Soli Deo Gloria: For the Glory of God Alone

The Messenger, March 4, 2010
Francis Makemie: Teaching Them to Observe All Things

By RB TOLAR
Special to The Messenger
We Christians today are so concerned about the winning of souls that we very often forget the part of the Great Commission that commands us to teach converts, after they have been won, in the tenets of the faith. Thus, many fall by the wayside or lapse into ineffectuality.
Presbyterianism has always stressed the need for ministers who are educated to preach and teach, and so the call went out from the early Scots-Irish immigrants back to Ireland and Scotland: “Send us ministers!” It was on such a journey to Scotland that Col. William Stephens met Francis Makemie and invited him to come to America.
Makemie was born in County Donegal, Ireland, and educated and ordained in Scotland. He was 24 years old when he arrived in Maryland and established a Presbyterian community in the trading settlement of Snow Hill on the Pocomoke River. He proceeded to establish and pastor several other churches along the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
Makemie was as much an itinerant missionary as a pastor. He made extended trips into Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley and even conducted several forays among the Scots-Irish in North Carolina. Wherever he stopped, he would preach the gospel and catechize his congregants. (Catechizing is a method of teaching Biblical doctrine using a series of questions and answers.)
Makemie also made a number of journeys to New York to recruit ministers for the congregations he had founded. One of these trips resulted in the most famous incident in his life and a landmark case on religious freedom in the colonies.
Denied a license to preach in public, Makemie held a meeting in a private house, after which he was arrested for preaching without a license. Lord Cornbury, the royal governor, accused Makemie of spreading “pernicious doctrines” (On a literary note, readers of Robert Louis Stephenson will find it ironic that the governor’s actual name was Edward Hyde).
Makemie informed the governor that he neither would nor could refuse to preach if asked “by any people.” He was finally granted a jury trial and, after five months in jail, was acquitted, having claimed the right to preach under the Toleration Act.
Legal entanglements aside, Makemie’s crowning achievement was the founding of the first presbytery in America in 1706. Working alongside Jedidiah Andrews, who had come to Pennsylvania at Makemie’s request and done yeoman’s work in Philadelphia and western Pennsylvania, Mackemie brought together seven churches in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.  He died in 1708 and was buried at his farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
It is hard for us today, with our abundance of churches and worship styles, to look back 300-odd years and appreciate the abiding importance of his work. Francis Makemie traveled countless miles through trackless wilderness and struggled to establish churches in sparsely settled areas. He was tireless in his efforts to recruit ministers to the frontier. He strove with all his being to obey Jesus’ command, “Feed my sheep.”
Would that we in the Church today were so compelled.
Editor’s note: RB Tolar, saved by God’s grace alone, is grateful for the opportunity to participate in this writing ministry. He attends Grace Community Church in Union City.

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