Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers / Religious Figures
- Name : Chalmers
- Born : 1740
- Died : 1847
- Category : Religious Figures
- Finest Moment : Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns (3 vols., 1821-26)
Born 17 March 1780, at Anstruther in Fife, Chalmers went to St Andrews University aged 11. He was made a minister at Kilmeny parish in Fife, in 1803. An influential publication for him was William Wilberforce's Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797). Chalmers, who was interested more in solving human problems, particularly those of the poor, than playing about with religious doctrines, took an evangelical stance, and became popular for his great orations at the pulpit of Tron parish, in Glasgow.
In 1819, he became minister at St John's in Glasgow, the largest, and poorest parish in the city. He received permission from the city to administer charitable donations made to the church, and was successful in helping the poor more efficiently. He returned to St Andrews as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1823, five years later moving to Edinburgh University as Professor of Divinity. Religious politics, like it or not, began to impinge on his active mind when, in 1843, there arose the Disruption. This was a mass walk out at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by 203 commissioners, in protest for the right of parishioners to choose their own minister (rather than have one chosen by a patron).
Chalmers was then made Moderator of the new Free Church of Scotland, and was later made principal of the church's College, founded in Edinburgh for ministerial training. He was still principal when he died, on 30 May 1847, in Edinburgh.