New Lights: The Growth of Dissent and Voluntaryism in Scotland, 1712–1843

Abstract

This chapter questions what ‘dissent’ historically meant in Scotland prior to the Disruption. Following a brief overview of post-Reformation Scottish religious history, the chapter details the origins of the eighteenth-century secessions from the Church of Scotland and the varying reasons for these schisms, before assessing the growth of ‘New Light’ voluntary thought within the main seceding churches and their increasing influence in Scottish society from the turn of the nineteenth century. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of these new groups of urban middle-class dissenters in the major ecclesiastical and political controversies of the first half of the nineteenth century: the Voluntary Controversy of the 1830s and the ‘Ten Years’ Conflict’, which directly resulted in the Disruption and the formation of the Free Church.