Journal articles on the topic 'Church of Scotland. Synod of Fife'

The General Synod met at St Paul's and St George's Church in Edinburgh from 9 to 11 June 2016. In his charge to Synod, the Primus, the Most Revd David Chillingworth, reflected on the injunction of St Paul to ‘please God, who tests our hearts’. As the Synod prepared to consider canonical change in relation to marriage, he asked how the Church was to continue to express the love and unity to which it was called by God. During the preceding year, deep pain in relationships had been experienced both in the Anglican Communion and with the Church of Scotland and Church of England – and there was a need to explore whether the Scottish Episcopal Church itself might have contributed to that distress and to shape a response that ‘pleased God, who tests our hearts'. In the light of the (then) forthcoming referendum on the European Union, the Primus suggested that it was not the wish of many in Scotland to use national borders to protect economic privilege. If the referendum took the UK out of the European Union, it could have profound effects on the unfolding story of the new Scotland and of the UK as a whole.

The agenda seemed slight and uncontroversial. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had been stimulated by the debate on homosexual ministers but nothing in the programme of discussion for Synod seemed likely to spark such feeling and argument. The Anglican Covenant could excite members to threaten schism or lead to a divided Church but it did not look likely.

The General Assembly of the Church again met in a ‘blended’ form, based from the Assembly Hall. The Moderator of the General Assembly this year was the Rev'd Dr Iain Greenshields, BD PhD, Minister of Dunfermline St Margaret's, Presbytery of Fife. Last year's Moderator was an Elder, rather than a Minister: Lord Wallace of Tankerness, PC QC FRSE. Lord Hodge, Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, was Her Late Majesty The Queen's personal representative to the Assembly as Lord High Commissioner. A brief synopsis of Assembly Business follows.

Over a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, the learned architect John Kinross RSA worked with that passionate antiquary, the third marquess of Bute, on sizeable and significant restoration projects across Scotland. The projects were Falkland Palace and Chapel, Fife; the Augustinian Priory at St Andrews; Greyfriars' Church and Convent, Elgin; and Pluscarden Abbey, Morayshire. This paper considers how their work played out against the restoration debate which was at its peak during these years. It tests the levels of innovation and design in the pair's key commissions, and considers what influence they may have had in informing both architectural practice and emerging philosophies in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Scotland.

This article looks closely at the legal nature of Establishment, both in England and North of the Border. The legal material shows that the two cases are very different. The Ace od Supermacy 1558 and related legislation enable the English church's porition to be presented so as to meke it one aspect of the State, and tetwntieth-century case-law has tended to confirm that understanding. The Scottish kirk enjoys statutory autonomy under the Church of Scotland Act 1921, and again case-law emphasises the reality of its exemption from some of the usual jurisdiction of the secular authorities and courts (though its scope may be becoming less clear-cut in the light of developments within the European Community). The author asks how, in the English context, the legal analysis relates to the reality of the English situation, as seen through the insights of other disciplines, to the role of the Church of England nationally and locally, and to the, sometimes confrontational, relationship between Synod and Parliament.

The theology of women's ministry is a comparatively new item on the Church's agenda. It is less than two decades since the Church of Scotland took the historic decision to open its ordained ministry to women. At the time it seemed a controversial step, and many must have wondered where it would lead the Kirk. I think that we can truthfully say that it has not led to any dire disasters, but rather to the enrichment of the ministry. That has also been the experience of many other Churches which in recent years have opened their ordained ministry to women. But controversies remain. The 1985 General Synod elections in the Church of England were dominated by the issue of women's ordination, with feelings running high in pressure-groups on both sides. In some Churches the introduction of women's ordination has exacerbated divisions already existing among members. Some of the major Christian denominations, including both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, do not permit any form of ordination for women. Even within denominations like the Church of Scotland, where the introduction of women ministers has occurred without disruption, there are still members who have doubts about whether it is really right. In many small Christian groups women are debarred from all but the most informal ministry, because it is considered unbiblical for them to preach, address assembled Christians publicly, or presume to teach men about spiritual matters.

