Poles apart: the new Presbyterian pulpit war has begun

Times Online UK ^ | October 12, 2008 | Allan Brown

[Alex Murphy]

The island faiths have always seemed to me, at distant consideration, a fairly detached bunch, roused only by the threat of Sunday ferry sailings or the sight of an untethered child’s swing on the Sabbath. Okay, they don’t like anything much unless it involves walking slowly to church in a hat formerly owned by their great-grandfather, but these austere elaborations of the Calvinist reform tradition — the Free Church, the Free Church (Continuing) and the Free Presbyterian Church — always seemed too remote, too isolationist, to care about the world beyond Benbecula.

But there’s one thing that does rouse their Presbyterian passions. They’ve really got it in for the sons of St Peter. They are implacably set against Catholicism. One might imagine that the recent influx of Polish people of that persuasion might seem something of a cross for them to bear, were they in the business of bearing crosses, that is.

In fact, the Poles are catnip to the Protestant proselytiser. They’re still — it is assumed — tentative in their adopted nation, vulnerable, looking for hospitality and succour, removed from the wellsprings of their faith. The Rev John MacLeod, assembly clerk of the Free Church (Continuing), says they are a natural constituency.

“While we have no formal strategy to target the Poles, it would be exceedingly strange if we were not looking to evangelise among that community. We do most of our missionary work in Scotland in Inverness, which is chock-a-block with Poles. It’s becoming a natural constituency for us. They have little to go home to when they come off shift. They have social and spiritual needs that are not being met.”

It’s a curious idea that a sentimental Slav might cheer himself up with a few chapters of Martin Luther but, heigh ho, horses for courses.

[vladimir998]

Spiritual needs not being met?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4739614.stm

Maybe if the early Scottish Protestants hadn’t murdered the last cardinal of Scotland those Poles today would have their “spiritual needs” met by being in Catholic Scotland.