Revealed: the fatal flaw
Leading article
Kenneth Roy
The Megrahi Scandal: Part 2
The Cafe
Ian McTurk on Megrahi
The Anna Karenina theory
Economy
Alf Young
Tolstoy has entered the debate on Britain’s fiscal policies
Film
Dharmendra Singh awards five stars to ‘Blue Valentine’
Kicked out of
the mosque
Free speech
Anthony Silkoff
A bewildering experience
in Glasgow
Life of George
Big John’s funeral
Did he kill Keats?
Person of the Week
James Clark
Profile by Barbara Millar
Gridlock
The Richard Wild series
Islay’s pics
Monifieth, Angus
West end, Glasgow
North Berwick, East Lothian
Glasgow Central Station
Drumpellier Park, Lanarkshire
Photographs by
Islay McLeod
Religion
A conflict of integrities
Bruce Gardner
I
One day, my dear wife had a bump in a church car. At first, it was just a fender-bender: she and our four children were travelling on an island track and another car came, a little fast, round a blind bend. It was a minor collision, but our car’s chassis shifted by a quarter of an inch and, in insurance terms, it was a write-off. Yet it was brand new: property of the Kirk.
No injuries were sustained, just some shock, but, now that we had totalled a shiny new car, I had the unenviable task of phoning Reverend Dr Sandy McDonald – the Kirk’s relevant authority – to tell him the awful news. I shall never forget that conversation. It went very much like this:
‘Hello, Sandy,’ I began, mouth dry, ‘It’s Bruce Gardner here, from Lewis. I don’t know how to tell you, but my wife has had a bump in your new church car and…well, it’s a write-off.’
Sandy McDonald’s reply was instantaneous: ‘Never mind the car – how’s your wife?’
That is the best of the Church of Scotland. For all its ups and downs, theological differences and its daft, inconsistent image in public, it is one of the most humane organisations I have ever known. I have nearly always found within it – with people of all theological descriptions – an inspiring tenderness. This cannot be dismissed as icing on the cake, for Jesus himself said that the mark of true Christians is love: ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love, one for the other…’ (John 13:34-35). The Kirk passes that test.
It is therefore a tragedy, reverberating within the soul, that this great church is now passing through a time of trial so great that its internal divisions threaten to wound it deeply. Some say it is like being at the death-throes of a great elephant that served its master well, moving forests of logs over countless years in all weathers, and now finds itself convulsed by some incomprehensible pain, while the onlookers stand transfixed – partly by awe, partly by grief – so there is a temptation to write the Kirk’s obituary as it lumbers off to the Kirk’s graveyard.
In the Scottish Review, months back, R D (Bob) Kernohan wrote about its current tensions:
‘…it [the Kirk] has allowed itself to be endangered by what ought to be its strength: its breadth of theological outlook and social inclusion, flexibility in style of worship and liturgical practice, and range of contact with Scottish life. It has explored various ecumenical blind-alleys in search of "organic unity" but hasn’t worked hard enough at its own unity and in maintaining the common purpose any coalition needs.’
The difficulty of the Church of Scotland is illustrated here by two words: ‘it’ and ‘coalition’: as the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government reveals, a coalition is fundamentally not an ‘it’, but a ‘they’. This creates uncertainty over every issue. A coalition has a bifurcation in which one half may lose regard for the other, like a domestic tangle from arranged wedlock.
The Kirk has seemed, since its inception in 1929, an unconsummated marriage between, on the one hand, a mainstream Enlightenment-influenced Church of Scotland and, on the other, refugees from 19th-century Calvinism, who fled the baleful restraint implied in a grim insistence on theological uniformity. So the Kirk is a conglomerate, like coloured, plasticine lumps bonded together – an improbable hybrid. It blends insistent, modern liberalism with historic, Calvinist (or charismatic) conservatism.
This mix has begun to feel itself shifting. It is my contention that, when one takes away mere humanism at one end and fanaticism at the other, there is a broad spectrum of genuine – if variegated – belief that is worth holding on to. Every so often, a high-profile case strained relations between the awkward partners. No one case could claim to be the single cause of tension: there were many, from the motherhood of God debate in the 1980s to division over freemasonry at the end of the decade, to women elders in the 1990s, to the civil partnership debate in the last decade. A firm decision was reached in each case, in which the Kirk would endorse some acceptable line, while (a fail-safe device) tacitly allowing the principle to be breached at will by individuals and congregations.
For myself, I subscribe to what Rose Galt, in SR, called ‘theocracy’: it is the purest freedom to me. It consists of the belief that God has spoken through his word, concerning his son, Jesus Christ, for all time, for all places and all souls (even if it must be sensitively adapted for each culture). For devoted evangelicals, as for Roman Catholics, no movement in this world changes fundamental truths.
The liberal, on the other hand, sees the Bible finding relevance afresh in adaptation to a world that is seen, to some extent, as self-validating. The optimistic liberal sees truth in humanity’s contentedness with what it decides to value. This has its own integrity, but that is not obvious to evangelicals, unless it demonstrates a love for God. By the same token, an evangelical insistence on the Bible, at the expense of the comfort of some, makes liberals struggle to see a love of neighbour. As a result, each side suspects the other.
So we have this crux: both sides may see themselves as apostles of love and view the other side as not only not showing real love (as they understand it), but also acting without love in the current debate. It has meant that each other’s actions are perceived as provocations.
