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‘Where have you come from?’ I suppose that is a question most of you have been asked at some stage or another. It’s a fundamental question in some ways, because unless you know where you’ve come from, you can’t be quite sure where you’re going. But even to ask that question is to assume that there is some significance in knowing the answer - that knowing where people have come from will help you to understand something about them.

Now I don’t want to quarrel with that assumption at this stage, not least because I am a historian, and I’ve been asked to do an historian’s job. But you might like to reflect on how important it is to know where someone’s come from, in order to understand either where they are, or where they’re going. It may help, but it is not the only thing we need to know.

So where have we come from?

On 5th October 1972 the United Reformed Church was born, the first church union across denominational lines in this country since the Reformation. I can remember sitting in the Central Hall, Westminster, and hearing the Uniting Resolutions moved and seconded, and the various speeches made. In the afternoon there was a Service of Thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey, and I still have the Order of Service.

I can remember talking to people in the queue outside. I can remember that there was a mix up over the seats where we were going to sit, and we ended up in rather different places from those which we had expected. I can remember Lord Hailsham going to sleep in the sermon. None of this is reflect­ed in the Order of Service, which is all the historian has to go on if there is no oral history.

Those of you who know that my own origins were in the Churches of Christ may wonder why I was there. Churches of Christ were already observers on the Congregational/Presbyterian Joint Committee from 1966, and subsequently, the majority of those churches became part of the United Reformed Church in 1981.

Usually if we answer that question our answers go back to the seventeenth century, particularly to Bartholomew’s Day (August 24th) 1662 when those ministers who could not sub­scribe to the new Act of Uniformity left the Church of England.

Our oldest congregations go back to that date. There are some which claim earlier dates such as 1642, but there are often problems in establishing the continuity of such congregations distinct from the Church of England between 1642 and 1662.

There are more congregations which can trace their origins back to the reign of James II, and in particular,. to 1687 when the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence - something which enabled non-conformists to come out of hiding. The church to which I belong now, Emmanuel Church in Cambridge, traces its origin back with certainty, or some certainty, to 1687; although probably there were undercover meetings in the Cambridge area for several years before then.

To understand our origins we need to look much further back than dates in the seventeenth century: into the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and behind that, to the Western Church before the Reformation, to those who brought the Gospel to these islands from Rome and Ireland, to the Church in Rome, where Peter preached and to whom Paul wrote his letter, back to those who gathered around the risen Lord in the upper room after the resurrection - the eleven disciples and the women who went to the tomb.

Peter and Paul, Augustine of Hippo and Augustine of Canterbury, Patrick and Columba, Anselm and Becket, Francis of Assisi and Wycliffe, Cranmer and Calvin - all these are part of our history.

Too often we begin our story too late, and it is separated from Jesus and the early Church by a thousand, or even fifteen hun­dred years in which, apparently, nothing happened. That is half, or three quarters, of the whole history of the Church. All of this is our history, not just theirs, whoever they might be.

When we talk about the unity of the Church and the catholic­ity of the Church, we are talking about time as well as space. That is one reason why in the cover of Rejoice and Sing the three prayers that you find there are from St Augustine of Hippo, St Columba, and the Sarum Breviary (the Book of Prayers used in Salisbury Cathedral in the Middle Ages).

All this is part of our history. Our history is not just confined to the last little bit, and that is the first important point that I want to make.

The origins of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism go back to Elizabethan Puritanism, even though they did not emerge as separate denominations until after 1662. Puritanism, which like most similar terms began as a term of abuse, is the name given to that movement which wished to take the reform of the Church of England further than Queen Elizabeth allowed; perhaps nearer to the reform effected by John Knox in the Church of Scotland, although comparisons are not easy to make.

