the scottish episcopal church

A New History, by gavin white

Preface

1
Tullochgorum

2
Eighteenth Century

3
Seabury

4
Worship

5
Edinburgh

6
Oxford Movement

7
Glasgow

8
Publications

9
Church or Province

10
'English Episcopal'

11
Schools

12
Social Service

13
Synods and Councils

14
Clergy Training

15
A Small Dog Barking

16
As Others See Us

17
Women

18
Society

19
Second World War and After

Selected bibliography

Links

When Lord Macaulay noted that the history of a people was in its newspapers, he may not have been thinking of those of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Yet these are the true record of that church, as more formal pronouncements are not. It was impossible for any editor to be over particular. Editors of church periodicals are forever scraping for copy, and when the church was small, and the magazines weekly, the editors had to trawl the deeper ranges of the Episcopalian sub-conscious to have anything in their nets at all. The results were astounding. No other church paper in Britain, with the possible exception of the Catholic Herald, which was only one of three Roman Catholic weeklies in England, expressed itself with such frankness.

To take one example, in the Scottish Chronicle of 1925 there was concern about over-population in Britain. To meet this threat it was suggested that marriage before the age of twenty-five should be forbidden, a comparatively easy thing to do, and celibacy should be encouraged amongst the young, while the married should have fewer children by self-control, and there should be more emigration. "The colonies should be willing to absorb a certain percentage of our aged and infirm along with the robust and strong." In our day there is unease because care of the old has been removed from the National Health Service, but nobody has suggested shipping them out to Australia. (1)

Admittedly there were occasional complaints at this uninhibited style; in 1934 a particularly mindless attack on the views of Dean Inge of St.Paul's brought forth a letter from Dr.H.T.J.Waring of Christ Church, Morningside, warning that such items "will do more to deepen the impression already too prevalent in the south that the Scottish Episcopal Church is a self-satisfied, small-minded, and obscurantist sect". But it is doubtful if many in the Church of England thought about the Scottish Episcopal Church at all. Yet it is surprising that the bishops and others in authority did not move more often to damp down the fevers in the church press. Possibly they felt like the Duke of Wellington who did not want his soldiers to pillage cities, but realised he had to accept the conventions of warfare and did not want them to lose the edge of their zeal. (2)

On the other hand, the church press of the nineteenth century was not as violent as that of the twentieth; it was stodgy and filled with mock-learning, and delighted in the language employed, or thought to be employed, by English undergraduates. Only after 1890 did it really gain a momentum of its own. In fact the earlier periodicals were crushingly respectable. The first of these was probably Stephen's Ecclesiastical Journal which ran from 1833 until 1837, and of which nothing at all would have been known had not old copies been found at St.Ninian's in Perth. Then followed the Scottish Magazine and Churchman's Review between 1848 and 1854, which included a life of Bishop Torry and an article on the controversial election of Bishop Wordsworth. After this came the Scottish Ecclesiastical Journal which was largely planned by Wordsworth, about whose election nothing was even hinted. It was edited by Dr.Gordon of Glasgow and Mr.Walker of Bowland, both good scholars, so that the magazine was of excellent quality but limited appeal. That seems to have lasted from 1851 until 1863, and was replaced by The Scottish Miscellany of which no copies appear to have survived. It was replaced in turn by the Scottish Guardian which began as a monthly in 1864, became a weekly in 1872 and was run from St.George's, Edinburgh, first by Dean John Skinner Wilson, the key man in all things in the church, then by G.Godfrey Cunningham until 1892, and by H. Boswell until it ended in 1904, after being many years in Dundee. (3)

