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Robert Burns and Christianity

by
Dr. Stuart G. Leyden
Submitted to The Capital Scot by
Dr. Stuart G. Leyden SGLeyden@aol.com

The Scots insist that Robert Burns is a poet of the people. Unlike Shakespeare, Goethe or Dante who appeal to an elite audience, Burns has a worldwide audience even though much of what he composed was in Scots dialect. Evidence of his universal popularity is expressed at New Year's celebrations in the singing of Auld Lang Syne (Old Long Ago).

When it comes to evaluating Robert Burns with respect to his Christian commitment, there is a division of opinion. Some contend that he was a sceptic, a hostile critic of Christianity, and at best a "wistful agnostic," 1 but not a believing Christian. The other side embraces him within the faith once delivered to the saints in the Calvinist expression of the Scottish Kirk. Perhaps I should not proceed any further without warning the reader that the evaluators often find in Burns whatever suits their predjudice. My case is made as a first generation American of Scottish ancestry, and as a Presbyterian clergyman.

The case against Robert Burns as a sincere Christian believer is made on the following grounds:

1. Burns seems much more interested in Satan or Beelzebub than God. In his Address of Beelzebub he takes the part of the devil in advising the privileged to deal harshly with the poor and disadvantaged:

"The young dogs, swinge them to the labour,

Let WARK an' HUNGER mak them sober!" 2

And in his Address to the Deil he reminds us of the devil's appearance in the Garden of Eden incognito (as a serpent) and of satan's power over Job. 3

"An' how ye gat him i' your thrall,

An' brak him out o' hous an' hal'"

2. Burns is held to be a critic of church life rather than a supporter. One of his most famous and delightful poems, Holy Willie's Prayer is a scathing criticism of one of the tenets of the hyper-Calvinism of his era, namely, the doctrine of double predestination whereby the Almighty with considerable delight consigns some to heaven and some to hell. This theology is placed in the imaginary prayer of a consummate hypocrite.

"O thou that in the heavens does dwell!

What, as it pleases best thysel,

Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell,

A' for thy glory

- - - - - - - - - -

O Lord--yestreen--thou kens--wi' Meg--

Thy pardon I sincerely beg!" 4

In one shot Burns blasts the despotic fatalism of the ultra-Calvinistic wing of the Kirk and exposes the sexual exploits of hypocritical Willie.

3. Burns is a self-confessed sceptic in matters of religion. He lived in the era of the continental Enlightenment in which Voltaire in France, Tom Paine in American, and David Hume in Scotland raked Christianity over the hot coals of rationalism-empiricism. In a letter to Cunningham he says, "I hate a man who wishes to be a Deist, but I fear, every fair, unpredjudiced Enquirer must in some degree be a Sceptic." 5

4. Lastly, his lifestyle was that of a self-confessed rake who gloried in his sexual promiscuity without regard for the consequences, namely, bastard offsrping. To be fair, he and his wife Jean did take one of them into their home. While flagrant sexual laxity is not proof of disbelief, it does seem inconsistent with a Christian lifestyle. In addition his interest in baudy sex found expression in his collection of ribald songs in The Scots Musical Museum.

ON THE OTHER HAND -- At this point I am reminded of Harry Truman's comment that he only wanted to talk to one-handed economists. Economists, he said, always hedged their advice by saying, "On the other hand..." As you would suspect there is another way to interpret Burns' relationship to the Christian faith.

The Devil - The fact that he wrote so much about the Devil testifies to his knowledge of the Bible where that unholy figure aappears in the Garden of Eden and in the life of Job to tempt and to test. One wonders if such a prominant symbol in his poetry might suggest some inward struggles with temptation in Burns' own life. Certainly, he was familiar with the teaching of the Bible on Adam's Fall and the reality of evil in the world. Burns had fun with the Devil in more ways than one, and he would not be the only believer who was more conscious of evil than of grace. Moreover his compassion for the poor, and insistance on human dignity ("A man's a man for a'that") may reflect not only his own humble origins, or Enlightenment independence, but a grasp of the Biblical teaching that humanity is made in the image of God.