During the Protestant Reformation of 1560, most of Scotland’s Catholic churches faced widespread destruction. Items considered idolatrous were targeted and destroyed. Significantly, stained glass windows were smashed and buried on site, or otherwise left to decay, and were replaced by austere, plain glass. In recent decades, archaeological excavations have recovered shards of this glass from several ecclesiastical sites across Scotland, allowing scholars the opportunity to better understand medieval liturgy and worship. Scientific analyses have been conducted to determine the ingredients used in manufacturing this glass, and to infer a place and timeframe of origin. These studies have proven invaluable in gaining an understanding of medieval trade links between Scotland and Europe, as well as of building and decorative phases for individual churches. Here, we consider the glass as an integral part of daily worship. Decorative patterns and colours of surviving fragments of glass, approximately dated, are considered in the wider and evolving context of medieval worship, and the prevailing religious Orders that were in Scotland at the time that many of these churches were founded. Two case-study sites are discussed in depth: Elgin Cathedral in Moray, which has yielded a significant number of glass shards through archaeological excavations; and Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, Scotland’s royal mausoleum. This inter-disciplinary study is the first to consider Scottish stained glass in terms of both its physical and chemical properties, as well as its wider religious meaning. This methodology will form the basis of future research to—for the first time—catalogue, scientifically analyse and liturgically contextualise all identifiable assemblages of Scottish medieval church glass.

The fishing town of Pittenweem (Fife) got its name (Gaelic Pett na h-Uaimhe, ‘estate of the cave’) from an impressive geological feature close to the East Shore known as St Fillan’s Cave. Although the existence of a historical Fillan has been carefully examined, no firm evidence has been found to link him to the famous Cave. In fact, the earliest recorded references to the Cave call it fons Sancte Marie Magdalene (‘spring of St Mary Magdalene’), leaving us with a new question related to Pittenweem’s pre-Reformation association with the Magdalene. This article attempts to understand when and how this came about. It begins by casting the net wide, setting the cult of Mary Magdalene within the broader context of the western Church, before offering a gazetteer of Magdalene sites in medieval Scotland and an exploration of when and how her cult came to Pittenweem. It concludes with brief remarks about the Cave’s later association with St Fillan.

In 1890, the General Assembly of the established Church of Scotland appointed a Commission on the Religious Condition of the People, with instructions to carry out a comprehensive review of the state of religion and morals in the country. The aim was to determine the reasons for non-attendance at church services and for the Church’s declining social influence. The Commission visited the presbyteries, and issued a series of reports between 1891 and 1896. These revealed widespread irreligion, non-attendance, intemperance, and vice. Among the most disturbing revelations, however, were the high levels of illegitimacy in many regions of the country. Sexual immorality, according to the report for the synod of Galloway, in the south west of Scotland, was ‘a rampant sin in the district, and makes a dark blot on the moral life of [the] community’. In the Presbytery of Strathbogie, in the north east, sexual misconduct ‘has so permeated family life, and is so prevalent in the community, that it is difficult to arouse a healthy and vigorous public opinion against it’. The problem seemed to lie in the nature of ecclesiastical discipline within Scottish Presbyterianism. The mode of administering discipline’, the Commission observed in its final report, in May 1896, at present fails to impress the community; it fails to promote repentance in offenders; and it may be asked whether, thus failing, it is not a hindrance rather than a help to the cause of morality. To the more sensitive and delicate in feeling who have yielded to temptation there is a natural repugnance in being obliged to face the minister and elders. … To those who have no such delicacy, the ‘standing of the session’ is little regarded.

