Scottish Protestant missions are organised programmes of outreach and conversion undertaken by
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
denominations within Scotland, or by Scottish people. Long after the triumph of the
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland.
The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...
in the
Lowlands
Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland.
Definitions
Upland and lowland are portions of p ...
,
Highlanders and Islanders clung to a form of Christianity infused with
animistic
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning ' breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, ...
folk beliefs and practices. From 1708 the Scottish
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) is a UK-based Christian charity. Founded in 1698 by Thomas Bray, it has worked for over 300 years to increase awareness of the Christian faith in the UK and across the world.
The SPCK is t ...
(SSPCK) began working in the area. In 1797
James Haldane
The Rev James Alexander Haldane aka Captain James Haldane (14 July 1768 – 8 February 1851) was a Scottish independent church leader following an earlier life as a sea captain.
Biography
The youngest son of Captain James Haldane of Airth ...
founded the non-denominational Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home. Dozens of lay preachers, divinity students and English preachers were sent to the region. In the early nineteenth century a variety of organisations were formed to support
evangelism to the region.
From the late eighteenth century the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
led to a rapid urbanisation of Scottish society. This created alarm amongst the Christians of the new Middle Class. The first
urban mission was founded in Glasgow in 1826 and drew on all the Protestant churches.
Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers (17 March 178031 May 1847), was a Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist, and a leader of both the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called "Scotland's greatest nine ...
advocated the "aggressive method", emphasising self-reliance backed up by intensive
Sunday school and evangelistic efforts. By the 1870s every middle class urban congregation had its evangelisation association and usually a mission station. An inter-denominational Home Mission Union in Glasgow was formed in 1885 which ensured that rivalries did not develop. The "Layman's Revival" reached Scotland in 1859 and lasted until 1862. The visit of American Evangelists
Moody and Sankey
''Sacred Songs and Solos'' is a hymn collection compiled by Ira David Sankey, who partnered Dwight Lyman Moody in a series of evangelical crusades from 1870 until Moody's death in 1898. The collection first appeared in 1873, and has subsequ ...
in 1874–75 revitalised the Evangelical mission.
The Scottish churches were relatively late to take up the challenge of foreign missions, but they came to embrace them enthusiastically. They were among the leading forces in European and American activity in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
sub-Saharan Africa, the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...
,
China and the
New Hebrides
New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (french: link=no, Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group ...
, and missionary work became one of their major contributions to the business of Empire. Scottish foreign missionary work was mainly undertaken by small, local organisations that were often inter-denominational. The most famous Scottish missionary,
David Livingstone
David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...
, became an icon of evangelic outreach, self-improvement, exploration and a form of colonialism. Women also played a major role with single women like
Mary Slessor
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
becoming missionaries in their own right.
The Evangelical effort began to decline in intensity in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Urban religion became dominated by the working classes themselves, with new proletarian organisations. In the early twentieth century the focus of the churches broadened to include social problems. The 1910
World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, has been seen as the culmination of nineteenth-century Protestant Christian missions. The missionary drive began to decline after the First World War, although the Church of Scotland continued to attach importance to its efforts. Most of the imperial aspects of the foreign missionary project had gone by the 1950s and humanitarian efforts began to be more significant. Despite declining church attendances Evangelical missions continued in Scotland into the twentieth century. There were a series of initiatives connected with the re-united Church of Scotland between 1947 and 1956. The
Tell Scotland Movement
The Tell Scotland Movement (1953-1966) was the most extensive and ambitious attempt at outreach by the Protestant Churches in Scotland in the twentieth century. At the time, together with its associated All-Scotland Crusade, led by Dr Billy Graham, ...
resulted in the controversial 1955
Billy Graham
William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018) was an American evangelist and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. He was a prominent evangelical Christi ...
All-Scotland Crusade, which arrested the decline in church attendance. However, attendance declined rapidly from the 1960s, resulting in a reduction in home mission activity. Most evangelism was now left to local congregations and it was much smaller in scale. By the twenty-first century the increasingly secularised Scotland became the subject of a number of "
reverse mission
Reverse mission is a Christian missiological concept focusing on the late-20th-century reversal of early missionizing efforts, whereby Christians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America send missionaries to Europe and North America.
History
The mo ...
" from countries that Europeans and North Americans had originally evangelised.
Highlands and Islands
Long after the triumph of the Church of Scotland in the
Lowlands
Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland.
Definitions
Upland and lowland are portions of p ...
,
Highlanders and Islanders clung to a form of Christianity infused with
animistic
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning ' breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, ...
folk beliefs and practices. The cults of saints like
Bride
A bride is a woman who is about to be married or who is newlywed.
