Duncan Shaw | |
---|---|
Moderator of the General Assembly | |
Church | Church of Scotland |
In office | 1987 to 1988 |
Predecessor | Robert Craig |
Successor | James A. Whyte |
Orders | |
Ordination | 29 July 1951 |
Personal details | |
Born | 27 January 1925 |
Died | 20 February 2018 93) | (aged
Nationality | Scottish |
Denomination | Presbyterianism |
Occupation | Church minister and historian |
Duncan Shaw (27 January 1925 – 20 February 2018) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, historian, and author. He served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1987 to 1988. [1] [2] [3]
Shaw was born on 27 January 1925 in Edinburgh, Scotland: he grew up in a tenement flat in the Meadowbank area of the city. [1] He was educated at Broughton High School, a state school in Broughton, Edinburgh. [1] After leaving school, he was a law apprentice. [3]
In February 1943, at the age of 18, Shaw enlisted into the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (REME) to serve during the Second World War. [2] [3] He went on to hold every rank between lance corporal and Warrant Officer Class 1 (the most senior non-commissioned rank). [2] He served in the United Kingdom and in India, before being demobbed in October 1947. [3] It was while serving in the British Army that he first grew a handlebar moustache for which he was noted for wearing. [1]
Returning to Scotland after the war, Shaw decided to join the ministry rather than continue his legal career. [1] From 1947 to 1951, he studied at the University of Edinburgh. [2] He continued his studies at Edinburgh: he undertook research for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Scottish history under the supervision of Professor Gordon Donaldson. [3] His doctoral thesis was titled "The origin and development of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1560–1600", and was completed in 1962. [4] He was awarded a Doctor of Theology (ThDr) degree by the Charles University in Prague in 1969. [3]
Shaw was ordained for the Church of Scotland and installed as minister of St Margaret's Church, Dumbiedykes, Edinburgh on 29 July 1951. [1] [3] He tended to serve in churches in working-class communities. [1] He moved to become minister of St Christopher's Church, Craigentinny, Edinburgh in 1959, and served there until he retired on 3 January 1997. [1] [3]
Shaw was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in succession to Robert Craig. [2] He served as moderator from 1987 to 1988. [1] He invited Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, to address the Assembly when it met in May 1988: her address was known as the Sermon on the Mound. [1]
In 1955, Shaw married Ilse Pieter (died 1989). Together they had three children. In 1991, he married for a second time to Anna Libera Dallapiccola, a professor at the University of Heidelberg. [1]
In 2005, Shaw helped re-establish the Clan Shaw of Argyll and the Isles: he appointed its Representer (equivalent to clan chief) by the Lord Lyon King of Arms. The clan had been annihilated by Clan Campbell in 1614. [3] He had previously tried an failed to claim the Barony of Craigentinny. [1]
Shaw died in Edinburgh on 20 February 2018, aged 93. [3]
John Willock was a Scottish reformer. He appears to have been a friar of the Franciscan House at Ayr. Having joined the party of reform before 1541, he fled for his life to England. There he became noted as a zealous and taking preacher. This led to his arrest for heresy under an Act of Henry VIII., "for abolishing diversity of opinion" in matters of religion. He was found guilty of preaching against purgatory, holy water, priestly confession, and prayer to the saints, and of holding that priests might lawfully be married, he was for some time confined in the Fleet prison. After the accession of Edward VI he was chaplain to Henry, Duke of Suffolk, who had married King Henry's niece, and is best known as the father of Lady Jane Grey. He preached for a time in London, in St Katherine's Church, when both he and John Knox, his fast friend, were granted general license to preach anywhere in England. Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, presented him to the rectory of Loughborough in Leicestershire, a living which he continued to hold during King Edward's reign, and again during that of Queen Elizabeth for the rest of his life. Thus in his later years he was in the unique position of being at the same time a parish minister in both England and Scotland. When Mary Tudor came to the English throne in 1553, Willock fled to Embden, in the Protestant Duchy of Friesland. There he practised as a physician with much success, and rose to some eminence. In 1555, and again in 1556, the Duchess Anne of Friesland sent him to Scotland as her Commissioner on matters of trade. In 1558 he returned home, and preached for some time in Dundee, with much acceptance among the friends of reform. In 1559, when John Knox had to leave Edinburgh in peril of his life, Willook took his place as the evangelist of the Reformation. It was then that he conducted in St Giles what is believed to have been the earliest public celebration of the Holy Communion in Scotland after the reformed ritual. In 1560, when Queen Mary of Guise lay dying, the Earls of Argyll and Moray, and other Lords of the Congregation advised her to "send for a godly, learned man of whom she might receive instruction"; and Willock was chosen to minister to her, which he faithfully did. That same year he was made Superintendent of Glasgow and the West. He was also one of the six Johns entrusted with the drawing up of the First Book of Discipline, the others being John Knox, John Winram, John Spottiswood, John Douglas, and John Row. Sometime in that year he went to England, and brought home his wife, Katherine Picknavell, an English lady. He was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly in 1563, 1564, 1565, and 1568. In 1565 Queen Mary endeavoured to put a stop to his activity by having him imprisoned in Dumbarton Castle; but the Reformers were now too strong for her, and she had to depart from her purpose.
