I have just arrived home from a two week history tour of Scotland. I was one of the historians leading about 15 families on what proved to be a dynamic and educational thrill ride through 3,000 years of history. You can read all the books available in the library on the great battlefields of Scottish history and google the names of castles until you’ve exhausted the 600 or so in the Caledonian cities, lochs, towns, and countryside, but your grasp of the past is never firmer than when you stand on the bedrock of where the action took place. In Scotland, it really is bedrock. The castles, churches, monuments and cemeteries exude a feeling of permanence because so much is built of rock and stone.

From the ancient monoliths and grave sites of the fields around Killmartin (which still defy precise interpretation), to the lofty towers of Edinburgh or Stirling Castles, the bones of the earth were fashioned as man’s attempt to worship, memorialize, and defend. The rocks of remembrance stare at us on every hand but the stories they represent are not as self evident. The men who fashioned the stone are all dead and it requires serious digging to bring them to life again.

One of the greatest men of Scotland, some would say the one who had the most far-reaching impact on the nation, is a good example of a forgotten man in his own country. John Knox (1510-1572) was educated at Edinburgh University and became a follower of the preacher George Wishart, a man who rejected the Roman Catholicism of his nation and embraced the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Wishart was tried for heresy and burned at the stake between the cathedral and castle at St. Andrews under the direction of Cardinal Beaton in 1546.

Knox was captured by the French after the siege of the castle of St. Andrews, served as a galley slave, and eventually fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied under the Reformer John Calvin. Upon his return to Scotland Knox began boldly teaching the Bible doctrines of the Reformation, which brought him into ardent conflict with Mary, Queen of Scots and the bishops of her church. As a result of Knox’s preaching, thousands of Scots turned to the apostolic doctrines of Grace and the Presbyterian form of church government which became the foundation of ecclesiastical polity still in existence as the state church of Scotland.

The triumph of reformed Presbyterianism in Scotland initiated a conflict which did not diminish until the 18th century. Persecution of the Scots over conformity to Anglican liturgy and government, initiated by the Kings of England, especially Charles I, Charles II, and James II, resulted not only in the martyrdom of thousands of Scots, men, women, and children, but also spurred the emigration of thousands more to Ireland and America. The storm of protest and reform brought by Knox, resulted in the enrichment of the American and Caribbean colonies of Great Britain, so much so that at least twenty three of the Presidents of the United States are of Scottish ancestry as are multiple thousands of teachers, inventors, scientists, businessmen and soldiers, many descended from those banished victims of prelatic intolerance.

John Knox, a man of enormous importance to Scotland and America is buried under the parking lot behind St. Giles Church where he had preached an uncompromising Gospel and changed the world. There is a bronze statue of Knox in the large stone church, as if he and his message are frozen in time. I suspect few Scots know much about the great reformer much less the powerful message he preached. Nonetheless, the religious foundations he laid in Scotland were built upon and have moved around the world.

Bill Potter