Organisation
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HISTORY
Introduction
Reformed and Presbyterian, national but free - that in
a nutshell is the modern Church of Scotland. How it grew
into its present shape is a story more than 1,500 years
old...
The early years
The Middle Ages
Reformation
Covenanters
National Church
Disruption and reunion
The Church of Scotland today
The early years
As long ago as about 400AD St Ninian began the first large-scale
Christian mission to Scotland from Whithorn in the far
south-west, converting many Pictish people to the new
faith, long before Scotland was a single country.
Iona Abbey on the Island of Iona - credited
as the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland
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The great heroic figure
of the early story is St Columba, the Irish prince-in-exile
who crossed to the island of Iona off the west coast
of Scotland later in the fifth century. |
He established a community of monks who spread the Gospel
far and wide through Scotland and the north of England.
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The Middle Ages
In the centuries that followed, as Scotland began to find
its identity as a nation, and hundreds of years of tension
with her English neighbours to the South unfolded, the
Church adopted the Roman - not Celtic - practices of work
and worship. Saintly figures like Queen Margaret encouraged
and supported its work and influence, and the papacy allowed
Scotland to be independent of England for church purposes.
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Reformation
The Reformation in Scotland came to its head in the 1560s,
and was modelled on John Calvin's Geneva.
| His pupil John Knox
is famous for head-to-head debates with Mary, Queen
of Scots, the Catholic Queen who returned from France
and tried to remain loyal to the Roman system. By
the end of the 16th century, the Protestant Church
of Scotland had developed into a Presbyterian Church,
with a system of courts (today General Assembly,
presbytery and kirk session), and a strong tradition
of preaching and Scriptural emphasis. |
Mary, Queen of Scots
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Covenanters
Anyone reading Scottish history comes to realise
what a key player the Church of Scotland has been since
it was reformed in the 16th century. It was not all plain
sailing from then on, however, especially after the crowns
of Scotland and England were united in 1603.
Greyfriars Kirk, where the National Covenant
was signed
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Attempts by Charles
I and Charles II to control the Kirk (to use the
Scots term) met with protest, including the signing
of the National Covenant at Greyfriars Church in
Edinburgh in 1638. |
Many years of bloody struggle continued amongst factions
with different views. Known as the
Covenanters they continued to proclaim their faith,
even resorting to holding open-air services.
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National Church
The succession of William and Mary to the throne in 1688
changed the situation, and the Revolution Settlement of
1690 finally established the reformed, presbyterian Church
as the national Church of Scotland. The monarch even today
has a special relationship with the Church of Scotland
and renews that every year with a representative of the
monarch attending the General Assembly.
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Disruption and reunion
Controversy and division were common in the Church between
1750 and 1850, when there was considerable concern about
the Church's relations with the State, particularly over
intervention in the appointment of ministers. The largest
division was the Disruption
of 1843 - a major split which saw about one third of the
Kirk break away to form what came to be the Free Kirk.
The next 90 years were spent removing the causes of
division, and reuniting several churches, all of them
presbyterian, so that today the Church of Scotland is
the largest Protestant church in the country, with a
number of very small churches alongside it, representing
those who chose not to find their way into the union
process.
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The Church of Scotland today
That process of re-union gave the Church of Scotland an
opportunity to resolve once and for all how it wanted
to govern itself and how it wanted to relate to the state.
Little remains of the Church's previous establishment,
but she retains a strong sense of a national responsibility
to bring Christ's Gospel to the whole of Scotland. She
is free, therefore, from civil interference in spiritual
matters. In a millennium and a half, the Church has been
at different times a tiny, radical outside force, a revolutionary
movement, a strand of government and a partner in civil
society. It has been supportive and critical, protective
and destructive, peacemaker and warrior.
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Today the Church of Scotland
lives in the creative tension of serving a nation,
offering the ordinances of religion and also providing
a prophetic Gospel voice through parish ministry
and national engagement of many kinds. |
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