A KIRK DISRUPTED:
Charles Cowan MP and the Free Church of Scotland
By A. Donald Macleod
Christian Focus. 363 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 1 781 912 690
Even those with a cursory knowledge of Scottish church history may remember that at the Disruption of 1843, when 450 ministers and elders left the established Church of Scotland over the abuse of patronage (and the government’s failure to address it), one of the wonders was that within a year nearly £233,000 had been raised for the support of the new Free Church.
Within a decade, 730 new church buildings, 400 manses, 500 schools and a new theological college had been built. (By contrast, the total annual income of the Church of Scotland was estimated at £20,000.) It was an inspiring story.
The businessman
This book is about the businessman who organised that stunning success, Charles Cowan, an Edinburgh paper-manufacturer, cousin of Thomas Chalmers, provider of paper for the books of Sir Walter Scott, and friend of William Gladstone.
Cowan’s other claim to fame is that he was the man who stood for Parliament against the sitting Member, the illustrious author and orator Thomas Babington Macaulay, and beat him resoundingly – to national amazement. Cowan is remembered as ‘the man who beat Macaulay’. He sat in the Commons for 12 years, without particular distinction, although he faithfully represented Scottish concerns (and particularly those of the Free Church), and he discovered the problems facing a Christian in politics. Sadly, when he retired from Parliament, ‘earlier certainties, both in politics and religion, were becoming more ambiguous, more blurred’.
Scholarly and readable
This biography demonstrates that it is possible to be both scholarly – it skilfully marshalls a mass of primary material and up-to-date secondary sources – and also readable. One reviewer describes it as a ‘page turner’ and there is plenty of interest in the growth of Cowan’s business, his family, the development of his spiritual life and his interests. For instance, he helped to found the National Curling Club, which drew up the rules of the sport. He was also a founder-member of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights – the first effective Scottish Nationalist movement.
Reliving the glory year
However, the great event of Cowan’s life was undoubtedly the Disruption, that watershed in Scottish history, when ‘the majority of the most zealous and active among both clergy and laity left the Church in 1843’. Even at the end of his life, at his 40th and last General Assembly of the Free Church, when his speech was almost inaudible, Cowan still relived that glory year. Readers will have plenty of opportunity to make up their minds as to whether the great breach was inevitable and whether it was ultimately worthwhile.
Bourgeois respectability?
The Free Church of Scotland changed during Cowan’s lifetime ‘from its early revivalist intensity into bourgeois respectability and spiritual complacency, especially in the Lowlands’. And Cowan himself subtly shifted in his religious orientation, changing from one motivated by ‘Gospel truths’ into a ‘denominational loyalist’. In his last months, however, he seems to have returned to his old ‘thankfulness, humility, trust and prayerfulness’. This account of both the Free Church and the individual man of business is both fascinating and sobering.
