thefrontpagecampaign

I went shopping with Jordan yesterday.  I don’t particularly like shopping.  I don’t go “just to look”.  There really has to be a reason.  Yesterday’s reason was to get the boy clothes for the summer.  He’s now wearing trousers made for the small adult. 

Another reason was to take that expensive pencil I bought in December back to the Pen Shop in Princes Square.  It has a blockage and I couldn’t fix it myself.  I thought they might just replace it, but as the lady behind the counter said, If your car breaks down they don’t just give you a new one!  So it goes off to the manufacturer to be pulled apart and reassembled.  It’s still within guarantee, but it does seem rather a palaver for a pencil. 

Anyway, while we were driving towards the car park we saw a Moslem woman standing at a bus stop on Cathedral Street totally covered head-to-foot, with only a narrow slit for the eyes.  Uncharacteristically (for he is not a curious boy) Jordan asked why she was dressed thus.  I explained that she must be a very strict Moslem and went on to talk about the concept of modesty and how different cultures and different religions have different ideas of what constitutes modesty.  It’s not that we in the West have no concept of modesty at all; just that our concept is different from some Moslems.  I explained that personally I would be upset if his sister dressed in the way that some girls do, for my concept of modesty prefers not too much flesh being on show.  Later, we did pass some girls with an awful lot of leg on show and I pointed out that I would regard that as immodest.  However, when the seminar progressed to an explanation of the connection between modesty and sex he asked me to stop—this is not the kind of talk he wants to hear from dad!

As we were heading home I noticed a stall.  There were lots of stalls, including one for the Communist Party of Great Britain, which I thought didn’t exist any longer.  The one that caught my attention was manned by a couple of ladies and was for “thefrontpagecampaign”.  These ladies were drawing attention to the soft porn that appears at the eye-level of children in many news agents and supermarkets these days.  This was a petition I was willing to sign.  I have complained at the Hamilton Asda about this but without any response.  The campaign leaflet says:

We respect the right of adults to choose their media and the same freedom should apply to the majority who would prefer to shop without seeing displays like this one [a picture of a scantily clothed woman].  Such displays are not suitable for public places where children and young people are present.  There is no age-rating system imposed on newspapers and magazines.  This means it is legal for retailers to sell to minors publications that routinely include themes of bondage, oral sex, group sex, and home-made sex photography. 

If you want to contact this group you can do so at www.thefrontpagecampaign.co.uk

As a society we wring our hands and demand blood when our children are sexually exploited and abused.  Yet all around we expose them to sexual images and even dress them up in in sexy clothes.  And if you’ve ever been to a school disco, you’ll know that when it comes to dance moves, you don’t know where to look. 

Why can’t we see the connection?

Praise where praise is due

In recent months my wife, Kim, has got used to seeing my name in the newspapers.  Now the shoe is on the other foot.  In her weekly column in Carluke Gazette our MSP, Karen Gillon, mentions Kim by name.  Karen is talking about the end of the school term and is congratulating the pupils for all their achievements, and recognizing the sterling work done by teachers.  Then she expresses concern about the lack of jobs for teachers coming to the end of their probationary placement.  She says, “James [her son] has had a probationary teacher again this year and I cannot speak highly enough of Mrs.  Watson.  We need people like her in our schools and I continue to press both the Council and the government to find the money to employ more of these teachers.”  Karen already has our vote, but her support is very much appreciated all the same. 

PARABLE OF THE PERSISTENT WIDOW

(Luke 18:1-8)

This is what I call a “how much more” story.  Jesus tells a story, a parable, about how humans behave, and then compares it to how God behaves.  For example, when he talks about fathers giving gifts to their children.  We wouldn’t give our children a stone when they ask for bread, or a snake when they want fish.  How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him.  It’s the same with the passage about worrying.  The Lord cares for the birds of the air; he’ll care for us too.  After all, how much more valuable are we to him than birds? 

