New Boats and Old Rocks

With one minor exception, Scotland has seen no church union since 1929. During those five decades the national Kirk (now with just over one million members) has been involved in talks that failed: for example, with Episcopalians (43,000) and Congregationalists (20,000). There have been friendlier relations with Roman Catholics (about 310,000 adult members) and Baptists (16,000), perhaps aided by the fact that no marriage was purposed.

What comes as a surprise to visitors, however, is the continued existence of four smaller Presbyterian bodies (aggregating 40,000 members and adherents). With three of these groups there is not even a remote possibility of union, for doctrinal reasons; the fourth protests the principle of an established church even in the modified form existing in Scotland today. Neither can any of these groups unite with each other. There was also an abortive merger scheme twenty years ago between the Church of Scotland and the Church of England (about 1.85 million communicant members).

What needs to be added to this background is that the total Scottish church membership, including sizeable other bodies such as Christian Brethren and Salvation Army, still accounts for rather less than 40 per cent of the population. More than three million souls in the land of John Knox are without even a nominal religious connection.

It seemed important to offer this flurry of statistics as something not irrelevant to the latest merger scheme—between the Church of Scotland and Scottish Methodists. The latter, who number fewer than 10,000 with forty ministers, have never been strong in Scotland, and are found chiefly in the cities and in those areas visited by John Wesley on his travels north of the border.

Talks between the Church of Scotland and the Methodists have been in progress since 1963, and have accelerated since 1972. “The principal tenets of the faith,” it is reported, “are clearly held in common.” Everything has been carried on in a low key. We are assured that the arrangements will be flexible, that no uniformity of worship will be imposed, and that any adjustments found to be necessary can be made after the union. The average church member might well echo words spoken by an army officer’s wife: “We are just simple women who sit in the pews; we really don’t know what this is all about.” She shrewdly pointed out that women constituted a majority in the church, but it makes no difference either way: The average church member is not being asked for an opinion on this scheme.

It was with some interest, therefore, that I read in the Church of Scotland magazine that in the general assembly this month the scheme “is likely to be powerfully opposed.” Evidently we are in for another season of acrimony in which protagonists will be provoked into saying more than they ought, and the thoughtful will again mourn that the ecumenical movement should engender such bitterness.

Anyway, I read the basis and plan proposed for union between the Kirk and Scottish Methodists that is being put to the general assembly this month. The new body is to be called the Church of Scotland, with Methodist ministers continuing in their present circuits as well as being received as members of a presbytery. Their representative layfolk likewise would be deemed as elders in the united church. There would still be Methodist superintendents, called circuit moderators, but in presbytery they would have the same status as other ministers.

Presbyteries over the last year had been formulating comments on the scheme, and these have been listed in an appendix to the report. None of the others quite emulated the overseas presbytery of Jerusalem in welcoming the scheme enthusiastically. The presbytery of England, which knows Methodism better than any other, gave a more typical reaction: The scheme was unacceptable in its present form. This polite brushoff was expressed in different words by other presbyteries.

There was objection to imprecision and ambiguity—the very factor that had scuppered the Anglican/Methodist scheme in England in 1969. Some saw the specter of the bishop in the ill-defined continuing role of superintendent. Disquiet was expressed that the acceptance of Methodist lay representatives as presbytery members “glosses over the question of ordination rather than tackles it.” How presbyteries and circuits could operate side by side was also unclear: The Kirk’s largest presbytery bluntly warned that it would reject what it called “two distinct and contradictory systems of church government.”

Another hazy area concerned the position of the Westminster Confession—accepted by the Kirk as a subordinate standard of faith, though few of its ministers today hold to double predestination or believe the Pope to be the Man of Sin. The proposed scheme, it is alleged, is so worded that the historic creeds are promoted, the Westminster document relegated. Since Scottish Methodists belong to the British Methodist Conference, questions of mutual eligibility of Scottish and English ministers arose. All the Kirk assembly is being asked to do at present is to send the scheme down to presbyteries for approval with instructions to report in time for the 1979 assembly.

Church merger reports are peculiarly vulnerable things, not constructed to withstand close scrutiny. Whenever striking and imaginative variations are played around a familiar theme, the strident cry of betraying our heritage is heard in the land, and dark allusions made about building new boats to founder on old rocks. On the other hand that might just be true. When a beguiling ecumenical tune is piped to us, some of us don’t dance, tiresome children that we are. So another batch of wrong conclusions is drawn and we are dismissed as incorrigible.

“Is it God’s will that his people should be one?” To this the congregation will answer yes. “Is Christ divided?” No. “Well, why don’t you join us?” Unionists spend a lot of time trying to convince evangelical dissentients that unity matters. But the evangelical appreciates that fact so much that he is out in front asking two questions: Unity on what basis? Unity to what end? Unless unity is regarded as only one aspect of the quest for all-round holiness, we shall merely emulate Edward Lear’s impetuous characters who, disregarding bad weather and good friends, went to sea in a sieve. The present Scottish merger scheme is riddled with ambiguities. If it is finally accepted it will only be because either Presbyterians or Methodists, or both, are not taking their own doctrinal standpoint seriously.

A postscript. After I wrote this column the scheme of union between the Kirk and Scottish Methodists was passed overwhelmingly by the former, but rejected by the latter.

J. D. Douglas is an author and journalist who lives in St. Andrews, Scotland.

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