The Paris Olympics 100 years on

The 2024 Olympics in Paris have a significance for Scottish sport that not many have noticed. Exactly one hundred years ago, the last time the Olympics were held Paris, Scottish runner Eric Liddell won gold in an event he hadn’t trained for. The moving story was immortalised by the film Chariots of Fire. Last month, the University of Edinburgh awarded the ‘Flying Scotsman’ a posthumous honorary doctorate, accepted on his behalf by his daughter. 

In the words of a recent article in the Guardian, it’s a story which ‘provides a curious challenge for a secular age’. Liddell – born in China to Scottish missionary parents – came to Scotland at the age of 5. He excelled in sport at school and university. As a student at the University of Edinburgh, he broke the Scottish records for the 100 and 200 yards, and set a new record for the inter-universities 440 yards. His electrifying pace also earned him seven rugby caps for Scotland as a winger.

When the Paris Olympics came round in 1924 Liddell was selected to run the 100 and 200 metres in Paris. However he withdrew from the 100 metres on religious grounds when it was revealed that the heats were going to be held on a Sunday. For Christians, Sunday is ‘the Lord’s Day’ (Revelation 1:10), which we believe we are bound by God’s pattern of creation, as well as the Fourth Commandment, to ‘keep holy’ (Exodus 20:8). The British Olympic Committee put huge pressure on Liddell to run in what is the showpiece event of the Olympics, but he stood firm. Rather than compete, Eric spent the day preaching in the Scots Kirk in Paris.

When the 200 metre race came around, Eric ran and wan bronze. Ahead of the 400 metres, the team masseur gave him a note. When Eric opened it at the stadium he found words taken from the Biblical book of 1st Samuel: ‘He who honours me, I will honour’. Liddell’s plan was to ‘run the first 200 metres as hard as I could, and then, with God’s help, run the second 200 metres even harder’. That’s exactly what he did - winning gold in a world record time of 47.6 seconds.

One hundred years on, Liddell continues to be an inspiration to those who have found their sporting aspirations and Christian faith coming into conflict. Growing up I knew various people who gave up the chance to play rugby, hockey or athletics at international level because of trials, training camps or games which took place on Sundays. In the face of the often conflicting advice they have received, Liddell’s example - along with the Bible verse he was given - helped give them the motivation to stand firm.

In the film Chariots of Fire, the dramatised Liddell says: “When I run I feel God’s pleasure”. Although that line was made up for the film, it’s probably a fairly accurate description of how Liddell felt. What Liddell did say however was: “God made me for China.” That was the land his parents had felt called to as missionaries, it was where he had spent the first five years of his life – and as a young boy Liddell simply considered himself to be Chinese.

 A week after he won gold he graduated from university and enrolled at Bible college. The following summer he took part in his last athletics meeting in Scotland, winning the Scottish Amateur Athletics Association titles in the 100, 220, and 440 yards, before leaving for Tientsin, China.

In 1934 he married Florence, a Canadian nurse. They had three daughters but he never met the youngest: when civil war broke out and then the Japanese invaded in 1941, Liddell sent his pregnant wife and young children to safety. He stayed, working as a missionary in war-torn Siaochang. In 1943, he and his missionary colleagues were interned by the Japanese in a camp in Weihsien. He died there in 1945. In words which close out Chariots of Fire: ‘Eric Liddell, missionary, died in occupied China at the end of World War II. All of Scotland mourned’.

It is indeed a story which provides a curious challenge for a secular age – as well as those who share Liddell’s faith. It’s the story of a man who gave up not simply one race, but a life of comfort and fame. What was it that led him to do it? The answer is that he had found something greater than gold.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 8th August 2024

I Will Build My Church

Stephen reviewed the following book for the February 2023 Banner of Truth magazine:

I Will Build My Church: Selected Writings on Church Polity, Baptism, and the Sabbath
Thomas Witherow; Jonathan Gibson (ed.)
Westminster Seminary Press, 2021
313 pp., hbk, $29.99
ISBN 9781733627269

Why would anyone read a little-known, nineteenth-century Irish Presbyterian writing about secondary issues? Sinclair Ferguson’s answer in the foreword is that this trilogy really sets out to answer the questions of how God wants us to regulate our church, family and weekly lives. As for being unknown, a new 70-page biographical sketch by the editor fills out the life story of a man trained under Thomas Chalmers, who pastored a small-town church of almost 2,000 people, before becoming the first Church History and Pastoral Theology Professor at Magee College, Derry.