Another example is in Mt.12, where he heals the man with the withered hand.  He challenges the Pharisees: if your sheep falls into a hole on the Sabbath, you would rescue it.  “How much more valuable is a man than a sheep.”

The point of this story in Luke 18 about the persistent widow is quite clear.  Jesus tells us at the very start: The Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.  It’s about persistence in prayer.  He says that if an unjust judge is willing to grant the request of a widow simply because she nags him into submission; how much more can we expect our Father in heaven to answer our prayers.  He may delay in answering, but don’t be discouraged: always pray and don’t give up. 

The story is quite straightforward.  There was, in a certain town, a judge “who neither feared God nor cared about men.”  There was a widow in that town who had been wronged.  It doesn’t matter how she had been wronged, but she deserved justice.  She didn’t have a husband or any other male relative to plead her cause, so she had to do it all herself.  She may have gone to court formally and got no where.  All that was left to her was personally harassing the judge. 

She was like a dog with a bone.  She just wouldn’t give up.  He’d step out of his house in the morning and there she would be, crying, Give me justice.  He’d be out for dinner with his friends, and she’d be standing outside on the street.  She’d follow him about.  He couldn’t shake her off. 

At first he’d brush her aside.  But in time I can imagine she’d begin to play on his nerves.  He’d try all sorts of ruses to lose her—changing his routine; putting on dark glasses. 

Eventually, he couldn’t take any more.  So he says to himself:  Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me I will see that she gets justice so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming. 

He’s going to make sure she gets justice, not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of some peace and quiet.  She gets what she wants, not because she deserves it, but because of her persistence. 

Jesus concludes: Listen to what the unjust judge says.  And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?  Will he keep putting them off.  I tell you he will see that they get justice and quickly. 

Jesus is saying, if that judge gave justice to the widow because of her persistence, how much more can we expect God to give his people the justice they cry out for?  God is not like the unjust judge.  Justice had to be prised out of his hands.  God, on the other hand, is only to ready and willing to answer our prayers. 

Let me make a few observations from this.

1. Christians are expected to pray.  We should pray always and not give up.  Prayer is not an optional extra.  It is our duty; our life-blood as Christians.

2. We are to pray continually.  v.7 “who cry to him day and night.”  Paul who prayed three times that the thorn in the flesh be removed.  Or the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane who also prayed three times that the cup of suffering be removed. 

Isa.62:6: I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, they will never be silent day or night.  You who call to on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.

We might ask why we should keep on praying.  One answer if that God wants us to.  He wants us to give ourselves no rest; and to give him no rest.  He wants us to be persistent in prayer. 

3. We must accept that God will not answer our prayers as quickly as we would like.  We may get discouraged.  But look at the contrast between God and the unjust judge – this is the “how much more” factor.

a. the widow was a stranger to the judge; we pray to the God who calls us “his chosen ones”

b. she was just one; God’s elect are many

(Matthew Henry: As the saints of heaven surround the throne of glory with united prayers so the saints on earth besiege the throne of grace with their united prayers.)

c. she came to a judge that wanted her to stay away; we come to a Father who invites us to draw near

d. she came to an unjust judge; we approach a righteous Father

e. she had no friends or lawyer; we have an Advocate with the Father who ever lives to make intercession

f. the judge gave her no encouragement; God has given us precious promises that if we call on him he will answer

g. she could only press her claim at certain times; we can pray at any time

h. the judge came to dread the sight and sound of her; our God delights in our prayers.

How much more…

Finally: the Lord Jesus ends by asking: However, when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth?  Here is another answer to the question: Why pray, and why pray persistently?  The Lord is looking for faith and prayer is the exercise of faith.  Prayer that persists, though it seems as if heaven’s door is locked.  As Matthew Henry puts it so quaintly:

The parable has its key hanging at the door; the drift and design of it are prefixed.  Christ spake it with this intent, to tech us that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

The key is persistence.

