Obituary of Ian Gordon Manson, the Church of Scotland's director of social work; born 25 December, 1956, in Aberdeen; died 18 October, 2005, in Dundee, aged 48. "Ian Manson was a man of considerable talent, boundless energy, and deep Christian conviction. Ian was strongly influenced in his values and priorities throughout life by the example of his father, the late Rev Gordon Manson, and the Christian dedication of his mother, Jean. He was always quick to pay tribute to the abiding influence of his upbringing ..."
Source: The Scotsman. posted at 4:15 PM

Council leaders have complained that new laws aimed at controlling sectarian marches will also force them to spend hundreds of pounds on consulting about whether to allow Brownie parades. Legislation going through the Scottish Parliament will require any public procession to go through the same procedure of 28 days' notification, a risk assessment and consultation with the community. Orange marches, republican parades, political protests, gala days and traditional church parades will all get the same treatment. But the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has asked MSPs to amend the Bill to give councils discretion regarding something as innocuous as a Brownie parade.
Source: Edinburgh Evening News. posted at 4:12 PM

A minister whose flock are among the country's wealthiest has condemned the divide between rich and poor. Parishioners of Rev Bob Brown, brother of former Scotland football boss Craig, at Aberdeen's Queen's Cross Church live in an area with an annual average income of more than £50,000. He is also involved in the charity, Instant Neighbour, which helps the city's poor. Last year they distributed 13,000 food parcels and the forecast for this year is 18,000. Mr Brown, 61, said: "There is a serious issue of poverty here."
Source: Sunday Mail. posted at 4:02 PM

A charity that urges teenagers to reject condoms and refrain from sex is being funded by the Scottish Executive, despite ministers' official message that schoolchildren should protect themselves against unwanted pregnancies and sexual infections. Fertility Care Scotland volunteers deliver a "pro- abstinence" message to thousands of schoolchildren across the country, urging pupils to reject "lifestyle choices" that may damage their fertility. Tim Street, director of the Family Planning Association, said it is "dangerous" for any group to focus exclusively on abstinence. "We need to explain the consequences of having sex and present all the options. Being pro-abstinence doesn't do that," he said. Michael McGrath, director of the Catholic Education Service, said FCS was an "orthodox" organisation that was welcome in denominational schools. "FCS is a resource that is used by schools on some occasions," he said.
Source: Sunday Herald. posted at 3:46 PM

In a stinging attack on the Israeli government, the moderator of the Church of Scotland's General Assembly, David Lacy, has accused the Jewish state of "theft" by constructing its highly controversial separation barrier inside the Palestinian territories. On a two-week trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Rt Rev Lacy said his visit to the West Bank town of Bethlehem - just south of Jerusalem and now separated by an eight-metre concrete barrier - had left him "gobsmacked".
Source: Scotland on Sunday. posted at 3:41 PM

Rev Jim Cochrane hopes to attract more youngsters to Tillicoultry Parish Church by arriving in church on a skateboard and delivering sermons wearing knee pads and trainers. He now plans to deliver a leaflet entitled "Does Jesus Have a Skateboard?" to every home in Tillicoultry.
Source: Daily Record. posted at 3:38 PM

For the past 14 years the Rev Angus Smith has dealt with a congregation whose faith was all at sea. But now the Church of Scotland minister, whose parish is made up of the 120 rigs and platforms in the North Sea, is to retire as chaplain to the oil industry. The "minister for oil", as he has been dubbed, has racked up over 72,000 air miles and spent more than 1,000 days - almost three years - at sea in the course of leading church services and giving spiritual guidance to the 25,000 men and women who work in the offshore oil industry. The job, which Mr Smith took on in 1991 under the aegis of the Scottish Churches Industrial Mission, was created after the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988, the world's worst oil rig tragedy, in which 167 men died.
Source: The Scotsman. posted at 3:32 PM

A leading Catholic thinker in Scotland has been given a key role in the Vatican's long-term campaign to promote Christianity in Western culture. John Haldane, professor of philosophy at St Andrews University, is to become consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture. The 51-year-old, who has written for The Herald, said it was time to "reclaim Europe for Christianity".
Source: The Herald. posted at 3:26 PM

Bishop Stephen McGill, the former Roman Catholic Bishop of Paisley who retired in 1988 after twenty years in the post, has died peacefully at the age of 93. A former Rector of Blairs College, Scotland's junior Catholic Seminary, and Bishop of Argyll and the Isles from 1960 to 1968, he also participated in the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Cardinal Keith O'Brien said: "For many years Bishop McGill was the father figure of the Bishops Conference of Scotland."
Source: Scottish Catholic Media Office news release. posted at 10:37 PM

