A tradition in crisis: understanding and repairing division over homosexuality in the Church of Scotland

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
Liam J. Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Diagnostic Analysis ◽  
Committed Relationships ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
The Status ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Protestant Denominations ◽  
The Church

AbstractLike many Western churches, the Church of Scotland has been divided in recent years over the ordination of gay clergy in committed relationships, and, more generally, over the status of homosexuality for Christian ethics. Yet there has been no academic research undertaken which situates the debate within the wider context of Scottish theology. This failure has resulted in theological and ecclesial impasse, which this paper seeks to remedy through a diagnostic analysis of division over homosexuality, drawing upon the analytic tools developed by R. G. Collingwood. While this article has as its focus the Church of Scotland, its method and conclusions will be relevant to other Protestant denominations, especially Reformed churches such as the Presbyterian Church (USA).

scholarly journals The Language of the Church: Westminster in Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
W. John Carswell
Keyword(s):  
General Assembly ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

This paper reflects on the debate at the 2018 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on reviewing the status of the Westminster Confession of Faith as its principal subordinate standard of faith. It considers the role of doctrine in the church; whether it is appropriate to devote time and resources to consideration of doctrinal statements at this juncture when the church may be seen to be seen to be facing more pressing issues; and whether a framework such as the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Book of Confessions might serve as a useful model for the way ahead – or whether such an approach would in fact only hamper lasting renewal in the church.

Scotland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Status ◽  
Steep Decline ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Episcopal Authority

This chapter examines the transformations in the status and character of Scottish Episcopalianism from 1662 to 1829. Despite being re-established in the Church of Scotland in 1661–2, episcopacy was abolished in 1689. Thereafter Episcopalians were a Nonconformist group, and only the minority of congregations whose clergy were loyal to Queen Anne and her Hanoverian successors enjoyed legal protection. But while the intermittent prosecution of the Jacobite clergy contributed to a steep decline in the number of Scottish Episcopalians, disestablishment allowed the clergy to reassess episcopal authority, and to experiment with liturgical reforms. After transferring their allegiance to the Hanoverians in 1788, the Episcopalians drew closer to the Church of England, formally adopting the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1804. By the end of the period, the Episcopalians saw themselves as an independent, non-established Church, one of the branches of international Anglicanism.

‘The Substance of the Faith’ A Clarification of the Concept in the Church of Scotland

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-338
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Nicene Creed ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

In determining the meaning of the expression ‘the substance of the Faith’, it seems right to go back to the act of the Scottish Parliament in 1690 which ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith ‘as the publick and avowed Confession of this Church, containing the summe and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches.’ There the WCF was regarded as containing the sum and substance of some thirty Reformed Confessions, including the Scots Confession, the First and Second Helvetic Confessions. These confessions expressly acknowledged the ancient Catholic Creeds and Conciliar Statements of the Church, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Formulations of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the so-called ‘Athanasian Creed’, and embodied all their main statements as essential articles of belief. This was true of the WCF which, as James Denney once pointed out, ‘contains everything that is in the Nicene Creed’ (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 39If). That is to say, there was no move away from what the Athanasian Creed and the Second Helvetic Confession called ‘the Catholic Faith’, although the basic articles of faith handed down through the Creeds were set within a confessional frame of distinctively Reformed character. It was inevitable, therefore, that a distinction was made between what Samuel Rutherford called (Due Right Presbyteries, p. 13) ‘a confession dejure, what everyman ought to believe, as the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Athanasius’, and a wider summation of teaching common to ‘true Reformed Protestant religion’.

Scottish Presbyterianism and the National Education Debates, 1850–62

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 363-380
Author(s):  
Ryan Mallon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
National Education ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Parish Schools ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

This article examines the mid-nineteenth-century Scottish education debates in the context of intra-Presbyterian relations in the aftermath of the 1843 ‘Disruption’ of the Church of Scotland. The debates of this period have been characterized as an attempt to wrest control of Scottish education from the Church of Scotland, with most opponents of the existing scheme critical of the established kirk's monopoly over the supervision of parish schools. However, the debate was not simply between those within and outside the religious establishment. Those advocating change, particularly within non-established Presbyterian denominations, were not unified in their proposals for a solution to Scotland's education problem. Disputes between Scotland's largest non-established churches, the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and within the Free Church itself over the type of national education scheme that should replace the parish schools severely hampered their ability to express common opposition to the existing system. These divisions also placed increasing strain on the developing cooperation in Scottish Dissent on ecclesiastical, political and social matters after the Disruption. This article places the issue of education in this period within this distinctly Dissenting context of cooperation, and examines the extent of the impact these debates had on Dissenting Presbyterian relations.

Confessionalism and Ecumenism: a Consideration of the Wider Loyalties of the Church of Scotland

1964 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-210
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Louden
Keyword(s):  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition ◽  
Presbyterian Churches

The spurious word Confessionalism is employed to describe a church's adherence to a particular tradition of doctrine and order, and the elements in that tradition which hold a group or family of churches together in a common sharing of life, worship and fellowship. The confession of faith as such is very much a Reformation phenomenon and the various particular Confessions of Faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries played a large part in creating the families of churches to which we are now accustomed within Protestantism. It is by the Augsburg Confession (1530) that Lutheran church tradition is denned; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) stamped the Continental Reformed Churches with their own particular character; the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) were for many long years and are still officially the defining document for the Anglican Communion; and it is largely the existence of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) which has made it possible to identify Presbyterianism as a family of churches at least within the Anglo-Saxon world. It is true that the relation of even the English-speaking Presbyterian churches to this Confession of Faith has been greatly modified over the years, but it still provides the essential criteria for recognising one of our churches as Reformed and Presbyterian.

Free Church Theology 1843–1900

2019 ◽  
pp. 242-264
Author(s):  
Michael Bräutigam
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
William Robertson ◽  
The Church

This chapter explores the theology of key scholars of the Free Church of Scotland from 1843 until 1900, when only a small remnant continued as the Free Church after its union with the United Presbyterian Church. Divided into two parts, the first section looks at the theology of the Disruption fathers, Thomas Chalmers, Robert S. Candlish, William Cunningham, and George Smeaton. The second part deals with the subsequent generation of Free Church theologians, in particular with a group known as the ‘believing critics’. Influenced by new developments on the continent, scholars, such as William Robertson Smith and Marcus Dods, challenged the church with their focus on historical criticism in biblical studies. Delineating the distinctive features of individual theologians as well as taking into account the broader landscape of nineteenth-century Scotland, the chapter attempts a fresh perspective on theological debates within the Victorian Free Church.

scholarly journals Anomalieë in die Gereformeerde standpunt oor die rol van die vrou in die kerk

2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
W.C. Vergeer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Status ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

Anomalies in the Reformed understanding of Scripture concerning the role of women in the church Theories of T.S. Kuhn on the progress of science are applied in this study of the changing position of women in the Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCSA). From this perspective, the resolutions and appendices of the 1988 Synod of the RCSA concerning the issue of women in office, are seen as a “governing paradigm” on the status and role of women in the church. This paradigm has, however, in recent times been increasingly challenged by a number of anomalies that can no longer be adequately explained. Anomalies in ecumenical, hermeneutic and exegetic levels, as well as anomalies in the application of Scripture are pointed out and discussed. These anomalies are seen as evidence of an era of revolution concerning the views on women in the RCSA. According to the theories of Kuhn, this revolution will continue until a new paradigm capable of explaining all the relevant phenomena, becomes prominent.

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