New members

Today we had one of those “all singing all dancing” type services that tend come at the end of the school year.  To begin with we had a report from the Mission and Evangelism Task Group, feeding back the information which has now been collated from the community survey we did in January.  The survey was very worthwhile from several points of view.  Primarily it has given us some very practical ideas about what kind of outreach might be most worthwhile.  From a pre-evangelism perspective we are thinking about parenting courses.  Also, we feel a need for more social events. 

Next, one of our boys from the BB was awarded his Queen’s Badge which is no small feat.  Given that the survey highlighted the [perceived] lack of youth activities in the village, we believe that what we offer through the BB and GB is very valuable.  About 100 children and youth are involved. 

The highlight of the service was admitting to membership three people by profession of faith and two who are transferring from other congregations.  The fascinating thing is that the five of them come from very different backgrounds, yet share certain things in common.  Three were women; two were men. One of the men is in his late teens who has been part of this church family all his life.  One has suffered chronic depression; another is recovering from an addiction.  Three of them have connections with Africa. 

They all did the Christianity Explored course; and all of them found it immensely helpful.  All of them gave a short speech (“a word of testimony”) as to how God had led them to this place of joining the church today.  This is such an encouragement to the rest of the congregation. 

I now make it a policy that anyone transferring from another church should do the CE course.  It’s amazing how people who have been church members for years still find it such a revelation.  It gets them off to a good start within the church family, giving them a small of group they come to know really well.  And it irons out any misunderstandings about the basics of the faith. 

When people ask me how things are going in the church I tend to reply: Nationally, depressing; but locally very encouraging.  You can see why.

Moralising with AC Grayling

Whenever I go to the smallest room I like to read.  Always have done.  Anything that can be digested in the time-span allotted by nature.  Therefore, I usually go through books of quotations, or reference books, as well as magazines.  At the moment I have AC Grayling’s “The Meaning of Things” close to hand. 

AC Grayling teaches philosophy at the University of London and is popular with the media these days.  He writes newspaper columns and often appears on programmes like “Any Questions” or “Question Time”.  He is a trenchant atheist.

“The Meaning of Things” emerged from articles in the “Guardian” newspaper.  The subtitle is “Applying Philosophy to Life”.  There are short chapters on subjects as diverse as sorrow, virginity, health and trifles (not the pudding). 

Grayling does not suffer from ambivalence.  He knows what he thinks and gives it to you straight.  So you know where you stand with the man. 

His opening chapters on Moralising and Tolerance have forced me to think about my own attitudes.  Grayling says, “A moraliser is a person who seeks to impose upon others his view of how they should live and behave.”  Grayling takes a dim view of moralisers.  While they claim to be the voice of the silent majority, Grayling attributes to them less noble motives.  “Their true motives are that they are afraid of attitudes and practices more relaxed than they can allow themselves to be—their timidity, their religious anxieties, their fear that they might themselves be, say, homosexual or libidinous, and a host of personal motives besides, drive them to stop the rest of world thinking, seeing or doing what they are afraid to think, see or do themselves.”

Is this true?  Have I aired my views about homosexuality as a way of ensuring that I never hop into bed with another man?  Do I call adultery sin because I myself am tempted to stray?  Do I rail against promiscuity from the pulpit because in fact given half a chance I would be playing the field? 

The honest answer to that is “no”.  Fear is not my motive.  Love is.  I truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that it’s message is a message revealed from the Living God.  I truly believe that this message includes warnings against those activities which are not only physically harmful to our bodies and emotionally harmful to our minds, but spiritually harmful too.  They contravene God’s perfect plan for our lives. 

And therefore I believe I have a duty not only to avoid such behaviour myself but to do my utmost to persuade others to refrain too.  I cannot force anyone to behave contrary to the way they wish; but surely I have a right to try to persuade. 

