Book review: JONATHAN RANKEN ANDERSON – the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Gospel Standard Strict Baptists
By John Hooper
JONATHAN RANKEN ANDERSON, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Gospel Standard Strict Baptists by Roy Middleton. The James Bourne Society, 2023; 126 pages, hardback. Price: £13.50 from the Christian Bookshop, Ossett.
From time-to-time church history throws up a maverick, and such a man is the subject of this captivating little book. The author, an elder in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland congregation in Barnoldswick, clearly has a deep interest in Anderson and has given much of his time to researching his life and works. The book covers Anderson’s life, his connections with the Free Presbyterians and the Gospel Standard Strict Baptists, and the role of Herbert Baston Pitt of Trowbridge in editing and publishing some of Anderson’s sermons. There are seven appendices including a tract from the pen of Anderson himself.
Jonathan Ranken Anderson (1803-1859) was one of the men of the Disruption in 1843 when the evangelical cream of the Church of Scotland left to form the Free Church of Scotland, but Anderson was different from most and he knew it. As I was reading the book, I could not help but think there was a contradiction about the man. On the one hand his preaching was warmly and pointedly experimental and attracted the most spiritual of people, including many readers of his printed sermons. Roy Middleton tells us, “Throughout his ministry, his hearers so valued his preaching that they took his sermons down by shorthand and then copied them out…. There are over six hundred and seventy sermon transcripts that cover the entire period of his ministry….” (page 28). Some of these were edited and printed by Herbert Pitt, a Gospel Standard man, and were widely read and appreciated in those circles. It is fascinating to read of Anderson’s connections across the United Kingdom. In 1852 he went on a preaching tour of Devon, noting in his diary, “My visit has caused quite a stir in Plymouth. Oh! That it may be for the salvation of some.” (page 89)
But there was an ungracious censoriousness about the man, especially toward the preaching of his better-known peers in the Free Church of Scotland. He was ready even to deny the conversion of men like Robert Candlish, George Smeaton and John Kennedy (page 29). If there was any justification for Anderson’s sharp criticisms of the Free Church in the early 1850s (page 17), the way in which he handled himself during this period set a poor example to those around him. After leaving the Free Church under a cloud in 1852, Anderson and his congregation continued as an independent presbyterian church in Glasgow until his death.
Roy Middleton handles these two aspects of Anderson’s life and character well, giving us a book that is hard to put down and can be warmly recommended.