I am a Baptist, the son of a Baptist. So it may surprise you to learn that for the past seven years I’ve been a member of a local Presbyterian church. After terminal decline since the seventeenth century, there are signs that Presbyterianism is again on the rise in England, perhaps partly due to migration rather than salvation (Presbyterianism to me sometimes feels like a halfway house for disaffected Anglicans on the one hand and confessional Baptists on the other).

If you’d asked me when I was a wee lad what a Presbyterian was, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Had you mentioned that Presbyterians baptised babies, unable to confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord (Acts 8:37; Romans 10:9), my raw Baptist sensibilities would’ve seen red and avowedly dismissed them as a bunch of heretics! It was only later that I discovered (much to my dismay at the time!) that many of the preachers, theologians and individual Christians that God has most used throughout history have basically been Presbyterian by persuasion: John Calvin, John Knox, Jonathan Edwards, John Murray, the list goes on (I promise you they’re not all called Jo(h)n!).1

Now that Presbyterianism has been somewhat demystified for me, here are some things that I’ve learnt over the past seven years. Despite their weird terminology and odd quirks, we owe our Presbyterian (or Presbo, Presbie, for short!) brethren a great debt of gratitude and should make the most of the unity and partnership we have in the Gospel.

The Presbyterian form of government works

The word Presbyterian comes from the Greek πρεσβύτερος (presbuteros), meaning an elder. A Presbyterian church is led by a team of elders called a ‘session’. Presbyterians insist on a plurality of elders to provide back-up and hold each other accountable. No one man should have supremacy, not even the pastor; all Presbyterian elders are equal. Presbyterian churches are organised into local ‘presbyteries’, where elders from different churches meet to have a good old natter (ahem, I mean, serious Presbyterian conversation!) and approve the appointment of additional elders, amongst other things.

So far, so good, not indistinct to many Baptist churches also led by elders, you might think. But the big distinctive is that the congregation, even the membership, has very little say in the actual day-to-day running of the church. Coming from a more Congregationalist background with regular members’ meetings and votes on everything from chairs versus pews to what translation of the Bible you use, this was a bit of a shock to the system. It can feel decidedly undemocratic and untransparent.

Yet once you get your head around all the strange terminology (like trainee ministers being taken ‘under care’ before being ‘licensed’ to preach), I think, practically speaking, it works very well. Gone are the rowdy AGMs and many of the member-to-member squabbles. Instead, if a church’s elders are men truly called by God, you have calm, reasonable, mature church governance. It can feel painfully slow at times, Presbyterians do not rush hastily into anything and love a committee! But if things are worth doing, they’re worth doing properly. The pastor doesn’t have a freehand without elders of equal standing to challenge him. The whole church still gets involved as well, such as in those aforementioned committees or in confirmatory votes on the recognition of deacons, elders and pastors. Presbyteries ensure unity fellowship with the wider Church. Most importantly, it means the congregations are genuinely led by their elders as sheep by under-shepherds, not the other way round. It’s no guarantee of unity and harmony in a local church, of course, but I think it correctly captures the essence of biblical church governance (e.g., Acts 14:23; 20:28; 1 Timothy 3:1-7; Hebrews 13:17). Being a product of the twenty-first-century, I can’t help my predilection for liberal democracy and therefore, in the main, retain my preference for the Congregationalist model, but I believe there’s much to be said for the Presbyterian form of church government.

Presbyterians love their theology

There’s a reason why many of the best theologians over the past few centuries have been Presbyterians. Presbies place a great value on careful expository preaching of the Bible and on creeds, confessions and historical theology. It may be that being at a church in as academic a city as Cambridge has given me a somewhat skewed perspective, but I’ve never met so many people as serious about theology and as in love with the Patristics, Reformers and the Puritans. Theirs is a cerebral faith, open-minded insofar as is biblical, that can sometimes perhaps tend too much to the intellectual and less to the experiential or spiritual. But which—as I have found it—is a refreshing counterweight to the anti-intellectual fundamentalism sometimes found in churches of Baptist convictions. Of course, Presbyterians aren’t impervious to downgrade (witness the whole-sale collapse of Presbyterianism in Scotland and Wales over the past 100 years).

Presbyterianism has opened up to me the riches of Reformed theology in a way that Baptists, for whatever reason, never have. Covenant theology is a case in point. It’s not one I’ve fully reconciled with my Baptist convictions yet. But it is a superb redemptive framework with which to make sense of the 66 books that make up the Bible.

The upshot is that I’ve felt massively built up in my faith these past seven years. If Presbos aren’t as outwardly evangelistic as Baptists, then they excel in building up believers. I had many good Presbyterian books on my bookshelf before joining a Presbo church that then felt more heavy-going, even turgid, than devotional. Now, dare I say it, I feel like I’ve caught more of that glorious flame and can’t get enough of the writings of those who are ‘old, dead and Scottish’ (as one Presbo puts it!).

There’s immense value in having wider fellowship with Christians of different theological persuasions. We must be able to differentiate between hills to die on, fight on or ignore, distinguish between primary and secondary matters. I’ve largely remained on my guard being in a Presbyterian church all these years, but that’s healthy (Acts 17:11). 

Sing Psalms like Presbyterians

I don’t think there’s ever been such a time when the Church has sung so few Psalms as in modern-day Protestantism. I count it as one of the greatest tragedies in our congregational worship today that we have almost completely swapped out a songbook inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself for the slop, frankly, that a lot of modern groups serve up (though perhaps the tide is turning). By no means do I believe in exclusive Psalmody, I love many hymns, songs and choruses, old and new; but one of the things I have most appreciated about Presbyterians is that they actually use the Psalter for its primary intended purpose. And not like some of the Reformed Baptists I know (and love) who sing them to impossibly obscure, old tunes making it very difficult to sing along.