Grayling sets up the aunt sally of Victorian values, so easily knocked down—the abuse of women and children, the poverty.  (Though remember that it was evangelical Christians who were at the forefront of the anti-slavery campaign, and the Factory Acts reform.)

I don’t know anyone today who is calling for a return to Victorian values, certainly not me.  I am not calling for a return to anything, because I don’t think there ever was a golden age to return to.  What I am calling for is an honest debate that looks at what we have become as a society.  Are we happy?  Are our children secure?  Do our relationships—sexual or otherwise—fulfil our need for love? 

I’m not seeing a society at ease with itself.  I’m seeing a restless, discontent, dissatisfied society, constantly on the look for something more. 

All I’m saying, is that modern Scots are looking in the wrong places.  Does that make me a moralizer?

The wisdom of Richard Sibbes

I’ve been reading “The Bruised Reed” by the Puritan Richard Sibbes (no prizes for guessing why I pulled this one down from the shelf).  Here are some of his pearls.

It would be a good contest among Christians, one to labour to give no offence, and the other to labour to take none. 

Nothing is so certain as that which is certain after doubts.

Illustrating the unworthy thoughts that sometimes come to mind, and distress the godly, he says, A pious soul is no more guilty of them than Benjamin was when Joseph’s cup was put in his sack.

Of Christ: He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows for us.  He was broken that we should not be broken; he was troubled that we should not be desperately troubled; he became a curse that we should not be accursed.  Whatever may be wished for in an all-sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ.

 

The Nuremburg Defence

Writing about this year’s General Assembly is never going to be easy for me.  Regular readers of this blog will understand that for me it was more than just an ecclesiastical debate.  It all became rather personal.  In fact, probably I was second only to Scott Rennie himself when it came to being the face of the debate.

Initially this was because the press had me on their books as the evangelical to call for comment.  This was because of my position as Secretary of Forward Together. 

However, the stakes were raised beyond measure on Wednesday 13^th May when my photograph appeared on page 3 of the Times (UK edition) and on the “timesonline”.  I feel it’s now time to share something of this story.

Until then I would say that the Times had been the fairest of all the newspapers, in that they were not vilifying the evangelicals.  They had run the “Life and Work” editorial story; but they also ran a balancing story the next day.  The Sunday Times too had been quite fair.

However, on the Tuesday evening I received a phone call from Times journalist, Mike Wade.  I met Mike at the Assembly.  He’s a round Yorkshire man (no photo available) who looks as if he enjoys his real ale.  If Mike’s opening line had been less confrontational that Tuesday evening things might have gone differently.  As it is he asked me straight out to comment on the reaction of people to the previous Sunday’s sermon, the reaction, he said, being one of outrage that I had compared Scott Rennie’s supporters to the Nazis.  I realized immediately what he was referring to and told him that this story was “unworthy” of him and put the phone down. 

In the sermon (from Jude) I was trying to show my congregation why I was involved in the debate, my point being that though none of us like conflict, sometimes it is necessary.  Being someone who reads a lot of war history it occurred to me that a good example was that of the French not challenging the German re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936.  Because they avoided conflict in 1936, a worse conflict arose in 1939. 

I’m not so foolish or pig-headed to insist that another illustration (or none) would have been wiser. 

With hindsight, I realize that I was making myself a hostage to fortune, especially by putting that sermon on the blog.  But only that day I had received an e-mail from a minister telling me that people in his congregation were down-loading those sermons from Jude and finding them very helpful. 

Initially I decided to have nothing to do with the story.  But an hour or so later the Times photographer called saying that he’d like to come and take a picture of me—otherwise they’d use an old, unflattering one!  I decided that if I were to co-operate I’d better hear the story.  The photographer read the blurb which by and large was ok.  Later, when Mike Wade was going through it with me I had to warn him that if he included certain comments (Nazis, death-camps, pink triangles) I would take the matter further.  Interestingly, those comments didn’t appear in the final version.  (And yes, I did take informal legal advice—I still have friends in the profession). 

