Christians are being persecuted for their faith by the UK’s liberal elite
by Kevin McKenna, The National:
LAST Monday in Oran Mor, the entertainment venue that has come to define Glasgow’s West End almost as much as herbal infusions, I watched as the Free Church of Scotland endured another routine kicking. Around 150 of the city’s retired ponytail and red corduroy brigade snorted and brayed as a musical play called Wee Free unfolded on stage in what had once been the basement of Kelvinside Parish Church.
The play was the latest in Oran Mor’s enchanting A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime drama series, which has been one of the most exhilarating recent developments in Scottish live theatre. It was the first time I’d attended in several years. Sadly, it was not a happy return. Wee Free was a grotesque and distorted view of the Free Church of Scotland (the Wee Frees), a community of Christian believers who have become the favourite subject of scorn for Scotland’s self-styled liberal elite.
The drama was entirely devoid of subtlety or irony and long before the end of a leaden and cliché-laden hour you hoped that something, anything, approaching an original thought might emerge. It had no merit at all, though the four accomplished actors gave of their best in a squalid little production. The Free Church was depicted lazily as a medieval inquisition complete with a joyless minister and his brow-beaten wife, whose femininity had been thrashed out of her by a judgmental and domineering male church. And just in case anyone was in any doubt about the intention of the writers (I use the term under protest), the Christ-child was described as “the bastard baby Jesus”. Yet, you can hardly blame the pair who penned this drama. They were, after all, merely reflecting what has come to be accepted as the default position on the Free Church of Scotland by those who consider themselves to be liberal, free-thinkers. These people, though, are about as liberal as a firing squad. In their dictatorship of ideas only a state-approved Christianity can be permitted in public life; one that has been shorn of anything that they deem to be out of kilter with smart, enlightened and diverse Scotland.
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