St Columba’s was founded in 1879, and has been in the present church building since 1891.
The Reformation Background
The influence of Calvin’s Presbyterianism grew in England during the seventeenth century, and was particularly pronounced in Cambridge, where it drew the sympathy of many college members of the University. A hallmark of Presbyterian churches, in addition to their broadly Calvinist theology, is a conciliar approach to church government, with congregations governed by a body of elected elders, rather than bishops, as in the Catholic and Anglican churches.
Despite brief hopes of a Presbyterian reorganisation of the Church of England which followed the English Civil War, the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 brought with it a restored episcopacy. In 1662 the Act of Uniformity was passed, which required that all who would minister in the Church of England show that they had been ordained by a bishop. This led to over 1900 clergy from parish churches and colleges throughout England being expelled from the Church of England. Many of these ministers maintained clandestine congregations until the Act of Toleration in 1689 that granted freedom of religion to dissenting Protestants in England. Despite the setbacks in England, Presbyterianism remained the dominant form of Protestantism in Scotland, which was to be hugely influential in the foundation of St Columba’s.
The presence of Presbyterianism in Cambridge had dwindled through the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, many Scots and Irish Presbyterians began to move to the area to pursue careers in business, the professions and academia. This gave Presbyterianism in Cambridge a fresh impetus.
Until 1871, members of Cambridge colleges were required to attend worship in the Anglican college chapels. As this regulation was relaxed, more and more Presbyterians, mostly Scots, entered the University, and the demand for a congregation of the Presbyterian church in Cambridge grew. In 1879, the first congregation of the Presbyterian church in Cambridge met in the Guildhall. Work on the present church building began in 1890, and the new church was opened on 7 May 1891. In November 1893 the Presbytery approved the name of St Columba, ‘the presbyter-apostle of Iona’.
Westminster College, a theological college of the Presbyterian Church of England came to Cambridge in 1899. This had a great influence over the life of St Columba’s, with many prominent theologians teaching at the college also becoming deeply involved in the life and preaching of the church. To this day, St Columba’s continues to benefit from the intellectual and spiritual work of those who teach at Westminster.
In 1972, the Presbyterian Church of England united with the Congregational Church in England and Wales to form the United Reformed Church, of which St Columba’s is now a part, with further unions in 1981 with the Churches of Christ and in 2000 with the Congregational Church of Scotland. We continue to worship in the traditional Reformed style, maintaining our Caledonian roots in ministering to Cambridge University and the wider world as the Church of Scotland chaplaincy in Cambridge.