No Dissent Allowed

THE SCOTTISH CHURCH – PART ONE

Overseas friends, take note - Scotland and England are not the same – that’s not a political point just a statement of the obvious. Scotland has a distinct legal system, education system, sporting identity, its own banknotes, and of course its own parliament – and this year even the possibility of complete independence.

The Scottish church too has a separate identity. There was no ‘British Reformation’ – rather there was an English Reformation and a Scottish Reformation – two events distinct in their timings, personalities, causes, and consequences. Indeed that the Reformation took hold in both England and Scotland was not inevitable – during the English Reformation Scotland was a separate independent country and remained Catholic – a position it might have retained to the present day, as Ireland did for example.

As we know, however, it didn’t and its Reformation proved to be one of the most thorough experienced by any country – going significantly beyond England in its reform of national church practise and structures. Indeed there was a vigour and intensity to the Scottish Reformation that made it much more an issue of conscience than of the politics that often drove the movement elsewhere. So while, to some extent (and of course this generalises) the English Reformation focused on the emancipation of the State from Papal jurisdictions, the Scottish Reformation was not content until the church was emancipated from the State.

From a human perspective it is somewhat surprising that Scotland became such a hotspot of the Protestant Reformation. Geographically Scotland is on the edge of Europe and in the 15^th and 16^th centuries was not greatly prominent among its nations. Christianity had had little opportunity to infiltrate Scotland under the Romans – their Empire stopped at Hadrian’s Wall. Only in the 6^th century did Christianity become established through the missionary work of St Columba. In the following centuries Scotland gradually became a unified nation (the clans recognising ‘one crown’ in the 9^th century) and securing political independence in the wars with England under Wallace and Bruce in the 13^th and 14^th centuries.

Religiously, it was in the 12^th century that Scottish Christianity became institutionally Catholic. The previous indigenous Christian communities (the Culdees) were overtaken by the establishment of formal church structures from abroad. Scotland became a nation of Bishops, Abbots, Monasteries and Church courts – all under the jurisdiction of Rome. The Catholic Church prevailed and indeed no other church would have been tolerated. As elsewhere in Europe the church of the day became hugely powerful and wealthy extending its reach into every area of civic and political life. Thus was the religious order in Scotland for about 400 years.

However, by the 16^th Century, as across Europe, it was a church unrecognisable from its New Testament beginnings. Centuries of doctrinal additions, the priest-craft that had turned Christian worship into magical ceremonies, the refusal to allow ordinary people access to the Bible, and the inevitable corruption brought by wealth and power – had made it ripe for reform or rejection.

For the ordinary person Scotland was a nation controlled by an establishment elite, convinced of their superior worldview, whose ultimate aim was the retention of their power and the benefits it brought them. If you fitted in, said the ‘right things’ and ‘doffed your cap’ to the approved belief structures then you would get by – even get on. It was a ‘one party state’ in which to live peacefully you had to ‘toe the party line’ – dissent would bring accusations, scrutiny, hostility, perhaps the loss of employment or reputation, even imprisonment or worse – unless your unacceptable ideas were quickly and publicly recanted.

It was the 'ideological straight-jacket' that always seems to accompany one group having all the power. A few years ago I sat with a Bulgarian Pastor; he told me that as a youth in 1970s Bulgaria he was not allowed to go to university because of his Christian beliefs. The response of the Communist authorities to any view that challenged their ideology was to punish it – to exclude and suppress those who differed.

For Evangelicals today the above scenarios are no longer unimaginable – Scotland is governed by a tight political and media elite. An elite who decree the acceptable beliefs of the day – viewpoints on morality, religious practise, education... that are shibboleths on which any hope of public advancement depend. Even today a petition signed by 54,000 Scottish citizens has had their addresses redacted before being submitted to the Scottish Parliament, such is the fear of potential reprisals by public bodies. Dissenters can be isolated and subject to sanction - unless, of course, they quickly admit their foolishness and seek re-acceptance into the ‘club’. 

Scotland in 1514 and Scotland in 2014 are not a million miles apart - the Evangelical faith is hardly on the radar, establishment beliefs seem dominant and secure, and there is no great sense of how things might change. But change came and Scotland became a bastion of evangelical faith – a shining light for the Gospel.

However, the change didn’t just happen – a range of factors and great sacrifices were required to bring it about. It's those factors subsequent blogs will seek to unpack.

Notes

1.       Source Material: Much of the historical material I’m drawing on is from ‘Protestantism in Scotland’ (Copyright – 2013 Jawbone Digital), first published in 1878. Being from the Victorian era it is somewhat flowery and romanticised in places and I’m also conscious of the kind of embellishments that a book written very much as a defence of the Reformation can contain. Thus I’ve used it largely as a resource for names, dates and key events rather than for its commentary on them.

2.       Sectarianism: The story of the Reformation is by definition the story of conflict between the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland and those who sought to reform or replace it. The concern/interest of these pieces however, is not so much in the theological faults of Catholicism but in the story of the Reformed Evangelical faith – how it fared and took hold in the face of a prevailing ideology and establishment that was deeply hostile to it. The latter points being the lessons of most relevance to Evangelicals today - who again are a tiny minority in Scotland and finding their beliefs increasingly in conflict with the dominant worldview. So although there are inevitably many references to Catholicism this is not a polemic against it – but a larger reflection on the lessons evangelical Christians might learn from Scottish history.