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 PrintableVersion Voice of NonconformityWilliam Robertson and the British WeeklyWorst because most subtleVOICE OF NONCONFORMITY The name of William Robertson Nicoll (WRN) may not be well known today, but a century ago he was the highly influential editor of the widely-read British Weekly and friend of Lloyd George, James Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and all the leading theologians of the day. At this time the number of nonconformists in Britain nearly equalled that of Anglicans, and politicians were obliged to take serious note of the ‘Nonconformist conscience’. The Nonconformist heyday was shortlived, however, and in the career of WRN there are indications of its fragility. Questioning the BibleWRN was born in an Aberdeenshire manse in 1851. His father had identified with the ‘Disruption’ of 1843, when 474 ministers and elders left the established Church of Scotland over the issue of lay patronage and formed the Free Church. WRN trained for the ministry in the Free Church College of Aberdeen. This was a period of new questioning of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament. If it seems strange that many in such a bastion of orthodoxy as the Free Church should have embraced critical views, the author attributes this to the prevailing veneration of ‘scholarship’. WRN himself developed what he called a ‘believing critical’ position. After serving as minister in two churches, WRN was forced, through ill health, to resign and move to London. He joined the publishing firm of Hodder and Stoughton in 1886 as editor of The Expositor, a magazine for ministers. Initially, he included evangelical contributors such as B.B. Warfield, but his aim was to include broader views. With considerable charm, he secured contributions from many of the progressive scholars of the day — A.B. Davidson, George Adam Smith, A.S. Peake, James Hastings, Marcus Dods, James Denney and Henry Drummond. New journalHe also persuaded Hodder and Stoughton to found a new journal for general readers in Nonconformist churches. The British Weekly had the subtitle, ‘A Journal of Social and Christian Progress’, and was designed ‘for Christian radicals’. At first, WRN wrote the whole issue himself, trusting to his acute sense of what people wanted to read. It included news, devotional articles and interviews with celebrities. Soon he used contributions from his wide range of contacts. He encouraged younger writers, because he realised they would be the future readership of the paper. ‘Journeys and visits to towns’ keyed in to readers’ growing ability to travel. WRN tried to educate his readers by including serialised novels. He had broad interests and encyclopaedic learning (as evidenced by his personal library of 23,000 books), and wrote prolifically on a diverse range of topics. In 1899, WRN successfully led a campaign against the Sunday newspapers started by the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, and they were withdrawn. After this success, church news began to play a secondary role to political issues in the British Weekly. KnighthoodWith the circulation at 100,000, WRN opposed the Balfour Education Act of 1902 because of its discrimination against Non-conformists. The paper became increasingly identified with the Liberal party, and WRN played a significant part in the Liberal landslide election victory of 1906 and the subsequent radical programme of social improvements. In 1909, WRN was awarded a knighthood ‘for political and social services’. Lloyd George held WRN responsible for bringing Nonconformists to support the war of 1914-18 as being ‘righteous and necessary’. WRN edited the British Weekly until his death in 1923, when it began a slow decline until it closed in the 1980s. Nonconformity shared in the decline of the Liberal party, with which WRN had done so much to align it. Delicate balancing actThe author maintains that WRN was an evangelical, on the four tests of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism. However, he was always striving to promote his own liberal principles in both religion and politics. This was a delicate balancing act. He stressed the importance of vital personal spirituality, but undermined this by accepting and promoting destructive views of the Bible. Martyn Lloyd-Jones regarded him as ‘one of the worst, because one of the most subtle, influences in the decline of Nonconformity’. This is a thorough and fascinating study of one who was highly influential in his day, but whose long-term influence is open to severe questioning. Joy Horn,
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