The Flip
When John Knox returned from Geneva in 1559 Scotland was a Catholic country.
Mass was celebrated in Latin, in colourful, ornate spaces, fragrant with incense and beeswax, sonorous with sacred music, rich in iconography and ritual. Saints’ days and quarter days regulated time (and agriculture and commerce). Monastic and episcopal foundations were key economic institutions, continuing to provide welfare services and centres of learning despite the notorious skimming of benefices by clerics and related proprietors. God existed: theology was the foundational science of the time. For the individual, the experience of worship was sensuous if, for most, incomprehensible: they made their own meaning.
By 1561, Scotland was a Protestant country. The Mass was banned. Many sacred spaces had been stripped of art and ornament. Scripture and preaching was in Scots. The sensual ritual of the Mass was replaced by a logocentric religion[i] based on sermons and vernacular readings of Scripture. This ‘new’ Scotland was demystified (to an extent) but far from disenchanted[ii].
In the context of the Climate Emergency, I am astonished by how quickly and comprehensively a society ‘flipped’ from one hegemonic paradigm to another. Far more extreme than the Russian Revolution of 1917 or the Cultural Revolution of 1966. In a few years, unifying, latinate Catholicism was replaced with fractious, vernacular Calvinism in substantial areas of the politically important Eastern Lowlands.
Surprise, surprise!
One of the salutary discoveries I have made whilst researching Archeobiography is the strong Scottish – as opposed to Gaelic or Irish – element in my genealogy. Rather to my dismay, I am not ‘simply’ a Celt, born and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands, but an even blend of Celtic and Germanic experience[iii] reaching back into time, inter-breeding and interacting, annealing into a cultural myth about who I am.
Due to the more rapid secularisation (and periodic secessions) among Protestant Scots, I was never convinced my ‘Scottish’ Elliott and Niccol heritage was ‘Protestant’. Segregated schooling and regular Church attendance on the Bolland and Armour side of my family reinforced my sense that I was culturally Catholic. Catholic, in this context, equals Irish.
Unsurprisingly, the Scottish Reformation was not a key topic on the History curriculum of the Catholic schools I attended[iv]. Whilst I soaked up the prejudicial cultural myths – Derry’s Walls, Jacobite Rebellions, Faith of my Fathers and Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off – no-one made any effort to enlighten me (or anyone else I knew) about the Reformation. I was aware that there was a preacher named John Knox and he was beastly to the young (Catholic) Mary Queen of Scots.
Imagine my embarrassment, therefore, to discover John on a remote branch of my family tree: first cousin 13 times removed.
Of course, Knox is not the Scottish Reformation – too easy to slip into the ‘Great Man’ narrative, especially when the man in question wrote the first ‘definitive’ history of events as if it were an autobiography.
My research into ‘my’ Scots was intent in better understanding the lifeways of my direct ancestors – one of whom was John’s aunt – so the Scottish Reformation was added to the reading pile. But researching those lifeways was a revelation.
A Godly Commonwealth
What emerges is, for me, a startling revelation of the effectiveness and totalitarian nature of the Calvinist transformation of Scotland.
Back in the bad old days[v], some of my colleagues described my leadership style as ‘somewhat Maoist’: which, in the context of a neoliberal, corporatist milieu, I regarded as a compliment. But the efficacy of the early modern Scottish reformers seems, on reflection, breathe-taking. In the second wave of Reformation – inspired by Melville rather than Knox – Scotland instituted a system of communal governance – based on Presbyteries rather than Soviets – which persisted and evolved for four centuries (and, perhaps, can continue to evolve).
Moreover, that system of governance was founded on the pre-modern quantum of ‘the Parish’ which, in general, was based on how far a person could reasonably walk to and from the kirk on a Sunday: the (shanks pony) precursor of the 20 minute community. Sunday services were timed to ensure rural parishioners could get to and from the Kirk in daylight during winter months. Local relations could be maintained without recourse to fossil fuel subsidies.
