A SERIOUS PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 869, 16 July 1910, Page 9

A SERIOUS PROBLEM

CALVINISM 'AND TRUST DEEDS. Serious issues have arisen for the Free- Churches of England. Wliilo causing the utmost ferment among Nonconformists generally, they have, however, attracted as yet very little attention from tho public press (says tho "Daily Mail" overseas edition). Tho Free Churches are face to face with a situation by which at least threefourths of tho Baptists and Cpugregationalists' churches arc liablo to bo closed by the process of law, and their present worshippers ejected. AVhat is more, any endowment these churches possess may be taken from thoso. now using them. The situation has arisen in unexpected fashion. When tho Rev. R. J. Campbell began to advance his Now Theology doctrines some' critics arose and declared that tho City Temple was opened under a trust, deed, which enjoined that it should only be used for tho advancing of orthodoxy. . They, threatened. Mr. Campbell with the law. The difficulty! was' got over in. tho case of the City Temple: But inquiry was made about other churches, and the fact canie out that practically every Baptist or Congregationalist church built before IS3O "is held by trustees— the deacons—under a formal legal trust that provides that the faith preached in the churches must be Calvinism. Apparently, as tbo. law now stands,, any member of a congregation can bring action against the trustees if Calvinism is ..not preached, and can 'have the minister and people ejected from the building. A case which came before the Courts recently, proved this. Practically no Congregationalist and no Baptish preacher to-day is a Calvinist as Calvinism was understood \by our forefathers. Most of them living in'these trust-bound churches repudiate the name, and declare that . rather than preach predestination as Calvin preached it, .they .-weald., go out m the street to-morrow. It is impossible to believe that some way will not be found out of the difficulty. Yet when one remembers how in Scotland a few years ago the whole of the great Free Church organisation was deprived of a large part of its endowments and buildings because of a similar difficulty, it is impossible not to feel'some apprehension.