A Glenrothes Catholic who has long campaigned for the return of a traditional Latin Mass to churches is toasting some success. Alex Kirkwood has been championing the re-introduction of Tridentine Mass to Catholic churches in Scotland via his own website and his personal contacts in the church for more than 20 years. Now Mr Kirkwood is celebrating the fact that Cardinal Keith O'Brien recently granted a weekly Latin Mass in Edinburgh - the first time in 40 years that such a weekly Mass has been held in the capital. The Mass is held every Sunday in St Andrew's Church, Belford Road, Edinburgh, at 11.30 am.
Source: Dundee Courier. posted at 10:21 PM

The captain of First Division football team Stranraer, Derek Wingate, has been convicted of shouting sectarian abuse at police. He committed the offence outside a Glasgow bar hours after Rangers won the Premier league in May. Sgt Andrew McLean told the court: "He shouted 'IRA scum' then shouted 'fenian scum' three times." Wingate claimed that he shouted 'IRA scum' to the tune of music being played in the bar. "I would not have shouted 'fenian scum' as my wife and mum are Catholic, so shouting that would be offending them," he said. Wingate was fined £500 at Glasgow Sheriff Court for breach of the peace aggravated by religious prejudice.
Source: BBC Scotland News. posted at 10:18 PM

Plans to convert a church into a family home in the middle of a working graveyard have been thrown out by Aberdeenshire councillors. The plans for Kinellar Church, near Blackburn, were yesterday described as "tacky and horrible" as members of the Garioch area committee overturned council planners recommendations. The category B listed building, which has an ancient Pictish stone at its entrance, is on the Scheduled Monument Register and home to a war memorial. Councillor Martin Ford backed the plans and warned that failure to restore the crumbling church could lead to its collapse. He said: "The sinner is the Church of Scotland here, not the council. They decided to sell the church as it was surplus to their requirements."
Source: Aberdeen Press & Journal. posted at 10:13 PM

In his Remembrance Day remarks, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Right Rev David Lacy, has called for people everywhere to remember the evils of war.
Source: Church of Scotland news release. posted at 7:09 PM

MSP Annabel Goldie, a Church of Scotland elder, has been selected as the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
Source: The Guardian. posted at 7:02 PM

A 93-year-old man is recovering after being robbed on his way to St Anthony's church in Govan Road, Glasgow.
Source: Scotland Today. posted at 7:55 PM

The co-author of Rosslyn and the Grail, Ian Robertson, debunks some of the myths in the best-seller The Da Vinci Code.
Source: The Scotsman. posted at 7:51 PM

Righead United Reformed Church, founded in 1955 as East Kilbride Congregational Church, has been celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Source: URC Synod of Scotland. posted at 11:40 AM

The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Bruce Cameron, has announced that he will step down at the end of April 2006, prior to his retirement after 14 years as Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney at the end of June 2006.
Source: Scottish Episcopal Church news release. posted at 11:37 AM

A special service was held in Dundee Parish Church (St Mary's) yesterday to honour members of the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry who lost their lives in the first and second world wars. The church is home to the regiment flag, which was put in place when the regiment was disbanded in 1975. The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry is now C Squadron of the Queen's Own Yeomanry. Many members have recently served both in Bosnia and Iraq.
Source: Dundee Courier. posted at 11:27 AM

The congregation of St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Dundee celebrated its 150th anniversary with a special service last night.
Source: Dundee Courier. posted at 11:25 AM

Andrew Collier considers the impact of homosexuality issues on Scotland's churches. "There is simply no alternative to differences of thinking being handled with courtesy, respect and understanding. When it comes to same-sex relations, all churches are built of glass. They know the consequences of throwing stones at each other."
Source: The Scotsman. posted at 11:22 AM

RAF chaplain Father Ivan Boyle is leaving his parish at Kinloss to mark Remembrance Day in the Gulf, where he will meet troops from the Moray base stationed there with the Nimrod fleet. The Roman Catholic chaplain, currently 'on loan' to the RAF from the Diocese of Motherwell, will lead men from 201 and 120 Squadrons in the service of remembrance this weekend.
Source: Aberdeen Press & Journal. posted at 11:14 AM

Rev John MacLeod of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) said yesterday there were hopes of a peaceful settlement of its property dispute with the Free Church following a meeting last week. The 'rebel' group split from the Free Church of Scotland, claiming it was the true Free Church and therefore the rightful owner of church property. Assets at stake including pension liabilities and the Free Church College on Edinburgh's Mound, are believed to be worth more than £10 million. In March a landmark a Court of Session judge ruled in favour of the Free Church.
Source: Aberdeen Press & Journal. posted at 11:12 AM

