Welcome to our church

In the early 17th century King Charles I wanted to impose the English form of worship on Scotland.

This did not go down well with members of the established church and eventually led to the signing of the ‘National Covenant,’ a manifesto of protest, believed to have taken place in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, in 1638.

In 1643 a group of nobility and churchmen drew up the Solemn League and Covenant whereby the Scottish Covenanters would support the overthrow of King Charles I, on condition that the English adopted a Presbyterian form of Church government.

However, by 1660, Charles II established Episcopacy i.e. the church ruled by Bishops in Scotland. Consequently, a number of congregations and clergy took to the hills to worship.

By 1662, Charles II created an act which proclaimed that permission was required from a bishop to preach. Then in 1670 another act applied the death penalty to anyone preaching at open-air meetings or conventicles.

This became known as the Killing Times.

Between 1660 and 1688 18,000 people were either killed, imprisoned, sent into slavery, or banished for their Presbyterian faith.

And to make matters worse, in 1712 Queene Anne’s Parliament re-introduced patronage into the church, totally disregarding the Treaty of Union imposed 5 years earlier. This gave the right to a wealthy patron to place someone of their choosing to be the minister regardless of the wishes of the congregation.

A written protest was sent to the General Assembly in 1733 by four dissidents and a month later they met again and formed the idea of a Secession Church.

The well-established Praying Societies warmed to the new Secession Church and on the 5 th of August 1737 the new Church received permission to use the parish church in Linlithgow to hold a meeting.

The District Societies began to discuss Secession in all its aspects and after deliberating for a year, in 1738, 15 Elders and 122 members left the established church and joined the Associate Presbytery, thus formally creating the ‘Secession Church’.

Among those who left, were a group who had been worshipping at Craigmailen Farm in the Bathgate Hills and the congregation was formally initiated “At Knock” within the Parish of Bathgate on Wednesday November 15th, 1738.

The new congregation held their first service in January 1739 and were led in worship by Mr John Hunter, the first minister licenced to preach in the Associate Presbytery. As they did not have a building, a tent was used consisting of two boards covered with a sheet to create the altar and the tent was tied to a large stone.

To this day that stone, known as the ‘preachers stane’ has the inscription:

This stone is in a field on the land of Upper Craigmailen Farm.

Between 1739 and 1741 the congregation was without a minister. In 1740 there was a large influx of members, and the congregation were given a site at Craigmailen for a church. The Rev. Andrew Clarkson was ordained as the first minister of Craigmailen Church at the Knock on 17 th June 1741.

The ‘Secession Church’ prospered until 1747 when a split occurred due to a new clause added at the Reformation to the oath taken by burgesses.

An oath had to be taken to uphold the ‘True Religion’ (established church). An interpretation of the new clause was that, by implication, a son could not succeed to his father’s business without swearing the oath.

While those of the other opinion were known as the “Christian Religion.”

The supporters of these two groups need a new name and

‘True Religion’ - Burghers
‘Christian Religion’ - Antiburghers

The Antiburghers went on to form the General Associate or Antiburgher Synod and being in the majority, like the rest of the country, together with their minister, kept possession of the Church at Craigmailen when the other side left. Things remained stable until the minister’s death in 1762. The Rev. Clarkson was succeeded by Rev. Alexander Oliver in 1763. At this time, the Bo’ness and Mid Calder members left Craigmailen and founded their own congregations in their respective towns.

By 1807 the building at Craigmailen was in a state of disrepair and was abandoned, with the minister and the Linlithgow members moving to Linlithgow and the Bathgate members deciding to move to Bathgate.

The Associate Presbytery of Edinburgh formed the Bathgate people into a congregation and raised a building for worship on a site, still used today in Marjoribanks Street, then known as College Street.

A link with the past Church still exists where a carved stone sundial, brought from the Craigmailen church, was incorporated in the northeast wall of the old manse.

A minister was called in 1807 but the position was never filled and so it was not until 1811 that Mr. Robert Morison became the first minister of the Antiburgher Secession Church in Marjoribanks Street in Bathgate, and continued as minister until his death on the 5 th of August 1855, aged 72. He was laid to rest in the graveyard at Bathgate High Parish Church where his headstone can be found.

James Morison was born in the Church manse in 1816 and while growing up, his spiritual mind developed, and he evolved his ‘New Views’ which conflicted with the prevailing Calvinism and he was suspended from the United Secession ministry in June 1841 for holding such heretical ideas. The following year his father Robert was also suspended, for coming under the influence of his son’s theology. In 1843 the same fate befell the Rev. Alexander Rutherford of Falkirk and the Rev. John Guthrie of Kendal. Thus, these four met together in Kilmarnock on the 16 th of May 1843 and founded the Evangelical Union.

The Evangelical Union claimed freedom from state control, subsidy, and interference.

By the 1880s James Morison’s views were widely recognised by the organised church life of Scotland and by the close of the 19 th Century there were some 90 Churches. Indeed, Glasgow University conferred on him the degree of ‘Doctor of Divinity’ acknowledging the esteem in which his theology was held.

In 1875 moves were afoot to purchase the grounds of the existing Church in Marjoribanks Street. Work on the new building started in 1894, designed by James Fairley, architect, from West Calder. The memorial stone was consecrated and laid by Professor Simpson on the 9 th of March 1895. On Thursday 15 th August 1895, the E.U. doors were opened, and the church was dedicated by the Rev. William Kirk, assisted by the Rev. David Graham.

Yet another momentous change in the life of our Church came a year later when the Evangelical Union began discussions with the Scottish Congregational Church to consider a merger

It was March 1895 before a draft constitution was written for consideration and seventy-six Congregational and sixty E.U. Churches, discussed the basis of a draft union. The E.U. Churches were already in agreement to unite based on the draft proposal, but the Congregationalists deferred the decision for a year.

In April 1896 at the A.G.M. of the Congregational Union in Glasgow the vote was taken with 144 for and 33 against the union. Then in October 1896, separate conferences took place within the individual churches and votes taken, resulting in:
Congregational Union, 93 for, 17 against. And the E.U. 140 for and 14 against.

Therefore, the motion was passed declaring the union of the two Churches from Jan 1st , 1897.

Our Church in Bathgate entered whole-heartedly into the new union with Mr. George Wolfe, secretary of the Bathgate E.U. Church being appointed the treasurer of the Congregational Union in Scotland.

Once again, our church in Bathgate did not want to sever its roots with the past and proudly continued to proclaim itself as the Church of the E.U. Congregational Union.

However, in 1994 at the general assembly it was decided, for charitable status reasons, to call the ‘Union’ a ‘Church’ making it ‘Congregational Church in Scotland’. Bathgate became known as the ‘E.U. Congregational Church in Scotland.’

With the dust hardly settled on that affair, a new union was in the offing, with the United Reformed Church. In September 1998, the Congregational Church in Scotland discussed a proposed union with the ‘United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom’.

In 2000 the Unifying Assembly of the ‘Congregational Church in Scotland’ and the ‘United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom’ united to form the ‘United Reformed Church.’