Donald 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 25 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. On 28 July 1893, at a meeting in Portree, Isle of Skye, Macfarlane joined the Rev Donald Macdonald, Shieldaig and Alexander Macfarlane, a schoolmaster on Raasay, in forming a presbytery. 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 when he was translated to the Dingwall congregation which he pastored until his death in 1926.