4 - Controversy

Summary

John Kennedy's ministry divides very naturally into two stages. The first, to 1870, was the ordinary life of a rural Free Church minister: his principal focus was on fulfilling his regular duties of preaching, and pastoring his own congregation, to which he had added the writing of some books. These had not, as Chapter Three has noted, proved universally popular, and they were historical and theological rather than controversial writings. However, from 1870 onwards, Kennedy was actively engaged in the major public controversies of the Free Church. Given his retiring disposition, it is unlikely that Kennedy relished this role, but he clearly felt that the issues at stake required him to put aside his native sensitivities. The first significant controversial speech Kennedy gave, in October 1870, addressed the union question, and he continued to engage actively in that and in the closely related disestablishment question until his death, as was discussed in Chapter Three. However, other public questions soon engaged his attention as well. Kennedy proved adept at using the medium of the controversial pamphlet in particular to argue his case, and he wrote numerous such publications over the last fourteen years of his life, on many subjects. But although the issues on which Kennedy engaged in controversy were superficially disparate, in fact his public stance was both consistent and coherent. In the 1860s, Kennedy had published books describing the traditional Calvinistic Presbyterianism of the Scottish Highlands; from 1870 onwards, he contended vigorously for this Calvinistic Presbyterianism.

Kennedy and Worship

The subject of the public worship of God was central to John Kennedy's whole adult life from the time he was ordained to the full-time ministry at the age of twenty-four. He routinely conducted five services a week in Dingwall and was frequently engaged in leading worship elsewhere. For Kennedy, worship was nothing less than the practical expression of one's view of God. For this, the Westminster Confession taught, one day in seven was set apart as a Sabbath ‘to be kept holy unto him’ by all people, involving ‘an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations’. Instead, they are to spend ‘the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy’.