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

In 1928 an English priest wrote that when he went to be ordained in the Diocese of Brechin he discovered how to pronounce that word before meeting his new bishop. "I find him to be an Englishman, and subsequently discover he cannot correctly pronounce the name of his Diocese." After noting that virtually all major charges were served by English clergy, he poked fun at a "Bishop of Aberdeen who probably cannot pronounce the name of the eastern portion of his diocese", meaning Deane, and meaning Buchan, but who "speaks of a sinister movement to betray the Scottish character of the Church." (1)

That the Episcopal Church was led by Englishmen was due to several causes. From about 1840 until 1890 the church was mainly Scottish, and a few English bishops would give it the respectability it still needed after being so long under a Jacobite cloud, but would not weaken its claim to be the true Scottish church. But in the late nineteenth century immigrants from England were on the increase, and expected their bishop to be an English gentleman. And if they were numerous enough to dominate a congregation, they expected their clergyman to be English, whether a gentleman or not. And from about 1890 it was becoming obvious that the Episcopal Church would not replace the Presbyterian establishment. From that date, the word "province" was used, meaning a subsidiary unit of the Anglican Communion, and possibly a somewhat detached equivalent of Canterbury and York. If the Episcopal Church was neither going to replace Presbyterianism, nor, as was obvious after 1929, going to unite with it, then it had to see itself as part of something else, world Anglicanism. And in world Anglicanism bishops outside America were Oxford or Cambridge men, of a particular social class, meeting one another on common ground and binding the communion together. But two other factors contributed to this process. One was the belief in leaders produced by English public schools, or their colonial equivalents, Glenalmond being such a thing, though these last never ranked with the real thing in England. The other factor was the decline of the Episcopal Church in its Scottish strongholds, Aberdeenshire and Argyll. They could no longer provide the clergy who had previously offset the English, though these had rarely become bishops.

This policy was probably inevitable. Virtually all of Scotland was anglicised. Presbyterianism itself was anglicised, and became an anglicising agency, though of a different nature. Had the Episcopal Church turned its back on all this, it would have been largely irrelevant. But in anglicising, the Episcopal Church latched on to the more unhelpful aspects of English life, and of England before the Reform Act, with its landed aristocracy. For the Scots, despite their claims to the contrary, had their own elite - - an elite of professional men. The Episcopalians scorned professionalism in favour of the well-born amateur, in the tradition of landowners, and Episcopalians had relied on landowners when they had no other friends. In a later age, electing bishops who were congenial to the landed class brought in financial support.

But if this was a short-sighted policy, it was not confined to Scotland. The same churchmen with good degrees from Oxford or Cambridge were sent to the overseas dominions, and were sought for those dominions, which was natural when those dominions still received migrants. Canada broke the pattern early, though not without hard feelings. In Australia and South Africa the men who could not quite become bishops at home did so abroad. And, perhaps most harmfully of all, the Church of England itself kept this pattern of leadership until nearly the end of the twentieth century. For ultimately the argument was more about class than about nationality.

"You will find", observed a writer in 1919, "that clergymen who have not an Oxford or Cambridge education, and the indefinable stamp or air it leaves, however distinguished they may be at other universities, are looked upon askance in England in the same way as it seems Scotsmen are regarded by patrons of the greater benefices in Scotland." Twenty years later, when a new Bishop of Edinburgh followed a number of elections of other men straight from England, there was a complaint about leading laymen having "a form of snobbery which makes them look to the older English universities for the 'right sort of men'." And in the following year Dean Inge of London was muttering that the best English archbishops of the century "were all Scots for whom there were no bishoprics north of the Tweed." But this was hardly new. In 1871 when it was a question of electing an assistant with succession to Terrot of Edinburgh, J.F.Montgomery, "the nominee of the Scottish party", withdrew, and the Rev. V.G. Faithful proposed Dr. Cotterill, the Bishop of Grahamstown in South Africa, because of his excellent degree from Cambridge which "qualified him for every public act, every public office connected with the University, and there were few English appointments open to the Laity, which he might not have justly endeavoured to get...". He could have been an admiral or an ambassador, so it was right that he should be a bishop. There were leaders, and there were others. (2)