When marrying, the bride's future spouse, (if male) is usually referred to as the '' bridegroom'' or just ''groom''. In Western culture, a bride may be attended by a maid, bri ...
and
Maelrubha persisted, beside rituals like the sacrifice of bulls and the cleansing of milk, along with tales of
fairies,
kelpie
A kelpie, or water kelpie (Scottish Gaelic: ''Each-Uisge''), is a shape-shifting spirit inhabiting lochs in Scottish folklore. It is usually described as a black horse-like creature, able to adopt human form. Some accounts state that the kelpi ...
s and other beasts. There had been localised success during the
Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
, undermined by a shortage of
Gaelic-speaking clergy and the vast scale and inaccessibility of some parishes.
The Scottish
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) is a UK-based Christian charity. Founded in 1698 by Thomas Bray, it has worked for over 300 years to increase awareness of the Christian faith in the UK and across the world.
The SPCK is t ...
(SSPCK) was founded by Royal Charter in 1708. Its aim was partly religious and partly cultural, intending to "wear out" Gaelic and "learn the people the English tongue". By 1715 it was running 25 schools, by 1755 it was 116 and by 1792 it was 149, but most were on the edges of the Highlands. The difficulty of promoting Protestantism and English in a Gaelic-speaking region eventually led to a change of policy in the SSPCK and in 1754 it sanctioned the printing of a Bible with Gaelic and English text on facing pages. The government only began to seriously promote Protestantism from 1725, when it began to make a grant to the General Assembly known as the Royal Bounty. Part of this went towards itinerant ministers, but by 1764 there were only ten. 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. They would later be important in the Evangelical revival.
[M. Lynch, ''Scotland: A New History'' (London: Pimlico, 1992), , p. 364.]
In 1797
James Haldane
The Rev James Alexander Haldane aka Captain James Haldane (14 July 1768 – 8 February 1851) was a Scottish independent church leader following an earlier life as a sea captain.
Biography
The youngest son of Captain James Haldane of Airth ...
founded the non-denominational Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home. Dozens of lay preachers, divinity students and English preachers, such as
Charles Simeon
Charles Simeon (24 September 1759 – 13 November 1836) was an English evangelical Anglican cleric.
Life and career
He was born at Reading, Berkshire, in 1759 and baptised at St Laurence's parish church on 24 October of that year. He was the ...
(1759–1836) and
Rowland Hill
Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his soluti ...
(1744–1833), were sent to the region. They preached an evangelical gospel, influenced by the ideas of
Tom Paine
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
and established independent churches across the Highlands.
[D. W. Bebbington, "Missions at home" in M. Lynch, ed., ''The Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 422–3.] When Haldane and his brother
Robert
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
accepted the principle of adult baptism in 1808 most of them became Baptist chapels. Gaelic school societies were founded, beginning in Edinburgh in 1811, supporting travelling schools to the northern Highlands and western Isles. The
Congregational Union of Scotland
The Congregational Union of Scotland was a Protestant church in the Reformed tradition.
The union was established in 1812, by 53 churches in Scotland. Its aim was to conduct missions in Scotland, and to support the existing Congregational churche ...
was formed in 1812 to promote home missions. In 1827 the Baptists consolidated their efforts in the Baptist Home Missionary Society. In 1824 the government provided funds to build 32 churches and 41 manses in the Highlands. After the Disruption in 1843 most of the expansion was in new churches established by the Free Church. Missions to fishermen and seamen began with the Seamen's Friend Societies.
[
The mission to the Highlands and Islands was highly successful in transforming the religious complexion of the region and the lives of the people. It succeeded in creating a stronghold of Evangelical Presbyterianism. At the Great Disruption in 1843 most of the clergy and congregations would demonstrate their allegiance by leaving the Church of Scotland for the breakaway ]Free Church
A free church is a Christian denomination that is intrinsically separate from government (as opposed to a state church). A free church does not define government policy, and a free church does not accept church theology or policy definitions fr ...
. Callum Brown argues that the mission to the Highlands and Hebrides was Scotland's first "foreign" mission and acted as a "dry run" for future work in Africa and Asia.
Urban missions
From the late eighteenth century the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
led to a rapid urbanisation of Scottish society. By 1859 almost a third of the population were resident in a town of more than 10,000 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
Thomas Chalmers (17 March 178031 May 1847), was a Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist, and a leader of both the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called "Scotland's greatest nine ...
warned of the "home heathens", "paganism" and "dense irreligion" of an urban poor who were alienated from the Church, morality and the social order. Fears of non-church going would be confirmed nationally by the "emergency" revealed in the Census of 1851. The result was a new emphasis on Christianising the urban working classes that resulted in a series of missions to the towns.
