During the late nineteenth-century William Ross became the minister of Cowcaddens Free Church Glasgow, which was situated in an area of serious social deprivation. Subsequently the church experienced significant growth and was recognised by contemporaries as an example of successful urban mission amongst the working class. This study aims to explore the reasons for the apparent success of the church and its minister, the influences which formulated their response to the urban environment, and how this compares with the work and growth of other churches within the same locality. The wider aim is to explore the extent to which the social status, activities and work of Cowcaddens Free Church either support or contradict, existing understandings about the place of religion in nineteenth-century working class life and patterns of religious decline. This study also assesses the approach of Ross and his church to ‘social concern’, a subject of considerable importance to evangelicals during the nineteenth-century. The evidence concerning church growth and the social status of the congregation is explored through detailed statistical analysis. Examination of archive material and secondary sources contribute to the formation of a more detailed picture of the local social context in which Cowcaddens Free Church operated, and of the wider Scottish theological and ecclesiological context. The evidence suggests that this was an active, growing, working class church which succeeded in attracting the urban masses to religion, but that it did so through a concentration on evangelistic outreach rather than an emphasis on social concern. As an example of religious growth and successful urban mission, Cowcaddens Free Church contributes to ongoing research concerning the importance of religion to the urban working class, and present understanding of patterns of religious growth and decline during the nineteenth-century.

James Orr (1844-1913) was a Scottish theologian, apologist and polemicist. He was the leading United Presbyterian theologian at the time of the United Free Church of Scotland union of 1900, and beyond his own church and nation he came to exercise a significant influence in North America. This study is an examination of Orris theological contribution, what he believed and how he expressed it, in its historical setting Particular attention is paid to the convictions which undergirded and gave impetus to his activities. The study reveals that while Orr was far from unaffected by the intellectual movements of the late-Victorian period, his contribution may best be described as a call for continuity with the central tenets of evangelical orthodoxy. He was one of the earliest and principal British critics of the Ritschlian theology, and a strong opponent of rationalistic biblical criticism. He emphatically rejected all evolutionary interpretations of man's moral history, and held firmly to orthodox Christological formulations in the face of alternative assessments of the historical Jesus. While factors of temperament affected the tenor of his work, his contribution was most decisively shaped by the convictions that evangelical orthodoxy is ultimately self-authenticating, that truth comprises a unity or interconnected whole, that genuine Christian belief implies a two-story supernaturalist cosmology, and that the rationalism of the times was a temporary malaise. A general lack of support for his views within the scholarly community, combined with his own deep-seated populist instincts and common sense convictions, led Orr in later years to direct his appeals primarily toward the Christian public. The conclusion reached is that Orr deserves to be recognized, not so much as a brilliant or particularly original thinker, but as an able and exceptionally vigorous participant in a period of dramatic theological challenge and change.

Text in English / This dissertation offers an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian Church mission policy during the period, 1898 - 1923. The study contains an examination of historiographical methodology, the historical background both in Scotland and South Africa along with the multi-faceted dimensions within the South African context of the time. The Mzimba Secession provides an appropriate historical starting point which led to a serious disruption of the Mission. The role of the major participants, black ministers and elders and missionaries, is assessed as a struggle between them and the Foreign Mission Committee of the United Free Church of Scotland, following the union of two churches in 1900, took place involving the various policy options. This eventually led to the formation of the Bantu Presbyterian Church of South Africa. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

Text in English / This dissertation offers an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian Church mission policy during the period, 1898 - 1923. The study contains an examination of historiographical methodology, the historical background both in Scotland and South Africa along with the multi-faceted dimensions within the South African context of the time. The Mzimba Secession provides an appropriate historical starting point which led to a serious disruption of the Mission. The role of the major participants, black ministers and elders and missionaries, is assessed as a struggle between them and the Foreign Mission Committee of the United Free Church of Scotland, following the union of two churches in 1900, took place involving the various policy options. This eventually led to the formation of the Bantu Presbyterian Church of South Africa. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)