Andrew M. Jones, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History, Reinhardt University
When you walk down the middle of one of Scotland’s city centres, between the high street chains and coffee shops, you will inevitably be confronted with something sacred – a church. Even in rural Scotland, the ecclesiastical architecture of a bygone era dots the landscape as predictably as sheep or a minibus full of American tourists.
Such was I once. While I am not Scottish, I study the history of Christianity in Scotland and had the immense privilege to live in Scotland for several years in pursuit of those studies. More than that, through the kindness of friends and strangers I became a member of St. Columba’s Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. While I studied the Scottish church’s past, I was living in its present. As such, I have both a deep understanding of Scottish Church History and an even deeper regard for my Scottish brothers and sisters in Christ who are alive and well.
So how might Scotland’s Christian past speak into the present and guide towards the future? I’d like to offer some suggestions based on the research I undertook while living in Edinburgh. The final result of that research was my first book, The Revival of Evangelicalism: Mission and Piety in the Victorian Church of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
At the broadest level, my book explores the nature of the evangelical movement within the Church of Scotland between the Disruption of 1843 (a schism which resulted in the formation of the Free Church) and the year 1900. Of course, there were many other evangelicals in Scotland beyond those within the established or national Church of Scotland during the years in question. Scottish Baptists, Scottish Episcopalians, non-established Presbyterian churches like the Free Church, the Brethren churches in Scotland, and Scottish Congregationalists all contributed to the mosaic of nineteenth-century Scottish evangelicalism in critical ways. I chose to focus on evangelicalism specifically within the Church of Scotland after the Disruption because, for the most part, no one else had yet to do so. My findings were surprising.
As it turns out the evangelical movement continued, broadened, and exerted significant influence or impact on the Church of Scotland during the nearly six decades in question. To tell that story, I focused on three of the leading evangelical ministers and three Church of Scotland or church- adjacent publications. The first minister was a man named Rev. William Muir.
The Church of Scotland was divided prior to the Disruption between the Moderates and the Evangelicals. Muir represents a group of Evangelicals called the Middle Party, who shared the spiritual and theological emphases of most Evangelical ministers, but sought a more conciliatory approach and eventually remained inside the Church when Disruption finally occurred in May of 1843. So Muir and the Middle Party represent continuity between the evangelical movement as it had existed in Scotland since the eighteenth century.
The core features of evangelicalism that were championed by men like Muir included heartfelt, personal faith in the cross of Christ as the key to salvation and eternal life, an emphasis on personal conversion experiences, a focus on the Bible as both the ultimate arbiter of truth and the foundation of a rich devotional life, a keenness to support missionary movements abroad and revival movements at home, and the maintenance of transatlantic and international connections with other evangelicals in the Anglophone world.
The two other ministers I wrote about both maintained these emphases and expanded upon them as the century progressed. Norman MacLeod was a liberal evangelical whose whole mindscape was influenced by the Romantic spirit of the age. He thus helped to broaden evangelicalism within the Church of Scotland, encouraging his congregants and ministerial colleagues to adapt rather than react to cultural paradigm shifts. In practice this meant accepting a theology that departed from the Westminster Confession of Faith on issues like the Sabbath and the extent of Christ’s atonement.
Archibald Hamilton Charteris, the final minister, represents the influence or impact of evangelicalism in the Church of Scotland during the latter decades of the century. His main contribution, I argue, was the democratization of evangelicalism – he and his Life and Work Committee created many new programs to get the laity involved in missions, revival, and evangelism.
Something that became clear as I was researching and writing on these ‘established evangelicals’ (as I came to call them) was the connection between mission and piety – hence the subtitle of the book.
The missionary emphasis of nineteenth-century evangelicalism, which involved both social action at home and evangelisation abroad, was driven by the personal and communal enthusiasm to spread the gospel in word in deed. That enthusiasm often reached increased levels following local, regional, or national revival movements like the ones that impacted Scotland in the second half of the century. Thus the support for missions, both in terms of fundraising and personnel, was often seen as a metric by which to judge the spiritual temperature of the national Church. Henry Rice of Madras, India didn’t mince words on this subject in an 1889 article in Charteris’ Life and Work magazine: ‘The church or congregation that does not cultivate the missionary spirit, and take part in the extension of Christ’s kingdom on earth, will soon be more or less marked by symptoms of spiritual deadness and decay.’ A few years later, another leading evangelical minister named George Wilson highlighted the same dynamic from a more optimistic point of view: ‘When the children of God are by His grace and Holy Spirit wholly consecrated and yielded unto Him, by the very law of their new and full life they become missionaries. They simply cannot help it.’ So for ‘established evangelicals’ mission and piety were two sides of the same spiritual coin.
So what – considering all that I uncovered and argued in my research – should we take with us when we return from the past to the present? First, a powerful Christian witness for today’s Scottish nation should continue to emphasize core Christian values that are shared broadly. I think of C.S. Lewis’s notion of “mere” Christianity. Christianity truly began to shape the culture and society of nineteenth-century Scotland when men and women who differed on theological points like baptism and the extent of the atonement came together to promote evangelization, Sunday schools, revival, temperance, and social reform. The good news is that this type of collaborative work is already being undertaken across Scotland. Not only does Logos Scotland represent such an approach, partnership groups like the East of Scotland Gospel Partnership are also working along similar lines.
Second, contemporary Scottish churches who seek to impact the nation with the Gospel must continue to marry spiritual vitality with active engagement. As someone who spent countless Sundays worshipping and praying within the context of contemporary Scottish Christianity, I know my brothers and sisters in the Scotland are also committed to Jesus in ways that lead to rich spiritual lives and support for missions at home and abroad. I suppose if there’s any key lesson to be learned from the evangelicals in the Victorian Church of Scotland, it’s that we – as believers in 2024 – should cultivate a faith in Jesus whereby our personal glorification and enjoyment of God continues to overflow to those around us. That may mean becoming a missionary in Nepal, or it may mean volunteering with an organization like 20schemes in Niddrie. This brings to mind perhaps my favourite quote that I encountered over the years of research for the book. A Free Church minister from Edinburgh named William Arnot, writing in Norman MacLeod’s periodical Good Words, declared: ‘Love to the Redeemer cannot lie hid in the breast of a redeemed man; it will and must break forth, a blessing to every needy creature that lies within its reach.’
In summary, modern Scottish Christians facing modern problems from a Christian worldview would do well to consider the lessons of the past. The men and women who worshipped in those imposing high street churches in the nineteenth century were not so different, after all. Compelled by the Gospel and informed by Scripture, they set out to became agents of change in their society and culture. With God’s help, so can we.