As a depleted Church of Scotland prepares to make deep cuts, John Lloyd explores the social consequences of religious retreat
Life & ArtsThe medieval villages of East Fife are beautiful — Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem, St Monans — the houses embracing the harbours that were once the source of their living, and are no longer.
The people have largely withdrawn, and now the Kirk — as it’s always called — is itself withdrawing. Its finances are stretched, new ministers are scarce, congregations scarcer. It has neither archbishop nor pope: these were consigned to the devil centuries ago. Instead, in offices in Edinburgh’s New Town, a web of committees has decreed a deep cut in the Kirk’s churches in Scotland, presently numbering between 4,000 and 5,000.
Yet as the group was constrained to recognise — had they been successful, the town would have been left with the same tiny, financially unsustainable congregation. One said: “I don’t know if people want religion — except for funerals.” An elderly man, erect in his chair, put the dilemma simply: “No congregation, no church.”
The purchase is weaker now. Active and innovative, he chides his church for “fearfulness . . . When people are afraid of the future, they shrink from it.” Growth there is, but beyond the Kirk: a shift in Christian worship now globally evident. — long part of the Scots religious scene — are now reviving, especially for the young who pack hired halls, while the great edifices cannot find ministers, let alone congregations.
He is more brusque about the faltering Kirk than Michelson. “Being nice only gets you so far. You need to go back to the resurrection. See First Corinthians 15.” Holdsworth’s husband works with the Chalmers Institute, which Jared Michelson told me is a valued resource for Cornerstone. It is directed by Mark Stirling, a former doctor, who was also involved in setting up Cornerstone. The institute is named after Thomas Chalmers , born in a small merchant’s family in Anstruther, who became the most influential divine in Scotland — formidably gifted, pious and charismatic.
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