Witherow’s Apostolic Church seeks to bring Prelacy, Independency and Presbyterianism before the bar of Scripture. While he claims to have entered the project with misgivings as to which would triumph, he unsurprisingly finds Presbyterianism to meet all the Apostolic criteria (Independency meeting half, and Prelacy none). His only real departure from historic Presbyterianism is a radical two-office view which sees no place for a distinct ordination for ministers.

The second work, Scriptural Baptism, robustly sets out the paedobaptist position. Witherow writes as a man who had seen the 1859 Revival lead to defections from the Presbyterian Church, and takes no prisoners.
His work on the Sabbath (a published address) is the weakest of the three. Witherow’s Sabbatarian conclusions are biblical, but some of his argumentation is problematic, not least the claim that our Lord breached ‘the inspired interpretation…of the Mosaic law’.

The three works have been lightly edited for readability. The decision to characterise them all as ‘Presbyterian distinctives’ seems odd when only one of them is. While a number of footnotes say that the editor was unable to locate sources for quotations or books, all are easily found using Google.

Overall, this is a very valuable volume and many will feel that Witherow’s arguments have never been answered.

In praise of a weekly 'lockdown day'

Despite concerns about variants, the slow unlocking of the UK continues, as we celebrate reaching level 1 here in Dumfries and Galloway. Yet it turns out that there are actually some parts of lockdown that people want to hold on to. A recent Guardian article said: ‘With the country opening back up, some of us are choosing to shut back down every now and then to focus on ourselves and our family’. The authors then went on to ask: ‘Are you going to miss the positive aspects of lockdown so much that you’re going to create your own personal, regular “lockdown days” just for yourself or your family?’.

In our 24/7 society, where we’re so used to rushing from one commitment to another, there was something refreshing – at least at the start – about that burden being lifted. Of course, it would be easy to overplay it. Even back in April 2020, one Times columnist said he was encountering ‘an almost intolerable level of guff about reconnecting with nature, learning the joys of contemplation, home-cooking, realising how much more there is to life than nine-to-five, putting the rhythm of lovely walks and daily exercise back into life, birdsong, etc’. He went on to make a prophecy which, fourteen months later, has the ring of truth to it: ‘Once people need to be in at work for 9am again, it will take a matter of days to disconnect from nature, skip the Zen, head later for a pub or restaurant, and find there just isn’t time for that leisurely walk’.

 And yet is there nothing from our experience of a slower pace of life that can be redeemed? Or are we simply doomed to return to the tyranny of the urgent?

 Just a few days before the idea of a regular ‘lockdown day’ was floated, the Wall Street Journal published an essay by Sohrab Ahmari entitled ‘What we’ve lost in rejecting the Sabbath’. Ahmari, an Iranian-born author, converted from atheism to Roman Catholicism in 2016 at the age of 30. Writing about the Jewish and Christian practice of setting aside one day a week for rest and worship he argues that ‘in an age of constant activity, we need it more than ever’. Of course, the fact that we live in a 24/7 society is one of the main arguments that people – including many Christians – use when they claim that a weekly day of rest is unrealistic. But for Ahmari, our very busyness means that our need to ‘switch off’ for one day a week is greater than ever.

 He notes: ‘We have banished the Sabbath in the name of “choice.” And some choice we have: Working-class families are denied even a half-day of rest together, yet we are puzzled by astronomical divorce rates, abysmally low rates of family formation, alienation and drug abuse. We have cashiered the Sabbath to minimize labour costs, regardless of the impact on families and communities’.

As for the argument that a weekly, society-wide shutdown would be impossible today, we just need to look at the pandemic. If what we value most is at stake, we can shut the shops, close the restaurants and suspend public transport. As someone wryly commented on Twitter during the first lockdown: ‘‘What if we shut down all non-essential services once a week?’

