Scottish Episcopal Institute Annual Lecture 2025
Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel, Lecturer in Divinity, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, offered the Tenth Annual Scottish Episcopal Institute Lecture on Thursday 30 October under the title ‘Scottish Theology and Scot-land’. It is available below:
Under the title ‘Scottish Theology and Scot-land’, Dr Daniel lectured around the fact that the majority of private land in Scotland is owned by just a few hundred wealthy individuals and international corporations. It was in response to the concentrated ownership of Scot-land that the Scottish Land Commission was established in 2017.
Dr Daniel argues that it is possible to trace the language used in recent Scottish Land Commission policy documents to two competing theological discourses within the Scottish Enlightenment, in line with fact that the Scottish Enlightenment was not, as is often supposed, an era of secular philosophy verses Calvinist theology, but in fact a competition between two opposing parties within the Kirk: Moderates and Orthodox. Looking at contemporary political discussions through the lens of Scottish Enlightenment theological controversies, not only changes one’s impression of the Scottish Enlightenment, but raises the question of whether the central question for contemporary debates is not who owns Scot-land but how it is used?