RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1943, Page 2

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. CENTENARY FALLS TODAY; (Contributed.) Today the struggle for religious freedom is going on among the enslaved peoples of Europe with passive but daring and effective resistance and indomitable resolution. Today marks the centenary of a great milestone in Scottish religious freedom. On May 18, 1843, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met in St. Andrew’s Church, Edinburgh, and before the Queen's Lord Commissioner protested at the State’s continued interference in the spiritual affairs of the Presbyterian Church, especially in depriving th<»m of the right to choose their ministers. Then the great majority, in all, marched out to another building and there constituted the “Free Church of Scotland.” In all 451 ministers of the Established Church gave up their manse, glebe and stipend and went out with nothing. Congregations left their churches and until others could be built worshipped on roads, lake sides, sea shore, in cowsheds oi’ any shelter they could find. Hundreds of farmers had to give up their leaseholds, and all schoolmasters who joined the movement were compelled to resign their schools. But they won a great victory in the end and the freedom gained has never been lost. They proved their sincerity by self-sacrifice which alone will make freedom secure. That spirit of the “Scottish Disruption,” as it was called, is abroad again in Europe and it has again been declared that: “The last bulwark of a planned Democracy is a spiritually free Church.”