Impartiality is one of the most needed and maybe one of the most neglected aspects of faithful ministry. The closer our relational bonds are the more easily we can be tempted by line drawing, blind loyalty, party spirit, or clouded judgment. These things have no place among those who account themselves servants of Christ — and that includes within ministerial friendships.

The St. Crispin’s Day speech given by Henry V in Shakespeare’s historical play is well remembered. The French vastly outnumbered the English, and the King had one chance to persuade his men to do what none of them wanted — “to make us fight cheerfully.” And on the muddy fields of Agincourt the King roused and commanded his men for the fight:
From this day to the ending of the world,But we in it shall be remember’d;We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile.
The imagery of the band of brothers has been used for wartime propaganda. In popular culture it’s most recognizable by Stephen Ambrose’s record of Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment assigned to the 101st Airborne Division in World War II. Those who have battled in blood together share a close kinship and loyalty that transcends many relationships in life.
From one angle it’s also reflective of the relationships cultivated in the service of the gospel. The Apostle Paul speaks of the ministry as warfare and the destroying of strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4). He reminded Timothy to be a “good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). He commended Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:5) and Archippus (Philemon 2) as “fellow soldiers.” Aristarchus was Paul’s “fellow prisoner,” which more literally means a fellow-prisoner-of-war (Colossians 4:10). He also identified Prisca and Aquila as those who risked their necks for him (Romans 16:3) — and often made mention of many fellow workers, brothers, and kinsmen.
Pastors and elders can likely identify quickly with Paul’s love for his co-laborers. Writing to William Farell and Peter Viret, John Calvin said: “I think there has never been, in ordinary life, a circle of friends so sincerely bound to each other as we have been in our ministry.” Sharing the experiences and burdens of the pastorate, contending for the faith, and taking the kingdom of heaven by storm has a way of forging battle-like relationships, knitting Christians together in the bonds of love, courage, and loyalty. These friendships are needed in the ministry, and many pastors have been strengthened by such affectionate bonds. After all “a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).
But the band of brothers can have an insidious effect too. On March 16, 1968 it’s reported that 504 people — including elderly, women, children, and infants — were brutally murdered by United States troops in South Vietnam. This became known as the My Lai Massacre and remains the largest publicized massacre of civilians by US forces in the 20th century. Not every soldier in the company participated in the killings, but they also didn’t protest or file complaints with their superiors. Three US service members tried to stop the massacre and help the Vietnamese. These men were shunned, ignored, and denounced as traitors. In particular Hugh Thompson faced death threats and was vilified for his efforts….
…Sacrificing friendship for the sake of Christ isn’t easy. But sometimes it’s necessary. In March of 1887, Charles Spurgeon was drawn into an immense conflict known as the Down-Grade Controversy. He perceived that the Baptist Union was being threatened and it required him to set himself against some with whom he’d labored for decades. In the heat of the conflict Spurgeon wrote that he had “suffered the loss of friendship and reputation,” and went on to say “the pain it has cost me none can measure.”
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If I am God’s servant bringing God’s rule to bear in God’s church for God’s glory and the good of his beloved children, if I am a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ for the complete salvation of sinners, if I am a man who knows and trusts the influences and operations of the Holy Spirit bringing to bear the very truth he has made known, I need to be a man of the word, and we need to be a people of the Book.