The main difference between Congregationalists and Presbyterians was over the nature and the ordering of the Church. Congregationalists (or Independents as they were often called) believed in a gathered Church, that is to say a Church which consisted of those who lived faithful and holy lives. They thought that this meant that the Church had in a sense to be separate from the rest of the community that did not live faithful and holy lives; hence they were called Separatists, and this differentiated them from Presbyterians who believed in the traditional parish system whereby the Church had a responsibility to everybody who lived in a given geographical area. The way Presbyterians wanted to solve the problem of those who didn’t live godly and faithful lives was to establish an appropriate system of church discipline, exer­cised through elders who would assist the minister, together with a comprehensive system of oversight of the parish minis­ters through presbyteries which would consist both of minis­ters and elders. One of the main problems in the Church of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries was that of securing reliable parish priests who would do their duty, who would be on the spot to conduct services in the appropriate way, and who would look after their congregations.

1993 was the 400th anniversary of the first Congregational martyrs - Henry Barrow and John Greenwood. With Robert Browne, they were some of the earliest writers in favour of separatism. In the 1580s they were imprisoned in the Fleet Prison, and were there for the best part of seven years, with occasional trips out, sometimes to conduct services, some­times to do other things. Eventually they were found guilty of attacking the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Queen and of the Church of England. When Barrow was interrogated- by the Lord Treasurer, he was asked why he would not attend the Church of England, and among a number of reasons he gave four:- `1. Because all the profane and wicked of the land are received into the body of your church; 2. you have a false and anti-Christian minister set over your church; 3. neither wor­ship you God aright, but after an idolatrous and superstitious manner; 4. and your church is not governed by Christ’s testa­ment, but by the Romish courts and canons...’

What he meant was that he didn’t agree with episcopacy in general, with the `Prayer Book’ in particular, and especially with the canons under which the Church of England was gov­erned.

He was found guilty of the charge on 23rd March 1593. Preparations were immediately made for his execution, and that of Greenwood on 24th, but they were reprieved. Seven days later they were actually taken to the place of execution, and ropes were placed around their necks. They spoke to the crowd who gathered to witness the execution and then they were reprieved again. Finally on 6th April, they were taken out early in the morning, and hanged at Tyburn.

It is almost like a story from America’s death row in the sort of cat and mouse game before the final end. But it is a reminder that there are people in our tradition who died for their beliefs. If any of you know Emmanuel Church, Cambridge, you will know that we have stained glass win­dows with heroes of the Congregational tradition - it is one of the rare places in the country which has Cromwell in a stained glass window, which we lent to an exhibition some years ago because it was unique. On the Sunday nearest to the martyr­dom of Barrow and Greenwood, who are two of the other people in those windows, we remembered them in our prayers.

I have no time to explore the significance of the emigrations which followed in the early years of the seventeenth century, particularly to North America. Everyone knows the story of the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620. One result ironically, was that Congregationalism became the established church in Massachusetts until 1834.

Similarly most people know about the religious background to the Civil War. The victorious alliance between English Parliamentarians and Scottish Presbyterians, resulted in a long discussion about the future pattern of church government. The Westminster Assembly, which sat between 1644 and 1646, was supposed to settle this. It produced the Westminster Confession and the Form of Church Government. Parliament approved the Confession, but not the Form of Church Government, which was Presbyterian. Nevertheless they sub­sequently became the standard for the Church of Scotland and Presbyterianism throughout the English-speaking world.

The Westminster Assembly did not resolve the differences in church order between Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

Cromwell’s rule was in effect a victory for Congregationalism; but only in effect because people could do more or less what they liked - a kind of de facto independency. When Cromwell was dead, and people summoned back Charles II, it was the Presbyterians who took the initiative. In fact, one of the main reasons, ironically, that Charles II was summoned back was because it was thought that he would be prepared to establish a presbyterian form of church government in a reformed Church of England, and in his Declaration from Breda, he promised a liberty to tender consciences.