The first urban mission was founded by David Nasmith
David Nasmith (March 1799 – 17 November 1839) founded The City Mission Movement in the UK, the US and in Europe.
Biography
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Nasmith began life in manufacturing as an apprentice. He set up The Young Men's Society for ...
(1799–1839) in Glasgow in 1826 and drew on all the Protestant churches.[ This ]City Mission
The City Mission movement started in Glasgow in January 1826 when David Nasmith founded the Glasgow City Mission (Scotland). It was an interdenominational agency working alongside churches and other Christian agencies to provide for the spiritu ...
spread to almost every British and Irish city and the US. 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.[ He advocated the "aggressive method", in which poor relief was replaced with a voluntary system, distributed parsimoniously to the poor after intrusive questioning by church elders. 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. The system was widely adopted by the Free Church after the Great Disruption and would be taken up by the Church of Scotland under the leadership of A. H. Charteris (1835–1908) in the 1870s.][ By the 1870s, every middle class urban congregation had its evangelisation association and usually a mission station, where members of the working classes were encouraged to strive for financial independence and the status of full congregational membership. After the expansion of congregations in the 1860s and 1870s there was considerable duplication of effort and competition between churches and denominations in Glasgow. As a result, an inter-denominational Home Mission Union was formed in 1885, which divided the city into small districts, ensuring that the whole city was covered and that rivalries did not develop.][Brown, ''Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707'', p. 105.]
A new wave of urban revivalism began in New York in 1858, sometimes called the "Layman's Revival" because of the prominence of lay preachers. It reached Scotland the next year following a trade depression and enthusiasm would continue in a heightened form until 1862. In the major manufacturing districts of the country, prayer meetings were held in offices and factories and in the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Some viewed the revival with alarm, as it caused absenteeism from work and long prayer meetings disrupted the working day.[ The visit of American Evangelists Ira D. Sankey (1840–1908), and ]Dwight L. Moody
Dwight Lyman Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 26, 1899), also known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with Keswickianism, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massa ...
(1837–99) to Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1874–75 revitalised the Evangelical mission, leading to the founding of the Glasgow United Evangelistic Association. The Tent Hall was opened in the city in 1876, which hosted poor relief and evangelical meetings, and the Bible Training Institute for training lay evangelists was founded in 1892. Charteris was instrumental in the foundation of the Women's Guild in 1887, which underlined the role of women in the missions. They also acted as Biblewomen, reading scriptures, and dominated teaching in the Sunday schools.[
Urban missions did not succeed in gaining the religious loyalty of the mass of the urban working classes and were beginning to lose their effectiveness by the last decades of the nineteenth century. However, although the majority of the working classes did not come to attend churches, the success of the urban missions was that the working class did make up the majority of those who did attend and support the churches and would later shape the ideas of the trade union and labour movements.
]
Overseas missions
The Scottish churches were relatively late in taking up the challenge of foreign missions,[ but they came to embrace it enthusiastically. They were among the leading forces in European and American activity in India, sub-Saharan Africa, the West Indies, China and the ]New Hebrides
New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (french: link=no, Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group ...
, and missionary work became one of their major contributions to the business of Empire. Most missionaries worked within either a medical or educational context, establishing schools, universities and hospitals.[O. Checkland and S. Checkland, ''Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832–1914'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd ed., 1989), , pp. 161–4.] 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
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...
show, shown to audiences in church halls throughout the country.[R. J. Finley, "Missions overseas" in M. Lynch, ed., ''The Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 245–6.]
Scottish foreign missionary work was mainly undertaken by small, local organisations that were often inter-denominational. The most important was the Edinburgh Missionary Society (EMS, later the Scottish Missionary Society, SMS) and the Glasgow Missionary Society (GMS). Both societies began their work in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...
in 1797, but the efforts failed and were rapidly abandoned. The societies then worked as associated societies of the London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational m ...
(LMS), through which most Scottish missionaries would be sponsored until the mid-nineteenth century.[N. Erlank, "'Civilising the African': the Scottish Mission to the Xhosa", in B. Stanley, ed., ''Christian Missions and the Enlightenment'' (London: Routledge, 2014), , pp. 146–9.] Scottish missionaries sponsored by the LMS included Robert Moffat (1795–1883). He arrived in Cape Colony
The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with t ...
in 1817, later to be joined by his wife Mary, and where he worked with Dutch Reformed
The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...
minister George Thom. The GMS did not resume its direct work abroad until the 1820s after a visit from Thom built up their enthusiasm. They dispatched several missionaries to the Cape, including John Ross (1799–78), the first minister set apart for foreign missionary work by the Church of Scotland, who arrived in 1823. They joined John Brownlee (1791–1871), a Scottish missionary of the LMS, who had founded a station at Tyhume. Ross founded another, later known as Lovedale.[
The most famous Scottish missionary, ]David Livingstone
David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...