If controversy on this issue never ceased, it could be bitter. An editorial in the 1919 Scottish Chronicle began, "If we were in a position to say that the Bishop of Edinburgh deliberately, and apart from all other considerations, reserved some of the best livings in his diocese for Englishmen just because they were Englishmen, we should be making a very serious reflection on the holder of the Metropolitan See...". That reflection was then made. Furthermore, "we are driven to the humiliating reflection that however competent the native clergy may be as hewers of wood and drawers of water, they are somehow or other unfit to fill the higher offices of the church." The editorial went on to say that all the bishops except one, A.J.Maclean of Moray, were "educated, ordained, and trained in England." It was admitted that most of them were Scots by birth or origin, even if that had no effect on their outlook or accent. And the Bishop of Edinburgh, Walpole, had been "promoted straight from his parish of Lambeth to the Metropolitan Scottish See." Then Canon MacCulloch complained that it would not be so bad "if the very best men whom the English church can give were introduced. But they are not." Which, of course, was true. If these men had been of the first rank, they would not have accepted bishoprics in Scotland, though they were the sort of men who might have been deans or archdeacons in England. And, MacCulloch continued, "our church is becoming more and more aloof from the main currents of Scottish life." But that was not just by the choice of bishops; the Episcopal Church had bet on certain developments in Scottish society, and history had gone the other way. Choosing leaders from Oxford and Cambridge was a result of that bet and not a cause of it. (3)

Later in that year there was a quite racist attack on Anglo-Saxons as leaders, which was untypical, and a cheery anecdote on Deane's election at Aberdeen in 1917, when an elector asked if another nominee was Oxford or Cambridge, and, on being told he was an Aberdeen graduate, stomped out in disgust. And in 1920 Dr. Low, the Rector of St. Columba's, Largs, complained about experienced clergy seeing "strangers brought in and put over their heads", to which someone replied that Scottish graduates were "in the main intelligent men...", "But their social manner and mode of speech are not what one would expect from a graduate...". In 1921 Canon Petrie rejoiced at the election of a Scot, E.T.S.Reid, as Bishop of Glasgow, as "they were a Scottish diocese of the ancient Scottish church", and another wrote, "This election will help to scotch if not to kill the legend, 'No Scotsmen need apply'." In 1926 there was a long grumble about attempts to make bishoprics attractive to Englishmen who "would do credit to the Church's social aspirations and thus contribute to the tide of success." And next year a writer wondered whether Scotland might not produce someone worthy of being Provost of St. Mary's, Glasgow, which, with St. John's, Edinburgh, was considered a bastion of privilege. In 1933, again about St. Mary's, a writer complained that "the chief charges in the Scottish Church are filled by Englishmen." "While the Anglican Communion throughout the world is creating everywhere a native ministry, in Scotland it is at a serious discount." This complaint was supported by two Scottish curates at St. Mary's, who, when yet another Englishman was brought in to be provost, had to go and, in the circumstances, had to go to England. (4)

When Kenneth Mackenzie was elected Bishop of Brechin in 1935, straight from a Salisbury canonry, the old quote of Bishop Anthony Mitchell about Scottish priests being "hewers of wood and drawers of water" arose once more, complete with an old sonnet by Dean G.T.S.Farquhar on "those who o'er the Border reach." And, "There was plenty of sound Catholic custom in Scotland long before Kelham, or Mirfield, or even Cuddesdon, sent forth their emissaries...", Mackenzie being an Anglo-Catholic standard-bearer. And, not for the first time, a Scottish priest who should have been a bishop was named. "But our Scottish church has too often acted as a harsh stepmother...". By 1938 there was yet another outburst over St. Mary's, Glasgow, where a complete outsider was brought in, and later in the year Canon J.C.H.How of Brighton was elected Bishop of Glasgow, having no Scottish connection. One observer noted what was often overlooked, that Englishmen who had worked for any length of time in Scotland were as unwelcome as Scots when it came to election. Having been in Scotland reduced their social status. (5)

But appointments direct from England were now having to be defended. When Eric Graham, a former principal of Cuddesdon, the upmarket theological college outside Oxford, became Bishop of Brechin in 1944, there was a rather nasty story of a Scot who was supposed to have said that he had never known there were bishoprics in Scotland until he was offered one. Much was made of Graham being in some sense a Scot, the consecration sermon including the phrase, "So you come back to this country of your ancestry...". But it was never made clear in what way Graham could be considered a Scot. It was rather like the tale of the bright young man about London in the First World War who was given a commission in the Scots Guards when he told the board that he had some property in Scotland, but did not tell them that it was a suit of clothes sent for dry cleaning at Perth. (6)

