This thesis explores the formative influences, development and impact of the theology of
David Smith Cairns, Scottish minister, academic and writer, during the high point of British
imperial expansion, and at a time of social tension caused by industrialisation. In particular,
it describes and evaluates his role in the Church’s efforts to face major challenges relating to
its relationships to the different world religions, its response to the First World War, and its
attitude to the scientific disciplines that called into question some of its long-standing
perceptions and suppositions. Examination of Cairns’s life and work reveals an eminent
figure, born into the United Presbyterian Church and rooted in the Church in Scotland, but
operating ecumenically and internationally. His apologetics challenged the prevailing
assumptions of the day: that science provided the only intellectually legitimate means of
exploring the world, and that scientific determinism ruled out the Christian conception of the
world as governed by Providence. A major feature of his theology was the presentation of
Christianity as a ‘reasonable’ faith, and throughout his life he maintained a particular
concern for young people, having endured his own crisis of faith when a student in
Edinburgh. He enjoyed a decades long involvement with the Student Christian Movement
and the World Student Christian Federation, based on a mutually enriching relationship with
one of its leading figures, the renowned American evangelist John Raleigh Mott. As chair of
Commission IV of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Cairns
spearheaded efforts to encourage the Church to redefine its role in relation to the different
world religions, and to adopt a fulfilment theology that allowed for a dialogical rather than
confrontational model of mission. As leader of a Y.M.C.A. sponsored interdenominational
enquiry into the effects of the First World War on the religious life of the nation and
attitudes to the Churches, Cairns reported on the Churches’ failure to engage with a large
section of the population, and in particular with the young men at the Front. The resulting
report offered an important critique of the Church and its vision in the early twentieth
century, and provided a call for reform and renewal in Church life, with an emphasis on the
need for social witness. The thesis concludes that in these three major areas Cairns provided
a prophetic voice for the Church as it entered the twentieth century and faced the challenges
of that time