, was funded by the London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational m ...
. After his "disappearance" and death in the 1870s he became an icon of evangelic outreach, self-improvement, exploration and a form of colonialism.[A. C. Ross, ''David Livingstone: Mission and Empire'' (London: Continuum, 2006), , pp. 242–5.] The legacy of Livingstone can be seen in the names of many mission stations founded following his example, such as Blantyre
Blantyre () is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with an enumerated 800,264 inhabitants . It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, L ...
(the place of Livingstone's birth) for the Church of Scotland and Livingstonia, headed for more than fifty years by Robert Laws (1851–1934) for the Free Church, both now in Malawi
Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeas ...
.[
Women also played a major role. Initially this was as the wives of male missionaries, as was the case with ]Mary Moffat
Mary Moffat born Mary Smith (1795 – 9 January 1871) was a British missionary who became a role model for women involved in missionary work. She was the wife of Robert Moffat, the mother of Mary Moffat Livingstone and David Livingstone was her s ...
, the daughter of Mary and Robert Moffat, who married Livingstone in 1845.[ Increasingly single women began to act as missionaries in their own right, often as teachers. Former Millworker ]Mary Slessor
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
(1848–1919) spent 28 years as a United Presbyterian missionary in Calabar
Calabar (also referred to as Callabar, Calabari, Calbari and Kalabar) is the capital city of Cross River State, Nigeria. It was originally named Akwa Akpa, in the Efik language. The city is adjacent to the Calabar and Great Kwa rivers and c ...
in modern Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. Arriving in 1876, she combated cruelty and superstition, earning the title of ''Eka Kpukpro'', Mother of All the Tribes.[
In India Alexander Duff (1806–78), who arrived in Calcutta in 1830, played a major part in the development of higher education and the conversion of higher caste Indians. After the Great Disruption many of the staff from the established Church of Scotland's India mission joined the Free Church.][ ]Patrick Manson
Sir Patrick Manson (3 October 1844 – 9 April 1922) was a Scottish physician who made important discoveries in parasitology, and was a founder of the field of tropical medicine. He graduated from University of Aberdeen with degrees in Master ...
(1844–1922), who worked in China, is considered by many to be the father of modern tropical medicine. In Japan Scottish missionaries enjoyed some success and Henry Faulds
Henry Faulds (1 June 1843 – 24 March 1930) was a Scottish doctor, missionary and scientist who is noted for the development of fingerprinting.
Early life
Faulds was born in Beith, North Ayrshire, into a family of modest means. Aged 13, he wa ...
(1843–1930) helped implement major advances in medicine under the Meiji.[ Members of the Free Church became associated with the colonisation of ]New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
: the Free Church offshoot the Otago Association
The Otago Association was founded in 1845 by adherents of the Free Church of Scotland with the purpose of establishing a colony of like-minded Scots in Otago in the South Island of New Zealand, chiefly at Dunedin.
In addition to religion, the ec ...
sent out emigrants in 1847 who established the New Edinburgh or Otago settlement in 1848.
Decline and revivals
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. There began to shortages of volunteers and funds for a large number of organisations. Reasons for this transformation that have been advanced include changes in leisure habits, the rise of socialism and the Labour movement, loss of middle class certainty about the validity of the gospel and its imposition on the working class as a solution to social ills. The migration of the middle classes away from inner city areas to newly built suburbs also removed them from contact with the working classes and a loss of willingness to engage in the Evangelical project, particularly the new petite bourgeoisie of white collar workers and tradesmen. 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.[Brown, ''Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707'', pp. 130–1.] The Faith Mission was founded in 1886 and sponsored "pilgrims" who went wherever they were invited.[ The imposition of Evangelical religion above also began to be rejected by the working classes themselves, who began to resist attendance at organised events and visitations.][
In the early twentieth century the focus of the churches began to broaden to include social problems.][ In 1900 the inter-denominational Scottish Christian Social Union was formed. In 1904 the ]Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland.
The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...
established a Social Work Committee under David Watson and the United Free Church a Social Problems Committee. 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.