The story itself quoted the sermon accurately enough, though with some journalistic flare (apparently the sermon reached a “rousing climax”). 

What was most damaging was the headline “Anti-gay minister in Nazi battle outrage”, a headline more worthy of the Sun than the Times.  Mike says he is not responsible for headlines.  But people read headlines before they read copy.  And since journalists tend, by nature, to be a lazy crew, every other newspaper jumped on this bandwagon, more or less copying and pasting the headline and Mike’s story (after all, why reinvent the wheel.  Note, that not one journalist has actually been to see me at Kirkmuirhill; all of it is done over the phone, or by copying someone else’s story). 

The reactions have been very interesting. 

First, domestically.  It lead to a week of stress and strain in the Watson household.  It has left me with a profound sympathy for all the other ordinary people who for a day or two become headline news and whose lives are turned up-side-down for the sake of selling a few more newspapers.  I’ve even felt a twinge of sympathy for the MPs hounded out of office following the expenses scandal!

Second, personally.  I shut up.  Ironically, the press, the bastion of free speech, shut me up.  And I won’t be posting any more sermons on my blog. 

Third, the church.  The amount of support and encouragement I have received from the church locally and internationally has been overwhelming.  I have received post cards, letters, e-mails and phone calls from people I know and from complete strangers, some of them quite emotional (personal stories I wouldn’t dare share in public).  They far outweigh the filth I also received (most of which went to SPAM anyway). 

And fourth, the disappointment.  Criticism, from fellow evangelicals; friendly fire if you like.  Most hurtful of all when they hadn’t even bothered to read the sermon and believed what they read in the papers!  A friend of mine overheard two ministers speaking on the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, decrying me for calling their side “Nazis” (a word that never appears in the sermon).  “Those evangelicals are all fascists!” she said.  That I expect.  But not from fellow evangelicals.

When I told Mike about the affect his story had had on me and my family, he answered, without a word of regret, “I was just doing my job.”  I seem to remember that defence was used at Nuremburg.

What next?

Last night I received a phone call from a minister to tell me that he has decided to bring forward his retirement to next year—twelve months earlier than planned. He doesn’t want to remain in the Church of Scotland longer than necessary. He’s fortunate that he’s coming to the end of over 30 years of ministry. Walking away is an option for him.

The interesting thing about this man is that he is not an evangelical. He would describe himself as orthodox, perhaps even “high church”. But his views on marriage and its sanctity have left devastated by decisions made at this year’s General Assembly.

He’s not the only one. People are hurt and angry. They feel they have lost something precious. They are going through the grieving process. And they are reacting accordingly. The case of the church not uplifting an offering has been much publicised. Others, including ministers, have decided that they will simply not put their offering in the plate. They reckon their hard earned cash will better serve God’s kingdom elsewhere. They want, somehow, to register their protest, their dissent, their disquiet, about the direction the Church is taking. I’ve also been told that the Law Department has been inundated with requests from churches for copies of their title deeds. Because of our complicated history not all church buildings belong to the Church outright. It seems that some congregations are wanting to check who owns what. And according to the BBC Scottish news site the ministers in Lochcarron and Skye Presbytery were announcing something to their congregations yesterday—I haven’t yet heard what.

It seems to me that we don’t want to make rash decisions or rushed actions. We’ve got a couple of years to prepare. That’s exactly what we should be doing. We should be preparing to argue our case biblically and cogently. We should be pulling out all the stops to engage with the Special Commission. We want to win the argument.

In the meantime, here are some things we could be doing.

1. Write to the Moderator at 121 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4YN. Tell him how you feel.

2. Make sure your Kirk Session is ready to consult with the Special Commission.

3. Ask your Kirk Session to consider joining the Fellowship of Confessing Churches. It’s not an organisation; it’s a movement of like-minded congregations.

