrinal conviction, the spiritual bonds of society itself seem in danger of dissolution.’ Lack of support and the death of J.J. Tayler resulted in the demise of the Union in 1870. Martineau remained enthusiastic, and in 1885 became actively engaged in the work of the ‘National Church Reform Union’.
This body urged that the basis of the Anglican Church should be so ‘widened as to include, as far as possible, the entire Christian life and thought of the nation’. Martineau proposed that the National Church should be a Federal Union, and ‘any Christian denomination at present counted as Dissenting shall be co-ordinated with the Episcopalian as another branch of the Church of England, on showing its hold on the English religious life by a history of one hundred years and a magnitude of two hundred congregations, and also its adequate provision for education and character in its ministers.’ A bill to be presented to Parliament was drafted, but proceeded no further.
The inclusive English Presbyterian tradition survives (just about!) in the Free Christian wing of the Unitarian movement. In 1881 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association invited members of all ‘Unitarian, Liberal Christian, Free Christian, Presbyterian and other Non-subscribing or Kindred Congregations’ to a conference in April 1882 at Liverpool ‘in the hope that……it will assemble the ministers and members of our congregations on the broad platform of religion and morality’. These Conferences were held nearly every three years until 1926 and became a bastion of the anti-dogmatic Presbyterian/Free Christian tradition; it was popularly known as ‘The National Conference of Free Christian Churches’. Martineau proposed that the name for the diverse categories named in the Conference title should be subsumed into ‘English Presbyterian’ for ‘Unitarian’ was the expression of a personal belief - ‘If anyone, being a Unitarian , shrinks on fitting occasion, from plainly calling himself so, he is a sneak and a coward. If, being of our catholic communion, he calls his chapel or its congregation Unitarian, he is a traitor to his spiritual ancestry, and a deserter to the camp of its persecutors.’ In 1928 the National Conference was amalgamated with the British and Foreign Unitarian Association.
The Broad Church continues to flourish in the Church of England, and the time may soon be ripe for a further attempt to widen the comprehension of the National Church.
Ecumenism
We have been considering the thought of those who have sought to reduce the doctrinal conditions to be met for membership of Christ’s church, for the fragmentation of denominations has resulted from a superfluity of required beliefs as opposed to voluntary personal beliefs. We distinguish this aim from the concerns of the ecumenical movement which seeks to foster amity and co-operation between the different churches and denominations.
For example, neither the World Council of Churches nor local ‘Churches Together’ claim to be a super-church or a substitute for a united church. Indeed the conditions for membership of both impose a Trinitarian theology. Surely the first step is to encourage inclusivity amongst the constituent churches.
Conclusion
The all-embracing call of Jesus who urged, ‘Follow me’ (without conditions), has sounded in England since the seventeenth century. May the small voice of The Christian Compass join with those who still plead for the unconditional opening of the gates of Christianity to all who wish to accept that invitation.
by Dr Roger Booth, November 2004
Introduction
Religious institutions tend to fragment. The tendency is not peculiar to Christianity, for the adherents of Islam, Judaism and Hinduism have also been fissiparous. The ground of schisms is not often ethical standards, for they are usually shared by the different groups- the cause is more frequently divergence of doctrine or style of worship. However, within Christianity there have been from early times liberal individuals or groups who, disturbed by the dissensions between sects, have urged their militant fellows to submerge their doctrinal or liturgical differences beneath their common allegiance to the teaching of Jesus.
This reduced concern over doctrine, through stress on following the teaching of Jesus, places ethics or right behaviour as the main aim of many liberal Christians. But is a particular doctrinal belief about the status of Jesus or about the atoning effect of his death, to be preferred because it sanctifies or makes more compelling his teaching? For example is the avowal of Jesus as God or his death as redeeming sin more helpful to the daily observance of his teaching than the assessment of him as a great human prophet, and of his death as a supreme self-sacrifice? If the teaching emanates from God, it presumably carries more weight than the word of the prophet however great.
Yet ethics can surely be divorced from belief, and the teaching of Jesus can be followed because the follower considers it, through its virtuous content, to be a desired way of life, whatever the status of the teacher.
