Truth, Error and Principle: Anti-Catholicism in Presbyterian Dissent

This chapter outlines the dissenting churches’ reaction to the Maynooth controversy, the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England during the so-called ‘papal aggression’, and the anti-popery movement that dominated British public discourse in the late 1840s and 1850s. While the Maynooth controversy and the papal aggression appeared to offer a shared common enemy against which Scotland’s dissenters could unite, the chapter will question how far this dissenting co-operation moved beyond simple anti-popery and allowed for a dissenting and anti-erastian vision of Protestantism to emerge within the churches. It assesses how far a united dissenting effort against popery and Maynooth in particular was able to be maintained despite differences in principle and approach. It also questions whether dissenting unity in the anti-popery movement of the mid-nineteenth century was based simply on a narrow opposition to Roman Catholicism or a more positive assertion of Protestant dissenting identity. The chapter concludes by examining how this period of militant anti-popery impacted the churches’ perceptions of themselves, and how the 1860 tercentenary of the Scottish Reformation emphasised, despite the common ground achieved, their competing claims to Scotland’s Protestant heritage and nationality.