March 2025
Thursday May 23 2024
Picture by Andrew O'Brien
The Archbishop of Canterbury this morning celebrated the growing friendship between the Churches of Scotland and England.
Invited to address the Kirk’s General Assembly, the Most Rev Justin Welby said that the two national churches ‘must be the mortar that holds together the diverse stones that so beautifully make up the United Kingdom’.
He said that the Columba Declaration, signed by the two churches in 2016, had ‘sealed but did not create the warm and appreciative relationship that exists between our churches’. And he said that it had borne fruit particularly in the joint pilgrimage of peace to South Sudan undertaken by Pope Francis, the Very Rev Dr Iain Greenshields and himself last year, which he said ‘would have been unthinkable in the quite recent past’.
He also called for an end to bloodshed in Gaza, which he said would ‘not lead to security for Israelis, for which we long and pray, nor to a free and secure Palestinian state, for which we long and pray’. And he condemned both antisemitism and the abuse of Muslims in the UK: “Whatever is happening elsewhere, both faiths and many others have brought wonderful gifts to the UK…. They are our fellow citizens and must be protected by free speech and for free speech.”
He finished in reminding the gathering that the calling of both churches “Necessitates bearing the cross into the places of darkness… and following Jesus. A church that chooses any other way is at best a charity with pointy roofs and at worst a deception that will be corrupted. In discipleship, lived, shared and proclaimed we discover the faithfulness of God, whose goodness and providence is infinitely greater than our feeble, fragile, failures. For in imitating God, who carried the Cross, we become cross shaped and thus God shaped, and we become a single church of the 21st century that lives, grows, serves and glorifies its Creator.”
In the final business session of the Assembly, significant changes to the education of ministers were agreed which will allow new ministers to qualify through an Apprenticeship Route. Faith Action Programme Leadership Team (FAPLT) convener, the Rev Tommy MacNeil, told the Assembly that the proposals would ‘ensure our ministers are better equipped and prepared for the challenges of 21st century secular Scotland’, providing more routes for people into the ministry and speeding up the process from first discernment to ordination.
Initial proposals had encountered resistance among the Church’s academic providers, but following discussions were changed earlier this week and now include ‘the introduction of a two-year foundational programme to provide a general qualification for ministry’ and ‘a full-time formation process leading to a revised BD/MDiv degree combined with SQA credit-bearing ministry placements; reducing the current pattern of three years plus probation to three full years (which will include formative activity outwith academic semesters), with equality of time between study and placements’.
The Rev Professor David Fergusson, former Principal of New College, Edinburgh, said that academic providers were now willing to support the proposals, although he expressed disappointment that the essential duties of a ministers listed in the FAPLT report did not include teaching.
The Rev Professor Alison Jack, Professor Fergusson’s successor as Principal, said that the universities were very different places from even five years ago, and that the University of Edinburgh was ‘deeply committed’ to working with the church to meet its needs in the 21st century. She said: “I hope we have the opportunity to continue and develop the centuries-old relationship between the universities and the church, which has the potential to meet the challenges facing the church today.”
General Assembly 2024: Full Coverage
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