Some feared that the outcome of such outside pressure might be that a token woman would be elected. But in Dr. Alison Elliot we have in fact a most distinguished incumbent. Few people are as highly regarded in our Kirk and national life. Alison serves as an elder and session clerk at Greyfriars Church-the Edinburgh Kirk known to many Americans because of its associations with the children’s story ‘Greyfriar’s Bobby’. She is also associate director of Edinburgh University’s Centre for Theology and Public issues. Dr. Elliot first came into the limelight during her 4-year term as Convener of the Church and Nation Committee. Last year she was honoured by the Queen for her services to the Kirk and ecumenical relations. What an excellent Moderator she proved to be this past week. How well she handled the Assembly. Many of the commissioners were deeply moved by her devotions and by the fact that during the Assembly Communion service, conducted by her own minister, she joined the other elders in serving the bread and wine.
Lord Steel, the former leader of the Liberal Parry, was the Queen’s Commissioner to the Assembly. His opening address was an excellent blend of seriousness and humour. He recalled how when he fought his first General Election as Liberal leader in 1979, word reached him of the preparations in one of London’s fashionable churches for the Sunday service following the election. The vicar told the organist that if the Conservatives won, they would open with the hymn, Now thank we all our God., and that if Labour won they would begin with, Oh God our help in ages past. The organist who was secretary of his local Liberal association, asked the vicar what he would do if the Liberals won. “In that case”, replied the vicar, “we’ll have God moves in a mysterious way.” Lord Steel went on to speak of how we unfortunately live in an age dominated by a culture of disparagement, a culture which seems to afflict every institution, including parliament and the church. It would, he said, be a great transformation if commentators would distinguish between careful criticism and sweeping denigration, and take great care not to devalue these institutions. He then went on to comment on today’s global troubles. “The greatest problem in our world today is not Islamic fundamentalism; it is fundamentalism of whatever kind-Islamic, Hindu, Zionist or Christian. The rigid dogmatic and enforced certainties of any one group simply reinforce the antagonism and extremism of others. We see that most graphically in the continuing Israel-Palestine conflict.”
On the Sunday evening in his closing address to the Assembly, the retiring Moderator Professor lain Torrance, who has recently been appointed President of Princeton Theological Seminary, chose to reflect on the need for a new approach to Christian ethics. “Just about all of us were brought up to believe that Christian ethics is a matter of drawing boundaries, of shoulds and shouldn’ts. I simply no longer believe that. Christian ethics is about transformation first and last. We persist in imprisoning ourselves within the frame of reference of 16th century issues. The disputes between Luther and Zwingli on whether the body of Christ is present or absent at communion….is all very interesting, but it is not today’s issue. What matters today is not whether we can define the mechanism of the real presence, but whether our worship encourages a mindset of expectation and gratefulness to God, and loving openness to others…..” There was plenty of food for thought in his words, not least in his quotation from Seneca about gladiators. “When the gladiator enters the arena, he has no fixed strategies. He improvises on the basis of long ingrained skills. The task of the Church is to foster those skills, not to offer preset solutions in a Windows world with drop down menus for each situation.”
Much that was good happened at this year’s Assembly. At a special evening session on poverty, commissioners heard moving stories of hardship and struggles for survival from the mouths of some of Scotland’s most disempowered people. The session was both chastening and enlightening. One chilling statistic which challenged us was that a person living in what we call an area of urban deprivation, will on average die ten years younger than someone living in a suburban area.
Before the start of the debate on Church and Nation Day, Scotland’s first minister, Jack McConnell, addressed the Assembly. The Church has a good track record of opposing the excesses of governments of all political shades. This year’s Assembly turned its fire on the Labour government for its treatment of asylum seekers, its electronic tagging of young offenders, and its blundering into Iraq on a false prospectus. The Convener of the Committee, and the Assembly, were in no doubt that “despite what our government tells us, the world does not appear to us to be a safer place since we invaded Iraq, quite the contrary in fact.” Though Mr. Blair and Mr. McConnell may not be quaking in their boots at the Kirk’s criticisms, the well-informed critiques of this year’s Church and Nation report and of commissioners such as Dr. James Harkness, the former Army Chaplain General, are significant public markers. The government would do well to pay attention.
There were also before this year’s Assembly significant proposals for radical changes to the shape of the church’s central administration. While there is acknowledgement that the current financial situation facing the church has made the need for restructuring all the more urgent, many have felt for some time that the central administration should be reviewed and down-sized. Next year the Kirk will have to fund cuts of almost a million pounds in areas not designated as priorities. The new Council of Assembly comprising 16 people, will have the authority to take administrative decisions throughout the year. Some commissioners were concerned that it was putting a lot of power into the hands of a small group of people. Others were concerned that too much stress was being put on restructuring the central Boards and Committees, and too little on reformation-living out the core message in new and imaginative ways. One distinguished Scottish minister suggested that a suitable text for commissioners to this year’s Assembly might be some words spoken by Gains Petronius in 66 A. D. “We tend to meet any new situation by reorganising. What a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.” Reorganisation can sometimes be a diversion from the Church’s primary task. Let us hope that it is not so with the restructuring programme being proposed for the Kirk.
Dr. James A. Simpson, a retired minister and former moderator of the Church of Scotland, lives in Dornoch, Scotland.
Send your comment on this report to The Outlook
Please include your full name, hometown and state.
