The history of the Scottish Episcopal Church

At the Reformation, the Scottish Church fell into two parts, Episcopal (with Bishops) and Presbyterian (without Bishops, governed by elders). After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Kings James I and Charles I tried to project Episcopacy into Scotland on the English model, but after 1649, when Charles was executed, there was an extreme reaction towards Puritanism. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II and his successor James II made moves towards Roman Catholicism. When William and Mary replaced James II in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ they re-instated full Protestantism. They were recognised as King and Queen by the English bishops but not by the Scottish bishops. The Presbyterian Church became the Established Church in Scotland, and the Episcopal Church was driven underground, except for the ‘tolerated’ congregations which recognised William and Mary, and the Hanoverian Kings after them. There were only 4 Bishops, 40 priests and 5% of the population attending episcopalian worship. After the Jacobite Risings, the Episcopal Church was the object of wide suspicion, being felt to have Jacobite sympathies. It wasn’t until Bonnie Prince Charlie died that it could begin to emerge from a furtive existence. (In 1784, it was Scottish Bishops who consecrated Bishop Seabury to be the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, as the Bishops of the established Church of England could not be seen to consecrate a Bishop for the church of a ‘breakaway’ colony.)

Soon after 1788, The Reverend Daniel Sandford arrived in Scotland from England. He helped reconcile the different groups of Episcopalians and, once they had established themselves early in the 19th century, they built Episcopal churches in the centre of Edinburgh, one in York Place and the other at the West End of Princes Street, St John’s.

The Diocese of Edinburgh

Our Diocese, founded by Charles I during his efforts to establish Episcopacy in Scotland, is one of the seven dioceses of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It covers the eastern side of southern Scotland and stretches from the Firth of Forth to the English border. It includes more than 50 churches with a total membership of 8,500 and a communicant roll of 6,000. The Standing Committee of Diocesan Synod has two main sub-committees, Mission & Ministry and Finance & Management. Advice and support are available to charges in all aspects of their developing life. This includes work with young people and children, pastoral care and spiritual direction, as well as more practical concerns for buildings and financial management. In 2016 we appointed our first full-time Mission Enabler who helps us to focus on how we share in God’s mission to the world.

Church of St John the Evangelist

Late in the 1780s, Daniel Sandford (a 26-year-old parson from England), arrived in Edinburgh to teach Greek. In 1794, he opened a chapel for worship in a room in West Register Street then, as the congregation grew, he raised funds to build the new Charlotte Chapel at the west end of Rose Street. It opened on 28th May 1797. Sandford encouraged the reconciliation between the ‘qualified’ clergy and the Episcopal Church as a whole and, as the Church came together, he was consecrated Bishop of Edinburgh in 1806. He served as Bishop for 24 years, taking on in turn also the Dioceses of St Andrew’s and Glasgow.

His congregation was drawn from the diverse, mobile, aspirational social melting pot that was the first New Town of Edinburgh. By 1814, it was getting too big for the Charlotte Chapel, and Sandford approached the Revd. Allison of Cowgate Chapel with a plan for a city centre ‘mega-church’. The first idea was to build it at the foot of the Mound, but it then became obvious that it would just be too big. The two congregations then raised funds separately to build two separate churches at each end of the city centre, St Paul’s (now St Paul’s and St George’s) in York Place, and St John’s, on the site of a market garden at the West end of Princes Street. As building started, the proprietors of Princes Street, already nervous at a crop of shops and warehouses popping up at the East End, obtained a private Act of Parliament in 1816 to stop any further building between the Mound and Lothian Road. This area now forms Princes Street Gardens.

Daniel Sandford served as St John’s Incumbent until his death in 1830. Within St John’s, he established a tone of outgoing charity, devoted service and good relations with its Presbyterian neighbours which was to last into the future. In 1827, he had appointed as his Curate Edward Bannerman Ramsay, who after the Bishop’s death succeeded him as Incumbent. He served for 42 years, played a key role in the revival of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He carried St John’s to new heights of popularity and prominence, and made a profound difference to its interior aesthetic. We see his legacy today in the Memorials, Windows and Pews. He also injected energy into the whole area of mission, and St John’s was instrumental in setting up small churches and educational missions elsewhere in the city. The first initiative was a school and mission church in Tollcross in 1853, and others were to follow.  Aware of the plight of less successful churches, Ramsay founded the Scottish Episcopal Church Society in 1838, to give financial help to poor and elderly clergy and poor congregations, and to support candidates for the ministry.