But there were other periodicals. G.H.Forbes wrote and printed various magazines from his "Pitsligo Press" at Burntisland. His Gospel Messenger appeared from 1853 until 1858, and the Panoply, which was mainly liturgical and entirely arcane, at odd intervals between 1852 and 1875. The Scottish Witness was an insert for parish magazines which may only have existed briefly. The Scottish Church Review was a monthly journal of Christian thought founded in 1884 and edited by Dr.Wiseman who became Dean of Aberdeen. It was very good, perhaps too good, and after twenty-four issues ended for lack of readers. Much of this activity centred on the St.Giles Printing Company set up by St.Columba's, Edinburgh, for which Mr.Boswell came from England and worked on various projects till his death in a street accident in 1906. Canon Wakeham was also a power in this work, and began the Year Book, while the Buchan Churchman was largely the work of Dean Mackay, and the Scottish Standard Bearer was founded in 1890 by the Rev.A.Gray Maitland of St.Columba's, Crieff as a popular magazine for the laity. Dean Harper of St.Andrews who edited the Year Book said that each of these magazines was regarded as not being as good as it had been but, like Punch, "It never was." (4)

To replace the Scottish Guardian the publisher of a Dumfries newspaper who was "a Northern Churchman, an old-fashioned Scottish Episcopalian", R.G.Mann, turned the Glasgow and Galloway Gazette into the Scottish Chronicle which was at first printed at Dumfries, then at Selkirk, and during much of the time edited at Peterhead. Mann was also the originator, with the Rev.W.H.Jenkins, of the Million Shilling Fund for Glasgow extension, which he proposed at a great meeting in the St.Andrew Halls in 1913. From 1905 until 1907 the Scottish Chronicle was edited by Dr.Low of Largs, "balanced and conservative in Churchmanship", "But the Canon had no flair for journalism in the modern sense, and so the paper was a little heavy and occasionally dull." He was followed by John Wilkinson, who moved to Peterhead in 1908, and who "could write about everything under the sun" and did so. Then John Eric Macrae of Invergowrie filled in until H.W.Hall of Galashiels, later Bishop of Aberdeen, took over. Then Mann decided he could not continue the magazine at a loss, as he had done for most of his life, and it closed in 1930. It was replaced by an almost identical weekly with the old name of Scottish Guardian which ran until 1949 when it too became insolvent and folded. Then came the monthly Scottish Sentinel followed by a long gap before modern publications. Those modern publications have been official, and have shown it. They have been full of reports of meetings which are "exciting", and their main purpose has been to enable the leaders to lead the followers. The older papers were proud to be independent and they allowed the followers to speak to each other. If the bishops were given a place, it was rather like a clergyman arriving at the start of a children's party which would only get lively when he had gone. (5)

Canon Wilkinson was extraordinary. Born in Port Glasgow, he became the assistant editor of the Greenock Telegraph, was ordained in 1902 for Ardchattan in Argyll, went in 1904 to the already fading St.Andrew's-by-the-Green of Glasgow, and then in 1908 to the whaling town of Peterhead in Buchan. He edited the Scottish Chronicle for no less than twenty-two years, sending his copy each week to the printers in Selkirk, and even after his retirement from St.Peter's, Peterhead, in 1922, and from his editorship in 1926, and after his move to Ballater in 1929, he wrote as "Viator" in the Scottish Guardian. And in his Peterhead days he even edited the local weekly, the Buchan Observer, in which his "Viator" column also appeared, though its comments on social and political matters were never as forceful as they were in the Scottish Chronicle. For Wilkinson knew his readership. In a 1922 tribute it was said that "he has been the leader of thought in Peterhead", but one of the most fascinating aspects of the Buchan Observer was the interplay between Wilkinson's conservativism and the agnostic skepticism of the Rector of Peterhead Academy, a scientist, whose views sometimes clashed with those of his editor on the same page. And, as if he did not have enough to do, Wilkinson wrote an interesting and thoughtful Church History of Buchan, published in 1914. But the last word on Wilkinson must go to the Aberdeen Free Press, "To him the variegated warp and woof of human life presents itself in all the vast diversity of the patterned web, and he regards it not as a thing of shreds and patches, but as the great garment by which we are enabled in part to see the design of the Master Weaver." (6)

