Deposition of Ministers in the Church of Scotland Under the Covenanters, 1638–1651

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Great Purges ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Revolution

The period 1638–1651 saw the first major purges of the ministry of the reformed kirk in Scotland since the Reformation. These were the forerunners of the later great purges associated with the Restoration (of monarchy and episcopacy) in the 1660s and with the Revolution and re-establishment of presbyterianism in 1688–1690. Before 1638, for all the conflicts within the kirk and in its relations with the state, deposition of ministers had been rare. J. K. Hewison's estimate of 49 deprivations or depositions in 1560–1638 is probably too low, but is of the right order. No detailed study of depositions under the covenanters has ever been made. Hewison calculated that 138 ministers were deprived in the whole of the period 1638–1660. but this figure is far too low. More recentestimates (again covering 1638–1660) of about 200, and of about 210 depositions come much nearer the truth, but they also are too low; there were more depositions than this even in 1638–1651. Considering the importance attached to the depositions after 1660 and after 1688 as indicating the acceptability to ministers of the religious changes then introduced and the extent of persecution, it is rather surprising that so little attention has been paid to the predecessors of these purges— though James Bulloch's two useful local studies of depositions do cover the whole of the seventeenth century.

The Oath of Supremacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Public Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Speech And Language ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

Chapter 1 explores the impact of the Oath of Supremacy, looking at two trials, those of Thomas More and Anne Boleyn, which resulted from the astonishing changes precipitated by Henry’s decision to divorce Catherine of Aragon, forcing English men and women to wonder how honest they could be about their loyalties and precipitating a crisis concerning the nature of speech and language in public culture. The chapter explores these two important trials in terms of the Reformation, showing how arguments about truth and lying became particularly significant as the King assumed the right to rule the Church as well as the state. Uncovering the truth of each trial may be less important than understanding that they are about truth and whose right it is to declare what is truth and what lies.

scholarly journals Mapping the Scottish Reformation

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Michelle Brock ◽  
Chris Langley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Revolution

This article introduces readers to Mapping the Scottish Reformation, a digital prosopography of ministers who served in the Church of Scotland between the Reformation Parliament of 1560 to the Revolution in 1689. By extracting data from thousands of pages of ecclesiastical court records held by the National Records of Scotland, Mapping the Scottish Reformation (MSR) tracks clerical careers, showing where they were educated, how they moved between parishes, their age, their marital status, and their disciplinary history. This early modern data drives a powerful mapping engine that will allow users to build their own searches to track clerical careers over time andspace. In short, Mapping the Scottish Reformation puts clerical careers – and, indeed, Scottish religious history more generally – quite literally on the map.

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

scholarly journals Bishop Nicholas French and the second Ormond peace, 1648-9

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.

scholarly journals David Meredith Seares Watson, 1886-1973

1974 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 482-504 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Gold Medal ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Electrolytic Refining ◽  
John Watson ◽  
Second Year ◽  
The Church

David Meredith Seares Watson was born on 18 June 1886 at Higher Broughton, near Salford in Lancashire. He was the son of David Watson and Mary Louisa Watson ( née Seares). David Watson was a chemist and metallurgist who was a pioneer of the electrolytic refining of copper and had been educated at Clewer House School and at the Royal School of Mines where he was a student of T. H. Huxley, A. C. Ramsay and the metallurgist Perry, and took one of the earliest D.Sc.s in London, receiving a gold medal on graduation. He joined the Broughton Copper Company and eventually became the Managing Director. David Watson was a descendant of a Scottish family which included such eminent men as his father John Watson, an Advocate of Edinburgh and once Lord Provost of that city; great-uncle David Watson who was Minister of Cupar, Fife, once Moderator of the Church of Scotland; his great-grandfather James Watson who was Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh; and a Professor of Civil and Natural History in the United Colleges, St Andrews. Ultimately the line came from Turriff, Banffshire. Mary Louisa Watson was the daughter of Samuel Seares, a stockbroker of London, who was reputed to have among his ancestors a former Governor of Rhode Island at the end of the seventeenth century who married a ‘Red Indian’ wife. D. M. S. obtained a pedigree of this Sears or Seares, as variably written. From this stock apparently descended the Sears of Sears, Roebuck. D. M. S. Watson had one sister, C. M. Watson, who read classics at Manchester University and achieved first class honours on graduation at the age of nineteen, obtaining 97% marks from the famous Gilbert Murray of Oxford. She died tragically young in her second year at Somerville College, Oxford, having won the Chancellor’s prize for Greek Prose. It is not surprising that the children of such forebears should both have been brilliant.

Lauener, Michael, Schutz der Kirche und Stabilität des Staates durch Absenz von religiöser ,Seichtigkeit': die religionspolitischen Anschauungen von Jeremias Gotthelf und Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel aus dem Geist der Versöhnung

2019 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-349
Author(s):  
Michael Lauener
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract Protection of the church and state stability through the absence of religious 'shallowness': views on religion-policy of Jeremias Gotthelf and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel out of a spirit of reconciliation. The article re-examines a thesis of Paul Baumgartner published in 1945: "Jeremias Gotthelf's, 'Zeitgeist and Bernergeist', A Study on Introduction and Interpretation", that if the Swiss writer and keen Hegel-opponent Jeremias Gotthelf had read any book of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of this would have received his recognition. Both Gotthelf and Hegel see the Reformation to be the cause of the emergence of a strong state. For Gotthelf, this marks the beginning of a process of strengthening the state at the expense of the church. Hegel, on the other hand, considers the modern state to be the reality of freedom, produced by the Christian 'religion of freedom' (Rph, §270 Z., p. 430). In contrast to Gotthelf, for whom only Christ can reconcile the state and religion, Hegel praises the French Revolution as "reconciliation of the divine with the world". For Gotthelf, the French Revolution was only a poor imitation of the process of spiritual and political liberation initiated by the Reformation, through which Christ reduced people to their original liberty. Nevertheless, both Gotthelf and Hegel want to protect the state and the church from falling apart, they reject organizational unity of state – religion – church in the sense of a theocracy, and demand the protection of church communities.

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