Baptist Union of Scotland

The headquarters is north of the M8 in the Port Dundas areas of Glasgow.

[1] Baptists first arrived in Scotland with the armies of English republican Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, who established small churches in Leith, Perth, Cupar, Ayr and Aberdeen, but they did not survive for long, partly because of their association with Cromwell (who was generally not welcomed in Scotland), but more especially as a result of strident and often violent opposition instigated and inspired by the Church of Scotland and the Parliament of Scotland which it controlled.

Like other Scottish Protestant Christians of the time they were very conservative and adopted the opinions of a particularly strict form of Calvinism.

The Baptist Union of Scotland was founded in Hope Street Chapel in Glasgow (later Adelaide Place Baptist Church)[3] in 1869, with 51 churches in its membership, which represented almost 4000 members.

[5] According to a census published by the association in 2023, it claimed 9,946 members and 156 churches.