Reform, and especially ‘Land Reform’, is frequently associated with injustices and the clearance of indigenous populations from traditional rights to properties and service.
The radicalism of Presbyterian Reform was in siting authority at the Parish level – a more manageable authority than the secular courts of the time. Ministers and elders knew the congregation and the parishioners knew their minister and elders[vi]. To achieve a Godly Commonwealth, the kirk laboured to establish communal harmony and many of their processes strove for reconciliation rather than punishment[vii] Moreover, the central ritual of this new frame was ‘communion’: not the mediated dispensation of a printed wafer by a qualified cleric but a regular sit-down of the whole community (12 to a table) to share real bread and wine. The disciplines of catechism and family bible study synchronised the sensibilities and frame of reference of the whole community and Sabbatarianism (‘compulsory’ attendance at sermon time unless a small child or unwell) nurtured local community if not class solidarity.
In its most Puritan manifestations, this regime was totalitarian and, like all social institutions, vulnerable to corruption or misuse of power. But Margo Todd[viii] has argued that its architects were adept at
a) providing processes for communal mediation and welfare that existing clerical and secular governance did not
b) syncretising and repurposing elements of existing cultural practice to scaffold the transition (e.g. Communion, Poor Relief).
The original vision of Reform articulated by Knox (and his colleagues) was that Catholic church lands and benefices would be appropriated and re-invested in a Godly Commonwealth, supporting trained cadres of preachers and schoolmasters to guide congregations and extend the literacy which was essential to the sustainability of the change[ix]. Despite a thoroughgoing restructuring of social governance – replacing top-down feudal and episcopal processes with local sessions, regional synods and a General Assembly – the withholding of these resources choked many of their aspirations towards a Godly Commonwealth
Demagogues
As well as his direct reading of the Bible, Knox built on the thinking and evangelism of others such as Wycliffe, Huss, Wishart, Calvin, Zwingli. And, of course, he preached into a particular socio-political moment in Scottish history. But what strikes me is the persistence of reform his rhetoric, and those of his colleagues, and the underlying processes brought about.
As a former priest, of course, Knox ‘had the Latin’. He also had Greek, Hebrew and English. But the hour (or two hour) long sermons he delivered, riffing on selected bible texts, were thundered out in eloquent, accessible and darkly-humorous Scots. The congregation, finally, had no doubt what they should be grateful for and ashamed of. And the list was long. But they were roused by this, probably neurodiverse, advocate of revealed truth: revealed through meditation on the (biblical) truth[xi].
At Knox’s funeral in Edinburgh, the Regent Morton[xii], was reported to have said, “There lies he who never feared or flattered any flesh.”
He was a literalist who read deeply between the lines. He believed, intensely, that the truth was revealed to him through scripture and, it is clear, he could be uncivil and brutally direct in articulating ‘the God’s truth’. Yet, despite a number of close-calls, Knox died in bed. I suspect his eloquence and erudition left would-be executioners in some doubt whether he was in fact a prophet like Jeremiah, channelling God’s judgements on idolaters and Jezebels. Moreover, his demagogic talents left them wary of provoking the ‘rascal multitude’.
Communal violence predated Knox’s sermon in Perth in 1559. Protestant preachers and clerics had been executed by Catholic ‘authorities’. Catholic prelates had been assassinated by Protestant radicals. Knox spent almost 2 years as a galley slave for his part in the seizing of the castle at St. Andrews and many years in exile.
Paradigm shifts of this magnitude are dangerous. Barbara Walter’s has described how the risk of inter-communal violence increases as polities shift from authoritarian regimes to anocracies and formerly privileged groups resort to direct and violent action of mitigate their perceived losses[xiii].
From the first iconoclasm in Perth in 1559, Scotland did experience almost two centuries of civil war and communal violence. Perhaps the violence was baked in long before Knox’s sermon at St. John’s Kirk but, from this point forward, it was articulated in ideological terms: Royalist Episcopalians against Covenanting Presbyterians, the Elect against the Anti-Christ and the worshipers of Satan.