Critique of Hypocrisy - Burns' criticisms of Holy Willy, the Unco Guid and all forms of relgious self-righteousness put him comfortably in the company of all the great prophets of the Bible and especially in the camp of Jesus, who blasted the hypocrites over and over again in the Gospels.

Scepticism - That he was a sceptic should not surprise anyone. All sincere enquirers are bound to be sceptics, doubters of God's goodness in a world where the innocent suffer. His letters often fluctuate between belief and unbelief. He struggled. Late in his brief life he wrote to a friend, Mrs. Dunlop, about his son Francis Wallace and her godson:

"I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of Christianity is not only necessary by making us better men, but by making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me, Father, shall be firmly persuaded that 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses.'" 6

Now a cynic might say that Burns was simply trying to reassure a good Christian friend--telling Mrs. Dunlop what she wanted to hear. There are at least two reasons why I think that kind of cynicism is unfair.

When it was discovered that Jean Armour was pregnant by Robert Burns, the Kirk Session disciplined them both, and Burns appeared before the congregation. As far as I can discover he was not coerced. In spite of that humiliation, he continued to attend worship in his Kirk all his life. I assume repentant and forgiven.

Furthermore, Burns was brought up on the Bible in his home and wrote two paraphrases of the Bible, one on the first Psalm and another on Jeremiah 15:10. But familiarity with the Bible does not necessarily prove belief in its teaching. There is one poem of Burns that reveals profound Christian belief. It is the Cotter's Saturday Night. While it is true that you cannot find anything else quite like it in any of his other poems, we must not confuse quantity with quality. This has the quality of faith.

It is commonly assumed that Burns is to some extent recreating a scene in his boyhood home where his father, as priest in his own household, leads the family in worship. In this poem Burns includes the sacred history of Abraham, Moses, alludes to David on the lyre, Job's suffering, Isaiah's prophetic fire, the atonement of Jesus' blood for the guilty, the triumph of God over Babylon in the book of Revelation, the joy of family worship in the cottage and divine grace in their hearts. If you find that this poem soars with the Spirit both Christian and patriotic, perhaps it is because the author had a Christian spirit as well as a love for his native soil. Listen to it:

"The priest-like Father reads the sacred page...

Perhaps the Christian Volume is the theme,

How gultless blood for guilty man was shed;

How He, who bore in heaven the second name,

Had not on Earth whereon to lay his head:

How his first followers and servants sped;

- - - - - - - - - -

Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King

The Saint, the Father, and the Husband prays

Hope 'springs exulting on triumphant wing' ...." 7

Perhaps in a more profound way than many of his ecclesiastical contemporaries, Robert Burns understood human failing and Christian redemption. If his self-confessed doubt eliminates him from the Christian fold, who then can claim "Grace divine"?

Notes:

• 1 Article online at http://www.robertburns.org/encyclopedia/index.shtml
• 2 - quoted by Susan Manning, "Burns and God," Robert Burns and Culltural Authority, ed. Robert Crawford, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), 115.
• 3 - Robert Burns, Address to the Deil, Poems of Robert Burns, eds. Henry Meikle and William Beattie, (Melbourne, London, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953), 37.
• 4 - Ibid., 126.
• 5 - Susan Manning, Op.Cit., (Letters II,16) , 125.
• 6 - The Letters of Robert Burns, Vol. II, ed. G. Ross Roy, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 144.
• 7 - Meikle and Beattie, eds. Op.Cit., 68-70.

Credits:

Original © Copyright by Dr. Stuart G. Leyden SGLeyden@aol.com. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission of the author.

Originally published in Life & Work in a slightly different verison, under the title "With Passions Wild and Strong", by the Church of Scotland. See http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/.

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