Scottish Christian.com

Home > News > Scottish Christian News Monitor

Face to faith

Scottish Presbyterian manses are fertile breeding grounds for socially aware politicians, writes Ian Bradley. Gordon Brown is the second prime minister to be the child of a Scottish clergyman. The first, Andrew Bonar Law, was the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister serving in Canada. Brown's father was a minister in the established Church of Scotland. Sons of the manse have long been considerably more conspicuous and numerous in British public and political life than children of the vicarage. Other contemporary examples include the new international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, former Liberal leader David Steel, current Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore, and Conservative peer and former minister Peter Fraser.

Why have Presbyterian manses been such fertile breeding grounds for politicians? It is tempting to suggest that it is the particular mixture of high moral seriousness, social concern and intellectual calibre that marks out the Church of Scotland ministry. In the speech announcing his candidacy for the leadership last month, Brown movingly described his father, John Ebenezer Brown, who ministered for over 40 years in some of the most deprived parts of Scotland, as "the moral compass that has guided me through each stage of my life". He went on to say that his father had taught him the importance of integrity and decency, treating people fairly and having a duty towards others.

Something of the flavour of John Brown's ministry is conveyed in the title of his published volume of sermons: A Time to Serve. He is remembered for taking a hands-on approach to helping his parishioners and his son recalls that "weeping widows and warring elders would knock at the door at any time". This reflects another aspect of being a child of the manse: you are plunged at an early age into social problems and pastoral issues. Alexander attributes his own sense of public service to boyhood visits to impoverished parishioners in Bishopton. Steel similarly feels that his father, who spent eight years as a minister in Nairobi and rose to be moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, inculcated a zeal for public service into his five children.

Another aspect is that, in Moore's words, "from an early age you are a minor public figure". The minister's children are called on to read lessons and always on parade. This could induce a certain preachiness and precocity, as it did in the case of John Reith, whose father was a minister in the Free Church. Reith imbued the BBC with his stern moral principles, viewing it as a branch of the church militant, and went through life feeling unappreciated. Without the moral fibre and rigour implanted by his Presbyterian father, however, we might never have had Radio 4, nor a public broadcasting system that remains the envy of the world.

Perhaps the most characteristic son of the manse was John Buchan who like Reith was of Free Church extraction and like Brown spent much of his childhood in Fife. Buchan was imbued throughout his restless, adventurous career, which took in journalism, publishing, imperial administration and politics, with the healthy, wholesome, manly values of Calvinism and its sense of pilgrimage and predestination. He also anticipated Brown in combining a deep attachment to his native Scotland with a passionate sense of Britishness.

Although Brown's politics are of a more radical hue, and most sons of the manse have found themselves on the left of the political spectrum, he shares Buchan's moral and romantic attachment to the union. It is a quality deeply embedded in the Church of Scotland, epitomised by the loyal address to the Queen and singing of the national anthem which rounds off every general assembly. Brown relates to that now rather neglected strain in Scottish Presbyterianism as well as to its social radicalism and striving for justice.

Ian Bradley is a Church of Scotland minister who teaches practical theology at St Andrews University. His most recent book is Believing in Britain: The Spiritual Identity of Britishness.

Full story at The Guardian.