scholarly journals The Scottish Press, the Union and Civil Society after 1707: The Glasgow Advertiser and the General Assembly Test Act Debate of 1790

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Benchimol
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
First Century ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Extensive Coverage ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church

Constitutional debate in the twenty-first century Scottish media is often presented by reporters and commentators as a uniquely contemporary feature of the nation's civil society. The present article will explore how the Scottish press and eighteenth-century Scotland's highest profile civil society institution – the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland – interacted to facilitate constitutional debate around the legal, social and ecclesiastical meaning of the Union for Scots, some eighty years after the settlement of 1707. The article examines the Glasgow Advertiser's coverage of the 1790 General Assembly debate over a motion to repeal the Test Act (which stipulated a confessional qualification in the Church of England for Kirk members seeking to hold British office) to illustrate how the eighteenth-century Scottish newspaper press sought to uphold the constitutional interests of the nation through extensive coverage of a central institution of Scottish civil society.

The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith in its Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 265-278
Author(s):  
Whitney G. Gamble
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Church

In 1643, England’s Long Parliament called theologians from every county of England and Wales to Westminster Abbey to revise the Thirty-Nine Articles, the foundational documents of the Church of England. As the divines commenced their revisions, they encountered a theological movement which they believed represented the greatest threat to the cause of Reformation. Somewhat surprisingly, it was not Roman Catholicism or even Arminianism; it was antinomianism, a new and powerfully growing sect. Concern to combat antinomian tenets drove the assembly into complex theological debates for the first six weeks of its meetings. Parliament’s signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, however, brought an end to the assembly’s revisions. The Covenant instigated the writing of a statement of faith that would function as the confession for a theologically united Church of England, Scotland, and Wales. To supervise the execution of this plan, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland sent commissioners to the assembly to serve as consultative members. Although written in London primarily by English theologians, the Westminster Confession of Faith would be repudiated by Restoration officials. Its true impact came through its acceptance and implementation by the Church of Scotland.

The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740) Father of Nonsubscription in Ireland and Defender of Religious Liberty

1985 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Barlow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The British theological world was stirred at the beginning of the eighteenth century by what the learned and staunchly orthodox Presbyterian historian James Seaton Reid has called “latitudinarian notions on the inferiority of dogmatic belief and the nature of religious liberty.” In the 1690s John Locke had published his Reasonableness of Christianity and Letters on Toleration, followed by John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. In 1710 “Honest Will” Whitson, Sir Isaac Newton's successor as Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from the University for embracing Arian views. His departure was accompanied by rumors—long since substantiated—about his great predecessor's heterodox theology. Traditional theologians were shocked next by the appearance of Dr. Samuel Clark's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity which resulted in the author's arraignment before Convocation of the Church of England in 1714. The very same year John Simson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, was first tried before the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for teaching Arian and Pelagian errors. In 1729, after three more trials, Simson was suspended from his professorship for denying the numerical oneness of the Trinity. Fierce doctrinal contentions also began to occupy English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, erupting during the famous Salters’ Hall meeting early in 1719.

Mission-shaped Methodism and Fresh Expressions

Holiness ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Joanne Cox-Darling
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
First Century ◽  
Holiness Movement ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Church

AbstractThe Mission-Shaped Church report by the Church of England prompted the Methodist Church and the Church of England in the UK to respond to the dislocation being felt between the inherited model of church and the missiological challenges of the twenty-first century. The most significant ecumenical development arising from the report was the formation of the Fresh Expressions initiative, whose sole task was to release leaders and communities to found churches for the ‘unchurched’.Examples of Anglican fresh expressions are much researched, but Methodist contributions less so. This essay argues that Methodist people, as people of a holiness movement of mission and ministry, have much to offer to the current ecclesial debate. There is a need for fresh expressions to be denominationally distinctive before they can be distilled into something new.

Early Enlightenment Shifts

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Christian Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Rational Debate ◽  
Short Time Span ◽  
The Status ◽  
Doctrine Of The Church ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the tensions concerning doctrinal matters between several Committees for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland and the three Divinity professors John Simson (1667–1740), Archibald Campbell (1691–1756), and William Leechman (1706–85). It analyses how the themes of innovation, toleration, and rational debate marked theological debates in the early stages of the Scottish Enlightenment. The cases of Simson, Campbell, and Leechman exemplify how in a relatively short time span, the General Assembly and the Kirk started dealing with doctrinal debates concerning orthodoxy and heresy in a more moderate manner, and how the status of the Confession of Faith was subject to discussion, even if there were no proper debates on subscription in eighteenth-century Scotland.

Theology in the Church of England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Young
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church

The dismissive characterization of Anglican divinity between 1688 and 1800 as defensive and rationalistic, made by Mark Pattison and Leslie Stephen, has proved more enduring than most other aspects of a Victorian critique of the eighteenth-century Church of England. By directly addressing the analytical narratives offered by Pattison and Stephen, this chapter offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of this neglected period in the history of English theology. The chapter explores the many contributions to patristic study, ecclesiastical history, and doctrinal controversy made by theologians with a once deservedly international reputation: William Cave, Richard Bentley, William Law, William Warburton, Joseph Butler, George Berkeley, and William Paley were vitalizing influences on Anglican theology, all of whom were systematically depreciated by their agnostic Victorian successors. This chapter offers a revisionist account of the many achievements in eighteenth-century Anglican divinity.

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.

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