Cornerstone No. 190, page 8
Life & Work
Time for Change
Terry Deary and Martin Brown are the brains behind the Horrible Histories series, which has made history both accessible and interesting to young readers. I’ ve often wondered about asking them to write a history of the Church of Scotland – I’ m not sure how many readers it would attract, but it would certainly fall into their genre of writing! Tertullian noted that the distinguishing mark of the early church was the quality of their love for one another and that they seemed willing to die for each other. The history which has shaped the present-day Church of Scotland does not have as its most obvious characteristic such deep roots in love for those who belong to the same community of faith. Our past is deeply scarred by disagreement, separation and secession and that kind of stuff has become lodged in our psyche, providing an ideal breeding ground for conflict and making it hard for us to know how to live with our differences. Perhaps it is a comment made by Principal John Cunningham of St Mary’ s College in St Andrews which best sums up the character which has blighted the Church in Scotland for too long. Writing just a few years after the Disruption which gave birth to the Free Church of Scotland, he says:“ Never perhaps, in the history of any Church has so great a voluntary sacrifice been made for so slender a principle – but yet not too slender for the Scottish Ecclesiastical conscience to apprehend and exalt it into a question of life and death.” The 1929 reunion was welcomed in a great public fanfare; but a few years later John Burleigh, pre-eminent Professor of Scottish church history and Moderator of the General Assembly in 1960, wrote in his
:“ It is one thing to unite denominations, and quite another to unite congregations which are proud of their traditions and tenacious of their rights. Presbyterianism has always fostered strong congregational life. It is easy to be critical of parochialism or congregationalism in this sense and to demand thorough rationalisation. But grave spiritual damage may be done if this problem is not handled with patience, sympathy and Christian insight.”