The Reformation: they think it's all over; it is now

The Reformation has been cancelled – or so it would seem. Much to that community’s chagrin no doubt, the Stornoway-born and recent Church of Scotland Moderator Rev. Sheilagh Kesting has proclaimed a ‘first’ in terms of a post-Reformation pact with the Roman Catholic Church.

THE 450th Anniversary of the Scottish Reformers’ break with the Vatican in 1560 is - in what may be considered a supreme affront to the Reformers' efforts to restore the church to biblical forms  -  to be commemorated in St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on 3 November 2010.

Rev. Sheilagh Kesting, the first female minister to be appointed as Moderator, described the unprecedented move as a symbol of the greater understanding and co-operation that now exists between the two churches.

It is not without significance that the Pope is due to visit Scotland this Autumn. He is scheduled to be received by the Queen at Holyrood in Edinburgh on 16 September and go on to conduct an open air Mass in Glasgow.

Meanwhile with regards to the St. Giles' service and speaking for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland Peter Kearney, said: “This is a significant and seminal moment in Scottish Church history.”  You bet; and for a variety of reasons.
This development will effectively scupper any hope whatsoever of the Church of Scotland being taken seriously by true Bible believers. It will also remove the prospect of any other presbyterian church in Scotland linking itself with the Kirk: not that there was much prospect of this anyway.

Those who are familiar with the history of the Reformation in 16th-century Britain will know that the impetus and dynamic in Scotland and England were markedly different.
South of the border, King Henry VIII desired to throw off the Pope’s authority as head of the Church in order to divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn. Henry then duly installed himself as head of the Church of England under the so-called Divine Right of Kings which freed him from any earthly authority: it was a ‘power grab’ for personal advantage and political gain.

However in Scotland things were much different. Whilst Scottish Reformers also wished to remove believers from the Pope’s overarching jurisdiction, the heart-felt desire of John Knox and his colleagues was to see Christ Jesus given His place as the head of His church. The thrust was to break free from the corrupt and stultifying influence of an aberrant religious institution with a mere human as its head.

St. Giles at the heart of city, the Reformation and Scotland

At centre stage was, and is, St. Giles’ Cathedral (the name is now an anachronism as there are no longer titular bishops in the presbyterian Kirk, and believers are no longer venerated in this way). The church is an iconic emblem of both the Church of Scotland and the post-Reformation nation: it stands at the heart of Scotland’s capital city in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The Cathedral houses a statue of Knox, and his house is located further down the street.

John Knox's house
In 1559, during the violent upheavals surrounding the Reformation which aimed to destroy the ways of the Roman Catholic Church, soldiers were stationed outside St. Giles. Protestant nobles pulled down some of the altars at the Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Mass was scrapped. A few months later, and following a failed invasion by France, St. Giles was completely stripped of all ornamentation: the entire interior was whitewashed. Subsequently Knox, who hated the abuses of Catholic Church of that day, was made pastor of the famous building.

In the following century, ‘Reformation’ trouble broke out again when the English King Charles I, attempted to force the English Episcopal form of church government and prayer book upon the Scots. In an attempt to replace Knox’s much-loved ‘Book of Common Order’ with the English liturgy, the King’s appointee Bishop Lindsay experienced a people’s revolt when a certain Jenny Geddes reputedly picked up the stool on which she was seated and threw it at the Dean sitting just below the pulpit declaring: “Traitor! Dost thou say Mass at my lug?” (Traitor! Do you say the [Roman Catholic] Mass in my ear).

Following the lady’s example, others set their stools flying and the service had to be abandoned: such was the strength of feeling in a newly-reformed Scotland at that time. True Christians, it was believed, submitted themselves to Christ and the Reformed church. A continued allegiance to Rome represented a submission to a corrupt and heretical Roman Catholicism and a Christ-usurping Pope. Of the latter, the Protestant Westminster Confession of Faith –  written in 1646 and still the ‘subordinate standard’ of the Presbyterian churches – states: ‘There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God’ (WCF XXV; vi).

A good question: then an now

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