Plenary, 09 Oct 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 9, 2002

Official Report 392KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

To lead our time for reflection this week we welcome the Very Rev James L Weatherhead, a former Moderator of the General Assembly.

Thank you. Forty years ago, in May 1962, I was for the first time a member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland meeting in this hall and I spoke in support of a proposal for a Scottish Parliament. I do not claim that my persuasion moved the general assembly, which was minded to support such a proposal anyway. My proposal was only one of many irrelevant or superfluous speeches made in this hall before and since.

Before the Scottish Parliament was established, people used to say that the general assembly was the nearest thing that Scotland had to a Parliament. If that was true, it meant that Scotland was a long way in those days from having a real Parliament. That is not to denigrate the general assembly, but to say just that it is different.

The explicit basis of Church of Scotland government is the sovereignty of God, not the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament or the sovereignty of the people. That is made explicit in the constitution of the Church of Scotland, as recognised, but not imposed or granted, by the Church of Scotland Act 1921. That constitution states:

"This Church as part of the Universal Church wherein the Lord Jesus Christ has appointed a government in the hands of Church office-bearers, receives from Him, its Divine King and Head, and From Him alone, the right and power subject to no civil authority to legislate, and to adjudicate finally, in all matters of doctrine, worship, government, and discipline in the Church."

The constitution, however, also says:

"This Church acknowledges the divine appointment and authority of the civil magistrate within his own sphere, and maintains its historic testimony to the duty of the nation acting in its corporate capacity to render homage to God, to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ to be King over the nations, to obey His laws, to reverence His ordinances, to honour His Church, and to promote in all appropriate ways the Kingdom of God."

That is clearly derived from what St Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans:

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God … he"—

that is, the ruler—

"is the minister of God to thee for good."

I believe that other religions might say something similar, in their own terms.

Robert Burns said in the poem "Ode to a Louse":

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"

I see you, the Scottish Parliament, as ministers of God to the Scottish people for good; and I believe that that is how God sees you.