I’ve decided to seperate out some commentary on the Church of Scotland, and especially its decision to induct a practicing homosexual man into the office of ministry. You can see the tab above called (very imaginatively!) The Church of Scotland, which will take you to a different “page” rather than a “post” on this page and there will gradually appear several other pages under that one, each commenting on different aspects of the situation.
But by way of general comment, let me say that I enjoyed the experience of being at the Church of Scotland General Assembly after an absence of 10 years. It was good to catch up with many old friends, both ministers and elders; and to learn of a lot of news, both personal and concerning the church.
Notwithstanding the decision that overshadowed every aspect of this Assembly, it was encouraging to hear in private conversation as well as on the floor of the Assembly so many expressions of solid, conservative evangelical theology, not least of all from the most surprising of positions, the Lord High Commissioner.
For those of you unfamiliar with Church of Scotland pomp and ceremony, the Queen has no special constitutional position in the GA but is invited annually either to attend, or if that is not possible, to send a representative – the LHC – who then undertakes a handful of formal duties on her behalf. He or she gets the chance to make a speech at both the opening and closing of the Assembly and these speeches have varied wildly in their quality and content. Most are deliberately bland to try to avoid embarrassing anyone, especially the Queen; some are much more political, such as when Princess Anne fulfilled the role in 1999, the last time I attended, and she spoke up powerfully in support of the new Scottish parliament that had only just been inaugurated after an absence of 300 years.
This year’s LHC was George Reid, former Presiding Officer (i.e. ‘speaker’) of the Scottish Parliament and a longstanding MP first in Westminster (UK Parliament) and then in Edinburgh (the Scottish one) representing the Scottish National Party. He’s an old friend of my in-laws, who have been deeply involved in the SNP since the 1950s, but that’s incosequential to the point of this post!
Being a political man, I expected either the usual bland, non-descript, inoffensive offering, such as we were later to get from the Scottish First Minister (i.e. Premier) Alex Salmond when he was invited to address the Assembly, or something resembling a blatantly party political broadcast. He did neither.
Instead, he spoke meaningfully and articulately of the need for evangelical faith to re-ignite the passions and the mission of the church. He spoke about it without political bias, as the only salvation left for a country whose economy was stuffed and whose politicians, across all parties, have now been caught red handed with their snouts in the pigs trough of greed and self-grandisement. It was refreshing and encouraging.