So much for the periodicals, but there was also a stream of books, mainly historical, and mainly written by clergy of the historically-minded North-East. John Skinner of Linshart, old "Tullochgorum", not only published poetry in Latin and English, but An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland in 1788, and his Theological Works in 1809. Dr.George Grub was Professor of Law at Aberdeen from 1881, having previously lectured at Marischal College. He edited the Spalding Society volumes, and produced his four-volume Ecclesiastical History of Scotland in 1861. Grub was an old-fashioned High Churchman, like most Scottish Episcopalians of his day, but his writings were noted for scholarship joined to literary talent. William Stephen was rector of St.Augustine's, Dumbarton, when he produced his two-volume History of the Scottish Church in 1894. William Walker was clergyman at Monymusk and Dean of Aberdeen until 1907; his biographies of bishops and others are outstanding. His Life and Times of the Rev.John Skinner, M.A., of Linshart....is probably his finest work, but he also published a life of Bishop Jolly, a life of Bishop Gleig, a life of the younger John Skinner, and a volume covering Bishop Russell of Glasgow, Bishop Terrot of Edinburgh, and Dr. Grub. It is impossible for any discerning reader to dislike Walker; his kindliness and his good sense were only equalled by his literary talent. Remarkably, all these books appeared in a short period of time, two in 1878, others shortly after, and the last in 1893. (7)

Of lesser men, before we proceed to women, whether greater or lesser, J.B.Craven of Orkney wrote on church history and also, untypically, on the esoteric, J.P.Lawson published a history in 1843, Arthur Ranken of Deer wrote in the 1880s, and John Hampton Shepherd and his son of the same name produced a trickle of articles and books through the end of the last century and well into this. The older Shepherd was rector of St.Mary Magdalene's, Dundee, from 1908 until 1922, "bringing order out of chaos". Of the others, Dr.Low of Largs wrote reminiscences of Aberdeenshire, and W.G.S.Snow was a noted chronicler, while Herbert McNaught, an English clergyman who was assistant editor of the Scottish Guardian through most of the 1930s, wrote much on early Scottish clergy, and F.Goldie wrote a Short History of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. But Dean G.T.S.Farquhar had a special talent which was seen in his History of the Lay Claims published in 1907; that this had already appeared in subsequent issues of the Scottish Chronicle may account for the printed volume only selling thirty copies. The son of a clergyman at Forfar, he went to Glenalmond then Oxford where he suffered a two-year's illness, and, "When he came back to Oxford the animal vitality of his boyhood had left him, and he was just the quiet, unassuming person whom some of you have known these forty years and more", a friend wrote at his death in 1927. Gordon Donaldson, an Edinburgh professor, was a special case; he was a convert to Episcopalianism and in learning he outclassed all the others put together, but he wrote from outside the mainstream and not primarily for his fellow churchmen. And yet all of these writers were historians. None of them, except old Tullochgorum, wrote anything else. None of them seemed to think, and no Episcopalian seemed to think, that there was anything to write, and presumably anything to read, except history. The claims of the Episcopal Church were in history, and that was that. Nobody quite went as far as to suggest that theological studies were useless or dangerous, but that impression was given. But before we condemn Scottish Episcopalians for only writing history, we should remember that an equivalent number of clergy in England would have published nothing but a pamphlet on brass-rubbing. (8)

But now the women. There were three of them, Agnes Muir Mackenzie, Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson, and Marion Lochhead. And each of them understood that there is pattern to history, and it is not just an array of facts. But each, in her own way, got hold of a pattern which was wrong. Agnes Muir Mackenzie was the most noted figure of the three. Born in Stornoway, she was the daughter of a doctor who educated her himself, and though she went on to Aberdeen University where she was a distinguished student she was always something of an auto-didact, with the certainty of the self-taught. Throughout her life she wrote novels as well as history, though, as her obituary in The Times of 1955 remarked, as a novelist "her pages lacked something of vivid and immediate life." Her main work was her six-volume History of Scotland published between 1934 and 1941, and in all her works, historical or fictional, there is a fiercely Scottish patriotism opposed to the Act of Union of 1707, and speaking for the Highlander against the Lowlander. The final volume of her history, Scotland in Modern Times 1720-1934, was quite superficial on all matters religious. But the significance of Agnes Muir Mackenzie for Episcopalians was that they knew she wrote books, they knew she was highly regarded by many if not all, and they knew she proclaimed that the Episcopal Church was the only worthwhile church in Scotland. And all too many assumed that she had proved her case, when in fact she had not. (9)

