A Qualified Chapel, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland, was an Episcopal congregation that worshipped liturgically but accepted the Hanoverian monarchy and thereby "qualified" under the Scottish Episcopalians Act 1711 for exemption from the penal laws against the Episcopal Church of Scotland.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, many Scottish Episcopalians, holding the Divine Right of Kings, remained true to their oaths to James VII and II and refused in conscience to recognise or pray for William III and Mary II. The Episcopalians were ejected from parish churches by the Presbyterians. After the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 in which many Episcopalians participated, harsher restrictions were imposed on Episcopalians under the Toleration Act of 1746 and Penal Act of 1748. Priests who did not swear allegiance to George II, pray for him by name and register their Letters of Orders were forbidden to minister to more than four people ("the prescribed four") at any one time. The penalty for a first offence was imprisonment for six months; thereafter the penalty was transportation to the West Indies plantations for life. Penalties for lay people worshipping at Episcopalian services included being prevented from holding any public office, deprivation of the right to vote and being barred from admission to the universities and colleges. Further persecution followed – no clergyman ordained by a Scottish bishop could "qualify" to conduct ordinary and open worship.
The eighteenth century saw the establishment of Qualified Chapels where worship was conducted according to the English Book of Common Prayer and where congregations, led by priests ordained by bishops of the Church of England or the Church of Ireland, were willing to pray for the Hanoverian monarchs. Such chapels drew their congregations from English people living in Scotland and from Scottish Episcopalians who were not bound to the Jacobite cause. These were independent congregations, not recognised by the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and refusing to accept the authority of those bishops. [1]
The two forms of Episcopalianism existed side by side, one made almost invisible by penal laws and the other one tolerated and public.
The divide was largely ended in 1788 when Charles Edward Stuart died in exile. Unwilling to recognise his brother Henry Benedict Stuart, who was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, as his heir, the Episcopalians elected to recognise the House of Hanover and offer allegiance to George III. At the repeal of the penal laws in 1792 there were twenty-four Qualified Chapels in Scotland. [2] Nonjuring and Qualified congregations gradually united, particularly after the 1804 Convocation of Laurencekirk where the Episcopal Church adopted the Thirty-Nine Articles. By 1850 all but one of the former qualified chapels had joined the Episcopal Church. The last separate Qualified Chapel, St Peter's in Montrose, Angus, founded in 1722, [3] only joined the Episcopal Church in 1920. [2]
Following the practice in the Church of England, Qualified Chapels installed organs and hired musicians, singing in the liturgy as well as metrical psalms, while the non-jurors had to worship covertly and less elaborately. After the two branches united, the former non-juring branch absorbed the musical and liturgical traditions of the qualified churches. [4]
An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages.
Jacobitism was a political movement that supported the restoration of the senior line of the House of Stuart to the British throne. The name derives from the first name of James II and VII, which in Latin translates as Jacobus. When James went into exile after the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, the Parliament of England argued that he had abandoned the English throne, which they offered to his Protestant daughter Mary II, and her husband William III. In April, the Scottish Convention held that he "forfeited" the throne of Scotland by his actions, listed in the Articles of Grievances.
The Scottish Episcopal Church is the ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion in Scotland.
The Free Church of England (FCE) is an episcopal church based in England. The church was founded when a number of congregations separated from the established Church of England in the middle of the 19th century.
The Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin, commonly called St Mary's Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It is located on the Great Western Road, in the west end of Glasgow, Scotland. The current building was opened on 9 November 1871 as St Mary's Episcopal Church and was completed in 1893 when the spire was completed. The architect was Sir Gilbert Scott. It was raised to cathedral status in 1908. The total height of the cathedral is 63 metres. The church structure is protected as a category A listed building.
The Nonjuring schism refers to a split in the established churches of England, Scotland and Ireland, following the deposition and exile of James II and VII in the 1688 Glorious Revolution. As a condition of office, clergy were required to swear allegiance to the ruling monarch; for various reasons, some refused to take the oath to his successors William III and II and Mary II. These individuals were referred to as Non-juring, from the Latin verb iūrō, or jūrō, meaning "to swear an oath".
The Bishop of Edinburgh, or sometimes the Lord Bishop of Edinburgh, is the ordinary of the Scottish Episcopal Diocese of Edinburgh.