We will trace the history of these Christians of the past in order to encourage Christians of the present to follow their eirenic example, for ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. But first we consider the attitude towards raising or razing religious barriers demonstrated by Jesus, the Founder. For the followers of a Master truly follow only when they repeat his example in word or act.
Jesus
To evaluate the approach of Jesus towards religious barriers, we must examine the influences upon him of his Jewish faith as evidenced by the Hebrew Scriptures. The Torah was primarily nationalistic and exclusive. It dictated a sharp division between Israel as the people chosen by God, and others. The Mosaic covenant was made between God and the people of Israel (Exodus 24.3-8), and the ordinances of its law were addressed to the Israelites. They were extended in some instances to the ‘ger’, the non-Jew who permanently resided in Israel; beyond this exception, the law was no concern of the Gentile. Association with foreigners was condemned by the eighth century prophets (cf. Isaiah 2.6) and by Nehemiah, and intermarriage with them was also disapproved from early times (Exodus 34.16; 1 Kings 11.1,2) and violently prevented by Nehemiah (12.23-28). Even the Samaritans were not permitted to assist in the re-building of the Temple (Ezra 4).
The prophets did express a hope that the peoples would come to Zion but acceptance of the covenant was to be a condition of their accession. However, Isaiah 56 does illustrate an inclusive element in Jewish thought - foreigners and eunuchs, both of whom were excluded from the assembly of the Lord, are to be welcomed provided they keep the sabbath and hold fast the covenant, for ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ (vv.3-7).
Although, as we shall see, Jesus was in a few recorded instances influenced by the attitudes of his ancestral faith, his generally inclusive approach was probably the product of his own original thinking. His inclusivity is shown clearly in two Marcan stories where he seeks to include the under-privileged whom others would turn away from his fold. At 10.13-16 he was indignant when the disciples rebuked those who were bringing children that he might touch them. At 10.46-52 people try to stop a blind beggar approaching him - Jesus calls and heals him. It may be noteworthy that Jesus calls him even though they differ in belief - he calls Jesus ‘Son of David’, while Jesus is anxious to disclaim warlike Messiahship. At Mark 9.38-40 Jesus includes within his goodwill an exorciser who was using Jesus’ name in his exorcisms but ‘was not following us’. Jesus refuses the disciples’ request to forbid him.
Sometimes, however, Jesus’ inherited attitude to Gentiles did erupt. In Matthew’s version of the mission charge he adds from his own source M, ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ (10.5). Admittedly, this may have been only a practical assessment of the available resources. This same restriction of activity to the Jews is shown at Mark 7.24-30, but is over-ridden in the end by his all-embracing goodwill. There a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician, begs Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. Jesus demurs, saying, ‘Let the children first be fed for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ She replies that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. Jesus is impressed with this reply, and the daughter is cured.
Although referring to Gentiles as dogs (cf. Matthew 7.6), Jesus does not deny the entitlement of Gentiles to his ministry, but rather stresses the prior claim of his own people.
Jesus is not always reluctant to use his powers for the benefit of Gentiles, even Romans. At Matthew 8.5-13 we read how Jesus healed at a distance the slave of a Roman centurion at the request of elders whose synagogue the centurion had built. Jesus was so impressed by the faith of the centurion that he uttered perhaps his most universalistic logion in the Synoptics - ‘I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…….’ (v.12).
Jesus’ inclusiveness thus encompasses not only those of his own race who are impeded in approaching him, but also Gentiles and even Samaritans who, though of similar faith heritage, worshipped in a different Temple at Gerizim and used a different version of the Hebrew Scriptures; they were despised by the Jews as a mixed race. Yet John reports at 4.1-30 how Jesus converses with a Samaritan woman at length. And at Luke 9.52-55 he rebukes the disciples who desire revenge on Samaritans who had stopped their way.
