The Spiritual Independence of the Church

The crisis came out of patronage. Scottish parishes had for centuries been provided with ministers by lay patrons, and the Church of Scotland's Veto Act of 1834 allowed a congregation to reject a patron's presentee. Rejected candidates went to the civil courts, which held in the Auchterarder case and others that the church had no power to make such a rule and ordered the presentees inducted.

The church's answer was the Claim, Declaration and Protest adopted by the General Assembly in 1842, which asserted that Christ is the only head of the church, that its jurisdiction in spiritual matters is held from him and not from the state, and that no civil authority may compel it to induct a minister or overrule its courts in spiritual things. It was addressed to Parliament, and Parliament declined to act. On 18 May 1843, at the opening of the General Assembly in Edinburgh, the outgoing Moderator read a protest and walked out, and more than four hundred ministers, roughly a third of the clergy, followed him down the street to constitute the Free Church of Scotland. They left behind manses, stipends, churches and schools, and built replacements across the country within a few years, which is the measure of how seriously the principle was held rather than merely stated.

The Disruption was not repaired quickly. Most of the Free Church joined the United Presbyterians in 1900 to form the United Free Church, and reunion with the national church required first that the disputed principle be settled beyond argument. The church drew up the Articles Declaratory of its constitution in spiritual matters, and Parliament gave them statutory recognition in the Church of Scotland Act 1921, an unusual piece of legislation in that it acknowledges a jurisdiction rather than conferring one, and disclaims any power in the civil courts over the church's spiritual decisions. On that footing most of the United Free Church reunited with the Church of Scotland in 1929.

What resulted is a national church that is not established in the English manner, and the differences are concrete rather than symbolic. The sovereign is a member of the Church of Scotland, not its Supreme Governor, and worships as a member when in Scotland; at accession the sovereign swears an oath to preserve the Presbyterian church government of Scotland; no minister is appointed by the Crown and no Scottish churchman sits in the House of Lords by right of office. The Church of Scotland is therefore the clearest live counter-example to the English arrangement, and its own doctrine of spiritual independence stands as a rejection of royal supremacy rather than a local variation of it.