The History of the Church in Scotland
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Composed of bits and pieces taken from various sources: direct quotes from A History of the Church in Scotland by Alex R. Macewen, D.D. (originally published in 1944) as well as pictures and articles from Wikipedia and the Internet.

(This account is meant to present a non-scholarly survey of the spread of Christianity to the British Isles for us descendents of Scottish churchmen. It is the story of the slow, inexorable acceptance of the message of Christ, first to Ireland, then to Scotland as it had moved from Jerusalem, to Constantinople, to Rome, throughout the world, adding myth and exaggeration to what began as the simple words of an extraordinarily compelling young man from Galilee.)

SCOTLAND, the present Scotland, was not the home of one nationality or race until the 7th or 8th century. When in the earlier centuries we read of "Scots" and things "Scottish" the word usually designates the Scotic inhabitants of Ireland; the nursery and school of the Scotic race was in Ireland not in Britain.

The expression "Scottish Church" first occurs in a chronicle referring to 878 A.D. Until then there was nothing institutional or organically national in the Christianity of North Britain. Yet before that time Christianity had identified itself with the fortunes of the infant nation, and embodied itself in a Church entitled to a separate history. The identification with national life proved permanent and has secured continuity, despite the elimination of the Celtic elements in the 11th century, or Romanism in the 16th century and of English Episcopacy, at the close of the 17th century. "Ecclesia Scoticana" has remained a vital and vitalizing, progressive and national movement. In fact, Scotland has had no history apart from the history of the Scottish Church. (Macewen)

The story of the origin and early development of the Ecclesia Scoticana will show that it stood apart from Catholic Christianity — not deliberately nor even consciously separatist, yet separate, isolated and in its isolation embodying and perpetuating a national Christianity.

The North Britons did not in the beginning constitute a nation; they were separated as tribes or clans under various kings or chiefs. It was only under pressure from invaders, or when some scheme for pillage in the South took shape that they recognized common interests. As to their religion, information is exceedingly sparse. They have left no trace of temple worship, not even of altar worship, and indeed it is unlikely that they had any fixed religious organization.

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Each tribe had at least one augur or medicine man, known as the druid of the tribe. It is thought that Druidism was a pre-Celtic institution taken over from the aborigines by their Celtic conquerors. The Druids who claimed to mediate between man and the Invisible, took auguries from the flight of birds, from the stars and clouds, from contemplating the webs of spiders, etc and they prescribed ceremonies and sacrifices by which divine help might be secured. The mists and clouds were recognized as being under the control of gods, whose action might be foretold and influenced by druidical skill. There was something of sunworship, and sacrifice was offered on the eve of battles.

The Roman occupation of Britain, lasting from the first expedition of Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. to the withdrawal of the Roman forces by Honorius in 410 A.D., had a negative influence upon the religion of the whole island, especially on the religion of the north. In recently discovered inscriptions at Auchendavy, no fewer than ten heathen deities are mentioned, including Jupiter, Mars, Janus, the Celtic Epona, etc. Before the end of the second century the Romans abandoned all their forts in Caledonia. The ruin of the Roman Empire had by this time set in across Britain and, as throughout the world, barbarians pressed across the frontiers. In 407 Britain was abandoned by the Romans. However, through Gallic traders or other followers of the legions, a considerable number of Britons had been converted to Christianity before the third century, and the number steadily increased.

British pilgrims made their way to Jerome's monastery in Bethlehem, and from the west of Britain, another pilgrim, Pelagius, journeyed to Rome to become the originator of a great heresy. Pelagius was no heretic when he left his home in Wales. It was in Rome that his errors took shape, and his definitely Christian culture and character, to which Augustine attests, can have been formed only in Christian surroundings. Although the doctrine of Pelagius was declared heretical both by the Emperor and the Bishop of Rome it had made its way to Britain by 418, an early Christian influence though officially rejected.

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Rome had no function in the early development of Scotland. Its imperialism disappeared, leaving the land in barbarism, but before its disappearance was complete, a light was kindled on a lonely promontory off the Galloway coast. With Bede's brief account of St. Ninian and his work at Whithorne, the story of Scottish Christianity passes from the domain of legend, surmise and inference into valid Church history.

The following facts may be accepted as historical: Ninian was born before the middle of the 4th century, of that British race which was Christianized during the Roman occupation. He chose as his mission-center the sheltered peninsula of Galloway, where he was within reach of the Christianity of his native province and of the Christianity of Ireland. His mission, like all missionary enterprises in the west, had an industrial and agricultural side: the marvelous leeks he taught the monks to grow, his securing protection of the herds of the settlement by drawing mystic circles, and his achievements in boat-building and navigation. The heathen to whom he preached were marauders whose piracies were a terror on both sides of the Irish channel, but these unruly ones proved open to persuasion, if not conversion, and came to regard the gospel with deference.

