Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 245,000 members in 2024 and 259,200 members in 2023. While membership in the church has declined significantly in recent decades, the government Scottish Household Survey concluded that 20% of the Scottish population, or over one million people, identified the Church of Scotland as their religious identity in 2019.
In the 2022 census, 20.4% of the Scottish population, or 1,108,796 adherents, identified the Church of Scotland as their religious identity. The Church of Scotland's governing system is presbyterian in its approach; therefore, no one individual or group within the church has more or less influence over church matters. There is no one person who acts as the head of faith, as the church believes that role is the "Lord God's". As a proper noun, the Kirk is an informal name for the Church of Scotland used in the media and by the church itself.
The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church and established itself as a church in the Reformed tradition. The Presbyterian tradition in ecclesiology believe that God invited the church's adherents to worship Jesus, with church elders collectively answerable for correct practice and discipline.
The Church of Scotland celebrates two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, as well as five other ordinances, such as Confirmation and Matrimony. The church adheres to the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith and is a member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The annual meeting of the church's general assembly is chaired by the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
History
Early traces
According to traditional Scottish historiography, the first Christians in Scotland were converted by Saint Ninian around 400 AD. Early Christian missionaries included Saint Columba, who founded a mission at Iona two centuries later. In 1192, the Papal bull Cum universi separated the Scottish church from the Archbishopric of York, creating an independent national church with no higher authority except the Pope.Establishment and John Knox
The Church of Scotland, in its current form, traces its origins to the Scottish Reformation of 1560. At that point, many in the then church in Scotland broke with Rome in 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 Geneva, Switzerland. An assembly of some nobles, lairds, and burgesses, as well as several churchmen, claiming in defiance of the Queen to be a Scottish Parliament, abolished papal jurisdiction and approved the Scots Confession, 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, as Mary I, a Catholic, refused to do so, and the question of church government also remained unresolved. In 1572, the acts of 1560 were finally approved by the young James VI, but 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' which is a translation of the Greek; but in response to the new Concordat, a Presbyterian party emerged headed by Andrew Melville, the author of the Second Book of Discipline.Melville and his supporters enjoyed some temporary successes—most notably in the Golden Act of 1592, which gave parliamentary approval to Presbyterian courts. James VI, however, believed that presbyterianism was incompatible with monarchy, declaring "No bishop, no king". By skillful manipulation of both church and state, he steadily reintroduced parliamentary and then diocesan episcopacy; this approximately mirrored the structure of the Church of England, of which James had become Supreme Governor when he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. By the time he died in 1625, the Church of Scotland had a full panel of bishops and archbishops. General Assemblies met only at times and places approved by the Crown.
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
inherited a settlement in Scotland based on a balanced compromise between Calvinist doctrine and episcopal polity. Lacking his father's political judgment, he began to upset this by moving into more dangerous areas. Disapproving of the 'plainness' of the Scottish service, he, together with his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, sought to introduce the kind of liturgical practice in use in England. The centrepiece of this new strategy was the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, a slightly modified version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although a panel of Scottish bishops devised this, Charles's insistence that it be drawn up secretly and adopted sight unseen led to widespread discontent. When the Prayer Book was finally introduced at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh in mid-1637, it caused an outbreak of rioting, which, starting with Jenny Geddes, spread across Scotland. In early 1638, the National Covenant was signed by large numbers of Scots, protesting the introduction of the Prayer Book and other liturgical innovations that had not first been tested and approved by free Parliaments and General Assemblies of the Church. In November 1638, the General Assembly in Glasgow, the first to meet for twenty years, not only declared the Prayer Book unlawful but went on to abolish the office of bishop itself. The Church of Scotland was then established on a Presbyterian basis. Charles' attempt to resist these developments led to the Bishops' Wars. In the ensuing civil wars, the Scots Covenanters at one point made common cause with the English parliamentarians—resulting in the Westminster Confession of Faith being agreed by both. This document remains the subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland but was replaced in England after the Restoration.The Restoration
Episcopacy was reintroduced to Scotland after the Restoration, which caused considerable discontent, especially in the country's southwest, where the Presbyterian tradition was strongest. The modern situation largely dates from 1690, when after the Glorious Revolution, the majority of Scottish bishops were non-jurors; that is, they believed they could not swear allegiance to William III of England and Mary II of England while James VII lived. To reduce their influence, the Scots Parliament guaranteed Presbyterian governance of the church by law, excluding what became the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of the remaining Covenanters disagreed with the Restoration Settlement on various political and theological grounds, most notably because the Settlement did not acknowledge the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant, and so did not join the Church of Scotland, instead forming the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1690.Independence of the church
Controversy still surrounded the relationship between the Church of Scotland's independence and the civil law of Scotland. The interference of civil courts with church decisions, particularly over the appointment of ministers, following the Church Patronage Act 1711, which gave landowners, or patrons, the right to appoint ministers to vacant pulpits, would lead to several splits. This began with the secession of 1733 and culminated in the Disruption of 1843 when a large portion of the church broke away to form the Free Church of Scotland. The seceding groups tended to divide and reunite among themselves—leading to a proliferation of Presbyterian denominations in Scotland, as is demonstrated in the timeline above.The UK Parliament passed the Church of Scotland Act 1921, finally recognising the complete independence of the church in matters spiritual, and as a result of this, and passage of the Church of Scotland Act 1925, the church was able to unite with the United Free Church of Scotland in 1929. The United Free Church of Scotland was itself the product of the union of the former United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the majority of the Free Church of Scotland in 1900. The 1929 assembly of church leaders to effect the Union of that year met at Industrial Hall on Annandale Street in north Edinburgh.
Some independent Scottish Presbyterian denominations still remain. These include the Free Church of Scotland—sometimes given the epithet The Wee Frees—, the United Free Church of Scotland, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Associated Presbyterian Churches and the Free Church of Scotland . The motto of the Church of Scotland is nec tamen consumebatur —"Yet it was not consumed", an allusion to Exodus 3:2 and the Burning Bush.
Recent history
In 2023, the Church of Scotland published a report which detailed its connections to the Atlantic slave trade. It noted that from 1707 to the 1830s, Church of Scotland ministers and elders inherited wealth from familial relatives which were made on West Indian slave plantations and numerous church buildings contain memorials to and accepted donations from individuals who profited from slavery. The report also noted that enslaved Black people were used to build Church of Scotland churches in the West Indies, and the church distributed money made from slavery to Scottish parishes to fund philanthropic efforts that assisted Scotland's poor. It ended by recommending to the General Assembly that "a statement of acknowledgment and apology should be brought to a future General Assembly and a dedicated page about the Church’s connections to the slave trade should be created for its website."In 2025, Lady Elish Angiolini became the first practising Roman Catholic to be appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the British Monarch's representative to the Assembly.