A Tale of Two Assemblies: The future of the Church in Scotland
Another year, another annual church assembly, another battle and series of headlines about the church and sexuality. Deja vue. At this year's General Assembly the Church of Scotland 'crossed a Rubicon' (as the Principal Clerk pointed out). It voted by 339 to 215 to allow those in same sex marriages to be ministers. Although, somewhat bizarrely, it will not allow them to marry, or be married in church and it still officially holds to the biblical view that marriage is between a man and a woman. This will doubtless be rectified in the next couple of years when a theological commission reports and new rules will be put in place. It will probably be 2019 before the issue which began in 2009 is settled. Why is it taking so long?
It's not so much the vagaries of Presbyterian procedure that is causing the delay, as it is church politics. There are still a declining number of evangelicals within the Kirk...