Jesus’ inclusive influence is discernible in the decision of the Council of Jerusalem at Acts 15. The issue at the Council was whether it was necessary for converted Gentiles to be circumcised and observe the law of Moses in order to be members of the Jesus-group. Was non-Jewishness to be an excluding factor? The decision pronounced by James was that these Gentiles should not be troubled except that they should abstain from certain defiling things - idols, unchastity, murder and things strangled (i.e. not slaughtered in the kosher manner). The spirit of the decision was that the minimum impediment should be placed upon their acceptance into fellowship
Creedal Requirements
Before long, however, Christian inclusivity went into decline. Rules of faith and then detailed statement s of belief (creeds) began to be imposed as conditions of baptism into membership. The essence of these creeds concerned the status, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus. The rigour expanded from the initial rule of faith, ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12,3), to the simple assertions of the Apostles’ creed, to the complexities of the Athanasian. Whereas in the Apostles’ creed belief is declared in ‘Christ Jesus, his only son, our Lord’ and his birth, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and coming judgeship are recited, in the creed of Nicaea his status is elevated to ‘God of God…….of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made’, and in the Quicunque Vult (the Athanasian creed) the precision is strict - ‘Equal to the Father , as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood. Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ: One: not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God.’
Yet the earliest requirements for initiation into the Jesus-group were simple enough. Although Acts 8.37 is considered to be a scribal addition, it is very early and indicates the probably original form of baptismal belief required. To Philip’s permission for the eunuch to be baptised if he believed with all his heart, the eunuch replied, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God’. This was not a confession of Jesus’ divinity , but rather that Jesus was very close to God. The belief conditions for membership escalated, however, as mentioned, and in adult baptism in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer assent to the whole of the Apostles’ creed is required, following much earlier practice.
Richard Baxter
The founder of inclusive or Free Christianity in England is generally acknowledged to be Richard Baxter (1615-1691). Originally conformist to the Church of England, he was ordained by the Bishop of Worcester in 1638, and for 16 years was the parish minister at Kidderminster. Even at this early stage by a ‘steady discouragement of party spirit……he acquired an extraordinary moral influence over his people.’ Briefly during the Civil War he was a chaplain in the Parliamentary army, but although he praised the enlightened tolerance of Cromwell, he remained loyal to the national church.
At the restoration of monarchy and bishops in 1660 Baxter was acknowledged as leader of the English Presbyterians. He was offered the bishopric of Hereford, which he refused on grounds of conscience, and was made by Charles II a member of the Savoy Commission for reforming the Book of Common Prayer. Although he laboured indefatigably to achieve amendments to that Book, which would permit Presbyterian clergy (and Independents who wished) to remain in their vicarages, his hopes of a comprehensive national church were dashed by the bishops who would agree few alterations to the Book as put forward by them. The intransigence of the bishops led to about 2,000 Presbyterian incumbents leaving their livings because they were unable in conscience to sign the ‘assent and consent’ to everything in that Book; it also commenced the personal persecution of Baxter for the next 25 years.
These English Presbyterians might well have been called Anglican Puritans, for they were Puritans who wished, within the national church, to return to the purity of the early (New Testament) church, as opposed to those Puritans who wished to establish that purity in ‘gathered’ congregations outside the Anglican church, and were thus called ‘Independents’. The Presbyterians, as their name suggests, desired a move towards the church government by elders which they found in the New Testament, although they were willing to settle for a reformed system of bishops (episcopacy). However, they are the ancestors of the inclusive (Free) Christians because under the influence of Baxter and others they came to place great value on the freedom of the individual to reach his own decision on religious matters. ‘Parliamentary’ Presbyterianism in the sense of Scottish Presbyterianism with its layered system of church government which was accepted by Parliament in return for help from the Scottish Army in the Civil War, never gained a secure foothold among the English.
Baxter was also a member of a group called the Reconcilers, and this description fits him admirably for he used all his influence to find some way of ‘comprehension’ which would lead Presbyterians and Independents into the national church. ‘Look on all particular churches as members of the universal,’ he said in 1659, ‘and choose the best thou canst for thy ordinary communion…But deny not occasional communion with any (though accused by others) further than they may force thee to sin or than they separate from Christ.’ Ahead of his times, he even found hope for non-Christians - ‘I can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion which doth but bring him to the true love of God and to a heavenly mind and life; nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth him.’ In his effort to avoid tests which would act as barriers to his Master’s fold, he led a movement for the Reduction of Essentials or Fundamentals, and would require only acceptance of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments for entry to the Church of Christ.
