The Spiritual State of Scotland

The Spiritual State of Scotland

The majority of Church of Scotland presbyteries vote today on the acceptance of office-bearers in gay “marriages” – the denomination has already accepted practicing homosexuals in "civil partnerships". It seems to me that a quibble about terminology, (marriage or civil partnership), overlooks the fact that the sin is in the approval and practice of unbiblical conduct, whatever it may be called.  The denomination has already whitewashed the sin by its previous approval and seems unlikely to listen to the valid biblical and legal objections that will be raised by the evangelicals.  The situation is dire!

However, God is sovereign, and Scotland has risen out of the mire of a destructive theological progressive liberalism and insipid evangelicalism before: 

“Over vast tracts of the country, a cold, semi-sceptical moderatism held undisturbed sway, while the evangelism which here and there nominally maintained its ground was seldom of that strong, fervent, and high-toned type with which happily we are now so familiar. Error spoke aloud with clear and unfaltering tongue on the high places of the land, while truth, scorned and down-trodden, uttered its voice with stammering and muffled accents, and offered but a feeble resistance to the strong, triumphant tide of latitudinarian indifference that was rolling on. There was a good deal of nominal orthodoxy — fully more, perhaps, than a few years afterwards — but little holy unction. fervour, or power.”

"The Pastor of Kilsyth ; or, Memorials of the life and times of the Rev. W.H. Burns D.D." Rev. Islay Burns, St. Peter's Free Church, Dundee. 1860.

The renewal that followed could not be contained within the established national church and eventually led to the Disruption and the formation of the Free Church of Scotland, (1843). The differences are significant, however, for what was being faced then was the cold semi-orthodoxy of Moderatism, not the high handed rejection of Scripture, Christian ethical tradition, and fundamental truths of Christian and Reformed orthodoxy.