The positive success of his efforts, which are said to have lasted until 432, may be estimated from the fact the sixty-six sacred buildings are known to have been dedicated to St. Ninian in Scotland, many of them on the northeast coast. The fact that the founder of these adventurous outposts had been instructed at Rome is significant. However the light which St. Ninian kindled soon faded away. He might have been one who at the deterioration of the Church and the collapse of the Empire of Rome, saw in the darkness of heathendom, a field for a hopeful ministry. However, such inferences have no groundwork in the story of the early Scottish Church. The connection of St. Ninian with Rome failed to give permanence to his mission. The light which he kindled soon faded away.

In 431 A.D. a bishop of Rome dispatched a Christian named Palladius to Northern Britain as their first bishop, but the condition of Christianity there was frail and perilous, hopeless in the face of the virility of paganism. As yet there was neither a Scottish Church nor a Scottish nation in Britain.

During this period no political nor racial division of Britain into two kingdoms, north and south existed. Neither "England" nor "Scotland" existed. The dominant event of this century was the advent of the Vikings — Jutes, Saxons and finally Angles. In some cases they came as allies by invitation, in some cases as cautious and amicable settlers, in some cases as determined marauders; but in every case they came to stay and ultimately to rule. They were wholly pagan and they were enemies of Christianity. Where they conquered, the British church disappeared, either being obliterated or withdrawing into the unconquered west. Wherever the Anglo-Saxons went, the British Church was overthrown; their conquests meant the re-establishment of paganism.

Between 498 and 503, a stray band of settlers from the northeast corner of Ireland landed on the coast of Kintyre to find a precarious home at certain points of Pictland and Strathclyde. They were known as "Dalriadas." It was not until the sixth century that they were designated Scot or Scotti. By race they were Celts, strangers to North Briton but of kindred stock. Although probably an ordinary tribal migration due to economic causes, they had accepted Christianity and they brought their religion with them. They were connected with St. Bridget and St. Monenna, female saints held in honor in many parts of the West Highlands, even as far north as Mull. Many ruins of oratories and hermitages in Mull, Kintyre, Knapdale and Lorne may date from the beginnings of the 6th century. At most they prove that the migration was a general one and that the settlers were Christian.

Irish Christianity as a system had failed to lay hold of Caldonia. It fulfilled its missionary function only when it was transplanted and transformed by the deliberate effort of men of Christian genius. It has not been by historical concurrences, even less by racial mobility, that Christianity spread in this land, but by the personal intention and enterprise of consecrated men. The nationality and the Christianity of Scotland were first shaped by Columba, a persuasive preacher who converted many pagan folk to Christianity.

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In 563 St. Columba, coming from Ireland, founded the monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. It was a vigorous and vitalizing mission that laid the foundations of Scottish nationality and the Scottish church. Christian settlements north of the line between what are now Edinburgh and Glasgow, recognizing the Abbot of Iona as their master, studded the area.

These Christian colonies which exercised on a smaller scale the same civilizing influence as Iona developed and may be said to have created, that fusion of the races out of which the Scottish nationality emerged. In addition to his place in the history of the Church, Saint Columba has an indisputable position among the founders of the nation. (The Mackay Museum in Bettyhill, Sutherland, is said to be housed in one of Columba's farthest flung churches.)

"His personality was a unique as his achievements. His reputation was that of a "man of heroic dignity, angelic in appearance, polished in speech, holy in his doings, great in his counsel." He was guided by visions and exercised absolute authority in Iona and its most distant colonies. He was liable to bursts of passion and displays of an imperiousness and autocratic pride unlike the normal pattern of saintliness. Yet these traits were combined with a geniality and cheerfulness; Hilaritas, an hilarity compatible with deep devoutness, was his outstanding feature. Another specific feature of Columba's personality, reputed to be the defining characteristic of the mind in Northwest Britain, was the gift of "second sight" — an enlargement of the reach of his mind, which enabled him to read the distant and the future in his solitary musings.

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The druidism of early Ireland had picturesque and chivalrous elements not apparent in British druidism: it gave way to Christianity after a resistance which had a romance of its own. Irish conversion was gradual, and the glory of having organized the Christianity of Ireland lies with St. Patrick (Patricius). Born into a half Roman, half English settlement, his evangelizing influence upon the religion of Ireland left a permanent impression upon the Scotic Church.

Like all great religious pioneers, he combined personal courage and consecration, with diplomatic and political sagacity. His missionary policy was to establish friendly relations with the kings or chiefs who at that time ruled Ireland, to persuade them to substitute Christian ministers for their druid advisors, He supplanted the pagan sacrifices with baptism and the Eucharist. It was the spiritual independence of the gospel and its inherent moral force that led those whose Christianity was genuine to detach themselves and initiate a model of living in which religion and its requirements would be supreme.

