Kildare and Newkirk

 There are two towns in Kay County, Oklahoma which have very historic and Christian-related names. How many citizens from there know the origin of their town name?

            The Gaelic word for church is kirk.  When the Scottish Reformation under John Knox took place it was, as in all countries, part motivated by resentment of the vast lands and taxes of the Roman Church.  Edinburgh, the capital, also welched under the influx of Frenchmen who accompanied Mary of Lorraine who married James V of Scotland in 1538.  James died and Mary became regent queen for her son, James VI.  The clergy supported the French entourage that came with Mary, and obliged with religious processions, in which effigies of the Virgin or saints  were paraded and worshipped.  The practical Scots had ridicule and doubts, and in 1557, a mob seized an image of St. Giles in the Motherkirk (Cathedral of St. Giles) in Edinburgh.  A group of nobles formed a group and signed the First Scottish Covenant, resolving to establish the Reformed church in Scotland.  This inflamed Rome and especially the French Catholics who demanded Mary cut down the Protestants as Mary Tudor had done in England.  But Mary Stuart was not a leader and she merely signed a capitulation. Then she fled for her life or French rescue (which never materialized).  Parliament met in 1560 and accepted the confession of faith of John Knox, a reformed cleric.  But when the nobles proceeded to divvy up most of the land of the church among themselves, leaving only 1/6 of it to the clergy and church finances, Knox got angry and declared a movement and alliance of Scottish Presbyterianism and democracy. That tradition continues to this day. The reorganized church was called Newkirk by the common people.

            The second city named with Christian historic roots is Kildare.  I will let historian Will Durant explain.

            “Only second to him [Patrick] in the affection of the Irish people stands the woman who did most to consolidate his victory.  St. Brigid, we are told, was the daughter of a slave and a king; be we know nothing definite of her before 476, when she took the veil.  Overcoming countless obstacles, she founded the “Church of the Oak Tree” –Cill-dara, Kildare—at a spot still so named; soon it developed into a monastery, a nunnery, and a school as famous as that which grew at Patrick’s Armagh.  She died about 525, honored throughout the island; and 10,000 Irish women still bear the name of “The Mary of the Gael”.