Scottish religion in the nineteenth century includes all forms of religious organisation and belief in Scotland in the 19th century. This period saw a reaction to the population growth and urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution that had undermined traditional parochial structures and religious loyalties. The established Church of Scotland reacted with a programme of church building from the 1820s. Beginning in 1834 the "Ten Years' Conflict" ended in a schism from the established Church of Scotland led by Dr Thomas Chalmers known as the Great Disruption of 1843. Roughly a third of the clergy, mainly from the North and Highlands, formed the separate Free Church of Scotland. The evangelical Free Church and other secessionist churches grew rapidly in the Highlands and Islands and urban centres. There were further schisms and divisions, particularly between those who attempted to maintain the principles of Calvinism and those that took a more personal and flexible view of salvation. However, there were also mergers that cumulated in the creation of a United Free Church in 1900 that incorporated most of the secessionist churches.
Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the influx of large numbers of Irish immigrants led to an expansion of Catholicism, with the restoration of the Church hierarchy in 1878. Episcopalianism also revived in the nineteenth century with the Episcopal Church in Scotland being organised as an autonomous body in communion with the Church of England in 1804. Other voluntary denominations included Baptists, Congregationalists and Methodists, which had entered the country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, expanded in the nineteenth century and played a major part in religious and educational life, while the established church lost its monopoly over schooling and poor relief. The attempt to deal with the social problems of the growing working classes led to the rapid expansion of temperance societies and other religious organisations such as the Orange Order and Freemasonry. There were also missions at home to the Highlands and Islands and expanding urban centres and abroad, particularly to Africa, following the example of David Livingstone, who became a national icon.
Church of Scotland
The rapid population expansion in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, particularly in the major urban centres, overtook the system of parishes on which the established church depended, leaving large numbers of "unchurched" workers, who were estranged from organised religion. The Kirk began to concern itself with providing churches in the new towns and relatively thinly supplied Highlands, establishing a church extension committee in 1828. Chaired by Thomas Chalmers, by the early 1840s it had added 222 churches, largely through public subscription.C. Brooks, "Introduction", in C. Brooks, ed., The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), , pp. 17–18. The Church was increasingly divided between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party. While Evangelicals emphasised the authority of the Bible and the traditions and historical documents of the kirk, the Moderates, who had dominated the General Assembly of the Church since the mid-eighteenth century, tended to stress intellectualism in theology, the established hierarchy of the kirk and attempted to raise the social status of the clergy. The major issue was the patronage of landholders and heritors over appointments to the ministry. Chalmers began as a Moderate, but increasingly became an Evangelical, emerging as the leading figure in the movement.J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), , pp. 303-4.
Great Disruption
After prolonged years of struggle, in 1834 the Evangelicals gained control of the General Assembly and passed the Veto Act, which allowed congregations to reject unwanted "intrusive" presentations to livings by patrons and the Chapels Act, which put the ministers of Chapels of Ease on an equal footing with ordinary parish ministers. The following "Ten Years' Conflict" of legal and political wrangling ended in defeat for the non-intrusionists in the civil courts, reaching the Court of Session and then finally the House of Lords in 1839, which declared the acts unconstitutional. In 1842 Evangelicals presented to the General Assembly a Claim, Declaration and Protest anent the Encroachments of the Court of Session, known as the Claim of Right, that questioned the validity of civil jurisdiction over the church. When the Claim of Right was rejected by the General Assembly the result was a schism from the church by some of the non-intrusionists led by Thomas Chalmers, known as the Great Disruption of 1843.A. Roger, The Courts, The Church, and The Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of 1843 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), , pp. 27-8.
Some 454, roughly a third, of the 1,195 clergy of the established church, mainly from the North and Highlands, formed the separate Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church was more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly in the Highlands and Islands, appealing much more strongly than did the established church,G. Robb, "Popular Religion and the Christianisation of the Scottish Highlands in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries", Journal of Religious History, 1990, 16(1), pp. 18-34. and where the groundwork had been laid by the Evangelical Revival that had begun in the eighteenth century and had entered a second wave, known as the Second Great Awakening, with events like the Kilsyth Revival in 1839.
