By Brian Donnelly
The Church of Scotland is facing a “silent rebellion” over the issue of gay ordination from traditionalists who stay in the Kirk amid claims its coffers could face being hit by the loss of millions of pounds a year from those who leave.
The claims came as father and son ministers said they would leave the Church over the Kirk’s move to further back gay clergy at its May General Assembly, despite the decision still having to be ratified over the next two years.
Traditionalists within Kirk sessions and presbyteries could move to block gay clergy by refusing to administer ordination, the clergy Aberdeen minister Rev Louis Kinsey suggested, as Rev David Randall of Ayrshire followed his father Rev David Randall senior of Logie St John’s in Dundee in becoming the latest to say publicly that they will leave.
It follows three congregations in Edinburgh and five in the north of Scotland reported to have signalled discontent since May’s decision.
About 10 congregations in total are understood to be in specific negotiations with the Kirk to leave over its struggle with gay ordination was brought to the fore after the appointment of openly gay Rev Scott Rennie to an Aberdeen church in 2009.
Read more at http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/kirk-facing-silent-rebellion-as-gay-ordination-row-intensifies.21331301
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The inclusion of sin devoid of repentance is a frightening trend, indeed. That is has made its mark in the historical cradle of our faith in Scotland is particularly troubling. Knox, Morton, Argyll, Ruthven ,Baird, Glencairn and John Erskine of Dun were not pitted against Mary Queen of Scots so people could flagrantly mock the teachings of the Bible and the true Kirk! The celebration of “free choice” for inclusiveness of a lifestyle that the same rhetoricians hold to be beyond their control just underscores the godless maladroitness of liberalism in general. Machen certainly wasn’t kidding when he said:
““Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today!We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.”