The Edinburgh-based Banner of Truth Trust has released a new video series focusing on a neglected chapter in the history of the British church. The Covenanter Story narrates the lives and deaths of four men who took their place in a vast company of Scottish Christians killed for their faith in the 17th century.
The remote memorial to John Brown, killed as a Covenanter in 1685.
The rise of the Stuart kings, and their insistence that they had a “divine right” to rule over the state and church (the Kirk) in Scotland, put tremendous pressure on Christians who prized the gospel freedoms recovered at the Reformation. As Charles I installed bishops to rule the church in his name and introduced a Prayer Book which many felt was far too “Roman” in character, many in the Scottish Kirk openly objected.
In 1638, at Greyfriar’s Kirkyard in Edinburgh, 60,000 people put their names to the National Covenant. In signing, they committed the Scottish nation to uphold the Reformed faith and to resist Catholicism. They pledged to honour the King in civil affairs while granting him no supremacy over the church. A further 240,000 Scots would add their names to the rolls in the next few years.
Filming at Greyfriar's Kirkyard, Edinburgh.
The Covenanter Story focuses on what occurred in the years and decades after the signing of the National Covenant. The Covenanters would know some success in their campaign for a “second Reformation,” but this was mingled with severe persecution. The Stuart kings had no patience for those—whether church ministers or laypeople—who resisted the absoluteness of their rule. Up to 18,000 Covenanters would lose their lives between 1660 and 1688.
Filmed by Josh Rawlinson of Folkstorie Photography, the series was shot on location in Scotland’s central belt. The hope behind the videos is for the Covenanters’ zeal for the glory of Christ and willingness to suffer for Him to stand as a challenge and an encouragement to evangelicals in the current “darkening times.”
The Covenanter Story can be viewed in four instalments on the Banner of Truth YouTube Channel.
