Reformation, Dissent and Diversity: The Story of Scotland's Churches, 1560–1960 by Andrew T.N. Muirhead (review)

Not all Presbyterians are Scots or of Scottish heritage. One hopes that Canadians have realized that, given the ethnic diversity in most urban Canadian Presbyterian congregations as well as the establishment of Ghanian, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean Presbyterian congregations. It is equally true that not all Scots were Presbyterians, or if they were Presbyterian, not all of the same Presbyterian tribe.

In Reformation, Dissent and Diversity: The Story of Scotland's Churches, 1560–1960, Andrew Muirhead maps the diversity of Scotland's Christian traditions from the time of the Reformation to the 1960s. To do this, the author has chosen to give broad overviews of religious developments over a historical period, then to narrate the religious traditions that emerged roughly in the period just discussed. The overview chapters deal with the Reformation and developments in the seventeenth century (chapter 1), the period from the Restoration to the Disruption, which created the Free Church (chapter 3), the diversity of the nineteenth century (chapter 7), and finally, a concluding chapter taking the story into the twentieth century (chapter 12). There are two additional thematic chapters, one dealing with the impact of the churches on the lives of Scottish people and a second looking at regional variations.

The heart of the book is the chapters that explore the various religious traditions that emerged out of or were imported into Scotland. In chapter 3, Muirhead outlines the survival after the Reformation of the two episcopal traditions, the Roman Catholic and the Scottish Episcopalian, and how each of these traditions gradually rebuilt itself in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Discussions of Presbyterian divisions and recombinations span several chapters. The establishment of Presbyterian government in the national Church of Scotland in 1690 did not please Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters), who remained outside of the national church. The various factions (Hebronites, Wilsonites, etc.) within this small group are described. Various secessions from the Church of Scotland over the issue of patronage (who determines the minister of a parish) led to the formation of Secessionist presbyteries, which rapidly divided over related issues. This is not an easy story to tell, but the author does an admirable job, helping us to understand how, among other things, eventually the United Secessionists brought together the New Light Burgher Secessionists and the New Light Anti-burgher Secession Church. But wait. More Presbyterian divisions were to come, indeed the largest when the Church of Scotland split into two in 1843, with Thomas Chalmers and others leaving to form the Free Church of Scotland. The reasons behind this division, as well as the gradual and very complex path to union with other Presbyterian traditions, is outlined, and the reader by the end will have a clearer sense of how the "Wee Frees" emerged and how they are different from the much larger Free Church. The complexity of Christianity in Scotland goes beyond these Presbyterian traditions, and Muirhead outlines the history of Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist, Brethren, Holiness, Quaker, Unitarian, Mormon, Spiritualist, and other traditions. The religious complexity of Scotland is demonstrated throughout. Anyone who still imagines all Scots were Presbyterians after reading this account has not been paying attention.

The value of this book is in the descriptions of this complexity and how it emerged. There are also some wonderful anecdotes. One of my favourites comes in reference to the Baptist movement in Scotland, where Muirhead notes that the Haldane brothers, who had previously been Congregationalist, created a dubious distinction: "In a country known for its secessions, they were unusual in actually seceding from their own denomination which they had founded only a few years previously" (115). The impact of some of the smaller traditions on the larger Scottish religious culture are also worth noting. It was the primitive Methodists who first reintroduced celebrating Christmas into Scottish churches in the mid-nineteenth century, and this gradually had an impact...