AS Clerk of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland I write to defend ourselves as a Church and people from the exaggerations of the Rev Donald A MacLean, a former minister of our Church, and the outrageous language of your correspondent Stewart Lamont (At the mercy of the Ayatollahs, Weekend Extra, July 27).

Far from being a ``secretive sect'', the Free Presbyterian Church has a recognised place in the mainstream of Scottish church history and in modern Scottish society. In the schedules of the Charities Act, 1993, the Free Presbyterian Church is designated as a Church along with other Churches, and we belong to the Scottish Churches Committee.

As for being ``secretive'', we publish more information about our affairs - and our finances - than any other Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Our published Synod Proceedings contain 88 pages of Synod business and reports, and 52 pages of detailed financial records.

General Assembly business of the national Church, to which both of these individuals belong, won only a few pages in Life and Work.

Further, why should the Church of Scotland repeatedly invite us to enter into talks with a view to ecumenical relationships if we are a secretive sect or a cult?

The notion that this Church arranges marriages is a complete fiction. Mr Lamont's article calls us ``ayatollahs'', directly likening us to dictators who oppress, kill, and maim in the name of God. This is not journalism. This is vituperation.

It is a well-known characteristic of renegades to take the opportunity to malign the cause upon which they have turned their backs. The Rev D A MacLean found in the pen of Stewart Lamont a willing instrument to carry out this activity. However, this article is inaccurate.

Take Mr MacLean's ``ordeal'' on the Rhodesian mission-field some 40 years ago. This is a matter of public record. The 1956 Synod Proceedings detail the accurate story of Mr MacLean's recall from Africa. It includes a letter from an inspector of the Rhodesian Department of Native Education.

``Mr MacLean has not got the aptitude to handle African staff. At Ingwenya the staff live in an atmosphere of apprehension. Only yesterday a woman teacher came to the office and alleged that she had been pushed to the floor and dragged to the door by Mr MacLean.

``She further alleged that Mr MacLean ordered her to kneel before him and to state that she had not been pushed to the floor, but fell of her own accord, and to apologise. The woman knelt, and when she did not apologise for an action for which she was not responsible, he dismissed her from her employment.

``It would appear that Mr MacLean will not tolerate an African who is not completely subservient to his will. I do not wish to labour Mr MacLean's inability to get on with the Africans, and for Mr MacLean I am more sorry than otherwise.......''

This was not the view of a Free Presbyterian missionary, but the dispassionate opinion of a senior Government official. It was the Rhodesian Education Authority - not the Free Presbyterian Church - who first demanded that Mr MacLean be recalled from the mission-field.

The Report of the Foreign Mission Committee states: ``Mr MacLean explained that he asked this woman to leave the house three times, and when she refused to go he took hold of her hand and she flopped to the floor. Mr MacLean denied having pushed her.

``When asked if he had made her go on her knees and apologise, Mr MacLean said that he did, but that it was for telling a lie. When the committee remonstrated with Mr MacLean for such conduct he said that he saw nothing wrong with it.''

With regard to the school strike, this arose when the Rev D A MacLean ordered the pupils to write out a chapter of the Bible five times as a punishment. When they asked for paper, he refused to give it to them.

The Department of Education in Rhodesia made it quite plain that if Mr MacLean was not removed from his post as a superintendent of the school, the department would strike his name off their list.

With regard to Mr MacLean's failure to win election as Moderator of Synod in 1982, the Supreme Court of every Presbyterian Church may elect - or refuse to elect - any minister as Moderator as it sees fit.

Mr MacLean was never promised the Moderatorship; he was merely asked if he was willing to be nominated, in accordance with normal practice. That there was no plot is proved by the fact that the Rev A McPherson's motion was ruled out of order.

The Synod, as it had every right to do, voted other than for Mr MacLean. Mr MacLean left our Church shortly afterwards, for the Church of Scotland, thereby entirely justifying the Synod's lack of confidence in him.

We really reach the nadir of absurdity when we are told that MacLean considers that Lord Mackay was not disciplined so much for attending a requiem mass, as for appearing years before in the Duchess of Argyll divorce case.

Mr Lamont's article has ill-served your readership. He says that his story has a happy ending. The true happy ending was the ending of the nightmare being experienced by the mission staff in Rhodesia with Mr MacLean's removal, especially for the late Rev James Fraser, who was known by the Africans as ``the man who loves the people''.

Rev John MacLeod,

Clerk of Synod,

Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland,

16 Matheson Road, Stornoway.

MAY I reply to Stewart Lamont's account of the Rev D A MacLean's tirade against the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (Weekend Extra, July 27)?

One day in 1955 I wandered into a New Zealand Free Presbyterian Church service on a bright Sunday morn and heard one of those terrible Free Presbyterian Scottish ministers preaching the glorious Gospel. It was wonderful. The Word of God by that minister came as shafts of light into my soul.

Forty years have now gone by and the Free Presbyterian Church has done me nothing but good. I'm an Englishman from Salisbury in Wiltshire and the kindness, love, and forbearance that has been extended to me over those 40 years by the Free Presbyterians is quite remarkable.

I've had my ups and downs. The downs were often of my own making, the ups were due to God's goodness and the overwhelming kindness of the Free Presbyterians.

Lord Mackay, the Rev R R Sinclair, Mr Van Woerden, the Rev A Macpherson's son, and myself were all part of it and, may I add, the Rev D A MacLean himself. But they all went away. I stayed and I hope by the grace of God to stay to the end.

The Free Presbyterian Church has done me nothing but good and it's sad to see that other souls have obviously not made the same of it as I have.

The Free Presbyterian Church is an honest and good Church and not, as Stewart Lamont paints it, with his brush dipped in the paint supplied by the Rev D A MacLean.

T H Maton,

Desdale, Gairloch, Ross-shire.