Modern Scotland usually has little interest in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This year promises to be different. The Report on the ordination of homosexuals promises the media a heady mix of sex and splits, while evangelicals wait anxiously, wondering what kind of church will be left by the time the Assembly [...]
The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed. Peter C. Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xiv + 417pp. hb. £55). This volume brought out the hidden statistician in me, and I found myself counting the proportions. Of the twenty-one contributors only one, Karen Kilby from the University of Nottingham, was working, at the time of [...]
The Theological Commission appointed by the Church of Scotland in 2011 to examine issues relating to the ordination of those living in openly homosexual relationships has now prepared its report, and one thing is sure: very few of those attending the forthcoming General Assembly are going to have the stamina to read it. Ninety-four pages [...]
It’s probably a disgrace, but I’ve already forgotten the date of that referendum on Scottish independence. This cannot be attributed entirely to senility. I still know who I am, the date of Christmas, and the difference between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. These, after all, are important things, and one might feel honoured to announce them. But [...]
Most 20th century Highlanders view Christianity very much as Pontius Pilate viewed it: a load of rubbish, and sinister to boot. If asked why, you’d expect them to draw themselves up to their full intellectual height and tell you that modern science has put an end to that sort of nonsense. But what’s been interesting since [...]
It’s long been typical of Gaidheals that they lack pride in themselves, and particularly in their own language. Quite why this should be so is far from clear. Why should someone who spoke two languages feel inferior to one who spoke only one? Perhaps it was because the monoglot was the factor, the bailiff or [...]
It would be interesting to know what Dr. Peter Kearney’s employers really think of his recent outburst about sectarianism in Scotland . Dr Kearney is Director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office, but no one seems to have told him that the messenger must never become the message; which is exactly what he became last [...]
The church is always in crisis. If you don’t believe it, just read any preacher from one of her Golden Ages. All of them, from Augustine to John Kennedy, thought they were living in ‘cloudy and dark days’. The 21st century is no exception. True or not, the perception is that the church is in deep, [...]
Last week’s decision of the Church of England not to allow women bishops will have little immediate impact here in the Highlands. We do, of course, have our own form of Anglicanism, Eaglais Easbaigeach na h-Alba, but neither the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the General Synod has any authority over Scottish Episcopalians. They already have [...]
It’s not my job to sell tickets for Stornoway’s Lanntair Gallery, and so I kept mum about Richard Dawkins’s recent visit to the scenes of my childhood. I would still be mum were it not that the coverage of the event in the local press was the most prejudiced piece of news coverage that ever [...]