The article is devoted to the history of British Togoland, in particular, the central part of the Volta region (southeast of modern Ghana). The time frame of the study covers the period from the First World War to the incorporation of the Volta region into the Gold Coast. During the pre-colonial period, the region was a zone of active commercial networks, both in the slave trade and in a wide range of goods, which varied according to local and international demand. The ethnic majority living in the region is the Ewe group of peoples. The transition from the German colonial rule (1890–1914) – a short-term, but fundamentally important factor for the history of the region – led to the need of the Bremen missionaries work adaptation to the new conditions, the formation of Ewe’s own synod and political associations. Until 1957, the inhabitants of the central part of the Volta region tried to defend their right to unite the territory of the former German Togoland and maintain contacts with the Germans. The management of Togoland was also complicated by the location of the colonial government’s main office in the Gold Coast: by 1920s the Bremen missionary schools had already been transferred to the Gold Coast Department of Education, and the United Free Church of Scotland had to act as intermediaries between the British colonial government and German missionaries, most of the time remotely.

The most important contribution made by Archbishop James Ussher to the ecclesiastical developments of the Interregnum and Restoration periods was his short tract The Reduction of Episcopacy Unto the Form of Synodical Government. Printed only after his death in 1656, its combination of ministerial synods with episcopal rule was seen as a basis for presbyterian-episcopal reconciliation over the next three decades. The tract was printed in five editions during the later 1650s, and came out in two more editions in 1679, when the Popish Plot and the calling of a new Parliament revived hopes that dissenters could be comprehended within the Church of England. It was printed once more in 1689, in Edinburgh, when “comprehension” was again being hotly debated in both England and Scotland. By that time Ussher's name had come to symbolize such “limited” or “primitive” episcopacy, and indeed it has continued to do so among twentieth-century historians.The fame of the Reduction rests upon its content and authorship. Although the tract was only one of many such compromises offered during the Interregnum, it was the most radical to come from the royalist and Anglican side during that period. Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, Ussher was admired and respected by radical puritans and major Laudian spokesmen such as Henry Hammond and Bishop John Bramhall. The power of Ussher's name in this context was shown in 1685, when the nonconformist divine and politician Richard Baxter was on trial for allegedly making a printed attack against the king and the bishops. When Baxter's attorney, Sir Henry Pollexfen, sought to introduce as evidence one of Baxter's own printed compromises between episcopal and presbyterian government, Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys replied, “I will see none of his books; it is for primitive Episcopacy, I will warrant you — a bishop in every parish.” In replying “Nay, my lord, it is the same with Archbishop Usher's,” Pollexfen indicated both the radical nature of the Reduction and the legitimacy that Ussher's name lent to other compromises of this kind.

AbstractThe absence of young people in Catholic churches in many parts of the world, especially in the more economically advanced countries, is a cause for great anxiety within Catholic communities. This is expressed in relevant research literature and the three recent synodal syntheses of England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland. This article explores the key concept of synodality, some of the research on the religious affiliation (and disaffiliation) of Catholic young people and the voices and views of Catholic young people in the synodal process in the three syntheses. The views of the young people in the three syntheses are clustered under six themes: (1) absence from Church; (2) accusations of hypocrisy; (3) concerns about teaching on sexuality; (4) Catholic Social Teaching; (5) the importance of parents and (6) the ways in which young people can engage in the Church. Many of the comments of the young people in these three syntheses confirm some of the research findings and, crucially, the young people provide suggestions on the ways ahead in which they can be more active in the Church—‘being’ Church, rather than ‘doing’ Church.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (DPPL) upholds that Christian worship originates and is brought to completion in the Spirit of Christ, which dispenses truthful liturgical devotion and realistic manifestations of popular piety. A vigorous engagement of evangelization and culture is embodied in the Sabuaga Festival, an Easter Sunday celebration in Sto. Tomas, Pampanga. It is a collaboration of the Catholic Church (St. Thomas the Apostle Parish) and the Local Government Unit (Sto. Tomas). This paper argues how a true and fruitful harmony between liturgy and popular piety is achieved in the Sabuaga Festival. Hence, the researcher articulates the following, namely: First, the dimensions of the Sabuaga Festival that make it an expression of popular piety. Second, the principles offered by DPPL for the true and fruitful harmonization of liturgy and popular piety. 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