Scottish religion in the eighteenth century

This period saw the beginnings of a fragmentation of the Church of Scotland that had been created in the Reformation and established on a fully Presbyterian basis after the Glorious Revolution.

The legal right of lay patrons to present clergymen of their choice to local ecclesiastical livings led to minor schisms from the church.

Baptist chapels were re-established in the middle of the century and, although Scotland initially appeared fertile ground for Methodism, it failed to expand as quickly as elsewhere in the Great Britain and Ireland.

The religious settlement after the Glorious Revolution of 1688/9 adopted the legal forms of 1592, which instituted a fully Presbyterian kirk, and doctrine based on the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith.

A popular preacher, he corresponded with religious leaders in other countries, including New England theologian Johnathan Edwards (1703–58), whose ideas were a major influence on the movement in Scotland.

These fractures were prompted by issues of government and patronage, but reflected a wider division between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party over fears of fanaticism by the former and the acceptance of Enlightenment ideas by the latter.

[8] Although its founding ministers were from Perthshire and Fife, the forty congregations they had established by 1740 were widely spread across the country, mainly among the middle classes of major towns.

[10] Like the Associate Presbytery, the movement was initially small, but benefited from the Evangelical Revival of the later eighteenth century, which helped it expand rapidly.

Although the bishops had been abolished in the settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution, becoming "non-jurors", not subscribing to the right of William III and Mary II to be monarchs, they continued to consecrate Episcopalian clergy.

[18] The series of evangelical enterprises undertaken by the brothers James and Robert Haldane in the period 1796–1800, which led to the foundation of Sunday schools, day schools and tabernacles in parts of the Lowlands, Highlands and Islands, helped strengthen the Baptist and Congregational churches when the brothers later embraced adult Baptism and the congregations divided between the two traditions.

[20] Scotland appeared to be fertile ground for Methodism in the 1740s and 1750s, when visits from figures such as John Wesley and George Whitfield attracted large audiences of presbyterians.

Methodist societies were established in textile and fishing villages, particularly in Shetland, where Methodism was to enjoy its greatest relative popularity.

The Scots preferred an ordained clergy, rather than the lay preachers common elsewhere, and when Wesley granted this concession in 1785 membership doubled in four years, but it was rescinded after this death in 1791 and adherence reduced.

These included the Glasites, formed by Church of Scotland minister John Glas, who was expelled from his parish of Tealing in 1730 for his objections to the state's intervention in the affairs of the kirk.

With his son-in-law Robert Sandeman, from whose name they are known as the Sandemanians, he founded a number of churches in Scotland and the sect expanded to England and the United States.

[22] Closely involved with the Glasites were the followers of industrialist David Dale who broke with the kirk in the 1760s and formed the Old Scotch Independents, sometimes known as the Daleists.

He preached a combination of industry and faith that led him to co-found the cotton-mill at New Lanark and to contribute to the Utopian Socialism associated with his son-in-law Robert Owen.

Barclay was one of the most prominent followers of moral philosopher Archibald Campbell and espoused a rigorous form of pre-destination and insisted on Biblical-based preaching.

Having been rejected from various pastorships and by the General Assembly, he founded independent churches in Scotland and then in England, taking the name Bereans from the people mentioned in Acts 17:11.

[24] The Buchanites were a Millenarian cult that broke away from the Relief Church when Hugh White, minister at Irvine, declared Elspeth Buchan to be a special saint identified with the woman described in Revelation 12.

[27] 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.

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.

This was first seen at Easter Ross in the Highlands in 1739 and most famously in the Cambuslang Wark (work) near Glasgow in 1742,[31] where intense religious activity culminated in a crowd of perhaps 30,000 gathering there to hear English preacher George Whitefield.

[34] The revival was particularly significant in the Highlands, where the lack of a clear parochial structure led to a pattern of spiritual enthusiasm, recession and renewal, often instigated by lay catechists, known as "the Men", who would occasionally emerge as charismatic leaders.

[35] Because the revival occurred at the same time as the transformation of the Highlands into a crofting society, Evangelicalism was often linked to popular protest against patronage and the clearances, while the Moderates became identified with the interests of the landholding classes.

It laid the ground for the Great Disruption in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the Evangelicals taking control of the General Assembly and those in the Highlands joining the Free Church of Scotland in large numbers.

It had a major role in the Poor Law and schools, which were administered through the parishes, and over the morals of the population, particularly over sexual offences such as adultery and fornication.

[36] In the early part of the century the kirk, particularly in the Lowlands, attempted to suppress dancing and events like penny weddings at which secular tunes were played.

They installed organs and hired musicians, following the practice in English parish churches, singing in the liturgy as well as metrical psalms, while the non-jurors had to worship covertly and less elaborately.

[43] Catholic worship was deliberately low key, usually in the private houses of recusant landholders or in domestic buildings adapted for services.