Until the Disruption the Church of Scotland had been seen as the religious expression of national identity and the guardian of Scotland's morals. It had considerable control over moral discipline, schools and the poor law system, but after 1843 it was a minority church, with reduced moral authority and control of the poor and education.S. J. Brown, "The Disruption" in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 170-2. The established church took time to recover, but embarked on a programme of church building to rival the Free Church, increasing its number of parishes from 924 in 1843 to 1,437 by 1909.
In 1860 there was a well publicized matter of charges against Reverend John MacMillan of Cardross which he refuted and numerously appealed which became known as the Cardross Case.
Free Church
At the Disruption the established Church kept all the properties, buildings and endowments and Free Church ministers led services in the open air, barns, boats and one disused public house, sometimes having temporary use of existing dissenting meeting houses.M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London: Random House, 1991), , p. 401. However, with Chalmer's skills in financial organisation they created a voluntary fund of over £400,000 to build 700 new churches by his death in 1847 and 400 manses soon followed. An equal or larger amount was expended on the building of 500 parochial schools, and New College in Edinburgh for training clergy. After the passing of the Education Act of 1872, most of these schools were voluntarily transferred to the newly established public school-boards.J. Brown Stewart, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), .T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation, 1700-2000 (London: Penguin Books, 2001), , pp. 91-100.
Chalmers's ideas shaped the breakaway group. He stressed a social vision that revived and preserved Scotland's communal traditions at a time of strain on the social fabric of the country. Chalmers's idealized small egalitarian, kirk-based, self-contained communities that recognized the individuality of their members and the need for cooperation. That vision also affected the mainstream Presbyterian churches, and by the 1870s it had been assimilated by the established Church of Scotland. Chalmers's ideals demonstrated that the church was concerned with the problems of urban society, and they represented a real attempt to overcome the social fragmentation that took place in industrial towns and cities.S. Mechie, The Church and Scottish Social Development, 1780–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960).
In the late nineteenth century, the major debates were between fundamentalist Calvinists and theological liberals, who rejected a literal interpretation of the Bible.J. T. Koch, Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia, Volumes 1-5 (London: ABC-CLIO, 2006), , pp. 416-7. This resulted in a further split in the Free Church, sometimes called the Second Disruption, as the rigid Calvinists broke away to form the Free Presbyterian Church in 1893.A. Roger, The Courts, The Church, and The Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of 1843 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), , p. 98.
Secession churches
In the eighteenth century divisions within the Church of Scotland had led to the creation of the Associate Presbytery and Presbytery of Relief. The Associate Presbytery then split over the Burgess oath imposed after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, with one faction forming the separate General Associate Synod.M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London: Random House, 1991), , p. 293. Between 1799 and 1806 the Old and New Light controversy, with the "Old Lichts" following closely the principles of the Covenanters, while the "New Lichts" were more focused on personal salvation,M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London: Random House, 1991), , p. 400. split both the Associate and General Associate Presbyteries. This paved the way for a form of reunification, as both the New Licht factions joined in 1820 to form the United Secession Church, which claimed to have 361 congregations and 261,000 followers at its inception. The secession churches had made headway in recruitment, and by 1830 30 percent of the Scottish population were members. They made particular advances in the major urban centres. In Glasgow in 1835-36 40 per cent of the population were members and in Edinburgh and it was 42 per cent.M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London: Random House, 1991), , pp. 279-81.
Reunions In 1847 the United Secession Church was joined by the Presbytery of Relief to form the United Presbyterian Church. According to the religious census of 1851 it had 518 congregations and one in five of all churchgoers in Scotland. The Reformed Presbyterian Church had been established in 1743 from the remaining Cameronian congregations, which had refused to accept the Restoration of Episcopalianism in 1660 and had not re-entered the Church of Scotland when it was established on a Presbyterian basis in 1690. All but a remnant joined the Free Church in 1876.J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), , pp. 298-9. The Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church united in 1900 to form the United Free Church. A small section of the Free Church, largely confined to the Highlands, rejected the union and continued independently under the name of the Free Church.
Catholicism