John Glasse

The Reverend John Glasse (1848–1918) was a Church of Scotland Minister at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1877-1909. He was a leading advocate of Christian Socialism,[1][2] and was described by Sidney Webb as one of the "two most influential Scottish socialists".[3][4]

John Glasse
Born27 January 1848 
Auchtermuchty 
Died8 February 1918  (aged 70)
EducationMaster of Arts, Doctor of Divinity 
Alma mater
OccupationClergyman (1877–) 
Political partySocialist League, Social Democratic Federation 
Position heldminister (Greyfriars Kirk, 1877–1909) 

Life

At Greyfriars he was at the centre of a socialist studies group held at his manse in Tantallon Place whose membership included Annie Besant, Peter Kropotkin, and William Morris.[5][6] A personal friend of Morris, those whom he tutored also included James Connolly and James Thompson Bain.[7][6]

He was a member of the Scottish Land and Labour League;[8] and although the SLLL itself sought to maintain its distance from the Socialist League,[9] at the urging of Morris, Glasse joined the Socialist League in 1887, his membership fee of £5 (equivalent to £560.1 in 2019) paid to Philip Webb as recorded by the latter in a letter to Morris.[10]

In his 1919 history of the Scottish Labour Party David Lowe observed that Glasse "gathered around him many ardent idealists, to whom he administered doses of Proudon and Marx".[9] Glasse was a pivotal figure in the emergence of Scottish socialism in Edinburgh, going on to found the Glasgow branch of the Independent Labour Party with John Bruce Glasier.[11] He was unusual for the time for being one of the few Church of Scotland ministers who was politically committed to the Labour movement before World War One.[12] His holding a respected position within the Church while espousing socialist beliefs and publishing the belowmentioned pamphlets indicated a significant shift towards political pluralism in the attitudes of the Church since the middle of the 19th century, when radicals such as Rayner Stephens and Patrick Brewster had incurred more negative consequences for their beliefs.[13]

He founded the first Fabian Society in Scotland in 1892, in Edinburgh.[14] He was patron of the Greyfriars Choral Society and an executive committee member of the Edinburgh Unity of The Empire Association.[15]

He was born in Auchtermuchty on 27 January 1848 and died in 1918.[16]

Works
Glasse's inscription on the endpaper of a copy of Thomas Bassendyne's Bible, with his signature, sold by his family in 2017[17]

His The Relationship of the Church to Socialism (published in 1900) was one of several pamphlets that he wrote for the socialist movement.[18] In it, amongst other things, he expressed doubt as to the motivations for the then movement for Ritualism in the Church of England, opining that it was less motivated by popular demand and more motivated by sacerdotalism and self-aggrandizement.[19] He also expressed his objection to doctrines of Socialism being inevitable, which he regarded as damaging to the Socialist movement.[7] He wrote that "The object of my paper was to persuade the ministers and members of the Church of Scotland that they were not worthy of their privileges or position unless they resolved in the spirit of the prophets and of Jesus, and work along with Socialists in breaking every yoke and letting the oppressed go free."[7][20]

In addition to the aforementioned pamphlet, Glasse wrote about John Knox.[16]

  • Glasse, John (1905). John Knox. London.
  • Glasse, John (1906). "John Knox and Scottish Reformation". Quarterly Review. 205.

Earlier writings by him include Robert Owen and his Life-work and Pauperism in Scotland, Past and Present.[16]

In response to an appeal by Edward Carpenter for songs for a forthcoming socialist songbook, Glasse wrote "A Processional Hymn", to be sung to the tune St Gertrude by Arthur Sullivan, which was printed in the 22 October 1882 edition of The Commonweal.[21]

His Times and Seasons, published posthumously by Oliver & Boyd of Edinburgh in 1920, was a collection of sermons.[22] His The Mysteries and Christianity also published by Oliver & Boyd in 1921, was a summary (to date at the time of Glasse's death) of the scholarship concerning paganism and early Christianity.[23]

Freemasonry

He was a Scottish Freemason. He was initiated in Lodge St David, No. 36, (Edinburgh) and was Master of that Lodge 1892-1893. He was an Honorary Member of The Lodge of Holyrood House (St Luke's), No. 44 (1908). He served as Grand Chaplain to the Grand Lodge of Scotland 1889-1890.[24]

References

What supports what
  1. Donnachie, Harvie & Wood 1989, p. 9.
  2. Morton 2012, p. 228.
  3. Mathews 1993, p. 40.
  4. Furlong & Curtis 1994, p. 209.
  5. Kenefick 2007, p. 62.
  6. MacKenzie & Dalziel 2007, p. 229.
  7. Ransom 1980, p. 96.
  8. Reid 1971, p. 36.
  9. Kenefick 2007, p. 60.
  10. Aplin 2015, p. 574.
  11. Kenefick 2007, pp. 23,60.
  12. Kenefick 2007, p. 61.
  13. Parsons 1988, p. 54.
  14. Donnachie, Harvie & Wood 1989, p. 13.
  15. OB 1896, pp. 1086,1124.
  16. Scott & Macdonald 1915, p. 44.
  17. Herald 2017.
  18. Pierson 1979, p. 369.
  19. Kilcrease 2016, p. 83.
  20. Ransom 1975.
  21. Arnot 1976, p. 85.
  22. ET 1920, p. 265.
  23. Willoughby 1927, p. 64.
  24. Lindsay 1935, p. 658.