I often make the same pastoral mistake. It is not deliberate, it is often well-intentioned, sometimes it is even hopeful. It is this: to presume upon the biblical knowledge of the people to whom I speak. I do not at all mean by this to deliver a backhanded insult, appearing to confess a shortcoming of my own while really assaulting the failings of others. If I am teacher, if am called to preach the word, to be ready in season and out of season, to convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching (2Tim 4:2), then I cannot presume upon the understanding of the saints. I cannot say things, even true, biblically-based, and scripturally-sound things, and assume that everyone picks up the quotation of God’s Word or makes the connections of various texts-in-context that may be hanging in my mind. Not everyone is thinking of the chapter where that is taught, or instinctively arriving at the same point in redemptive history on the basis of what has gone before, or seeing the types and shadows fulfilled, or ticking the box of a certain conclusion in systematic theology.
I need to remember this in a variety of settings. I need to remember it when I am preaching, so that I more regularly quote the Scriptures, and—when appropriate and helpful, and probably more often than I do—to turn people to a particular portion or passage, so that they can see it for themselves. I need to remember this in teaching, publicly or more privately, when I may be discoursing on some scriptural theme or principle which I assume is evident to all, but which may be entirely in shadow for someone who has not read or understood that portion of God’s Word, or who has only just come to faith, or who has never been taught these things before. I need to remember it in church members’ meetings, when there are, perhaps, complex or thorny matters of church polity and practice to address, some of which may be alien in principle and in practice to some of the members. I need to remember it in evangelising—not that I can ask open-air listeners to look at their Bibles, or even that I can always put a Bible in front of someone with whom I am speaking more informally, but rather that I can both emphasise that I am speaking from the Bible and encourage them to check.
I need to remember all this not just for unbelievers who may never have been exposed to the Scriptures, but for both new believers and for older Christians as well. Even new believers who have been for years under the sound of the gospel, perhaps under the soundest of ministries, or who were raised by godly parents in a well-ordered home, are likely to be encountering much as if for the first time. The Spirit of Christ has opened their eyes, and they are like people who have never really read their Bibles before! To be sure, we are hoping that the new life they have will vivify the entire framework of truth which they have been taught, but there are lively perceptions and lively connections which they have not yet made, and will not without someone to guide them. And older Christians, too, for various reasons, may be marked by confusion, suspicion, or accusation. I have heard saints of many years standing assure me that the plain teaching of the Bible is wrong, or claim some obscure (or even well-known) verse, poorly interpreted and carelessly handled, as trumping the clear instruction of the more obvious portions of the truth. Some do not so much manhandle as manipulate or even mutilate a text, making it mean what they wish or expect, in danger perhaps of twisting it even to their own destruction. (Now, do I leave that hanging, or do I refer to 2 Peter 3:16, so that people know where I got that language?) Some listen to a preacher or teacher (more often than not, online) with a novel interpretation, or have perhaps come from a religious background marked by ignorance or flawed, if not false, teaching, to which they cling. Some have been bruised by bad teaching in the past. Some just don’t read or engage with their Bibles—some are scared of portions of it, or seem to have spent a lifetime with their eyes going over the page but little truth penetrating the mind. Some are (perhaps natively) marked by suspicion and aggression, quick to accuse and slow to trust, often ready to impute something ugly, perhaps because they have never heard of it or thought of it before. Often people have had little training in basic thinking and learning, or have their own particular limitations.
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The memory of those rivers of blood…makes nature tremble. — Antoine Court, 1756

A boulder toppling into a stream may alter and direct its course ever after. In the same way, certain historical events have changed and channelled the culture and mindset of entire peoples for many centuries. You cannot understand the English apart from 1066, Gloriana, Waterloo, and the Blitz. You cannot understand an American apart from the Pilgrim Fathers, the War of Independence, Gettysburg, and Pearl Harbor. You cannot understand an Australian apart from the Endeavour, Burke and Wills, the Ashes, and Gallipoli.
Marie Durand’s eighteenth-century church community cannot be understood apart from the sixteenth-century French Religious Wars, the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572, the Edict of Nantes in 1598, the Dragonnades, the Revocation in 1685, and the Camisard Rebellion of 1702–1704.
The “French Religious Wars” describes a series of eight civil wars fought out between 1562 and 1598. An estimated three million people perished, fifteen percent of the French population. Although the antagonists wore their inherited religious labels of “Protestant” or “Catholic,” social and political struggles were the true causes of these wars. A right devotion to the religion of the Bible—which brings reconciliation with God and our enemies—would have extinguished the flames of war.
French Protestants saw these wars as the necessary armed defense of their property and lives from Catholic aggression, of their right to live and worship as Protestants. French Protestant scholars agonized over God’s purposes in these violent struggles and what form resistance should take: whether to passively and patiently suffer persecution, whether to take up arms against tyranny, or whether to flee. This practical-theological struggle continued well into the eighteenth century and is manifest in a number of Marie Durand’s letters and the dreadful decisions that she was required to make.
The Fourth Religious War erupted from the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which commenced on August 24, 1572. This tragedy needs special mention because of the deep mark it left on both the Huguenot psyche and Catholic-Protestant relations for many generations. Certainly, its reverberations were felt by Marie Durand’s community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Antoine Court, for example, the leader of the restoration of the Protestant church in France from 1715, wrote in 1756 about “the memory of those rivers of blood […] of that Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the thought alone of which makes nature tremble.” Louis Bourgeon, a specialist on the Massacre, wrote in 1987 how its scale and ferocity had left its mark well beyond the eighteenth century: “The history of Saint Bartholomew’s continues to this day to be the cause of a spirit of passion, conscious or not.”[1]