ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that for the sake of ecumenism in this country the Dissenting witness needs to be made, heard and pondered, because it drives to the heart of the Gospel of God's free, Church-convoking grace. The discussion of establishment has sometimes been referred to a future which never seems to come. In mid-seventeenth-century England, too, such Congregational Dissenters as those who participated in the Westminster Assembly and those who prepared the Savoy Declaration of 1658 were quite persuaded of the propriety of the state's having the duty to encourage and promote religion and to protect professors of the Gospel, 23 provided that one brand of the faith only were not favoured above all others, and that the magistrate had no jurisdiction within the Church. A number of factors helped to re-focus the discussion of the establishment question in the nineteenth century. The 1902 Education Act prompted a closing of the Nonconformist ranks.
