Scottish Protestant missions

Long after the triumph of the Church of Scotland in the Lowlands, Highlanders and Islanders clung to a form of Christianity infused with animistic folk beliefs and practices.

Thomas Chalmers advocated the "aggressive method", emphasising self-reliance backed up by intensive Sunday school and evangelistic efforts.

They were among the leading forces in European and American activity in India, sub-Saharan Africa, the West Indies, China and the New Hebrides, and missionary work became one of their major contributions to the business of Empire.

The most famous Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, became an icon of evangelic outreach, self-improvement, exploration and a form of colonialism.

The missionary drive began to decline after the First World War, although the Church of Scotland continued to attach importance to its efforts.

The Tell Scotland Movement resulted in the controversial 1955 Billy Graham All-Scotland Crusade, which arrested the decline in church attendance.

By the twenty-first century the increasingly secularised Scotland became the subject of a number of "reverse mission" from countries that Europeans and North Americans had originally evangelised.

Long after the triumph of the Church of Scotland in the Lowlands, Highlanders and Islanders clung to a form of Christianity infused with animistic folk beliefs and practices.

The cults of saints like Bride and Maelrubha persisted, beside rituals like the sacrifice of bulls and the cleansing of milk, along with tales of fairies, kelpies and other beasts.

There had been localised success during the Reformation, undermined by a shortage of Gaelic-speaking clergy and the vast scale and inaccessibility of some parishes.

Probably more significant for the spread of Protestantism were the lay catechists, who met the people on the Sabbath, read Scripture, and joined them in Psalms and prayers.

[4] The mission to the Highlands and Islands was highly successful in transforming the religious complexion of the region and the lives of the people.

This created alarm amongst the Christians of the new Middle Class, who noted that there were insufficient churches to accommodate the growing number of urban workers and their families.

Preaching in 1827 Thomas Chalmers warned of the "home heathens", "paganism" and "dense irreligion" of an urban poor who were alienated from the Church, morality and the social order.

[8] Chalmers' experiment in St. John's, Glasgow, published in The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns (1821–26), provided a model of urban mission based on lay visitation.

The emphasis on self-reliance was backed up by intensive Sunday school and evangelistic efforts, underlined by frequent visitations, sometimes as often as once a month, undertaken by large number of volunteers who pressured parents and workers to participate.

In the major manufacturing districts of the country, prayer meetings were held in offices and factories and in the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

[14] Scottish missionary efforts were fuelled by the rivalry between different denominations in Scotland, and may have helped distract from problems at home.

The missions were popularised at home by publications and illustrations, often particularly designed to appeal to children, and through the new medium of the magic lantern show, shown to audiences in church halls throughout the country.

He arrived in Cape Colony in 1817, later to be joined by his wife Mary, and where he worked with Dutch Reformed minister George Thom.

[18] Former Millworker Mary Slessor (1848–1919) spent 28 years as a United Presbyterian missionary in Calabar in modern Nigeria.

In Japan Scottish missionaries enjoyed some success and Henry Faulds (1843–1930) helped implement major advances in medicine under the Meiji.

[21] The Evangelical effort began to decline in intensity in the final decades of the nineteenth century, both in Scotland and in major cities throughout the UK.

[23] As a result, urban religion became dominated by the working classes themselves, with new proletarian organisations such as the United Evangelistic Associations of Glasgow and Dundee, the United Working Men's Christian Mission, the Protestant Missionary Society of Glasgow, the Salvation Army and the various temperance societies.

Rather than focusing on the salvation and self-improvement of the working classes, they looked to help with issues of child welfare, slum housing and unemployment.

[15] The aim of most presbyterian missions was to establish self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating churches, however, they were sometimes reluctant to release land and control.

A number of native Christians, broke away to form their own independent "Ethiopian Churches", distinct from white dominated missions.

[30] The Tell Scotland Movement (1953–66), associated with Tom Allan and D. P. Thomson, resulted in the controversial 1955 Billy Graham All-Scotland Crusade, climaxing at the meeting in Glasgow's Kelvin Hall.