A statue of Celtic Football Club's founder, Brother Walfrid, was unveiled outside Celtic Park yesterday, almost 120 years after the club's formation. The man also known as Andrew Kerins was a Marist priest from County Sligo who, inspired by Edinburgh's Hibernian FC, helped establish Celtic in 1888 to raise money for Irish Catholic immigrants in Glasgow's East End. The 9ft-high bronze, created by Glasgow sculptor Kate Robinson, was blessed by the Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti. The Archbishop, who confessed he did not even know who Celtic were during his school days in Aberdeen, presented the chairman with a sandstone Celtic cross from St Mary's Church Hall in Calton, where the club was founded 118 years ago today.
Source: Sunday Herald. posted at 9:25 PM

Despite it being four centuries since the papist Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators were caught preparing to blow up King James and both Houses of Parliament, a key piece of anti-Catholic legislation remains at the pinnacle of the British constitution to this day: the ban on Catholics assuming the throne. "Does anyone today seriously believe that Britain would be imperilled and all of our civil liberties put at hazard if our monarch was a Catholic or the spouse of a Catholic," asks Patrick Reilly.
Source: Sunday Herald. posted at 12:44 PM

One hundred and fifty years ago this month, Dr David Livingstone made his most spectacular discovery, when on the Zambezi he saw a 1,600m-wide waterfall crashing on to rocks 100 metres below. But while dozens of events are taking place in Zambia to commemorate the occasion on November 16, the date will pass largely unnoticed in Scotland. Livingstone's great-grandson, David Wilson, and his wife Ada will travel to Zambia next week for the 150th commemorations on the invitation of the Zambian government. Wilson, himself a former missionary who now lives in Helensburgh, said: "I don't know of anything happening in Scotland. Maybe my great-grandfather's 200th birthday will be marked in 2013, but it seems that his most famous achievement will be ignored in his homeland. In Africa the people talk of Livingstone as the man who brought Christianity to the country. He remains a hero. But in Scotland he is not being thought of."
Source: Scotland on Sunday. posted at 12:29 PM

A Scottish archdeacon is to run the first Christian church to be built in the conservative Muslim state of Qatar since the arrival of Islam in the 7th century. The Ven Ian Young, who is from Perth, has been the chief Anglican priest in the capital, Doha, since 1991. Work on the £4 million Church of the Epiphany, which will not have a spire or free-standing cross, will begin next year on land donated by the reform-minded Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. As well as providing an official place of worship for Qatar's Anglican community, estimated to be 7,000-10,000 people, the Most Rev Clive Handford, Anglican Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf, said he hoped the "centre can be a base for ongoing Muslim-Christian dialogue". Also in the works are church buildings to serve Catholics, Egyptian Coptic Christians and a multi-denominational church serving Indian Christians. Qatar is home to some 70,000 Christian expatriates, most of them Roman Catholics, although the Anglican community is thought be the emirate's oldest, dating from 1916.
Source: The Scotsman. posted at 5:18 PM

A couple spooked guests at a Halloween party by holding a surprise wedding dressed as skeletons. Stephen and Yvonne, of Glenrothes, Fife, married in a ceremony conducted by a Church of Scotland minister, the Rev Donald Powlis. They and their guests at a bowling club in the nearby village of Coaltown of Balgonie then tucked into a wedding cake shaped as a Halloween pumpkin with a skeleton bride and groom on top.
Source: Daily Record. posted at 5:15 PM

On the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, Catherine Pepinster, editor of the Catholic weekly, the Tablet, reflects on what unites the religious and the secular. The Government's bill on incitement to religious hatred would, in England and Wales, outlaw written material or behaviour intended to stir up hatred against individuals because of their religion. "Significantly, many Catholics, with their own cultural memories of prejudice, consider it to be an unwise move. Baroness Helena Kennedy, the human rights lawyer, says she remembers anti-Catholic taunts from her Glasgow childhood and knows how such treatment can disfigure people's lives. But she believes allowing criticism enables people within a faith to grapple with their own difficulties." But what is more commonly experienced is a suspicion or fear of faith, often based on misunderstanding or lack of knowledge. "This week Faithworks, a Christian thinktank, said there was an urgent need for false assumptions about faith groups and their role in public life to be tackled. Highfields Happy Hens, a free-range poultry farm and vocational training centre, has one of the lowest re-offending rates of any young offenders programme in Derbyshire. But a scheme to replicate the model had been stalled, Faithworks said, because its manager has made clear that a Christian ethos was at the heart of its success."
Source: The Guardian. posted at 5:13 PM

