The Times (30 July 2009)

Free Church 'should welcome' Kirk rebels in wake of gay row

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6732397.ece

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A radical suggestion that the Free Church of Scotland, renowned for the strictness of its traditions, should end 166 years of theological hostility by relaxing its rules and opening its arms to members of the Church of Scotland has been made by one of its most prominent members.

The Rev David Robertson has declared that his church should “provide a home” for Church of Scotland members who are unhappy with the Kirk’s appointment of a gay minister and its stance on same sex marriages.

If his proposals were accepted, it would amount to one of the most significant realignments within the Scottish Presbyterian faith since the famous Disruption of 1843.

Mr Robertson wrote in the Free Church’s magazine The Monthly Record, which he edits: “We need to provide a home for those who cannot stay [in the Kirk]. If this means for the sake of Christian unity that we have to allow them to worship God in the way they are used to — then so be it. We need new wine, and for that we need new wineskins.”

Mr Robertson’s move comes two months after the Church of Scotland was torn by the appointment of Scott Rennie, an openly gay minister, to Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen, and the issue of same-sex marriages. Although the General Assembly approved the appointment, more than 400 Kirk ministers and almost 5,000 Church of Scotland members are said to have signed an online petition against the decision.

Mr Robertson, a modernist within the Free Church, believes that unhappy members of the Kirk should be welcomed into the Free Church and asserts that people of the same theology and faith should come together under a new realignment in British Christianity.

He said yesterday that his idea had had a huge response from people in the Church of Scotland, with about a third of the Kirk’s ministers and elders sympathetic to his views.

Last week, a Church of Scotland minister resigned in protest over the induction of Mr Rennie, who has a gay partner.

Mr Robertson, 47, who is a minister of St Peter’s in Dundee, told The Times he did not object to ministers being gay but did not think they should be in a same-sex relationship. He said that there was a wider malaise in the Church of Scotland because it had moved away from traditional understanding of the Bible.

The Free Church generally follows a more muscular and Spartan form of Christianity than the Kirk; sermons tend to be longer and there is no music during services.

Mr Robertson suggested that some congregations might choose to lift the ban on music, a reform the church has been debating for some time. “Yes, we would have to change. We can’t just say, come and join us, we were right all along. We haven’t been.”

In his editorial in the Monthly Record, he wrote: “We should not do what is unbiblical or sinful in order to facilitate Christian unity, but neither should we allow disagreement on secondary issues to prevent us from uniting with likeminded brothers and sisters. A renewed Free Church is the best hope for Scotland just now.

“It is time for us all to recognise that we are no longer in the 19th century, or even in the 20th. We are in a postmodern secular society where the vast majority of people are ignorant of the Gospel.”

Years of prejudice on all sides could be overcome, he suggested, by offering associate status to Church of Scotland ministers, elders and congregations. “There is a place for an intelligent, winsome, socially-active Christianity, and I think we all would be part of that,” he said yesterday.

The Free Church has a membership of 12,000 and rising while the Church of Scotland’s membership, about 550,000, is declining. A spokeswoman for the Church of Scotland said: “We are in continuing conversation with the Free Church on a variety of mattters.”

Iver Martin, a spokesman for the Free Church, said: “We would all be enthusiastic about the thought of perhaps a more united body of Bible-believing Christians, but we would like to do it properly and carefully.”

Comments on The Times website as of 31/7/2009

Joe Carvalho wrote:
As a minister in the Kirk it is my opinion that it will take a lot of generosity from the Free Church folks to accommodate Church of Scotland ministers and members who are unhappy with and deeply wounded by the departure of the Kirk from biblical moral standards, but it will equally take a lot of humility from Church of Scotland folks not to demand changes on the non fundamental from the Free Church has a realignment come to happen. Flexibility, humility and good will from both sides will form the very first step on the ladder towards an intelligent and productive realignment. Fear and unfair demand from either side will compromise the possibility of a healthy unity.
July 30, 2009 9:53 AM BST on UK-TimesOnline
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John Ross wrote:
Melanie Reid has written a fair article, even if she does peddle a few hoary stereotypes about the Free Church of Scotland. It must be recognised that May's decision of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was not a sudden, erratic, departure but merely the latest staging post on a long journey away from from mainstream Christianity. For the sake of transparency and integrity a realignment of Scottish Presbyterianism is long overdue and is precisely what I argued for in my moderatorial address to the Free Church General Assembly is 2007.
July 30, 2009 5:41 AM BST on UK-TimesOnline
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Clive JW wrote:
Religious folk: they can't stand each other, but they can always be depended to unite over hating someone else.
July 30, 2009 12:43 AM BST on UK-TimesOnline
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