The freedom of the church is the freedom to demand that its members and ministers adhere to its own biblical standards. The church is not the state (nor is it backed by the state’s power) and has no power of enforcement or compulsion except to declare truth and declare who is a member. 1  “It would, indeed, be an interference with liberty for a church, through the ballot box or otherwise, to use the power of the state to compel men to assent to the church’s creed or conform to the church’s program. To that kind of intolerance I am opposed with all my might and main.”

But if the existing Protestant church organizations, with some notable exceptions, must be radically reformed before they can be regarded as truly Christian, what, as distinguished from these organizations, is the function of a true Christian Church?

Machen believed that “true” churches were increasingly rare in his day, but he also believed such churches (all far from perfect) were still the most important institutions in the world. He went on to remind his readers what such churches were to be doing and how they should be doing it.

Ned B. Stonehouse, Machen’s biographer, dubbed him posthumously (after the Bunyan character) “Mr. Valiant-for Truth par excellence.” Here Machen says the church must be radically for the truth:

In the first place, a true Christian Church, now as always, will be radically doctrinal. It will never use the shibboleths of a pragmatist skepticism. It will never say that doctrine is the expression of experience; it will never confuse the useful with the true, but will place truth at the basis of all its striving and all its life. Into the welter of changing human opinion, into the modern despair with regard to any knowledge of the meaning of life, it will come with a clear and imperious message. That message it will find in the Bible, which it will hold to contain not a record of man’s religious experience but a record of a revelation from God.

Because he believed the Bible was true, perspicuous, and sufficient Machen warned his readers against the wiles of those resembling other Bunyan characters like the pragmatic Mr. By-ends and Worldly Wiseman. The church, armed with divine revelation, would be radical.

The truth would set the church free, but the church would never be free to do or believe just anything she wanted. The truth demanded intolerance:

In the second place, a true Christian Church will be radically intolerant. At that point, however, a word of explanation is in place. The intolerance of the Church, in the sense in which I am speaking of it.

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