Ramsay was a dynamic and inspiring preacher and, as the congregation grew, the galleries had to be greatly extended to accommodate it, and extra chairs had often to be set out up the nave. He became a distinguished figure on the Edinburgh scene and within Scotland. He was appointed Dean of Edinburgh in 1846, and in time was to be offered two Bishoprics, both of which he turned down. In 1855 the church, known up till now as a ‘Chapel’, finally became a ‘Church’. When Ramsay, much loved within the city community, died in 1872, around 20,000 citizens lined the streets at his funeral, and a copy of one of the old Celtic crosses on Iona was raised as his memorial on Princes Street. Inside St John’s, there is a monument of brass and stone, a marble bust and a memorial window to his memory.

A series of gifted Rectors maintained the momentum Ramsay had created, and by 1960 the church had 1,200 communicant members. The 680 pew places were often full, when chairs had to be set out in the aisles. In the 1960s Rector Keith Arnold instituted Team Ministry and encouraged lay involvement, while his successor Aeneas Mackintosh had the Rood Screen dividing the Chancel from the main body of the church removed. He also instituted the Kiss of Peace. The Church began to change from a very formal place with formal worship into one with a much more relaxed and spontaneous atmosphere.

This was also the time when St John’s began to work with other churches in the city centre (both Episcopalian and Church of Scotland) on a series of remarkable joint projects. This led to the inception of a Lunch Club, Cephas House (a supervised place where ‘lost’ young people could live), a Cellar with music for teenagers, a late-night Coffee House Mission, a drop-in for homeless people, and finally the ‘Rock Trust’ for homeless teenagers, which is now independently run but extending its outreach well beyond Edinburgh.

The move for greater informality in St John’s was further encouraged by Neville Chamberlain (1982– 1997), who had a new wooden altar designed and brought much closer to the congregation. He also initiated ‘The Murals’,  prominently displayed outside the church to highlight some current political issue. His successor, John Armes, started to plan a re-development, and led a compassionate and spiritual ministry before moving to become Bishop of Edinburgh. He was succeeded by Markus Duenzkofer. Markus, who had the difficult task of seeing the church through the pandemic and lockdown, stressed welcome and diversity, and conducted the first marriage ceremony for a gay couple in the UK. He oversaw the celebration of the church’s Bicentenary and the redevelopment of the Hall and Lower Terrace and began to reach out to a wider age range. David Bagnall, Associate Rector, has further built on this by holding a weekly gathering with Communion for young children and their parents (‘The Ark’), and opening the church (also weekly) to all-comers as a ‘warm space’. Through all this, our worship has lain at the heart of all we do, and the tradition of preaching, prayer and the sacraments is given a high priority, implemented by our richly-talented Ministry team. The Choir is a big factor in giving our services an impetus and vitality which draws our worshippers together.

The Congregation

The first congregation of St John’s included gentry escaping the insanitary hierarchy of the Old Town, lawyers raising their young families in the spacious Charlotte Square, English shopkeepers and artisans selling luxury goods in Rose Street, nabobs back from India, wives and daughters left behind by the Napoleonic Wars, and domestic servants.

The very earliest records of the congregation in Charlotte Chapel, from 1797–1800, had a ‘landed interest’ approaching half of the congregation, fairly typical of an Episcopal chapel. By the time St John’s was built in the 1810s, however, the landed interest had shrunk to a third, and the labouring classes composed almost half the congregation. The higher social ranking members of the congregation were a tightly-knit group. This group also formed the leadership of the congregation, the clergy and first vestry.

In 1837, St John’s to have been the most socially diverse of the New Town churches. Around one in five members at its communion rail were ’poor and working class’, more than Presbyterian St George’s and St Andrew’s, or Episcopalian St Paul’s or St George’s.

Between 1837 and 1854 the West End was changed beyond recognition, by the arrival of the railway: the Caledonian Railway Station was on St John’s doorstep. As Lothian Road was industrialised, and large amounts of new tenement housing sprang up close to the church, this affected the congregation and led to the founding by St John’s of a mission church and school in Earl Grey Street.

By 1959, Edinburgh’s rapid early industrialisation had long been overtaken by other cities, and it had specialised as a city of the professions. The Church Illustrated described the congregation at St John’s: ‘The congregation is drawn from the fashionable squares and crescents of Edinburgh’s classical new town (now mostly turned into flats), and from the later houses, built after the same manner, on the other side of the Dean Bridge, such as Comley (sic) Bank. University students too are regular worshippers, and since Edinburgh has a tradition of drawing students from England and from abroad, this gives a cosmopolitan nature to the congregation. Prominent among the coloured student worshippers are West Africans.’

In the years since, this kind of mix has continued, leavened by an increasing quota of visitors to the city, so that today’s congregation embodies a wide range of ages and ethnic origins. The emphasis has more and more been on our identity as an ‘Open Community’, as defined in our Mission Statement. Today, the visitor is greeted with the mantra ‘Whoever you are, and wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith, you are welcome in this place.’