'Oh dear. From time to time we embrace secular creeds instead, with all the insights and the dangers they bring.' Photo: Portrait of Robert Burns, by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787
Set, apart: Rob Paton on our own ‘unco guid’
‘We know what can happen when people don’t just seek the truth but become convinced they have found it.’
by Rob Paton
29th April 2022
Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s national poet, had an uneasy relationship with the kirk – to put it mildly. Presbyterians, like Quakers, were ‘dissenters’. They became fierce defenders of their self-governing communities of the faithful, where each individual could have direct access to Divine inspiration by reading the Bible. This was the legacy of John Knox, and why Burns, born to a humble farming family, was literate (education in Scotland ran far ahead of England).
