It shouldn’t need saying. Banning prayers and pastoral care is repressive and wrong. It is an obvious breach of human rights. Yet the Scottish Government is being urged to do exactly this in the guise of a ban on “conversion therapy”.
I’m a pastor. My concern is with the church — what she believes, what she celebrates, and what she proclaims. Achieving some legal and political end is not my primary calling and yet, I’m concerned that many younger Christians — ironically, often those most attuned to societal transformation and social justice — do not see the connection between a traditional view of marriage and human flourishing.
First the ‘terminally ill’. Then the disabled. Then the mentally ill. Then the old and infirm and sad and lonely.
Today marks the 450th anniversary of the death of the Scottish reformer and firebrand preacher John Knox.
As a young Christian believer I was stirred in my soul when I realised that our nation had turned its back on God. I wanted to glorify God in my life and assumed that ‘full-time Christian work’ was the best way to do it. I went to as many missionary conferences as I could, but in 1984 concluded that God wasn’t calling me to work for him in a church or as a missionary. So I became a teacher. In my own mind, this was a life on ‘Track B’.
Back in 2020, Christian filmmaker Murdo Macleod spoke exclusively to The Christian Institute about his upcoming film Morningstar, which was then still in its early stages. Covid was causing setbacks to production, but fast forward to the present day and the docudrama on the life of John Wycliffe is now complete and is in the middle of a screening tour of the UK.
