Walter Scott (Clergyman)

Walter Scott (1796 – April 23, 1861) was one of the four key early leaders in the Restoration Movement, along with Barton W. Stone, Thomas Campbell and Thomas' son Alexander Campbell. He was a successful evangelist and helped to stabilize the Campbell movement as it was separating from the Baptists.

Walter was born to John and Mary Innes Scott in 1796 in the town of Moffatt, Scotland. His parents, who were members of the Church of Scotland, hoped that he would become a Presbyterian minister. He spent six years at the University of Edinburgh, leaving in 1818. The same year he went to New York City at the invitation of his maternal uncle, where he taught languages at a school on Long Island. He soon moved to Pittsburgh, where he was baptized by immersion and became an active member of a small congregation led by a fellow Scotsman named George Forrester. Forrester helped shape Walter's understanding of Christianity, and in particular his belief that immersion was the only appropriate form of baptism.

The congregation in Pittsburgh influenced by the movement led by James and Robert Haldane. The Haldanes, who hoped to restore New Testament Christianity, rejected the authority of creeds, observed the Lord's Supper weekly, practiced foot washing and by 1809 had substituted believer's baptism by immersion for infant baptism. Forrester also introduced Scott to the writings of John Glas and Robert Sandeman. When Forrester died in 1820, Scott replaced him as minister and as director of a small school.

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