And I wonder if there is any mileage in the idea of a rally somewhere for prayer and mutual encouragement. Certainly, we need to be praying. But let’s never lose sight of the fact that God is sovereign. Yesterday I was preaching from Isa.41. Isaiah is ministering to the exiles in Babylon. In v.14 he acknowledges how they feel about themselves “Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you, declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” That’s a word for us all.

John Blanchard – a humble servant

With John Blanchard

I’ve spent the last week trying to get back to some form of normality.  I’ve been out visiting parishioners, including the bereaved (two funerals next week), and writing my first sermon in 3 weeks.  I’ve resigned from the FT Steering Group—I’ve been involved for five years (plus the couple of years it took us to get it set up)—so I’m now out of the loop.  Journalists, please note—like Manuel, I know nothing!

The great thing that happened last week was that we got to play host to John Blanchard, the evangelist and writer.  John has been the most influential British evangelist of his generation.  Not just through his extensive travelling, but more so through his writings.  Booklets like “Ultimate Questions” have been translated into several different languages and have been instrumental in bringing thousands to faith.  John’s magnum opus is “Does God believe in atheists” which is an incredible journey through every conceivable philosophy and belief-system, including secular humanism and evolution, in an attempt to show that believing in God, and accepting Christ Jesus as Lord, is the most sensible thing anyone can do. 

John is on a Scottish tour at the moment and asked if he could come to Kirkmuirhill.  He conducted a very fruitful mission here in the early 1980s and hasn’t been back since.  I was delighted to welcome him here. 

He’s now 77 and though there is an inevitable slowing down, there is no sign of any loss of sparkle or passion.  He is a voracious reader.  If we were not talking or eating he was reading. 

I only spent a few hours in his company, so I’m far from qualified to give a definitive opinion.  So let me say one thing.  What impressed me the most was the guy’s humility.  Two examples.  First, he was reading a book in order to answer someone’s questions about it.  Not only did he ask my opinion, he noted down what I said and told me that I’d helped him!  Second, before the meeting he was sitting at a table stuffing leaflets.  I can think of men, preachers and ministers, who just wouldn’t do that (“I’ve got an assistant to do that”).  But “the great” John Blanchard was just as happy doing the donkey work as he was standing in the lime-light. 

Our Lord Jesus often spoke about humility (Mt.18, Lk.22:24-28; John 13).  It seems to me that we are most Christ-like when we take the servant’s part.

Sunday Herald

This is an essay by Harry Reid, one of Scotland’s most senior journalists.  Harry has been an observer of the Church of Scotland for many years.  He’s not always right; but he’s not always wrong either!

A split church? Good

Essay of the week by Harry Reid

BRING ON the schism! I believe that is the only logical response to the Church of Scotland’s procrastination at the recent General Assembly. Having endorsed the individual gay minister Scott Rennie, the Kirk then refused to endorse the general principle of gay ministry, preferring to set up a commission to deliberate on the matter for two years.

This means that gay ministers – with the lonely exception of Mr Rennie – are in effect banned for at least two years. It also means that the hard decision on whether the Kirk is to accept gay ministers is postponed. Meanwhile, the sores will fester. Although taken for the best of motives – an overarching desire for unity – this was a timorous decision that has three immediate consequences.

First, it renders the position of Scott Rennie, and his congregation at Queen’s Cross, Aberdeen, very difficult. Rennie is now in effect isolated in the Kirk: on the one hand he is accepted by the Assembly, on the other he is being made an exception of because of the refusal to accept any other gay ministers for the time being. It is as if Rennie has been welcomed in and then, before his new ministry in Aberdeen has even started, told: “No, hang on a minute; we’re not quite certain about the general principle. Maybe endorsing you was an aberration. OK, we have backed you personally but we cannot regard that decision as any kind of precedent.” Thus the present position of the Kirk appears to be: Rennie is to be the minister at Queen’s Cross, but perhaps we’ve made a mistake.