Sources
  • Aplin, John (2015). The Letters of Philip Webb. 1. Routledge. ISBN 9781317283447.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Arnot, Robert Page (1976). "Letters of William Morris to Dr. John Glasse 1886–95". William Morris, the man and the myth. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780837186528.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Furlong, Paul; Curtis, David, eds. (1994). The Church Faces the Modern World: Rerum Novarum and Its Impact. Earlsgate Press. ISBN 9781873439067.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Donnachie, Ian; Harvie, Christopher; Wood, Ian S., eds. (1989). Forward! Labour politics in Scotland 1888–1988. Polygon. ISBN 9780748660018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kenefick, William (2007). "Left Radicalism, Labour and Socialism". Red Scotland!: The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872 to 1932. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748630820.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kilcrease, Bethany (2016). "William Harcourt's Protestant Erastianism". The Great Church Crisis and the End of English Erastianism, 1898–1906. Routledge Studies in Modern British History. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317029922.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Lindsay, Robert Strathern (1935). A History of the Masonic Lodge of Holyrood House (St. Lukes), No. 44 Holding of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, with Roll of Members, 1734–1934. II. T. and A. Constable at the University Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • MacKenzie, John MacDonald; Dalziel, Nigel R. (2007). The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity, Identity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719076084.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Mathews, Race (1993). Australia's First Fabians: Middle-class Radicals, Labour Activists, and the Early Labour Movement. CUP Archive. ISBN 9781001498980.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Morton, Graeme (2012). Ourselves and Others: Scotland 1832-1914. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748629190.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Parsons, Gerald (1988). "Social Control to Social Gospel: Victorian Christian social attitudes". In Parsons, Gerald (ed.). Religion in Victorian Britain: Controversies. 2. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719025136.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Pierson, Stanley (1979). British socialists: the journey from fantasy to politics. Harvard University Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Ransom, Bernard (1975). James Connolly and the Scottish Left (PhD thesis). Edinburgh University.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Ransom, Bernard (1980). Connolly's Marxism. Ideas in Progress. Pluto Press. ISBN 9780861043088.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Reid, Fred (1971). "Keir Hardie's conversion to Socialism". In Briggs, Asa; Saville, John (eds.). Essays in Labour History 1886–1923. Springer. ISBN 9781349007554.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Scott, Hew; Macdonald, Donald Farquhar (1915). "Presb. of Old Greyfriars". Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation. 1. Oliver and Boyd.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Willoughby, Harold R. (1927). "The Study of Early Christianity". In Smith, Gerald Birney (ed.). Religious Thought In The Last Quarter Century. The University of Chicago Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) (Religious Thought In The Last Quarter Century at the Internet Archive) (also published as Willoughby, Harold R. (May 1926). "The Study of Early Christianity during the Last Quarter-Century". The Journal of Religion. The University of Chicago Press. 6 (3): 259–283. doi:10.1086/480581. JSTOR 1195319.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link))
  • "Literature". The Expository Times. 32. T.& T. Clark. February 1920.
  • "First Scots Bible set to make £1,200". The Herald. 13 May 2017.
  • Oliver and Boyd's Edinburgh Almanac. Oliver and Boyd. 1896. (Oliver and Boyd's Edinburgh Almanac at the Internet Archive)

Further reading
  • Lowe, David (1919). Souvenirs of Scottish Labour. W. & R. Holmes. p. 12.
  • McCabe, Michael A. (1998). "The Tears of the Poor: John Glasse, Christian Socialist, 1848–1918". Records of the Scottish Church History Society. 28: 149–172. (The Tears of the Poor: John Glasse, Christian Socialist, 1848–1918 at the Internet Archive)
  • Hyslop, Jonathan (2004). "The Socialist: Edinburgh, the 1880s". The Notorious Syndicalist: J.T. Bain, a Scottish Rebel in Colonial South Africa. Jacana. pp. 65, 68. ISBN 9781919931722.
  • Geikie-Cobb, W. F. (1921). Jacks, Lawrence Pearsall; Hicks, George Dawes (eds.). "Review: Rev., D.D. John Glasse, The Mysteries and Christianity". The Hibbert Journal. G. Allen & Unwin. 20: 581.

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