Donald MacFarlane

For the merchant, see Donald Horne Macfarlane.

Rev. Donald Macfarlane (1834–1926) was the founding father of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It began as a separate denomination when he tabled a Protest against the Declaratory Act at the 25th May 1893 meeting of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (1843–1900). The Act, originally passed in 1892, had allowed a watering-down of the Calvinism of the church and conservative Free Churchmen like Macfarlane believed it would prevent church discipline of those who opposed the Westminster Confession of Faith as a result of it. Macfarlane and those who followed him believed that it 'altered and vitiated' the constitution of the Free Church.[1] Two months later at a meeting in Portree, Isle of Skye, Macfarlane joined the Rev Donald MacDonald, Shieldaig and a Raasay schoolmaster in forming a presbytery. [2] Macfarlane was minister of the Free Church in Strathconon, Ross-shire (1873–1879), followed by Moy, Inverness-shire (1879–1889) and Kilmallie (1889–1893). As a Free Presbyterian minister he served in Raasay until 1903; then he was translated to the Dingwall congregation which he pastored until his death in 1926.[3]

References

  1. ↑ One Hundred Years of Witness; Ed Duncan R MacSween; Glasgow, 1993; pp25-27
  2. ↑ Memoir and Remains of Rev Donald MacFarlane, Dingwall; Ed D Beaton; Inverness, 1929; p29
  3. ↑ Memoir and Remains of Rev Donald MacFarlane, Dingwall; Ed D Beaton; Inverness, 1929; p 10, 12, 16, 24, 40


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