Those hopes were dashed, and the most important point to grasp about what happened in 1662 was that it was not what people had expected. The intention in 1662 was to create a system which would keep most people in so that only a few who could not be included in any kind of comprehensive set­tlement would be left out. This was why Richard Baxter was offered the Bishopric of Hereford, which he declined. In fact, 1662 not only took out all the Independents, but many of the moderate Presbyterians as well, and it more or less dashed the hopes of a comprehensive Church of England. I say more or less because of what was to happen later. But it is worth emphasising that 1662 drove out more people than expected, and this was reflected in the policy of the government imme­diately following. There was not an immediate attempt to try and enforce conformity in the 1660s; indeed some of those who went out conformed and went back into the Church of England, and some of those who had not gone out in 1662 later left. It was only in the early 1670s that there was a first serious attempt at persecution of those who were outside the Church of England, and it was very short-lived - about two years. Then there was another attempt at persecution in the early 1680s - again quite short-lived.

One of the things that has not often come out in the history is that that second persecution in the 1680s was nearly success­ful. We sometimes get rather starry-eyed about persecution.

We are almost inclined to think that persecution is never suc­cessful - ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. That is too facile a view. The Church in North Africa, the most prosperous part of the Roman empire, was completely wiped out, in the seventh and eighth centuries. Persecution can be successful. The Church in Russia was nearly wiped out in the 1920s, and non-conformity in England was nearly wiped out in the 1680s. There is an argument for saying that Charles II’s death and James II’s accession gave a new possi­bility of life for non-conformity in England.

James II horrified nearly everybody. He was a Roman Catholic, and nobody, no Protestant that is, believed in toler­ation for Roman Catholics in the seventeenth century - that is where the limits of toleration were drawn - but nobody could dispute his claim to the throne. Because he wanted to give lib­erty to his Roman Catholic friends, that involved widening the bounds of religious toleration. But dissenters were not partic­ularly happy about a toleration that included Roman Catholics, and the Anglicans that constituted the body of his support, were not happy about any kind of toleration. The result was a rather complicated political situation between 1687 and 1688 that eventually led to James running away when William of Orange raised his standard in the South West. If James II had stayed, it is impossible to say what might have happened. It is certainly impossible to be sure that William would have become King. But James II ran away and made things very simple.

Again there was an attempt to make the Church of England more comprehensive. We remember 1689 for the Toleration Act because it was the basis of non-conformists’ liberties for the eighteenth century. But actually the Toleration Act was the second half of a double deal, the first half of which was never delivered. The first half of the deal was a more comprehensive Church of England, and it is significant that it failed again in 1689, as it had failed between 1660 and 1662. That meant that the Presbyterians stayed outside the Church of England, even after 1689. Comprehension was dropped. With tolera­tion England became inescapably pluralist.

There was a good deal of movement between Presbyterians and Congregationalists at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Joseph Hussey, the first recorded minis­ter of Emmanuel Church in Cambridge, began life as a Presbyterian before the congregation became Independent. In the early eighteenth century Presbyterians and Independents nearly came together nationally. Briefly they did, in the so­called `Happy Union’, but it did not last.

The problem for the Presbyterians was that there were too few of them to create an effective presbyterian system of church government across the country as a whole. What persecution failed to achieve in the seventeenth century, apathy nearly achieved in the early eighteenth, because once cut off from the universities and national life dissenters entered a period of decline. Although we look back to Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge -as great towers of Independency in the eighteenth century, they were actually presiding over a decline in Congregationalism.

What transformed thatt was the Evangelical Revival from the middle of the eighteenth century. We remember the Revival for John Wesley and Methodism, but it affected all the church­es in this country, as well as creating some new ones. In par­ticular it affected Congregationalists and Baptists by giving them a new missionary sense. Last year was the bi-centenary of the Baptist Missionary Society, founded in 1792; in 1995 we shall be looking to the bi-centenary of the London Missionary Society which was founded in 1795. The founda­tion of that, originally on an open-ended basis, though it rapidly became largely Congregational, was followed in 1819

by the foundation of the Home Missionary Society to build up new congregations in this country as well.

It was in this period, at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, that many of the old county Congregational Associations and Unions were founded. They became Associations and Unions of churches, as distinct from unions of ministers which they had been for a much longer period, because they were concerned to support weak churches, and to assist ministers in places where churches could not sup­port ministers of their own. By 1832 the Congregational Union itself was formed. We have entered a new era, and we are faced with the beginning of the formation of denominational organi­sations. So we will leave the Congregationalists there for a moment, and turn to the Presbyterians.

The Presbyterian Church in England in its modern form goes back to 1836 when an English Synod of Presbyterian churches was formed, based on two Presbyteries, one in Lancashire, and one in the rest of North Western England. These churches had links with Scotland. From the late eighteenth century well into the nineteenth century, there was a southward migration of Scots from Scotland, as the Scottish population grew and industrialisation developed in the lowlands of Scotland and the north of England. There were families like the Gladstone fam­ily, for example. The father of William Gladstone, who was Prime Minister, was a Liverpool ship owner, but John Gladstone’s father had been a ship owner in Leith, trading in the Baltic. As his business grew, he passed it on to his son, who started to trade in the Atlantic, and therefore from Liverpool. So the Gladstone family moved from Edinburgh to Liverpool. They also moved from the Church of Scotland to the Church of England, and William Gladstone though Liberal in politics, ended up as the first High Church Prime Minister: Presbyterian to High Anglican in three generations.

That kind of movement of people and denominations was char­acteristic of the nineteenth century. The English Presbyterian Church of 1836 became associated with the Free Church of Scotland after 1843 because of what was called `the Disruption’ in the Church of Scotland, when those who resisted the inter­ference of the government in the affairs of the Church walked out, and left to form the Free Church of Scotland. Most of the English Presbyterian Churches were in sympathy with the Free Church - they were after all Free Churches in the English con­text. Those Presbyterian churches who remained in sympathy with the established Church of Scotland withdrew at that stage, and formed what became, and indeed still is, the Presbytery of England in the Church of Scotland.

The English Presbyterian Church then drew into its ranks, by discussions, congregations of the United Presbyterian Church. These were congregations which had separated from the Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century, spreading throughout Scotland and through northern England. In 1876, the Presbyterian Church of England was formed by the union of the Presbyterian Church in England and the United Presbyterian Synod of England. There were discussions to bring the two churches together in Scotland as well, but at that stage they failed: they were not to succeed for another generation.

The union day was 13th June 1876, and Dr J Oswald Dykes and John Rankin were the two Moderators; and Dr James Anderson of Morpeth was the first Moderator of the new united church. Any who have attended the Westminster College Commemoration of Benefactors will recall that his is one of the names that is read out on that occasion.

One of the speeches that was made on that day is worth quot­ing. It was not made by one of the Moderators, but by one of those moving one of the supplementary resolutions:

‘We need to be aggressive and missionary, and aggressive by being missionary. No Church of Christ has any right to exist at all unless she is missionary. She is planted in the world for the very purpose, and all our talk about getting a place and a home for ourselves in England would be vain unless we took that place, and occupied that home for the sake of aggressive and evangelistic Christian work. We will do that along with others, for alas! the land remaining to be possessed is wide enough for us all, fellow-Christians of England, if we will only take care to keep out of each other’s way, and reclaim waste lands instead of encumbering each other. Finally, we are a uniting Church and mean to be. We are united now, but we have not done with union yet. We look to the passages of intercommunication between this united Church and the other Presbyterian Churches of the realm for great results.’

That concern for broadening out is something that has stayed with the Presbyterian Church of England.

One of our great deficiencies is that we lack an adequate his­tory of the Presbyterian Church of England. Because so little has been written about it, we are not sufficiently familiar with the story, and this is a pity.

