The opening of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church took place in Edinburgh on Tuesday, 18th May with the customary pageantry and ritual associated with this important event in the Church’s life when the highest court of the Church meets in annual session. The Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland this year was Lord Clydesmuir and in the message of H.M. the Queen which he delivered to the Assembly were some pertinent remarks about the need of preserving the Christian heritage, entrusted to the Church, free from the corrupting influences of modern life and of the discharging her duty by the faithful proclamation “to an uncertain and questioning generation, the continuing relevance of the Christian message.” The retiring Moderator, Dr Hugh Douglas, in opening the Assembly took also as the theme of his sermon the present position of the Church of Scotland, which he represented as passing through a winter of discontent, with declining congregations, internal divisions, and the failure to retain the religious interest of the Church’s youth. Some hopeful signs were, nevertheless discerned by the Moderator in the Church’s readiness to face the realities of her condition and to consider “radical solutions” for her problems. We fear, however, that the true causes of the plight of the Church of Scotland today have not yet been faced. The only solution, as far as we can discern, lies in the radical exercise of scriptural discipline to remove the deadwood of the destructive worldliness which afflicts the Church and a return to her true vocation, the faithful proclamation of the whole Gospel of Salvation. From St Giles the procession which included civic and church dignitaries wound its way to the Assembly Hall, where the Rev. Andrew Heron was installed as the Moderator for the present year. When the Assembly took up its work, proceedings were for a brief period enlivened by protests from the public gallery against the presence of the official Roman Catholic observer, Bishop James Monaghan, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Auxiliary Bishop to Cardinal Gray. This emissary of the Scottish papal church was nevertheless received cordially by the Moderator who said: “I would assure you that you are very welcome to this Assembly.” The significance of the presence of the Queen’s representative in the Assembly and the past history of suffering and contending with the papal church in Scotland by the National Church were certainly forgotten in the courteous but misguided welcome given to this papal bishop. The Assembly then proceeded to deal with the work before the court.
The General Assembly of the Free Church met under the new Moderator, Rev. Prof. G.N.M. Collins, who in his opening sermon dealt with the Church as the “Church” in an Age of Revolution.” In the course of his remarks the Moderator observed that the two most powerful enemies that faced the Christian Faith today were represented by the forces of Humanism and Communism; the one, especially active in Parliament, aimed at “destroying the moral and religious foundations of our national life,” and the other, although itself the greatest tyranny ever known, attacked under-privilege and social injustice as a cover to undermine law and order with the ultimate object of the overthrow of all lawfully constituted government. The Church, in an age of permissiveness in morals and religion, faced these dangers with a liberal Gospel, from which its divine authority and supernatural character had been removed. Christianity had not failed, but the Church must recover her early courage and conviction.