In this age the lights of the Church were kindled in many lands, but nowhere did they shine so brightly as in the Scotic Monasteries. The monks denounced idolatry in the years of rustic paganism and condemned the immoralities and cruelties of their chiefs without fear. The simplicities of Christianity, its uncomplicated beliefs and laws, were the motives and measures of their work. The simple stone churches that Columba built can be found in Northern England and as far north as the head of the Strathnever near Bettyhill.

At the end of the eighth century, the invasions from the North obliterated much of the Christian influences and buildings in Scotland. Its Gaelic population held the inland, while the Norseman began to settle on the coast. The churches and monasteries fell into ruins, and the bishopric disappeared for nearly three centuries. If there was any Christianity in Strathclyde, it has left no traces and exercised no influence on the history of the Scottish Church. Even the settlement in Iona was repeatedly raided and ultimately destroyed.

In 900 A.D. as the Dark Ages advanced, religion continued its slow growth in the land of the Pics, the Caldonia of the Romans, in a place known as Alba or Alban. It was a limited district, bounded by the Spey, the Forth and Drumalban. There were wars and leagues with Northumbrians and Britons. Seven earls struggled to maintain separate rule over their respective clans or kingdoms. The course of the struggle has left no trace; the only certainty is that a fusion of races was in process and that at the close of this period the king of Pictland was a Scot who ruled Picts and Scots as one people.

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That this fusion had religious elements is proved by the fact that it was completed and sealed by the constitution of a National Church, but there is no evidence of the process by which a sense of common Christian interests developed. One indisputable fact is that when, in the middle of the ninth century, a nation with a Scottish king emerged from the darkness, it had a Church of its own — Ecclesia Scoticana. The Scottish church, with a bishop at its head and its defined constitutional relations to the kings of Alban, was as much at variance with the Church of England, as was ever Scotland to England: Lent was observed at a different date; Holy Communion was differently regarded; Mass was celebrated in a fashion that seemed barbarous to English eyes and ears. Equally important was the difference between their relations to the See of Roman. The Romanizing of the English church was rapid, while the whole matter was outside the consideration of Ecclesia Scoticana, partly due to patriotic rebellion at Papal demands.

(The history of the Scottish Church now follows a lengthy, complex history of a succession of rulers through many centuries that is too complex for me to include and, hopefully too familiar to us cousins. Its major religious struggles came out of the struggles during the time of Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, "Bloody" Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, James I-IV and John Knox. Many worthy and ill-advised people lost their lives during this period of religious struggle.)

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At the beginning of the 16th Century, Scotland was a Catholic country. Its conversion to Protestantism was mainly due to a former Catholic priest, John Knox. Under his leadership Presbyterianism was made the state religion by the Scottish Parliament. The Church of Scotland traces it roots back to the beginning of Christianity, but its identity is principally shaped by the Reformation of 1560.

A romantic attempt to win Scotland (and England) over to Catholicism was initiated by Charles Edward Stuart, (1720 - 1788) known as "The Young Pretender." In 1745 he raised money to sail for Scotland in two small ships. Support from France was not forthcoming so he chose to raise an army after he landed in Scotland. Charles had charisma and soon found support from many of the Highland Chiefs. He marched on Edinburgh which quickly surrendered. (Donald Sage was a student in Edinburgh at the time and he and some friends decided to go to the castle where Bonny Prince Charlie was staying. They saw the Prince but got into trouble with local authorities who thought the young men were Jacobites and should be put in jail. The university authorities managed to convince the government that they were only curious students, and they were finally freed.)

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Donald Sage, writing in his book, commented that Charles had a noble face but appeared weak and dissolute, surrounded by powerful, tall Highland noblemen. In 1745 he defeated the only government forces in Scotland. Spurred on by this victory more Scots rallied to the Jacobite (Catholic) cause and Charles and his army marched south into England with around 6,000 men. The English king's son, the Duke of Cumberland, caught up with Charles and his army at Culloden. Charles had no military experience and chose to fight on open, marshy land. The result was an almost total massacre.

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Cumberland pursued and hunted down the fleeing survivors. The result was a catastrophe for the Highlanders and led to the banning of the wearing of clan tartans, to the Highland Clearances and the scattering of the clans. It was the last attempt to create a Catholic kingdom in Scotland. After this our ancestors, Presbyterian ministers, slowly began to take over the old places where Catholic priests had lived and taught.

Charles escaped and spent several months in disguise, hiding out in the Highlands. Eventually he escaped back to France, settled into a life of exile, began to drink heavily and was forever after seen as unstable.

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(This is a scanty and frankly plagiarized description of Scottish religious history. I would appreciate edits and corrections. Elizabeth Balderston)

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