James Aitken Whyte was a Scottish theologian, presbyterian minister, and academic. He served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1988 to 1989.
The "Sermon on the Mound" is the name given by the Scottish press to an address made by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on Saturday, 21 May 1988. This speech, which laid out the relationship between her religious and her political thinking, proved highly controversial.
Robert Pont (1529–1606) was a Church of Scotland minister, judge and reformer. He was a church minister and commissioner and a Senator of the College of Justice.
The Scottish Reformation was the process by which Scotland broke with the Papacy and developed a predominantly Calvinist national Kirk (church), which was strongly Presbyterian in its outlook. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation that took place from the sixteenth century.
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John Winram was a 16th-century Scottish priest and ecclesiastical reformer. He was born in 1492, the son of one James Winram of Ratho and his wife Margaret Wilkie. He obtained a Bachelor's Degree (1515), a Master's Degree and a Doctorate (1541) from St Leonard's College, University of St Andrews.
Daniel Lamont (1870-1950) was a Church of Scotland Minister and academic. He was a Professor of Theology at New College, Edinburgh from 1927 to 1945; and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1936 to 1937.
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South Leith Parish Church, originally the Kirk of Our Lady, St Mary, is a congregation of the Church of Scotland. It is the principal church and congregation in Leith, in Edinburgh. Its kirkyard is the burial place for John Home and John Pew, the man from whom the author Robert Louis Stevenson reputedly derived the character of Blind Pew in the novel Treasure Island. The church has been repaired, used as an ammunition store and reconstructed but still retains the basic layout of the nave of the old church.
William Taylor was a Scottish minister, Principal of Glasgow University and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in both 1798. Taylor was born in Invergordon in Scotland, the son of the Marquess of North Staffs and Margaret Parry. His parents' and grandfathers' families had come from the notorious Highland clan MacKenzie of Glencoe, and the family began trading as far north as Iceland in the early 17th century. Taylor was made an MP in 1805 and Deputy First Lord of the Admiralty in 1807. He moved to London after he took over as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1812, and served as Second Secretary to the Prime Minister from 1819 to 1823.
John Craig was a Reformer, and colleague of John Knox. Originally a Dominican, he became a Church of Scotland minister with significant extra responsibilities and played an influential part in the Scottish Reformation.
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Andrew Duncan was a Latin scholar and Church of Scotland minister at Crail. He achieved notoriety for his presbyterian principles which brought him into conflict with James VI who wished to impose an episcopalian system. He attended the General Assembly of Aberdeen in 1605 which had been proscribed or prorogued by royal authority and was one of six ministers who were imprisoned and later exiled as a result. He was allowed to return after several years in France but was subsequently banished again following further controversy in failing to comply with the Five Articles of Perth. He died in exile in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1626.
Duncan Shaw (1727–1794) was a minister of the Church of Scotland and historian, who served as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1786.