The Latitudinarians
Also in the seventeenth century but in a quieter vale than Baxter’s the Latitudinarians ploughed a similar eirenic furrow. Prominent among them were Lucius Carey Falkland (1610-1643). John Hales (1584-1656) and William Chillingworth (1602-1644). Possibly through their influence, in 1631 the Satanae Strategamata, written in 1565 by Giacomo Aconcio , a convert to Protestantism, was re-printed; he pleaded for ‘a tolerance broad enough to unite all sects into a single church, holding doctrines that all Protestants own’, and ‘ignored as non-essential the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, and other hotly disputed doctrines.’
Falkland thought it possible to make room within the national church for wide differences of dogmatic opinion, and Hales declared, ‘I do not yet see that……..men of different opinions in Christian religion, may not hold communion in sacris, and both go to one Church.’ Surely the bond of fellowship between Christians should be devotion to Jesus, not adherence to doctrinal formulae. Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, expressed this approach in his Irenicum, 1662, ‘The unity of the Church is that of communion, and not that of apprehension; and different opinions are no further liable to censure than as men by the broaching of these do endeavour to disturb the peace of the Church.’
Both the Latitudinarians, and the Presbyterians ejected from their vicarages in 1662, thoroughly disliked subscription to articles of belief. Referring to the Savoy Conference Richard Baxter said, ‘We would have had the brethren to have offered to Parliament, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue, as essentials of fundamentals which at least contain all that is necessary to salvation; and whereas it is said ‘a Socinian or a Papist will subscribe all this’, I answered, ‘so much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be a matter of our concord.’ .’
In the nineteenth century the Latitudinarians were known as Broad Churchmen. Thomas Arnold in his Principles of Church Reform (1833) explained that their desire was for a ‘church thoroughly national, thoroughly united, thoroughly Christian, which should allow great varieties of opinion, and of ceremonies and forms of worship, according to the various knowledge, and habits, and tempers of its members, while it truly held one common faith, and trusted in one common Saviour and worshipped one common God.’ He believed that all Dissenters, but not Quakers or Roman Catholics, should be admitted to the National Church; the parish churches should be the centres for all worship, with varying times for liturgical and non-liturgical services.
Regarding Unitarians he wrote, ‘it seems to me that in their case an alteration of our present terms of communion would be especially useful. The Unitarian body in England consists of elements the most dissimilar; including many who merely call themselves Unitarians, because the name of unbeliever is not yet thought creditable, and some also who are disgusted with their unchristian associates, but cannot join a church which retains the Athanasian Creed.’
The Broad Church valued Christian behaviour more highly than the holding of correct Christian doctrine. Dean Stanley in 1883 supported a liberal theology which ‘insists, not on the ceremonial, the dogmatic, or the portentous, but on the moral side of religion.’
The English Presbyterians
Baxter’s Reduction of Essentials was the matrix from which developed the later Presbyterian promotion of free enquiry in religion. This facilitates the holding of many different views within the same congregation. James Martineau in 1888 contrasted the habit of mind of Unitarian leaders such as Lindsey and Priestley who imported from their previous orthodox denominations the expectation that their new theology required a new creed - ‘They did not observe that the very people they joined, had insensibly passed through the whole distance between their old and their present theology, without any breach of the communion of worship or disturbance to the continuity of their history. There is no doubt some difficulty in resuming the name ‘English Presbyterianism’ after having allowed it to fall into disuse. But every suggested alternative is attended, I think, with more serious difficulty.’ Nevertheless the alternative of ‘Free Christian’ was, in fact, adopted to succeed ‘Presbyterian’ as the name for this Baxterian Christianity which seeks to embrace all who follow the teaching of Jesus but without restricting private judgment on doctrinal issues.
The ejected Presbyterian ministers of 1662 had been ‘unwilling nonconformists’ and for some years had hoped for comprehension within the national church Thomas Belsham dreamt in 1820 of a national church possessing ‘no doctrinal test but the profession that Jesus Christ is a teacher come from God, that he died and rose again, and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain everything necessary to faith and practice.’
