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Church Of Scotland Quotes

Browse 7 quotes about Church Of Scotland.

Church Of Scotland Quotes

“A society beset by terrifying social problems was threatened by realism... exacerbated by the deep-seated evils of poverty and overcrowding generated by Scotland's pell-mell industrialisation. To expose these would be revolutionary; it would also break the discipline of puritanism by mentioning the unmentionable... The Kirk enforced silence out of conviction, the middle class out of fear. The bogus community of the Kailyard was an alternative to the horror of the real thing.”

Middle ClassScotlandSocial ProblemsIndustrialisationKailyardChurch Of Scotland
Book:Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707 to the Present
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“For years the Church of Scotland, the Established Church, had been tearing itself apart. Two key issues dominated: patronage - the right of landowners to appoint and even force ministers on an unwilling congregation - and the interference of the state in church affairs. On one side were the Moderates, supporters of patronage, friends of the lairds, and, according to an earlier General Assembly report, often 'inattentive to the interests of religion'... The rival faction, the Evangelicals, opposed patronage, wanted complete church independence, and insisted on a far stricter interpretation of religious doctrine. So entrenched were the divisions that it brought the Disruption of 1843 - perhaps 'the most momentous single event of the nineteenth century' - with 470 ministers out of 1,200, plus their elders, congregations and 400 schoolteachers breaking away to create the Free Church.”

ScotlandPatronageEvangelicalsChurch Of ScotlandLairdsLandownersFree ChurchThe Disruption1843
Book:'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863
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“Davie's hostility to sectarianism, and to religious 'fanaticism', was perhaps part of his appeal. He acknowledged the legacy of Calvinism in his interpretation of the Enlightenment and democratic intellectualism, and continued to argue that the distinctive blend of religion, law and education was Scotland's special contribution to civilisation. But by the 1950s and 1960s, the Church of Scotland and its ministers were widely regarded in intellectual circles as a repressive force, morally censorious and culturally philistine. Davie's work, it may be suggested, was attractive to the youthful intelligentsia created by post-war university expansion. Before the war, most Scottish graduates had gone into the professions, the civil service, or school teaching. But now there were new career fields in the media, politics, and college teaching which promoted a less conformist attitude. The Reformation had long been seen as the basis for Scotland's identity and its cultural difference from England, but Davie offered a version of Scottish identity which substituted a secular intellectualism for the well-worn themes of Calvinism and John Knox, and made no appeal, either, to Kailyard sentimentality. Davie became a cult figure for journals like Cencrastus and the New Edinburgh Review, to which he contributed himself.”

ReformationCalvinismChurch Of ScotlandGeorge Elder DavieScottish EducationScottish Intellectuals
Book:Writing Scottishness: Literature and the Shaping of Scottish National Identities
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“Alexander Kilgour, in true Scottish style, was educated for the Church. At thirty-five he filled a Chair of Divinity. Two members of his Presbytery, before his appointment, were overheard to say, 'We don't want Kilgour of Inverald - he has far too acute a mind for a Professor.' And indeed Alexander, in a short while, had a wasps' bike about his ears. 'As bad as Smith o' Aiberdeen,' cried the critics. Alexander Kilgour, however, had not only the advantage of teaching ten years later than Robertson Smith, he had also the Kilgour habit of success in all he put his hand to. He retained his Chair, silenced the mutterers by tact and suavity, and gave width of outlook to a succession of young Scottish divines. His urbane persuasiveness of manner, however, covered a true prophetic zeal. He was passionate for enlightenment, drunk on the word: though in this matter too the pre-war whiskies were the best. The ageing man would sit with brooding brows over the later distilations.”

DivinityChurch Of ScotlandPresbyterianismAlexander KilgourWilliam Robertson Smith
Book:The Grampian Quartet: The Quarry Wood: The Weatherhouse: A Pass in the Grampians: The Living Mountain
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“The cause of the protagonist's spiritual crisis in these novels originates in the unloving and unlovely severity of various forms of Presbyterianism. In A Son of the Soil, the Church of Scotland's harshly judgemental and emotionally sterile tendencies are displayed in parishioners' right right to object to 'sitting under' a minister who does not meet their approval. During a minister's probationary period the congregation can object 'to his looks, or his manners, or his doctrines, or the colour of his hair'.”

MinistersJudgementalProbationChurch Of ScotlandPresbyterianismMrs Oliphant
Book:The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature
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“What can there be that is splendid in my life? - a farmer's son, with perhaps the chance of a country church as my highest hope - after all kinds od signings, and confessions, and calls, and presbyteries. It would be splendid indeed to be plucked by a country presbytery that didn't know six words of Greek, or objected to by a congregation of ploughmen.”

MinistersGreekScotlandCongregationChurch Of ScotlandPresbyterianismColin CampbellPresbyteries
Book:A Son of the Soil
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“I think not that it is in any manner needful for me to write down any history of the Kirk's trials here. Truly, it is an old story in our country of Scotland; and if there should be folk of another land reading this, doubtless they may learn concerning the matter, from many books and histories the reading of which, I doubt not, will be to the edification, to such as, by reason of belonging to another nation, or by reason of neglect in their upbringing, may want a sufficiency of knowledge to distinguish between the old and steadfast Kirk herself, and them that do sometimes iniquitously bear her name.”

ScotlandChurch Of ScotlandThe Disruption
Book:Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside
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