The Evangelical movement in nineteenth-century Scotland is normally associated with controversies surrounding the formation of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 and the leading roles played by churchmen such as Thomas Chalmers. The Free Church of Scotland was born out of disputes over a range of issues, including patronage and lifestyle, but Patricia Meldrum's volume provides a welcome insight into a lesser-known dispute, that within the Scottish Episcopal Church.
The author's central thesis is that doctrinal and theological differences over the Scottish Communion Office led some ministers and members to leave the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1842–1843, designating themselves as loyal to the Church of England and taking on the title of English Episcopal. Evangelicals objected to the Scottish Communion Office since it was seen as a move back to the beliefs and practices rejected by Cranmer and his followers. The Office's oblation undermined the Evangelicals' belief in the infinite merit of Christ's death on the cross, and while they had a strong sense of God's presence at communion, they objected to the Scottish invocation since it linked the experience to the bread and wine rather than with the hearts of the faithful. Nonetheless, Meldrum demonstrates the importance of local circumstances in determining patterns of secession, and this balancing of national concerns with local circumstances is a major strength of the volume.
Drawing together the varied factors leading to the formation of English Episcopal churches has required extensive research involving records of individual churches, private family papers, newspapers, published works of churchmen such as D. T. K. Drummond and Henry Cotterill, other primary sources and key recent secondary works on nineteenth-century Scottish Church history. The bibliography runs to nineteen pages and, along with the extensive footnotes, provides a helpful reference point for future researchers.
The book begins by defining the term “Evangelical,” noting that it emphasized the need for religious conversion, taught in the Bible, that led to a personal relationship with God. Evangelicals, therefore, placed considerable emphasis on missionary work since faith had life-saving qualities. Meldrum analyzes the strength of the Evangelical movement in the Scottish Episcopal Church, stressing its importance despite being relatively small in numerical terms. This national picture is balanced with an overview of its geographic spread, and while it is not surprising that the movement was strongest in the towns where population size helped maintain viability, it had a significant presence in holiday centers such as Dunoon and in some rural locations with sympathetic local landowners. In their missionary work, Evangelicals were successful in attracting a cross-section of society from aristocrats to the working class, including the unskilled, most notably in the mission churches run by St Thomas's, Edinburgh, and St Silas's, Glasgow. One of the most interesting findings is the significant role played by laypeople, some of whom were Presbyterians, in establishing Evangelical churches. This confirms the often flexible patterns of worship with the faithful attending different churches and denominations from their “home” congregation. These patterns can be traced in the rich heritage of voluminous family correspondence left by many Victorians, and Meldrum uses this source to build a picture of leading Evangelicals' lifestyles covering family relationships, often warm and loving, philanthropy, and attitudes toward leisure, arts, and science. Nonetheless, the central spine of the book covers issues of doctrine and theology, concluding with the compromises that allowed many Evangelicals to return to the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Chapter 3 provides a fascinating analysis of the social composition of Evangelical Churches and with its fourteen tables, eleven graphs, and six maps illustrates the extensive research underpinning the analysis. These do not get in the way of the argument, which carefully considers the strengths and weaknesses of sources, such as baptismal registers, and provides a detailed insight into eleven congregations. Some churches were able to reach the urban poor through missionary work, but the emerging picture is of a movement that was stronger among the middle class and skilled workers. It would have been interesting to compare Evangelical and non-Evangelical Episcopal congregations, but a comparison is provided with the Presbyterian churches.
The number of Evangelical ministers reached a peak of just over 13 percent of Episcopalians in the mid-nineteenth century, falling to just under 4 percent by 1900. This decline stemmed from a variety of factors including changes in canon law, which retained the Scottish Communion Office while offering protection to Evangelicals and greater freedom of worship in missions and meetings.
This volume adds to our understanding of nineteenth-century Scottish church history since it covers a largely neglected area. It supplements both general histories such as Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 by Callum Brown (rev. ed., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), and those of the Scottish Episcopal Church, most notably Episcopalianism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland by Rowan Strong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and The Scottish Episcopal Church by Gavin White (available at www.episcopalhistory.org.uk/).
The history of movements such as Evangelicalism in the Scottish Episcopal Church draws on many threads: social, theological, doctrinal, political, economic, national, and local. Patricia Meldrum has drawn these together to create a refreshing and original history of Episcopalianism in nineteenth-century Scotland.