A statue of Celtic FC founder Brother Walfrid has been put in place at the entrance to the club's home. The 9ft-high bronze statue will show Brother Walfrid, a Marist Brother whose real name was Andrew Kerins, cost £30,000, which was raised by fans. in the seated pose familiar to all Celtic supporters. The cover used in today's unveiling was funded by Sense Over Sectarianism and covered in hundreds of drawings made by children from 14 schools and five community groups across the city. The statue was blessed by Archbishop of Glasgow Mario Conti before the performance of a piece of music, entitled Walfrid At The Gates of Paradise, by acclaimed Scots composer James MacMillan.
Source: Evening Times, Glasgow. posted at 5:02 PM

The BBC has been accused of an anti-religious attitude, the House of Lords select committee considering the future of the corporation was told. The BBC was also attacked by members of the committee for treating religion "with kid gloves" and for employing reporters who tried to "fluff their way through complicated matters". Some of its popular serials like EastEnders ridicule religion, the committee heard this week, during the evidence being given by representatives of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faiths - all broadcasters and contributors to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day - as well as members of the British Humanist Association, on coverage of faith and the role of religious broadcasting to the committee on the BBC charter review.
Source: Hindustan Times. posted at 9:05 AM

Evangelicals in the Church of Scotland have lodged a formal protest over a Kirk statement backing gay adoption. They claim the policy was decided by a small group of people on a church sub-committee but then presented as the official view. Now the Rev Gordon Kennedy, chairman of evangelical group Forward Together, has called on principal clerk the Very Rev Dr Finlay Macdonald to investigate.
Source: Edinburgh Evening News. posted at 9:05 AM

St Ninian's Parish Church and Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen are to merge. The Church of Scotland's Aberdeen Presbytery Clerk, Ian McLean, said: "A panel of independent arbiters ... agreed that the church of St Ninian's would be the place of worship and the church of Beechgrove would be sold or let." The presbytery warmly praised the Rev Alison Swindells, who is leaving after six years at St Ninian's. The new congregation will be called Mid Stocket Church and the service of union will take place on November 17.
Source: Aberdeen Press & Journal. posted at 9:47 PM

Hindus are demanding that Royal Mail withdraws one of this year's Christmas stamps, claiming the mother and child image it represents is insulting to their religion. The 68p Christmas stamp, which would be used to send mail to India, features a man and woman with Hindu markings worshipping the infant Christ. Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Britain, said the image was insensitive, because it showed people who were clearly Hindu worshipping Christ. "It is the equivalent of having a vicar in a dog collar bowing down to Lord Ram on a Diwali stamp," he said.
Source: Daily Telegraph. posted at 9:30 PM

Rev Murdoch MacKenzie, convener of the Scottish Churches National Sponsoring Body for Local Ecumenical Partnerships, looks forward to the first Local Ecumenical Partnership Gathering in Scotland, to be held in Livingston on Saturday 26 November.
Source: Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) news.
posted at 8:23 PM

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance has provided a number of online resources for World AIDS Day, which takes place on December 1.
Source: Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) news. posted at 8:22 PM

Speaking at the joint Church of Scotland and ACTS Autumn Conference in Perth, the Scottish Churches Forum Convener and former Moderator, Dr Alison Elliot, offered participants three models for ecumenism - constructing, modelling and discovering unity.
Source: Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) news. posted at 6:53 PM

Regional Advisory Groups of the Sponsoring Body for Local Ecumenical Partnerships have been launched throughout Scotland.
Source: Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) news. posted at 6:51 PM

The President of the Evangelical Alliance of Sudan has called on British Christians to help fund the reconstruction of the country, which suffered 21 years of civil war. Bishop Elias Taban, of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Sudan, said: "We have no schools, no health services, no roads, no infrastructure. In the district where I live, Yei, one doctor has to serve 300,000 people."
Source: Evangelical Alliance news release. posted at 6:48 PM

A top football referee has revealed how Premier League stars have stopped swearing at him since he became a Baptist minister. Mike McCurry, who has been in charge of Old Firm clashes and cup finals, said that players had given him greater respect since he was ordained in April at Mosspark Church in Glasgow. Speaking on BBC Scotland's A Life In Question, to be broadcast on Sunday, McCurry, 41, said: "Nowadays, I suppose that because they know I am a minister, their language has improved."
Source: Daily Record. posted at 6:25 PM