And yet if we were to do so, a weekly Sabbath (or Lord’s Day) would actually look quite different from the weekly ‘lockdown day’ being proposed. The Guardian article talks about creating your own, personal lockdown days ‘just for yourself or your family’. Days like that are certainly important – but from a Christian point of view, having an exclusively inward focus leads to misery. True joy is found in focusing on God and in community with other people – and that’s what the Biblical idea of the Sabbath is all about. For us as a church, one of the great joys of restrictions being relaxed has been having one another in our homes again. A day that begins and ends in worship – with time in between given over to hospitality and fellowship – is a great and joyous reminder that we were actually made for something far bigger than ourselves and our families. Jesus spent time alone with God, he spent time with his disciples, and yet almost constantly we see him spending time with people, eating with them, enjoying their fellowship and investing in their lives.

A good lockdown legacy would see us regularly silencing the gods of work and entertainment and doing something similar.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 10th June 2021

Reading the Bible every day for 20 years

In a recent sermon, Stephen mentioned the following video by Rev. Matthew Everhard, who was marking 20 years of reading the Bible every single day. You can watch it below:

You can download his Bible reading plan here. Everhard’s YouTube channel contains many other helpful videos — some examples of which are below:

Everhard has lectured on Jonathan Edwards for the RP Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh and also preached at one of their chapel services:

In November his church are hosting a conference with most of the speakers coming from RPTS.

Sir Andrew Agnew - Remember the Sabbath Day

Around four miles from Stranraer is a 60-foot tower with the inscription ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy’.

The monument, towering above Leswalt, was erected in 1850 in honour of Sir Andrew Agnew, seventh baronet of Lochnaw, and friend of former Stranraer minister William Symington. Agnew was elected as MP for Wigtownshire and used his position to bring a bill before Parliament prohibiting all labour on the Lord’s Day, except for works of necessity and mercy. On his fourth attempt, the bill reached the committee stage, before the death of King William IV caused a dissolution of parliament. Agnew’s efforts brought him a bitter personal attack from Charles Dickens.

The Agnew Monument, on the site of an Iron Age Hill Fort (Tor of Craigoch), contains a number of (badly-weathered) inscriptions. The inscription on the south side reads:

"Erected by a few of the Inhabitants of this district and other friends in memory of the late Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw Bart [Baronet]. As a token of the esteem so universally & deservedly entertained for him & the respect in which the memory of his name & character, his life & labours is cherished. 1850.”

Above is the Agnew shield with its motto Consilio non Impetu, and above a curved inscription, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”.

A book-length commemoration of his life (Memoirs of Sir Andrew Agnew) was written the year after his death by Original Secession (and later Free Church) minister Thomas M’Crie. A briefer Memoir of Sir Andrew Agnew was published shortly after his death by James Bridges.

The entry for him by David Hempton in the Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology reads as follows:

“Agnew, Sir Andrew (Lochnaw) (1793-1849), politician and sabbatarian.

The posthumous son of Andrew Agnew, he succeeded to a baronetcy in 1809, attended Edinburgh University and married Magdalene Carnegie in 1816. He entered parliament in 1830 as a member for Wigtownshire, which seat he successfully defended twice, in 1831 and 1832, before failing in his candidature for the Wigtown boroughs in 1837. In politics he was a moderate reformer, but his parliamentary career was dominated by an unremitting campaign for sabbath observance. As the chief parliamentary spokesman for the Lord’s Day Observance Society he introduced four bills designed to prohibit all unnecessary labour on Sunday, the last of which reached the committee stage before Parliament was dissolved on the death of William IV. Although unsuccessful, all four bills occasioned considerable controversy both inside and outside the House of Commons. His opponents, including Charles Dickens, alleged that his measures were exclusively directed against ‘the amusements and recreations of the poor’. In response Sir Andrew stated that he was equally opposed to the casual amusements of the rich and that the poor would be the ultimate beneficiaries of a labour-free Sunday.

Although denied a parliamentary platform after 1837, Sir Andrew continued to promote the sabbatarian cause, particularly in the Scottish railroad industry, where he used his substantial financial influence to win important concessions. Renowned for his perseverance and consistency of purpose, he did as much as anyone to lay the foundations of the so-called Victorian Sunday.”

You can listen to two sermons about the Lord’s Day, taken from our series on the Ten Commandments, below: