“If you build it, they will come.” Or . . . will they? Smith said yes; Chalmers said absolutely not. The following is an academic article I wrote for the Historical Journal of the Scottish Reformation Society that explains how Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) argued for religious church establishments as mission agencies against Adam Smith’s regrettable misapplication of laissez faire to matters of religion.
I also gave a somewhat abbreviated lecture last year at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. You can listen to that here:
Someday I hope to be free to return to further academic research on Chalmers’ territorial or ‘parish’ missiology, if not to get back into a Ph.D. program. All God willing!
West Port Experiment 
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