The Secession and United Presbyterian Churches

Abstract

This chapter examines the work of theologians in the United Secession (1820–47) and United Presbyterian Church (1847–1900). Three significant thinkers were Henry Calderwood, (1830–97), John Cairns (1818–92), and James Orr (1844–1913). With others, these theologians addressed the relation of the Secession Churches to Calvinist orthodoxy, they promoted the cause of Church reunion, and they sought to provide an appropriate apologia for faith in the changing intellectual culture of the nineteenth century. Over the period of a century, a coherent vision emerged of a via media, or liberal conservatism, that became an enduring facet of the Secession traditions. A sub-narrative concerns James Morison who was deposed from the United Secession ministry in 1841 because of his views on the universality of the atonement. Morison’s Arminian theology was novel in Calvinist Scotland, but it proved to be a template for later evangelical developments.