Yet all this made sense if anglicisation was to continue. And nobody could be sure it would not. The idea of incorporating the Episcopal Church into the Church of England, put forward by Bishop Ewing in 1858, was impractical as it collided with the establishments north and south of the Border, but that was all that was held to be against it. And, as early as 1856, 69 of the 157 clergy of the Episcopal Church were ordained in England, as against 87 ordained in Scotland, and six elsewhere. And the clergyman who flew the St. George's Cross flag from the church tower of Old Deer in Aberdeenshire in 1936, admittedly a very late date for such a thing, seems to have felt that this was a very proper flag for any church in the Anglican Communion. As for the title "English church", it was so widely used that it is difficult to disentangle its various meanings. At one time congregations needed to be thought "English" even when they were not, to avoid persecution, and then it became a mark of respectability, and then a mark of modernity, like meaningless Americanisms on British garments to-day, and then in areas of massive English migration it became an appropriate description. But at no time was it acceptable to everyone; the more widely it was used the more the Scottish patriots deplored it. (7)

Yet Scotland and England did not exist in a vacuum. The relationship stretched into the empire, and if Scotland was thought to have lost by its association with England, Scotland was held to have gained by being next to England in benefiting from empire. And Scottish clergy were said to hold so many high posts in the Anglican world that having Englishmen over them at home could not matter. In 1933 it was said that there were "nineteen Scots bishops in the Anglican Church, ten of these hold sees overseas. In England there are eight Scots Deans, ten Archdeacons, and over thirty Scots Canons...". In 1939 it was calculated that there were 138,000 "Scots Episcopalians in Canada", though in fact the estimate referred to Canadian Anglicans with Scottish names, few of whom were descended from Scottish Episcopalians. But lists of Scots in high places in the Church of England were meaningless; archbishops such as Tait or Davidson or Lang were Presbyterian in background, but anglicised into the upper class at Oxford or Cambridge. And the English were not always happy about Scots; even upper class ones. When J.C.H.How was elected to the Glasgow bishopric from a parish in Brighton, an alderman in that town said that this was unusual, since, "His experience was that Scotsmen came to England, gained the plum appointments, and took good care not to return to their native land." (8)

But the defence varied with time. It began with frank statements on class, "A clergyman from England is almost certain to be a gentleman, both by birth and education", the date being 1872. Then the language moved from manners to leadership. Bishop Campbell of Glasgow at the start of this century "belonged to an easily recognised type of men, the men who are leaders by virtue of their individuality, the men who do the big things...", wrote Bishop Deane in 1925. "We are looking for born leaders of men", wrote a supporter of English appointments in 1933. And these would not come from the Scottish university system which "produces, not always, but often, a race of pedants and prigs", to quote a correspondent of 1900, "who think that long words mean learning, and sententiousness is the same as culture." This account was, however, attacked. But there was also an argument based on numbers of available candidates. On the Glasgow election of J.R.Darbyshire in 1931, discounting the lesson of his predecessor Reid who had shown that it was no longer true that "no Scotsman need apply", "Clergymen from provinces outwith Scotland may bring with them a wider outlook and a truer sense of proportion." And, "we should be content to choose for a Bishop the ablest man we can get, without caring whether he happened to be born north or south of the line that once divided the two separate Kingdoms." And C.C. im Thurn, the Dean of Glasgow, argued that few Scots were available as so many "promising young Scotsmen" went south. In 1939 it was pointed out that there were 14,000 clergy in England but only 400 in Scotland, so it was hardly surprising that most bishops and provosts came from England. Yet the vast bulk of the 14,000 English clergy were as firmly excluded as the Scots. Selection depended on class. (9)

That there was a leadership class educated in England was widely held in the Episcopal Church, however much it was also opposed. In 1940, when threats of invasion brought to the surface all kinds of things normally kept under wraps, Scottish Episcopalians debated the title "Lord Bishop". This was quite properly shown to be applicable to bishops as bishops, and not by reason of bishops being in the House of Lords or by other state relationship. But it was noted that American bishops did not use the title, and that Canadian bishops used the title sparingly, due to local sensitivities. It was not suggested that the same should apply in Scotland for the same reason. The title was valued for conveying social status. Scotland was not like America or Canada - - that was the last thing most Episcopalians wanted..

But if the Episcopal Church went down a blind alley on this issue, it was not apparent at the time that it would prove to be such. Going down blind alleys is normal in church life, but being aware that they might be blind alleys is a blessing not always given to churches. On the issue of social class, the Scottish Episcopal Church was sufficiently divided about what it was doing to be able to reverse itself when the time came. Unhappily, it was slow to realise when that time had come. (10)