James Martineau and J.J. Tayler were advocates of this Presbyterian comprehension. They formed in 1867 the ‘Free Christian Union’ whose purpose was a catholic or comprehensive union on the basis of spiritual rather than doctrinal affinity (see The New Affinities of Faith. A Plea for Free Christian Union by James Martineau (London, 1869)). Apart from Unitarians and some other Noncomformists the main support came from Broad Churchmen , including Henry Sidgwick, the Cambridge philosopher, and C. Kegan Paul. Martineau wrote in a letter, ‘Unless some witness is soon borne to the possibility of separating the religious life, not indeed from doctrinal conviction, but from concurrence in doctrinal conviction, the spiritual bonds of society itself seem in danger of dissolution.’ Lack of support and the death of J.J. Tayler resulted in the demise of the Union in 1870. Martineau remained enthusiastic, and in 1885 became actively engaged in the work of the ‘National Church Reform Union’.
This body urged that the basis of the Anglican Church should be so ‘widened as to include, as far as possible, the entire Christian life and thought of the nation’. Martineau proposed that the National Church should be a Federal Union, and ‘any Christian denomination at present counted as Dissenting shall be co-ordinated with the Episcopalian as another branch of the Church of England, on showing its hold on the English religious life by a history of one hundred years and a magnitude of two hundred congregations, and also its adequate provision for education and character in its ministers.’ A bill to be presented to Parliament was drafted, but proceeded no further.
The inclusive English Presbyterian tradition survives (just about!) in the Free Christian wing of the Unitarian movement. In 1881 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association invited members of all ‘Unitarian, Liberal Christian, Free Christian, Presbyterian and other Non-subscribing or Kindred Congregations’ to a conference in April 1882 at Liverpool ‘in the hope that……it will assemble the ministers and members of our congregations on the broad platform of religion and morality’. These Conferences were held nearly every three years until 1926 and became a bastion of the anti-dogmatic Presbyterian/Free Christian tradition; it was popularly known as ‘The National Conference of Free Christian Churches’. Martineau proposed that the name for the diverse categories named in the Conference title should be subsumed into ‘English Presbyterian’ for ‘Unitarian’ was the expression of a personal belief - ‘If anyone, being a Unitarian , shrinks on fitting occasion, from plainly calling himself so, he is a sneak and a coward. If, being of our catholic communion, he calls his chapel or its congregation Unitarian, he is a traitor to his spiritual ancestry, and a deserter to the camp of its persecutors.’ In 1928 the National Conference was amalgamated with the British and Foreign Unitarian Association.
The Broad Church continues to flourish in the Church of England, and the time may soon be ripe for a further attempt to widen the comprehension of the National Church.
Ecumenism
We have been considering the thought of those who have sought to reduce the doctrinal conditions to be met for membership of Christ’s church, for the fragmentation of denominations has resulted from a superfluity of required beliefs as opposed to voluntary personal beliefs. We distinguish this aim from the concerns of the ecumenical movement which seeks to foster amity and co-operation between the different churches and denominations.
For example, neither the World Council of Churches nor local ‘Churches Together’ claim to be a super-church or a substitute for a united church. Indeed the conditions for membership of both impose a Trinitarian theology. Surely the first step is to encourage inclusivity amongst the constituent churches.
Conclusion
The all-embracing call of Jesus who urged, ‘Follow me’ (without conditions), has sounded in England since the seventeenth century. May the small voice of The Christian Compass join with those who still plead for the unconditional opening of the gates of Christianity to all who wish to accept that invitation.
Addendum (by Tim Powell)
With the failure of the Free Christian Union, the next effort to ecourage a Free Christian approach was the Free Catholic movement of the early twentieth century. This is explored by Elaine Kaye in 'Heirs of Richard Baxter? The Society of Free Catholics 1914-1928', Journal of Ecclesiastical History vol 58 no 2 (April 2007), 256-272.
With the failure of the Free Christian Union, the next effort to ecourage a Free Christian approach was the Free Catholic movement of the early twentieth century. This is explored by Elaine Kaye in 'Heirs of Richard Baxter? The Society of Free Catholics 1914-1928', Journal of Ecclesiastical History vol 58 no 2 (April 2007), 256-272.