In the delightful fable of Dr Doolittle there is a llama-like creature with a head at both ends: it is called a pushmi-pullyu, facing two ways. This seems to be the state of the Kirk today.
II
‘Can two walk the same way if they are not agreed?’ (Amos 3:3)
At the deeply-confused and disorientated General Assembly of 2009, about a third of those present did not vote for or against allowing a practising homosexual to minister in one congregation, because, unfortunately, discussion of the principle had to be deferred until a technicality was decided: ie whether Aberdeen Presbytery processed the call correctly, which, strictly, it had.
Of course, the homosexuality issue has to be addressed, not because the Church of Scotland rejects homosexual people per se, but because there is a substantial case that the Bible gives a negative view of it. The issue then becomes this: while no ministers are perfect, and they have sins like anyone else, they are not allowed to preach in a pulpit on the basis of their sins being endorsed. None of them has that luxury. Therefore, the case of the call of a practising homosexual divides the church, depending on the interpretation of the Bible that is dearly held by each minister.
The Kirk’s answer to this was to set up a special commission (names for which appeared by magic at the above assembly) to look into the issue and report to the General Assembly of 2011. In the meantime, public comment and debate were to be stifled.
Thus, as SR found out at the time, the 2009 assembly followed its technical decision with a moratorium forbidding public comment on the issue of homosexuals in the ministry for two years. Reaction was mixed. Evangelicals did not want it but, having given their sacred word, were then bound to obey it. Some liberals treated it as a hindrance to free expression and so seemed to ignore it. For example, one gay minister is billed to speak on homosexuality at the Cambridge Union. To some evangelicals, such publicity lacks integrity; to some liberals, it demonstrates it.
However, the hold of the two-year moratorium is now loosening to allow constructive contributions: the presbytery of Edinburgh opened up the whole question at the end of last year in a Scotsman online article (Ian Swanson, 30 December, 2010). I myself see that there is a danger of exacerbating tensions if we refrain from balanced comment. In the words of an evangelical commentator in that same article: ‘Because of this stifling of debate, everything has been suppressed and when the cork comes out of the bottle, who knows what will happen?’. I agree. To avoid more emotional upheaval, they must talk to each other: now.
It may partly be a crisis of modern selfishness. The love I encountered 20 years ago, the tolerance for which the Kirk was once famous, has been whittled away by the growth of new and ruthless extremisms of both left and right, in which people dream of operating in a world without the constraints of the other half of the theological equation. As in rocky marriages, relational breakdown begins long before the divorce court. It is always tragic to watch, as attitudes harden, actions become deliberately indifferent and silences grow ever deeper, so we desperately need some wise and tolerant communication. Silence has been bad for us.
What will happen? There are a few scenarios – some optimistic, others pessimistic. First, as Church of Scotland law is designed to hinder and deter its congregations from being able to leave or take property and monies with them, the Kirk may find a creative compromise in May that allows both sides to keep their integrity. I have seen assemblies rise from the nadir of folly to the heights of wisdom, so we must not assume that the story of the Kirk is ended.
However, if this assembly failed to reach an agreement that satisfied some evangelicals and they decided to throw in the towel of hope, they might feel unable to continue and thus seek a variety of alternatives (independently or as congregations), at whatever loss to themselves. In 1843, many ministers left the Kirk on a principle: congregations rallied round, raised new buildings and bankrolled their ministers at painful cost. Evangelicals may do the same now, not to reject others or exhibit mere pique, but just because their consciences lead them away.
Positively, it may be argued, the former partners might feel freer to breathe, to live according to integrity. Negatively, division in the Church of Scotland could damage its moral influence, so churchmen (a dying breed) need to be found, to act as peace-makers and honest brokers.
The conflict is not so much a crisis of integrity, but a crisis of integrities (plural) that may not feel able to co-exist. If so, the unconsummated marriage is facing partial annulment. There are flickers of hope, however. I entered a seemingly hopeless Bethlehem by a wall built to hold in Palestinian militants and saw positive graffiti on the inside of it: ‘Make bridges, not walls!’. Jesus, whom the Kirk follows, taught: ‘Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God’. He was the greatest of peace-makers, proving that divides can be bridged – not between God and the Devil, but between all who sincerely love God and their neighbour.
Reverend Dr George Whyte, presbytery clerk of Edinburgh, does the Kirk a service by acknowledging that uniformity is impossible, but intelligent plurality may work: ‘I don’t think it’s possible for us all to agree on a common policy. It’s whether we can learn to live with each other while taking different views.’ Here may lie the germ of a solution for all those who wish to pursue the original idea of a rapprochement between the two sides of the Presbyterian dhurch in Scotland, which was the hope underpinning the 1929 union.
Such a solution may suggest the creation of ‘wings’ in the Kirk, as in the Church of England, between which may be allowed a measure of freedom of conscience. Insisting on uniformity around one theological perspective could be short-lived, whatever admirers of current state law would wish. Unlike the world, which imposes mere blanket orders, the Kirk may need a flexible approach in love. The attractiveness of such a new approach would depend on both evangelicals and liberals being assured that their values were not threatened with extinction.
Still, with love, even if things are grim, it would be wise not to write the Kirk’s obituary yet.
Bruce Gardner is a Church of Scotland minister