The history of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America has its origins in the Church of England, a church which stresses its continuity with the ancient Western church and claims to maintain apostolic succession. Its close links to the Crown led to its reorganization on an independent basis in the 1780s. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was characterized sociologically by a disproportionately large number of high status Americans as well as English immigrants; for example, more than a quarter of all presidents of the United States have been Episcopalians. Although it was not among the leading participants of the abolitionist movement in the early 19th century, by the early 20th century its social engagement had increased to the point that it was an important participant in the Social Gospel movement, though it never provided much support for the Prohibitionist movement. Like other mainline churches in the United States, its membership decreased from the 1960s. This was also a period in which the church took a more open attitude on the role of women and toward homosexuality, while engaging in liturgical revision parallel to that of the Roman Catholic Church in the post Vatican II era.
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The history of the Scottish Episcopal Church is traced by the church to ancient times. The Church today is a Christian denomination in Scotland and a member of the Anglican Communion. It has enjoyed a distinct identity and is neither Roman nor English. It is therefore not a Daughter Church in the Anglican communion.
The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Michael Bruce Curry, the first African American bishop to serve in that position.
James Brown was a clergyman in the Scottish Episcopal Church, notable as one of a few Jacobite dissenters who refused to abandon their allegiance to the House of Stuart when directed to do so in 1788.
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Scottish religion in the eighteenth century includes all forms of religious organisation and belief in Scotland in the eighteenth century. This period saw the beginnings of a fragmentation of the Church of Scotland that had been created in the Reformation and established on a fully Presbyterian basis after the Glorious Revolution. These fractures were prompted by issues of government and patronage, but reflected a wider division between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party. The legal right of lay patrons to present clergymen of their choice to local ecclesiastical livings led to minor schisms from the church. The first in 1733, known as the First Secession and headed by figures including Ebenezer Erskine, led to the creation of a series of secessionist churches. The second in 1761 led to the foundation of the independent Relief Church.
Church music in Scotland includes all musical composition and performance of music in the context of Christian worship in Scotland, from the beginnings of Christianisation in the fifth century, to the present day. The sources for Scottish Medieval music are extremely limited due to factors including a turbulent political history, the destructive practices of the Scottish Reformation, the climate and the relatively late arrival of music printing. In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant, which led to the development of a distinct form of liturgical Celtic chant. It was superseded from the eleventh century by more complex Gregorian chant. In the High Middle Ages, the need for large numbers of singing priests to fulfill the obligations of church services led to the foundation of a system of song schools, to train boys as choristers and priests. From the thirteenth century, Scottish church music was increasingly influenced by continental developments. Monophony was replaced from the fourteenth century by the Ars Nova consisting of complex polyphony. Survivals of works from the first half of the sixteenth century indicate the quality and scope of music that was undertaken at the end of the Medieval period. The outstanding Scottish composer of the first half of the sixteenth century was Robert Carver, who produced complex polyphonic music.
Music of Scotland in the eighteenth century includes all forms of music made in Scotland, by Scottish people, or in forms associated with Scotland, in the eighteenth century. Growing divisions in the Scottish kirk between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party resulted in attempt to expand psalmondy to include hymns the singing of other scriptural paraphrases.
Evensong is a church service traditionally held near sunset focused on singing psalms and other biblical canticles. It is loosely based on the canonical hours of vespers and compline. Old English speakers translated the Latin word vesperas as æfensang, which became 'evensong' in modern English. Typically used in reference to the Anglican daily office's evening liturgy, it can also refer to the pre-Reformation form of vespers or services of evening prayer from other denominations, particularly within the Anglican Use of the Catholic Church.
The 1929 Scottish Prayer Book is an official liturgical book of the Scotland-based Scottish Episcopal Church. The 1929 edition follows from the same tradition of other versions of the Book of Common Prayer used by the churches within the Anglican Communion and Anglicanism generally, with the unique liturgical tradition of Scottish Anglicanism. It contains both the forms of the Eucharistic liturgy and Daily Office, as well as additional public liturgies and personal devotions. The second major revision of the Book of Common Prayer following the full independence of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book succeeded the 1912 edition and was intended to serve alongside the Church of England's 1662 prayer book.