Talk:United Presbyterian Church (Scotland)
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Correct designation of its name
editWhere is the proof that it called itself the UPC "of Scotland"? This latter epithet is usually associated with denominations which believed in the Establishment Principle, thus the Free Church of Scotland. The United Presbyterian Church was a Voluntary denomination which repudiated the Establishment Principle. At the very most, such denominations used the term "in" rather than "of". The Presbyterian Church in Ireland was never an established church so it is not the Presbyterian Church of Ireland. Unless someone can document that the proper name is the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, I suggest that this article should be called simply United Presbyterian Church, and if it needs disambiguation that it be United Presbyterian Church (Scotland). Ergateesuk (talk) 23:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Above comment is entirely correct. As a "voluntary church" opposed to "established churches" and without any claim or desire to be one - the single defining feature of the UPC - it is anathema to retrospectively append its name with "of Scotland", which was not policy at the time. Plus until 1876 it had over 100 congregations and 20,000 members in England - see 'History of the Presbyterians in England' (Drysdale, 1889) p608; or put another way out of 31 presbyteries only 25 were Scottish, with 5 in England and 1 for Ireland - see 'Annals & Statistics of the United Presbyterian Church' (Mackelvie, 1873) pVI. In all contemporary official publications, Dictionary of Scottish Church History, etc. it is "United Presbyterian Church".
To illustrate this conclusively - searching "United Presbyterian Church of Scotland" in archive.org finds 0 results; in the National Library of Scotland catalogue only a few book titles; and in Scottish papers in the British Newspaper Archive only 879 uses of the phrase - compared to 459; over 500; and 67,462 respectively... i.e. plain "United Presbyterian Church" is at least 100 times more prevalent.