Secondly, the current divisions will not be healed by a two-year commission. On the contrary, attitudes will harden in the interim. Ministers and church members who are wrestling with this issue through their conscience, their understanding of scripture, and their commitment to a Christian life, are being given zero guidance. They are being told: “Just hang on for a couple of years, folks, and we may be able to give you a lead then. Or maybe not.”

So the Kirk is leaving its membership to their own devices and I’m sure some of them will see that as tantamount to an abdication of responsibility. A church that cannot make up its mind but prefers to defer a hard choice is a church that invites and encourages division.

Thirdly, the procrastination means that people who are contemplating a split, however reluctantly, are being given plenty of time to work on their tactics. If the commission proposes a general acceptance of gay ministers, and the assembly backs this, you can be sure that several presbyteries – and quite a few individual ministers – will object and fight on; and, crucially, they will have had time to work out exactly how they intend to fight on.

I hated writing the above sentences. For a start, I know that those who proposed the two-year commission were acting in good faith and doing their best to hold together, not to divide. Further, for years I have believed that any schism would be a disaster for our national church. Apart from anything else, I have taken the view that in its present parlous financial state – the ministry remains seriously under-resourced, both in terms of personnel and money – it cannot afford to lose the services of any dedicated and experienced ministers.

I have also deprecated the tendency for the Presbyterian churches in Scotland to split and split again, although, as I shall explain, later divisions are embedded in the collective soul of Protestantism. I was aware of the tenacious and protracted efforts that led to the partial re-uniting of the church in 1929, after the grievous split of 1843. (Mind you, the Disruption of 1843 was just one of many. There were two serious secessions in the previous century. Various ministers withdrew from the Kirk and formed the so-called Associate Presbytery. This new body duly tore itself apart and broke into four separate groupings. There was also a significant breakaway in 1752 when the new Relief Church was founded. The truth is that, if you take the long view, splits and secession have been the norm, not the exception.) For all that, surely the Kirk would not want, and can ill afford, to go through such a wretched process yet again? For that reason, I thought that any breakaway would be an unmitigated catastrophe.

Suddenly, I am much less sure. In the context of individual conscience, a spilt now looks both realistic and honest. It might even do the church more good than harm.

During the past few days, I have spoken with three different ministers on the conservative evangelical wing of the church. Each of them was utterly miserable. They felt – though I stress that the word is mine, not theirs – betrayed. The quality of their ministry – their pastoral work, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, taking funerals and baptisms, and so on – all of this is bound to suffer.

How can any minister who is desperately, corrosively ill at ease with his or her own church continue indefinitely to undertake onerous duties that are already demanding and sometimes lead to burn-out? When the church itself, which should be a prop, a constant source of support, succour and renewal, becomes instead something not to be trusted, almost as if it is the enemy, then the life of the minister in this aggressively secular society becomes lonelier than ever.

So some ministers may well decide that their agony cannot continue for another two years. They may well walk out, and they may well take the bulk of their congregations with them.

What would this mean for the wider Scotland? Well, it would mean an immediate bonanza for lawyers and builders. There would be inevitable, complex disputes about the ownership of churches and manses. The Disruption of 1843 was followed by a huge, remarkable nationwide programme of building: new churches, new manses.

Nothing on the same scale would happen this time, but even so, a schism would give an unlikely but welcome boost to Scotland’s recession-hit economy. The Kirk is currently seriously over-churched. The secessionists would not necessarily have to build too many new churches; they could rather take over, refit and refurbish some existing redundant churches. They could also rescue some venerable old churches from what might be regarded as profane use.

Some of the evangelicals are already threatening to withdraw donations to the existing church. As they have pointed out – understandably, but with an implicit threat left menacingly in the air – their congregations tend to be particularly generous. Raising money to support schismatic ministers and build new churches and manses might be less of a problem than some imagine.

