Thursday July 28, 1921. Parliament and the Church of Scotland.

Parliament passed the Church of Scotland Act of 1921, making the Presbyterian church in Scotland independent in religious matters while retaining its status as the Scottish national church.  The act provided.

Church of Scotland Act 1921

1921 CHAPTER 29

An Act to declare the lawfulness of certain Articles declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual prepared with the authority of the General Assembly of the Church.

[28th July 1921]

Whereas certain articles declaratory of the constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual have been prepared with the authority of the General Assembly of the Church, with a view to facilitate the union of other Churches with the Church of Scotland, which articles are set out in the Schedule to this Act, and together with any modifications of the said articles or additions thereto made in accordance therewith are hereinafter in this Act referred to as " the Declaratory Articles " :

And whereas it is expedient that any doubts as to the lawfulness of the Declaratory Articles should be removed :

Be it therefore enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1Effect of Declaratory Articles.

The Declaratory Articles are lawful articles, and the constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual is as therein set forth, and no limitation of the liberty, rights and powers in matters spiritual therein set forth shall be derived from any statute or law affecting the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual at present in force, it being hereby declared that in all questions of construction the Declaratory Articles shall prevail, and that all such statutes and laws shall be construed in conformity therewith and in subordination thereto, and all such statutes and laws in so far as they are inconsistent with the Declaratory Articles are hereby repealed and declared to be of no effect.

2Other Churches not to be prejudiced.

Nothing contained in this Act or in any other Act affecting the Church of Scotland shall prejudice the recognition of any other Church in Scotland as a Christian Church protected by law in the exercise of its spiritual functions.

3Jurisdiction of civil courts.

Subject to the recognition of the matters dealt with in the Declaratory Articles as matters spiritual, nothing in this Act contained shall affect or prejudice the jurisdiction of the civil courts in relation to any matter of a civil nature.

4Citations and commencement.

This Act may be cited as the Church of Scotland Act, 1921, and shall come into operation on such date as His Majesty may fix by Order in Council after the Declaratory Articles shall have been adopted by an Act of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland with the consent of a majority of the Presbyteries of the Church.

Scotland became a Presbyterian country in 1560 when the Reformation hit the country, following only shortly after King Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome. The story in Scotland is complicated and tied up with that of England's which was attempting to force a union at the time.  The origins of the Scottish Reformation has its beginnings in Europe where some Scottish religious figures were exposed to characters of the Reformation on the continent.  The attempted forced union by England and the competing claims of the adherents of Queen Mary created additional tensions. Added to that, the Catholic Church in Scotland and the Scottish government made little effort to prevent individuals from espousing Protestantism.  The turmoil associated with the reign of King James V and Queen Mary ultimately politicized the situation and gave John Knox, like Luther a one time Catholic Priest, an opening to create a Protestant fissure.

It also created a long-running peculiar situation in that Presbyterianism resisted being an established church for a long time and the English crown, once Scotland was subject to it, had the model of the Church of England which was much closer to the Crown and, ultimately after a long period of religious strife, less Protestant than the Presbyterian Church.  The status took all the way until 1921 to basically resolve.

Like most Protestant churches worldwide the Church of Scotland, or rather the Presbyterian Church, has suffered a large decline over the decades.  Often presented as a current crisis, in reality the close adherence to the Presbyterian church has been in decline for many decades.  The Presbyterian Church is a Calvinist church traditionally and the Church of Scotland tended to be extremely stern in its views.  As with England, but in a more pronounced way, some areas of Scotland never did abandon the Catholic Church and in the 19th Century, Irish immigrants to Scotland increased their numbers.  By the 2010s only 32% of Scots claimed membership in the Church of Scotland while 16% were Catholic. While scandals have hurt the Church in Scotland, as elsewhere in the European world, Catholics outnumber Presbyterians in some Scottish districts presently. In the late 2010s a study suggested that by the mid 2020s Catholic Church would resume its status as the largest church in Scotland, which of course does not set aside the fact that the majority of Scots "unchurched", but basically Christian.  

The Presbyterian Church in the United States was heavily associated with Scottish immigrants at one time. This would be much less true today.

Life magazine came out on this date, with a cover of a dog disrupting a tea party of sorts.