In 1910 the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
, has been seen as the culmination of nineteenth-century Protestant Christian missions and the formal beginning of the modern Protestant Christian ecumenical movement. The foreign missionary drive began to decline after the First World War, although the Church of Scotland continued to attach importance to its missionary efforts.[ 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. This persuaded many missionaries of the need for distinct Presbyteries, still linked to white dominated denominations and missions. Among the first was the Bantu Presbyterian Church in 1929, which late became the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Most missionaries were relatively positive about political independence and de-colonisation in the twentieth century, in contrast to many in their parent churches at home. Most of the imperial aspects of the foreign missionary project had gone by the 1950s and humanitarian efforts began to be more significant.][
The Scottish denominations tended to continue to treat the Highlands and Islands as in need of special missionary attention into the twentieth century, with the Church of Scotland maintaining missions in the Islands until the 1960s. However, as the region became more bi-lingual and integrated into southern Scottish culture, the need for separate structures reduced and Highland agencies were gradually integrated into larger denominational structures. The Baptist Home Missionary Society of Scotland became part of the ]Baptist Union of Scotland
The Baptist Union of Scotland is a Baptist Christian denomination in Scotland. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Glasgow.
History
From the 1650s to 1869
Baptists first arrived in Scotland with the armies o ...
in 1931 and the Home Mission Committee was abolished altogether in 1971.[D. Meek, "Religious life: Highlands since the Reformation", in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 517–22.]
Despite declining church attendances Evangelical missions continued in Scotland into the twentieth century. There were a series of initiatives connected with the re-united Church of Scotland between 1947 and 1956. These included "Christian Commandos" and the "Radio Missions" of 1950–52 using BBC Scotland. The Herbridean revival of 1949–53 was initiated by the preaching of Faith Mission evangelist Duncan Campbell (1898–1972).[ The ]Tell Scotland Movement
The Tell Scotland Movement (1953-1966) was the most extensive and ambitious attempt at outreach by the Protestant Churches in Scotland in the twentieth century. At the time, together with its associated All-Scotland Crusade, led by Dr Billy Graham, ...
(1953–66), associated with Tom Allan and D. P. Thomson, resulted in the controversial 1955 Billy Graham
William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018) was an American evangelist and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. He was a prominent evangelical Christi ...
All-Scotland Crusade, climaxing at the meeting in Glasgow's Kelvin Hall.[ Six weeks around Easter 1955 saw nightly mass rallies of 10,000 people packing Kelvin Hall and for two weeks others attended churches and halls throughout the country. The final event at Hampden Park attracted just under 100,000 people. All this was accompanied by extensive press and broadcasting coverage and a return to visitation on a scale not seen since the nineteenth century. The success was great enough to arrest the decline in church attendance, which returned to almost pre-war levels.][R. J. Finley, "Secularization" in M. Lynch, ed., ''The Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 516–17.] However, the effects were short-lived. Church attendance began to decline rapidly in the 1960s, resulting in an "apparent loss of nerve" and a decline in home mission activity. Among the most effective of the organisations of the late twentieth century was the Scripture Union
Scripture Union (SU) is an international, interdenominational, evangelical Christian organization. It was founded in 1867, and works in partnership with individuals and churches across the world. The organization's stated aim is to use the Bible t ...
, which published Bible notes and scripture texts for children, organising meetings inside and outside of school. Most evangelism was now left to local congregations and it was much reduced in scale from the major efforts of the previous century.[
By the twenty-first century the increasingly secularised Scotland became the subject of a number of "]reverse mission
Reverse mission is a Christian missiological concept focusing on the late-20th-century reversal of early missionizing efforts, whereby Christians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America send missionaries to Europe and North America.
History
The mo ...
s" from countries that Europeans and North Americans had originally evangelised and which now attempted to restore or support Christianity in western countries. These include the Redeemed Christian Church of God
The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is a Pentecostal megachurch and denomination founded in Lagos, Nigeria. The General overseer (most senior pastor) is Enoch Adeboye, ordained in 1981. The church in Lagos had an average church attendanc ...
, founded in Nigeria in 1952, who opened the Open Heaven parish in Edinburgh in 2003,[E. Obinna, "Africans in Scotland", in E. Obinna and G. Vincett, eds, ''Christianity in the Modern World: Changes and Controversies'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014, , pp. 77–8 and 84.] and the Heart for the City project in Glasgow, founded by Lucas Njenga, which combined evangelism with concern for social renewal.[K. Ross,]
Non-Western Christians in Scotland: Mission in Reverse
''Theology in Scotland'', 12 (2005), p. 73. However, most of their recruits have been immigrants of African origin.[
]
References
{{Scottish religion
History of Christianity in Scotland
Missions