Scottish Episcopal Church
The Scottish Episcopal Church is a Christian denomination in Scotland. Scotland's third largest church, the Scottish Episcopal Church has 275 local congregations. It is also an ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion.
A continuation of the episcopalian "Church of Scotland" as intended by James VI, and as it was from the Restoration of Charles II to the re-establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland following the Glorious Revolution, it recognises the archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England as president of the Anglican Instruments of Communion, but without jurisdiction in Scotland per se. Additionally, while the British monarch holds the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England, in Scotland the monarch maintains private links to both the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church, though in Scotland they attend and are a member of the former. The church is led by a Primus, who is elected from the seven Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church from among their number to serve as a primus inter pares or ‘first among equals’ as the Senior Bishop. The current primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church is Mark Strange, elected in 2017.
In terms of official membership, Episcopalians constitute under 1 per cent of the population of Scotland, making them considerably smaller than the Church of Scotland or the Catholic Church in Scotland. In 2011, 0.9% of the population, or 103,017 people, identified as Anglicans or Episcopalians. In the 2022 census, 72,359 people identified as Anglicans or Episcopalians in Scotland. The membership of the church in 2024 was 22,990, of which 16,124 were communicant members. The attendance at Sunday worship, as counted on Sunday next before Advent was 8,710. This compares with the figures from six years previously, in 2017, where church membership had been 30,909, of whom 22,073 were communicant members, and there was a Sunday worship attendance of 12,149.
Official name
The Scottish Episcopal Church was previously called the Protestant Episcopal Church in Scotland, simplified at the General Synod of 1838 to Episcopal Church in Scotland.Although not incorporated until 1712, the Scottish Episcopal Church traces its origins including but extending beyond the Reformation and sees itself in continuity with the church established by Ninian, Columba, Kentigern, and other Celtic saints. The Church of Scotland and the Catholic church claim the same continuity.
The church is sometimes pejoratively referred to in Scotland as the "English Kirk", but this can cause offence. This is probably in part due to the fact that it is, nonetheless, a union of the non-juring Episcopalians with the "qualified congregations" who worshipped according to the liturgy of the Church of England. It is also sometimes known as the "Laird's Kirk" because of its historical associations with the landed aristocracy of Scotland whose membership of the church exceeded that of other denominations. In the mid-1800s it was recorded that three quarters of the "landed proprietors of Scotland" were Episcopalians.
History
Origins of Christianity in Scotland
The fifth-century Saint Ninian conducted the first Christian mission to what is now southern Scotland.In 563 AD, Saint Columba travelled to Scotland with twelve companions, where according to legend he first landed at the southern tip of the Kintyre peninsula, near Southend. However, being still in sight of his native land he moved further north along the west coast of Scotland. He was granted land on the island of Iona off the Isle of Mull which became the centre of his evangelising mission to the Picts. However, there is a sense in which he did not leave his native people, as the Irish Gaels had been colonising the west coast of Scotland for some time.
The Scottish Catholic Church would continue to grow in the centuries that followed, and in the 11th century Saint Margaret of Scotland strengthened the church's ties with the Holy See, as did successive monarchs such as Margaret's son, David, who invited several religious orders to establish monasteries.
Reformation
The Scottish Reformation was formalised in 1560, when the Church of Scotland broke with the Church of Rome during a process of Protestant reform led, among others, by John Knox. It reformed its doctrines and government, drawing on the principles of John Calvin which Knox had been exposed to while living in Switzerland. In 1560, the Scottish Parliament abolished papal jurisdiction and approved Calvin's Confession of Faith, but did not accept many of the principles laid out in Knox's First Book of Discipline, which argued, among other things, that all of the assets of the old church should pass to the new. The 1560 Reformation Settlement was not ratified by the crown for some years, and the question of church government also remained largely unresolved. In 1572 the acts of 1560 were finally approved by the young James VI, but under pressure from many of the nobles the Concordat of Leith also allowed the crown to appoint bishops with the church's approval. John Knox himself had no clear views on the office of bishop, preferring to see them renamed as "superintendents"; but in response to the new Concordat a Presbyterian party emerged headed by Andrew Melville, the author of the Second Book of Discipline.The Scottish Episcopal Church began as a distinct church in 1582, when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government and adopted a presbyterian government by elders as well as reformed theology. Scottish monarchs made repeated efforts to introduce bishops and two ecclesiastical traditions competed.