On the other hand, it could be argued that if the evangelical congregations are going to hold back money from the church to which they still belong, albeit funds they themselves have raised through generous giving, they are guilty of a move that is seriously anti-democratic. It would be sending out the message: we’re half in, half out.

But the national church can ill afford to lose the cash. A former moderator once said: “Thank God for money, so powerful a servant of Jesus Christ.” That particular servant is getting thinner and weaker by the day.

I have not so far said anything about the actual issue that is dividing so many good people. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that a mature modern church should be able to accept frankly gay ministers, as long as – and this is crucial – they are in stable relationships. For me promiscuity – whether it be homosexual or heterosexual – is the sin. But my views on this are hardly pertinent. Where I think I have at least some locus is that I can fairly claim to have seen this coming, and indeed warned the Kirk to the best of my abilities. In my book Outside Verdict – which was commissioned by a distinguished Kirk figure, the Very Reverend Dr Andrew McLellan – I wrote that it was high time for the conservative evangelicals to be listened to more and to be given a voice in an organisation that prided itself on being broad and democratic and inclusive. (The irony being that their critics regard the conservative evangelicals as being exclusive and narrow.) Instead, I wrote, the conservative evangelicals felt they were being ever further marginalised. I concluded: “The danger signals are there and they should not, they must not, be ignored.”

And on the specific issue of gay clergy, I wrote that if a far from negligible minority of ministers in the Kirk believed their concerns were not being taken seriously “then you are, at best, creating a debilitating sense of discontent, and at worst, sowing the seeds of secession”.

I take no pleasure in pointing out that it would have been much better if the two-year commission had been set up in 2002 rather than 2009. At the heart of all this unhappiness is the very essence of Protestantism: the primacy of individual conscience. Because of this emphasis, there has been an unfortunate fissile tendency in Protestantism from the very start. The great Reformation movement started by Martin Luther in 1517 soon became a series of distinctive discrete movements.

Some of the national Reformations – notably the English one – were overtly political. The English embraced the Reformation not because of any spiritual concerns but because of the tedious matrimonial difficulties of their egregious monarch, Henry VIII. As for Luther, hardly had his Reformation started than he was engaged in bitter arguments with other reformers, notably Huldrych Zwingli.

Calvin and Knox, numinous reformers of the next generation, were able to give the young movement shape and substance, but by this time what were in effect a series of national reformations – all very different in character – had already taken place. Protestants evinced a dangerous, chronic propensity to dispute and argue with each other; division became endemic.

At the core of Luther’s revolution was the notion of the priesthood of all believers. He said that all Christians were to be equal and subject to each other. In effect, he made the church – and all priests and ministers – redundant. He later resiled somewhat from this extreme position, but at the core of the movement which he began was the supremacy of individual conscience, based on individual reading and understanding of the Bible.

This being the case, splits and schism, disruption and division, were inevitable, and it has been that way for almost 500 years. One human being interprets scripture in a very different way from the next one. Protestant churches are not hierarchical; they are filled with fallible, struggling folk working things out for themselves. In that context, it maybe doesn’t really matter that our national church is dithering about giving a lead on this contentious issue.

Indeed schism would fit in with the reformed tradition. While in the past I have been appalled by this – I was amazed to find, on a visit to the parish of Gairloch in Scotland’s far northwest, that there were no fewer that five separate Presbyterian denominations operating within the single parish – I now accept that I may have been naive.

I now reckon that it is better to allow differences among the faithful and even relish them, instead of clinging to a false and phoney coalition held together by the fear of division more than any genuine unity.

In no way do I impugn the motives of those who set up the commission, and those who endorsed it. They are genuinely asking for time to try to resolve an almost impossible problem and then have another shot at endorsing the proposed resolution democratically.

But then I think of these wretched ministers, agonising about the church they love but no longer feel truly part of. It won’t be easy for them, but I reckon it’s time for them to quit the Kirk.