The sound you may hear from a Wee Free chapel might just be singing. After 147 years, the Free Church of Scotland, the “Wee Frees” have relaxed their ban on musical instruments and hymn singing.
On Nov 19 following two days of what was described by the church as “harmonious” debate, a special synod of the Free Church of Scotland voted 98-84 to allow individual congregations to decide whether to permit the liberty of using music in worship services.
Formed in 1847 following the secession of evangelicals from the Church of Scotland over what they saw as the state’s encroachment on their spiritual independence, the majority of the Free Church returned to the Church of Scotland in the last century. However, a dissenting group based in the Highlands and the Western Isles remained outside and continues the name and polity of the Free Church.
The church’s canons had called for the “avoidance of uninspired materials of praise and musical instruments” in worship, leading the Wee Frees to focus their musical efforts on Psalm singing, as the Psalms, being part of the Scriptures, were inspired, while modern hymns were not.
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Related article: The Wee Free should sing their psalms unadorned
This article contains gross inaccuracies, is facetious and rather unfriendly.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Free Church of Scotland has always been a singing Church, the fact is that until now we have almost exclusively sung Psalms.
Secondly, in the last two decades of the Nineteenth century the Free Church permitted both instrumental accompaniment and the use of hymns. Indeed, the Church produced a number of notable hymn writers including Robert M’Cheyne, “I once was a stranger to grace and to God”; Horatius Bonar, “Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul”; Walter Chalmers Smith, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise”; Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane, “Beneath the Cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand”; and Anne Ross Cousin, “The sands of time are sinking.” As early as 1857, Horatius Bonar published his collection, ’Hymns of Faith and Hope’, in which he expressed no narrow denominational or sectarian doctrine but ‘the Church’s ancient faith.’ Five years later, Jane and Sarah Borthwick of Lochearnhead translated a collection of German evangelical hymns, including, Spitta’s “O happy home, where Thou art loved the dearest;” which they published in 1862 as 'Hymns from the Land of Luther.' Lamentably, all this was brought to an end in 1905, after the 1900 union of the majority Free Church with the United Presbyterians to form the United Free Church of Scotland.
Thirdly, we do not meet in chapels, but churches. We are not Non-conformists (the term has no meaning in Scotland) and so such disparaging terminology is inappropriate.
Fourthly, the the Free Church of Scotland was formed in 1843, not 1847.
Fifthly, the "dissenting group based in the Highlands and the Western Isles [that] remained outside" can only refer those who did not go into the United Free Church in 1900, and has nothing to do with the formation of the Free Church in 1843.
If one of my students had handed in such inaccurate material he would have achieved a D-.