I still remember the day I saw Psalm 88 printed on a service sheet. You can’t be serious, I thought. How on earth were we going to sing something that ends with ‘darkness is my only friend’ (Psalm 88:18 CSB)? What value was there in doing so? By the end though, I’d thoroughly repented of that attitude. The Psalms cover ground modern songwriters wouldn’t dare to tread, emotions that feel wrong or we do our best to suppress. More than just the ‘clean sea breeze of the centuries’ (as C. S. Lewis writes),2 there is something inherently powerful about singing the very songs that Jesus would have sung as a man on earth (including Psalm 88). When we sing Psalms we sing with David, Israel, Jesus and the church through the centuries. The Psalms contain many all-out praise songs as well as powerfully moving songs of lament (best sung in minor key). They deserve to be part and parcel of our panoply of praise to our Triune God.

More broadly, Presbyterians are a whole lot more structured and obviously liturgical than most other non-conformists. They emphasise that God is a God of order (1 Corinthians 14:33). At its best this leads to reverent, biblical worship befitting the adoration of a holy God. The downside is that the liturgy can easily become merely formulaic, a going through the motions (though this itself is not entirely without value).

The baby elephant in the room

Alright, let’s address the elephant in the room: paedobaptism. A word which never fails to confuse Baptists the first time they are confronted by it (‘Huh? What’s a pseudo-baptist?’ asked one I remember). For those unfamiliar with the term, read infant baptism; paedobaptists baptise children of Christian parents. In England today, the Baptist position, ‘credobaptism’ as some call it—full immersion and believer’s baptism—has deep roots, even increasingly in Evangelical Anglican churches. Globally and historically, however, the Baptist position is a minority view (although of course, the early Church was all Baptist, they just got in a muddle at some point!).

Seven years is a long time to spend in a paedobaptist church; many Baptists crumble under the pressure. I, however, remained firm—or at least that’s what I tell people! The reality is that it doesn’t come up as often as you might think. If you know anything of the Baptist-versus-paedobaptist controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for me, it’s been the more accommodating approach of the famous Baptist John Bunyan (1628-1688) than the hard-line Anabaptists and early English Baptists who vied with paedobaptists like the renowned controversialist Richard Baxter (1615-1691). For a flavour of the latter, Baxter once claimed in a classic mic-drop moment that full immersion in a cold climate such as England was tantamount to a contravention of the sixth commandment as it could lead to ‘apoplexies, lethargies, palsies, and all comatous [sic] diseases…debility of the stomach…fevers, dysenteries, diarrhoeas, colics…convulsions, spasms, tremors, etc.’!3

Over the years, I’ve tried to come at paedobaptism as open-minded as I can, but I still can’t get over it. I wince every time a baby is sprinkled. The language that surrounds it I find troubling. Presbyterians do not believe that a child of Christian parents, a ‘covenant child’, is automatically converted, far from it, yet they would still call such a child a Christian, part of the ‘visible church’.

I’ve found the arguments and proof-texts used on both sides presuppose their view is correct, based on underlying assumptions. Presbos assume children were part of the Philippian jailer’s household, Baptists assume they weren’t (Acts 16:33). The one passage I’ve not yet heard a cogent Presbyterian answer on is that of children ‘made holy’ because of a believing parent (1 Corinthians 7:14). This seems to be a standard proof-text for paedobaptism. Yet in the very same verse, the unbelieving spouse is also ‘made holy’—but Presbyterians would not be willing to baptise an adult unbeliever!

For me, the most convincing argument in favour of paedobaptism is covenant theology. Put simply, if children were part of the Old Covenant through circumcision and if baptism is the sign of the New Covenant, then why should children be excluded now? I won’t go into the Baptist answer now (they would quibble a few things, including that baptism is the sign of the New Covenant). Ultimately, I’ve come to realise that this is not an issue that should divide us. Far more unites us. This goes for the quantity of water especially—I love the picture of dying to self and rising to newness of life in Christ (e.g., Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12), yet I don’t see it as a deal-breaker. I was surprised to learn that many modern-day Presbyterians are very understanding and generally happy to sprinkle, pour or dunk, according to preference!

One in Christ

To me it’s not a matter of whether Presbyterianism is right or whether we Baptists are the true descendants of the New Testament church. We all are. God in His sovereignty has allowed these theological divisions for a reason. We complement one another in our quirks and emphases. Our dialogue is conducive for the building of God’s one Church on earth. Whether we are Baptists or Presbyterians; whether we dunk, sprinkle or pour; whether we drink port for communion wine (as is the Presbyterian penchant) or grape juice—‘each one should be fully convinced in his own mind’ (Romans 14:5)—what is vitally important is that we follow and trust and serve and glorify the risen Lord Jesus Christ together. It’s His Church, not ours. We all meet at the foot of His cross and rejoice at His open tomb and we will all worship Him in heaven together forever.

This post is written as a personal reflection and tribute to my dear brothers and sisters at Cambridge Presbyterian Church. The Lord bless you all.

  1. Although, truth be told, Jonathan Edwards was more like a ‘wannabe’ Presbyterian. ↩︎
  2. C. S. Lewis, Introduction to Athanasius, On the Incarnation, translated by a religious of C.S.M.V., available online at https://bishoysblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/on-the-incarnation-athanasius.pdf ↩︎
  3. Michael Haykin, Amidst Us Our Belovèd Stands: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition, Lexham Press, 2022, 16. For some more juicy Baptist-paedobaptist action, also see Austin Walker, Hot Water: The Baptismal Controversies of the 1690s, Broken Wharfe, 2024. ↩︎