Applicability to the current predicament
As I outlined in my recent blog – Adaptation – priorities for ‘investment’ in adaptation, should be in :
association – reforming and rebuilding community solidarity and agency at grass-roots level
education – creating forums for agentic discussion and shared commitment informed by ethical and scientific wisdom and knowledge.
change – empowering and implementing change, safely and equitably, through a value-based reformation of demand
These priorities are based on my reflection on key themes expressed during the 2023 Pibroch tour:
- The need to rebuild community in face-to-face, situated contexts based on ‘place’.
- The need to improve climate literacy & critical thinking and to enhance local agency
- The need for processes which conciliate and mediate differing local interests
- The need for evangelism and ‘bardic’ preachers,
- The need for live ‘theatre’.
In this context, many of the structures and processes implemented through Presbyterian reform have much to commend them. I am not suggesting that the values and catechetical disciplines of Scottish Calvinism are imported into Climate Activism[xiv]. The concept of the Elect is antithetical to the idea of Climate Justice and The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of Women is self-evidently problematic[xv].
Rather, many aspects of the reformers practices (and activism) are relevant to achieving the necessary socio-political reformation to adapt to the Climate Catastrophe. There are lessons to be learned from this history, both in how changed should be framed and disseminated
- in community,
- passionately,
- in a context of enhanced and shared literacy,
- with charismatic activism,
- iconoclastically,
- bottom-up
- in the avoidance of violence and injustice.
The concept of intentional communities has arisen in a number of discussions around future lifeways. The intentional community seems to map usefully onto the idea of a ‘faith’ community in terms of solidarity around a shared script whilst (acknowledging the fractious nature of ‘Protestantism’) providing space for experimentation and renewal which a Universal dogma (16th century Roman Catholicism or UN Governance) does not allow.
In achieving this shift, however, I am intrigued by a number of facilitating mechanisms :
- Evangelism
- Bottom up agency
- Iconoclasm
- Faith
Like many ‘post-moderns’, I have been in the thrall of presentism too long. A relativist complacency in the face of obdurate geophysical realities. An acceptance of top down, imperial and corporate modes of governance. The pervasive enchantments of technology and advertising. The absence of hope.
Stuff is real (and non-negotiable). Governance is malleable. Iconography is vulnerable to erasure whether that be the keying of SUVs or the refusal of patriarchal and/or colonial narratives.
And history records that local, literate, reflexive agency is possible.
Isn’t it time for reform on a revolutionary scale?
[ii] Weber
[iii] more recently reframed as Catholicism and Protestantism,
[iv] All schools, in those Unionist decades, were wary of Scotland’s embarrassing trajectory towards and away from being a nation-state and, in Catholic schools, well, what was the point of digging all that up again?
[v] When I still earned my money facipulating corporate strategy and governance systems.
[vi] At the outset, the selection of ministers was by the congregation and elders were elected on a regular basis. Moreover, there was active encouragement of elders to criticise their ministers. Although there was a convergence and overlap between kirk sessions and burgh councils and heritors, this was as close to local democracy as Scotland would get for another 300 years. The issue of appointed ministers becomes problematic in the 17th-19th centuries however.
[vii] See Margo Todd, ibid.
[viii] Todd, Ibid
[ix] This proposal was at odds with the material interests of Protestant landowners who saw the opportunity, from the outset, to appropriate church lands in their own interests.
[xi] In the world of streaming mass entertainment, the sermon has achieved a bad press but the literature suggests that eloquent, barn-storming vernacular preachers attracted large audiences with some city dwellers (e.g. in Prague) going from one sermon to another in the course of a Sunday.
[xii] James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton – Wikipedia
[xiii] How Civil Wars Start – Barbara F. Walter Penguin 2022
[xiv] The First Catechism was rather biased towards the ‘establishment’ in its interpretations, especially of the Commandments.
[xv] Though I have a feeling that even Knox regretted his rhetoric.