Evangelical revival in Scotland

rdf:langString Evangelical revival in Scotland

rdf:langString The evangelical revival in Scotland was a series of religious movements in Scotland from the eighteenth century, with periodic revivals into the twentieth century. It began in the later 1730s as congregations experienced intense "awakenings" of enthusiasm, renewed commitment and rapid expansion. This was first seen at Easter Ross in the Highlands in 1739 and most famously in the Cambuslang Wark near Glasgow in 1742. Most of the new converts were relatively young and from the lower groups in society. Unlike awakenings elsewhere, the early revival in Scotland did not give rise to a major religious movement, but mainly benefited the secession churches, who had broken away from the Church of Scotland. In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century the revival entered a second wave, known in the US as the Second Great Awakening. In Scotland this was reflected in events like the Kilsyth Revival in 1839. The early revival mainly spread in the Central Belt, but it became active in the Highlands and Islands, peaking towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Scotland gained many of the organisations associated with the revival in England, including Sunday Schools, mission schools, ragged schools, Bible societies and improvement classes. In the nineteenth century the Church of Scotland was divided between the evangelicals and the Moderate Party. Events came to a head in the Great Disruption in which many of the evangelicals, particularly in the North and Highlands left to form the Free Church of Scotland. The country began to gain relatively large numbers of non-conformist churches and congregations, which were evangelical in outlook, including the Quakers, Baptist, Congregationalist and Methodist churches. They were joined by the Salvation Army, the Open and the Exclusive Brethren. A strand of evangelicalism developed in the Scottish Episcopal Church in the early nineteenth century, leading a group in Edinburgh to form a separate English Episcopal congregation. A major emphasis of evangelical Protestantism were organised missions. In the eighteenth century the focus had been the Highlands and Islands. Missions also developed to fishermen and to the growing communities of the urban poor. The visit of American evangelists Moody and Sankey in 1874–75 revitalised the evangelical mission. David Livingstone became the movement's most well-known foreign missionary. After his death, Scottish missionary efforts were fuelled by the rivalry between different denominations in Scotland. There continued to be spontaneous outbreaks of revival in the twentieth century. The most successful was the 1955 tour of Scotland by Billy Graham, which reversed the decline in church attendance in Scotland. In the late twentieth century the movement became divided. Evangelicalism had permeated Scottish leaving a legacy of strict Sabbatarianism and had helped foster local identities in the Highlands.