Episcopal government imposed by the Stuarts
In 1584, James VI of Scotland had the Parliament of Scotland pass the Black Acts, appointing two bishops and administering the Church of Scotland under direct royal control. This met vigorous opposition and he was forced to concede that the General Assembly should continue to run the church. Calvinists who disliked the more ceremonious style of liturgy were opposed by an Episcopalian faction. After ascending to the English throne in 1603 James stopped the General Assembly from meeting, increased the number of Scottish bishops and in 1618 held a General Assembly in Perth; this gathering adopted Five Articles of Episcopalian practices. Many Scottish church leaders, and their congregations, responded to the Five Articles with boycotts and disdain.James's son Charles I was crowned in Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, in 1633 with full Anglican rites. Subsequently, in 1637, Charles attempted to introduce a Scottish version of the Book of Common Prayer, written by a group of Scottish prelates, most notably the Archbishop of St Andrews, John Spottiswoode, and the Bishop of Ross, John Maxwell, and edited for printing by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud; it was a combination of Knox's Book of Common Order, which was in use before 1637, and English liturgy in hopes of further unifying the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. When the revised Book of Common Prayer was used for the first time during worship on 23 July 1637 in St Giles' Edinburgh, it sparked a riot which was so representative of the strength of popular feeling in Scotland that it indirectly precipitated the Bishops' Wars and this successful challenge of royal authority helped encourage many unhappy Irish Catholics into partaking in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the already increasingly uncooperative English Parliament into likewise declaring war on the king in the English Civil War. As a result of the weakness of the king, Presbyterian Covenanters were able to become the de facto government in Scotland until disagreement between the Scottish and English Parliaments over how to run Britain in terms of both civil and religious governance after the king was defeated led to another war and Scotland's conquest by the Covenanters' erstwhile allies the English Parliament's New Model Army.
Following the Restoration of the monarch in 1660, the government of Charles II reimposed episcopacy, and required all clergymen to swear allegiance to the king and bishops and renounce the Covenants, or be prevented from preaching in church. Up to a third, at least 27%, of the ministry refused, mostly in the south-west of Scotland, and numerous ministers also took to preaching in the open fields in conventicles across the south of Scotland, often attracting thousands of worshippers. This was forcibly repressed by the government, in actions later dubbed The Killing Time. The conflict continued under King James VII of Scotland until the Glorious Revolution led to his removal from power.
With the 1689 refusal of the Scottish bishops to swear allegiance to William of Orange whilst James VII lived and had not abdicated, the Presbyterian polity was finally re-established in the Church of Scotland. However, the Confession of Faith Ratification Act 1690 allowed Episcopalian incumbents, upon taking the Oath of Allegiance, to retain their benefices, though excluding them from any share in the government of the Church of Scotland without a further declaration of Presbyterian principles. Many "non-jurors" also succeeded for a time in retaining the use of the parish churches.
The excluded Scottish bishops were slow to organise the Episcopalian remnant under a jurisdiction independent of the state, regarding the then arrangements as provisional, and looking forward to a reconstituted national Episcopal Church under a sovereign they regarded as legitimate. A few prelates, known as college bishops, were consecrated without sees, to preserve the succession rather than to exercise a defined authority. At length the hopelessness of the Stuart cause and the growth of congregations outside the establishment forced the bishops to dissociate canonical jurisdiction from royal prerogative and to reconstitute for themselves a territorial episcopate.
The Scottish Book of Common Prayer came into general use at start of the reign of William and Mary. The Scottish Communion Office, compiled by the non-jurors in accordance with primitive models, has had a varying co-ordinate authority, and the modifications of the English liturgy that would be adopted by the American Church were mainly determined by its influence.
Among the clergy of post-Revolution days the most eminent are Bishop John Sage, a well-known patristic scholar; Bishop Rattray, liturgiologist; John Skinner, of Longside, author of Tullochgorum; Bishop Gleig, editor of the 3rd edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; Dean Ramsay, author of Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character; Bishop A. P. Forbes; G. H. Forbes, liturgiologist; and Bishop Charles Wordsworth. Bishop James Sharp, a former moderate Covenanter and Resolutioner, was appointed Archbishop of St Andrews and primate of Scotland in 1661. He was reviled by Covenanters, and his murder in 1679 led to an escalation of hostilities.