At the Church of Scotland Assembly the new Moderator was the Rev. James Matheson, Portree. (Mr Matheson’s father, the late Rev. Norman Matheson, was at one time Free Presbyterian minister of Halkirk and afterwards Free Church minister of Beauly). Mr Matheson’s pro-ecumenical sentiments show that he has gone far away from the outlook in which he was brought up. It is sad to think that it was this particular Moderator who welcomed to the Assembly Thomas Winning, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow and who invited the representative of Anti-Christ to address the Assembly. This was the first occasion since the Reformation on which a Roman Catholic addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It is not surprising that, on this occasion, a man of Archbishop Winning’s ecumenical bent would deliver a speech brimful of the ecumenical spirit and expressing good-will for his estranged brethren in the Church of Scotland. By this action the Church of Scotland has turned the clock back many centuries. While congratulating itself on its charitable attitude to the Roman Catholic Church, it has in reality been guilty of a gross betrayal of its Protestant heritage.
The issue was presented in a more realistic light on the previous day when the Assembly discussed an overture from the Presbytery of Dunkeld and a petition from the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland. The overture asked that a concise statement of the different fundamental beliefs of the two churches be prepared. Rev. George Dale said: “We only have to see the Roman Catholic demands to appreciate that the differences between our churches are as crucial today as they were in the Reformation of the 16th century.” Mr Thos. Orr for the Grand Lodge maintained that it was improper to receive such a representative of the Roman Catholic Church before opportunity had been given to compare the distinctive doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome where they were at variance with the Scriptural standards of the Reformed Churches. The
preparation of the Statement of Differences was referred to the Panel on Doctrine but the reception of Archbishop Winning went on as planned.
The Convener of the Committee on Education for the Ministry made an earnest appeal to presbyteries and congregations to seek out suitable recruits to the ministry because there were not enough candidates coming forward. If the result of this appeal is only to produce additional unconverted candidates for the ministry, the Church of Scotland would be better without them for she has already far too many of that variety. If, on the other hand, the Lord was to raise up soundly converted preachers of the Gospel within the Church of Scotland, that is a development which we could not but welcome. If such men were able successfully to run the gauntlet of the modernistic Divinity Halls and not imbibe the poison so freely administered there, it might well herald better days for the Church of Scotland. The rejection of that false teaching would soon result in a turning to the true doctrines of God’s grace and a turning from the present ecumenical alignment with the anti-Christian Church of Rome.
Rev. Hugh Douglas spoke of the £10 average annual givings of the members of the Church of Scotland as disgraceful, and told of three old age pensioners in his congregation who each gave that amount. He thought that if that was possible for pensioners then others could do much better. When it was proposed that congregations would be asked to make an effort to raise extra money for the Mission and Service Fund, the Rev. Paul Sewell tried to have ministers excused this task. He said that he was ordained as a minister of the Word and sacraments and not as a professional fund-raiser.
Prof. James Whyte, Convener of the Inter-Church Relations Committee said his Committee were recommending a temporary suspension of conversations with the Episcopal Church to which that Church, with some reluctance, had agreed. Contact would be continued through the multilateral conversations which involve several churches. This was agreed to though not without opposition. Rev. David Torrance prevailed on the Assembly to agree to ask the Presbyteries to initiate local ecumenical projects. While talks on unity are clearly foundering on certain basic disagreements, yet at local levels co-operative ecumenical ventures are flourishing.
A move to temporarily abandon negotiations towards union between the Church of Scotland and the Methodist Church was defeated and the conversations between those Churches are to continue having in view bringing to next year’s Assembly a basis and plan of union. The
Assembly also appointed the 1st Sabbath of January 1976 as a day of prayer for guidance in the plans for union between the two churches. Rev. Dr Philip Potter, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, called on the Church of Scotland to play a more solid, constructive and courageous part towards world ecumenism.
Rev. Peter Bisset, Convener of the Moral Welfare Committee, sounded an alarm on moral questions, particularly under-age drinking leading to an increasing rate of youthful alcoholism, immorality, gambling, and also abortion and euthanasia. The Committee accepted an addition to the Report reaffirming their conviction that total abstinence is the only safe policy that they can recommend to young people. The Assembly, while affirming that neither abortion nor euthanasia can ever be an acceptable element in any population policy yet conceded this to contraception and sterilisation.
Rev. John Waddell, Convener of the Overseas Council, in a plea for continued overseas involvement put forward a novel but not so bizarre argument as might have once been thought in support of his plea. He said that missionaries from these Overseas Churches may in the future (perhaps not so distant future), come to these parts to call the care-worn Christians of the West to a living hope. “Western society,” he declared, “may well need to be spoken to by those of other lands who have discovered the glories of the Gospel. So when we insist that the work in other lands goes forward we may well be ensuring that the day of revival for Scotland is on the way.” The Convener of the Home Board spoke of the need of a missionary Church to tackle those living in a near-pagan environment. He said that he was alarmed at the complete ignorance among young people in the school where he was chaplain of what used to be regarded as the basic things in Christian knowledge, morals and worship.
By a narrow majority the Church of Scotland members of the Joint Commission on Christian Marriage were instructed to raise with their Roman Catholic counterparts a Second Vatican Council declaration on the right of parents to decide the form of their children’s religious education. Rev. H. Monroe of Denny, Stirlingshire, who put forward the proposal said that, while the non-Catholic partner in a mixed marriage might not sign any declaration about the religious education of children, he or she was fully committed by a promise which the Roman Catholic partner had to sign. Mr Monroe went on to say that in correspondence with Cardinal Gray’s secretary he had been informed that for a Roman Catholic not to carry out the promise would be against the law of God.
On the Common Market issue the General Assembly voted in favour of the Church and Nation Committee’s deliverance which recognised that opinion in the Kirk and nation was divided on continued membership and urged all members “to prepare themselves by prayer and study to exercise their responsibility to vote,” and rejected a counter-motion by Lord MacLeod that the Assembly request the Government to withdraw from the European Economic Community. The Assembly also called on all ministers to observe Sabbath, June 1st, as a national day of Prayer on the Common Market.
The Moderator in his closing address attacked the tidal wave of selfishness and greed which has deluged society. He declared that for Christians to withhold service for gain was both un-Christian and immoral.