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The Kirk and the Kingdom: A Century of Tension in Scottish Social Theology 1830–1929

Online ISBN:
9780748676705
Print ISBN:
9780748644735
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
Book

The Kirk and the Kingdom: A Century of Tension in Scottish Social Theology 1830–1929

Published:
30 September 2012
Online ISBN:
9780748676705
Print ISBN:
9780748644735
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Abstract

This book questions the widely accepted assumption that throughout most of the nineteenth century the Church in Scotland failed both in pronouncement and in practice to take seriously the social conditions of an increasingly urbanised society. It traces the social theology which developed in the century from 1830 until 1929 by examining the views of leading churchmen such as Robert Burns of Paisley, Robert Buchanan in Glasgow, and argues that until the theologian Robert Flint published his book Christ's Kingdom upon Earth in 1860, the church had no model other than palliative pastoral care through which to respond to the urban crisis. Flint enabled the Church to see itself as a partner with secular agencies and political action in creating conditions which brought closer the Kingdom of God on earth. The practical outcome of this paradigm shift in Scottish theology in the west of Scotland was active engagement with urban housing conditions and proposals for reform. The optimism of at the beginning of the nineteenth century however gave way to regarding the Church's numerical strength and membership as more important. The needs of the movement to unite fractured Presbyterianism, accomplished by the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church in 1929, took priority over social theology and engagement.

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