Who are the Baptists?
Scotland
The first Baptist churches appeared in Scotland between
1650 and 1658, as a result of the evangelistic efforts of soldiers
and chaplains in Cromwell's army during their occupation of Scotland.
Churches were formed in Leith, Edinburgh, Cupar, Perth, Ayr and
Aberdeen. In 1653 Baptists in Leith and Edinburgh reprinted the
1644 London Particular Baptist Confession of Faith and declared
their allegiance to its doctrine. It can safely be stated that
similar views were held by the other Baptist congregations in
Scotland. Persecution arose in 1658 instigated by the Government,
due to allegations of political disloyalty against the city of
Edinburgh. It is possible that individual Baptists may have been
involved but this episode provided an excuse to purge the army
and all public offices of Baptists. The majority Presbyterian
body was all too eager to assist in the removal of Baptists. From
1660 to 1765 there is apparently no trace of Baptists in official
records in Scotland, with the exception of the small isolated
congregation gathered in his castle at Keiss in Caithness, in
the far north of Scotland, in 1750 by Sir William Sinclair, following
his conversion while serving in the British Army.
However, it is probable that small home-based groups of
Baptists continued to survive in Scotland. One Baptist family
from Glasgow emigrated to Virginia, USA, c.1740. John Duncan Sr
and his son of the same name were Baptist preachers; John Jr apparently
planted Mt Moriah B.C., Amherst County, Virginia, in 1745. The
ecclesiology of this cause was very similar to the Scotch Baptist
congregation planted in Glasgow, Scotland in 1765, and closely
connected to the understanding of Baptist views promulgated by
William Mitchell and David Crossley in West Yorkshire and the
Rossendale Valley in the north of England in the early eighteenth
century. A further confirmation of this link was the adoption
of Baptist views by a Burnley man, William Smith, in Glasgow in
1760. On his return to England he founded Haggate Baptist Church
on Scotch Baptist lines, but five years before the official emergence
of the Scotch Baptist movement in Scotland.
In 1765 the Scotch Baptist movement was founded in Edinburgh.
This movement led by Archibald McLean and Robert Carmichael held
to the principle of unanimity in doctrine and practices in their
churches, together with a strongly literalist approach to biblical
interpretation and a plurality of elders as church oversight.
This network of congregations grew steadily until 1810, until
a controversy over the necessity of elders at the Lord's Table
caused division in their ranks. A repeat of this conflict in 1834
caused the dissolution of their network with some of their more
conservative congregations joining the newly formed Churches of
Christ, associated with the view of Alexander Campbell and the
more open-minded causes uniting with Particular Baptist congregations
in Scotland.
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Concern for theological education amongst Scottish Baptists
began with the decision of George Barclay of Irvine to send Peter
McFarlane and Dugald Sinclair to Horton Baptist College, Bradford,
England, in 1806. In the period between 1806 and 1837 'English'
style Baptists sent twenty-two men from Scotland to this college.
However, there was growing concern in the 1830s that the majority
of these gifted young men were settling in pastorates in England,
rather than returning to their native land. John Street Baptist
Church, Aberdeen, approached Horton tutor Benjamin Godwin to see
if he would consider starting a small college in Scotland. Godwin
declined the invitation. By 1837 a Baptist Academical Society
was set up in Scotland, with members from all three streams of
Baptist witness, in order to address this issue. Little progress
was made until the Baptist Union of Scotland took over the provision
of ministerial training in 1845. The students were trained under
the auspices of Union secretary Francis Johnston in the Baptist
Theological Academy for ten years. In 1857 Dr James Paterson,
minister of Hope Street Baptist Church, Glasgow, became the tutor
until the formation of the present Baptist Union of Scotland in
1869. The present Scottish Baptist College traces its history
to back to 1894. It was, though, only after a bitter struggle
in the 1870s and 1880s concerning the right method of training
people for ministry within the denomination that the present college
was formed. In the twentieth century, however, the overwhelming
majority of Scottish Baptists valued the work of the college and
the necessity of a proper system of ministerial training. The
centenary of the college was attained in 1994. In 2001 the college,
although retaining its independence, became associated with the
University of Paisley and moved from Glasgow to the Paisley campus
of the University.
Baptist numbers in Scotland grew until a peak of 23,310 was attained
in 1935, but a steady decline was experienced until the 1950s
when this trend was reversed by the converts from the Billy Graham
mission in 1955. The downward spiral restarted in the 1960s, though
a vigorous policy of church-planting in the 1970s and 80s led
to modest growth in the latter decade. By contrast the number
of churches had nearly doubled in the last century from 93 in
1892 to 176 in 2004, but the average membership figure declined
from a peak of 160 per church in 1906 to 86 in 1997. A renewed
focus on the priority of mission in the denomination has produced
hopeful signs of progress in the twenty-first century.
by Dr Brian Talbot, Scottish Baptist History Archive, Glasgow
Jan 2006