Irish Presbyterian leader: Christ must be mediator in ecumenical worship
By the Rev. Walter L. Taylor, March 11, 2003
The moderator-elect of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Rev. Ivan McKay, says any ecumenical worship in which he participates must maintain the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ.
“I certainly will be involved in worship where I believe it is Biblical worship and acceptable to me as a Biblical Christian,” McKay said in March 9 radio interview with BBC.
McKay is the pastor of the Dundonald Presbyterian Church near Belfast, Northern Ireland. Elected on March 9, Rev. McKay will become moderator in June, when the Presbyterian Church in Ireland meets in its annual General Assembly.
Asked about his willingness to participate in ecumenical worship as Moderator, McKay would not issue any “blanket statement,” but said he would judge each situation case by case. However, McKay did lay out what principle would be the standard for his participation in such worship: “If I felt that the mediatorship of Jesus Christ were called into question, I would have great difficulty taking part in such worship.”
Within the Presbyterian Church (USA) today, worship services that are not centered on Christ are becoming more common, not simply at an ecumenical level, but at an interfaith level. In these services, the name of Jesus Christ is glaringly absent. Especially since Sept. 11, 2001, and magnified by the possibility of war in Iraq, some Presbyterians have rushed headlong into such interfaith worship as equal partners with Islamic clergy and leaders of other non-Christian religious groups.
Rev. McKay’s statement, however, echoes the teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which states emphatically: “Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost alone: not to angels, saints, or any other creature; and since the Fall, not without a Mediator; nor in the mediation of any other but of Christ alone” (BC 6.113).
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, still an evangelical denomination, is the mother church of the Presbyterian Church (USA), given that the vast majority of Presbyterians who came to America from Britain came from Ulster. The Rev. Francis Makemie (c.1658-1708), often called the “Father of American Presbyterians,” was ordained by the Laggan Presbytery in Ulster for work in the American colonies.
The PCI has some 300,000 members in more than 560 congregations spread over the island. With most of those churches in Northern Ireland, the Presbyterian Church is the largest Protestant denomination in that province.
BBC also asked McKay about his perspective on the relationship between Roman Catholics and Protestants in his troubled land: “In Northern Ireland today, and certainly in the area where I live, the question is not so much is my neighbor a Protestant or a Catholic. The question is much more what degree of godlessness or paganism have they reached. And I’m not so sure that the Protestant/Catholic issue is the biggest issue now facing us. I think increasingly secularism is the issue that has overtaken this old divide, and therefore there is an enormous challenge to us with the Gospel today to go out to a world that knows little or nothing [about it].”
The Rev. Walter Taylor, pastor of Forest Park Presbyterian Church in Statesville, is regular contributor to The Layman and the Layman Online.