Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Official Report 734KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev John A H Murdoch, moderator of the St Andrew’s Presbytery and minister of Largo and Newburn Parish Church.

My late father, Evan Murdoch, Miss Goldie’s uncle, told me once that when you are in the company of certain people, religion and politics are topics that you might avoid. With my cousin sitting near and her successor a member of one of my two congregations in Largo, it is not straightforward to dismiss the latter and, as a parish minister, it would be thought more than a little odd if I were not interested in the former.

I come here at your invitation, for which I am extremely grateful, aware of the need for both religion and politics to become more relevant to our nation, as young and old, believers and those of no faith, and those of all political and religious viewpoints work together for a sense of understanding, tolerance and harmony between those of all backgrounds and faiths, so that our nation remains true to its principles, its history and its sense of equality. There can be no finer day than this day, St Andrew’s day, to come here.

In the mid-1970s, I was a divinity student a stone’s throw away, in the Canongate kirk. I lived in Russell House, beside the manse where the esteemed Ronald Selby Wright was minister for over 40 years. I remember seeing, on one of the walls of the youth club that he ran, a lovely picture from the late 1960s of Pringle Fisher, the Scottish rugby captain, shaking hands with one of my boyhood heroes, the Scottish football captain, John Greig, of a team well known in the other city. Dr Selby Wright had brought them together in the youth club and what inspiration the young got from seeing that picture. In that setting, where impoverished youngsters from the closes around the Canongate learned new skills and tried to understand one another better while having great fun in the caring atmosphere of the youth club run by the church, that picture spoke of teamwork, unity and a sense of respecting others, no matter what their background, their faith or their tradition.

You in politics who are charged with the care of the people of the nation—a high calling—and those like me in the sphere of religion who are tasked to make God real, to honour the biblical commandment of loving God with all of one’s heart, all of one’s soul, all of one’s intellect and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, we surely have much to do together.

As moderator of St Andrews Presbytery I bring the good wishes of all in our presbytery and, indeed, of Largo—Upper and Lower—for all that you attempt to do here in this wonderful sphere for the betterment of everyone in the country. On this St Andrew’s day, there can be no better model to look to for striving to do all that is noble, true and good than our patron saint. As you know, he carried his cross without fear or favour of the crowd. Some message, some saint and some faith for all the world.