The origins of The Churches of Christ also go back to the eighteenth century divisions of Presbyterianism. Thomas Campbell was an Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian minister at Ahorey in the north of Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century. I will not take time to explain the significance of the fact that he was an Old Light Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian. More important is the fact that Campbell was involved in the Evangelical Society of Ulster, concerned to try and overcome some of those divisions; and he was also involved in the movement to make the Irish Synod indepen­dent of the Church of Scotland.

In 1808, for reasons of his health, he emigrated to the United States, and he ran into problems in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, because he discovered that the Presbyterians there were far behind those in Ireland.

Campbell was hauled over the coals when he admitted to Communion members of a different branch of the Presbyterian Church than his own. He was censured by his Presbytery, and when he appealed unsuccessfully against that, he decided that he would have done with the lot of them. He withdrew, and the Declaration and Address that he wrote, and which those who withdrew with him published in 1809, was an appeal for unity.

His son, Alexander Campbell, joined him in the United States, and they eventually settled at Bethany, in what is now West Virginia, where Alexander Campbell founded Bethany College.

Alexander Campbell’s writings in favour of the unity of Christians on the basis of a restoration of New Testament Christianity, which led him to advocate Believer’s Baptism and weekly Holy Communion, were widely distributed in the United States, and became known in Britain. As a result cer­tain congregations from the Scotch Baptists in this country adopted those principles, and formed themselves into a sepa­rate association of Churches of Christ.

The first church was formed in Nottingham on Christmas Day, 1836. The first conference of churches was held in Edinburgh in 1842. There was a second in 1847 when Alexander Campbell himself was here from the United States, and thereafter there was an Annual Conference every year, with the exception of 1940.

Our three traditions developed in separation. They grew in the nineteenth century, here and through missionary work abroad. They developed their own life and impetus. It was the twentieth century movement for Christian unity that started to bring them together, first through the Federal Council of Free Churches, established in 1919. Presbyterians and Congregationalists were involved in discussions with the other Free Churches and the Church of England in the 1920s. Then in the 1930s, and again in the 1940s, there were talks between Presbyterians and Congregationalists, neither set of talks pro­ducing anything at that particular stage, except an agreement to work together from the end of the 1940s.

Those discussions were resumed again in earnest in 1963, and pushed on by the Nottingham Faith and Order Conference in 1964, with its motto, `One Church renewed for mission’. That conference also led Churches of Christ to look for ways to implement their proclaimed commitment to Christian unity, which brought us eventually as observers on the Congregational/Presbyterian discussions. This is why we were present on that day in 1972, a day which also initiated further discussions, leading to the enlargement of the union in 1981.

All this is our journey as churches. But where have we come from? If we look at our local congregations, they do not just consist of people who come from Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Churches of Christ. My own congregation at Emmanuel, Cambridge, was a Congregational church, but it not only contains ex-Cong, ex-Pres, ex-CofC, and URC people who have not known anything else because they are under 21: it also contains ex-Baptists, ex-Methodists, ex-Church of England, not to mention some who have arrived from overseas.

When we ask who we are, we need to remember those who belong to us now but were brought up outside the three con­stituent traditions of the United Reformed Church that I have been talking about. We think we know who we are, but it is more complicated than we think. We also have people from other lands. It is just as complicated as being British. Sometimes we proudly say that this country has never been invaded since 1066. It’s not actually true, of course. Remember Bonnie Prince Charlie! In any case, we have received waves of people over the centuries - Dutch, French (Huguenots in the 1690s), Germans (because of the Hanover connection), Russians, Poles, those from Commonwealth countries in the twentieth century - all of them with varying Christian traditions.

Every local congregation stands at the meeting point of the past and the future. To be sure we have an inheritance, but the way we carry that forward depends on us. That is why it is vital that we claim our whole history, and indeed, the history of the whole Church. It is that unity between different peoples and different places that Christ proclaimed. Our journey is a single journey with a great company of fellow Christians.

Revd Dr David Thompson

(this leaflet was first published by the United Reformed Church in 1997 before the union with the Congregational Union of Scotland.)