Scottish Christian.com

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About Scottish Christian.com

Purpose
The project began as a links page on the website of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, became the Scottish Christian Web-Base during 1999, and relaunched as Scottish Christian.com in December of that year.

Its original aim was stated as follows: "Hundreds of churches, organisations and individuals in Scotland use the web to tell the world about their beliefs, activities, histories and hopes. Scottish Christian makes them more accessible by listing over 1,000 links, and promotes Christian use of the internet."

Publisher
Scottish Christian is published by Ian Ansdell, a freelance journalist, website developer and member of Holy Cross Scottish Episcopal church in Glasgow.

Inspirations

• 'Making sense of God'
'The community of faith is a community of longing, not possession. It is for those who have glimpsed something of the divine, as well as for those who have not, but long to. It is for those who have achieved some level of discipline and control in their lives and for those who have not, but long to. St Augustine once described the Church as a school for sinners, not a museum for saints. It should be as wide as humanity; it should include all who wish to be attached to it; it should welcome their desire to explore the mystery that besets us.'
From Dancing On The Edge by Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church

• 'The Church must learn to cope with computer culture'
'In the computer culture the Church can hear more clearly the voice of public opinion and enter into continuous discussion with the world around her ... involving herself more immediately in the common search for solutions to humanity's many pressing problems. The Church must avail herself of the new resources for her ever pressing task of evangelisation.'
From Pope John Paul II’s address on World Communications Day, 1989.

Criteria for inclusion
Links listings, articles and news summaries are mainly intended to reflect the life of the mainstream Trinitarian church in Scotland. Unitarian churches are included because they have observer status with Action of Churches Together in Scotland. Other faiths such as Islam and Judaism are included because of dialogues existing with churches and Christian organisations, and because of political and social concerns held in common.

Masthead photograph
Celtic Cross, Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Holy Island, Northumberland, which is not currently part of Scotland ... but it's a great picture by Ian Britton at Freefoto.

Design
Table-less layout with variable font sizes and fixed width implemented in January 2006, based on Leaves by Anthony at OSWD. To see previous versions of Scottish Christian, please visit WayBackMachine (where lots more retrospective fun can be had).

Colours
The red used on for links is hex #cc0000, conventionally named as blood red and signifying the Blood of Christ. The blue is Pantone 300, designated the official Saltire blue by the Scottish Parliament, converted to hex #0072bc.

Advertising
Advertisements are provided by Amazon UK, Tradedoubler and Google Adsense, and site visitors are to be congratulated on their prudence: I won't be weekending in the Bahamas any time soon! Please note that Google chooses ads by matching page content to keywords supplied by advertisers. This can result in unpleasantness ... more than 50 advertisers have been barred for unsuitability and ads are monitored regularly, but if you see an advert you feel is inappropriate please let us know.