M.E.M.Donaldson lived much of her life in Argyll but later moved to Edinburgh where she died in 1950. By her own account she was educated "privately and by self", and she surpassed Agnes Muir Mackenzie in certainty. She called herself a lecturer and author on Highland subjects. And she was shrill. In the church weeklies she was always extreme. Her best known work was her 1935 volume, Scotland's Suppressed History, in which she describes herself as "brought up amongst Established Presbyterians, but I was never one of them. At an early age I rebelled against a religion which repelled me..." But except on her childhood, her story was lifeless. It was almost as lifeless when chunks of it were re-cycled with an Enid Blyton framework for children as Till Scotland Melts in Flame. In that book children ask questions of a wise old uncle, "What is the meaning of 'canonical', uncle ?", and on being told at great length, are sufficiently resilient to come back with the question, "And what does 'coadjutor' mean ?" The Famous Five never asked questions like those. (10)

Marion Lochhead was an uneven writer. In 1941 she produced a serial in the Scottish Guardian entitled "Adrian was a Priest" which was utterly ghastly. At first it was fey and it then turned into a mere platform for characters out of ancient history to make theological speeches which sounded suspiciously like sermons at All Saints, Edinburgh. Her St.Mungo's Bairns was a child's history of a Glasgow which never was for children who never were either, but it had something about it. And her great work, Episcopal Scotland in the Nineteenth Century, published in London in 1966, was also uneven. It was thoroughly researched and the breadth of her knowledge was impressive, but whole sections were breathless, fact-filled, and schoolmistressy. She portrayed Presbyterianism as wild and irrational, and yet blamed the Church of England more than the Presbyterians. She was surprisingly appreciative of Bishop Ewing of Argyll, but failed to mention his attitude to Calvinism, without which there was not much left. The account of Bishop Chinnery-Haldane of Argyll is shattering without apparently intending to be so. But her book was without rancour, unless towards Dean Ramsay whom she utterly failed to understand, and the story was well told. Even today it is worth reading; though it will best serve those whom it leaves dissatisfied. (11)

If the modern observer is left somewhat awestruck by the sheer bulk of the historical writing produced by a rather small church, it is worth noting that most of it came from the old north-east. And that was where the Jacobite tradition with its "givenness" and the later Hutchinsonianism with its "givenness" gave a special virtue to the writing and the reading of history. That it ended, and it has ended, may be due to the fact that the church of the north-east is largely a memory. In 1924 Bishop Deane observed falling rolls and commented, "Aberdeenshire has always been noted for the propensity of its inhabitants for emigration." (He always used language like that.) "During the last two years the steady stream of emigration has become a torrent", and he went on to report of twenty-five people left in a church built for two hundred. Of course that was before church decline on a continental scale had really had time to bite, but a local decline was clearly at work in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire. And, whatever Deane and others might have chosen to believe, it cannot have had much to do with emigration. Total population in the area remained much as it had been or actually increased, and a comparison of Episcopal and Church of Scotland congregations in six communities between 1892 and 1939 show that the former decreased while the latter increased. The decline was actually noted in the Diocesan Synods of the 1890s, though in 1895 it was brushed aside as being "due doubtless to the very severe winter", and in 1897 attributed to clergymen not understanding how to fill out the forms. But whatever the cause, this meant the end of the Episcopalian heartland in the north-east, and something similar happened in that other home of rural Episcopalians, Argyll. And the balance between Scottish and English in the Episcopal Church was henceforth tilted even more towards the English. (12)