What a government sex scandal and a preaching ban tell us about modern Scotland

Feb 9, 2020 by

by David Robertson, Christian Today:

Scotland is an amazing country. I accept I may have a wee bit of bias but it has so much going for it – stunning countryside, a rich culture, incredible people and a society built on several hundred years of Christian civilization. However Scotland is in danger of throwing at least the last part of that wonderful heritage into the dustbins of history.

The Scotland that anyone over 50 grew up in is now almost unrecognizable – at least in spiritual and societal terms. In the past twenty years, I believe we have secularized faster than any nation in human history (although our Irish cousins are doing what they can to beat us in the race to the bottom!). And that has not been a change for the better.

Of course not everyone sees it that way. They believe that we are moving out of the Christian dark ages into a progressive, secular Nirvana. Tom Nairn over 50 years ago summed up the aim clearly: “Scotland will only be reborn when the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post.”

His wish has come true. Scotland’s clergy have been effectively neutered – the Established Church has now become little more than the spiritual wing of the secular thought police. Christianity is barred in all but name from much of public life – and the thought police want to ensure that it is limited in terms of private life as well.

This past week has seen two incidents that show just how far things have gone. Franklin Graham was banned from the SEC in Glasgow – at the request of Glasgow City Council (and a Church of Scotland minister) – on the grounds that his expressed views on homosexuality and Islam could mean that the meeting was illegal.

Glasgow’s motto is “Let Glasgow Flourish”. Or at least, that is, the version you will get today. The real motto is “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of Your Word and the praising of Your Name”. It is this city that now wants to ban the preaching of that Word on the grounds that it might be illegal.

Read here

 

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