Desperate bid to halt Church's destruction

ELEVENTH-hour talks aimed at avoiding a cataclysmic split in the Church of Scotland were taking place last night, as the Kirk sought to find a compromise over the appointment of openly gay ministers.

With hours to go before a debate that could define the future of the Kirk, senior clergy were working behind the scenes to avoid a damaging schism between hardliners and liberals.

A decision on the appointment of openly homosexual Scott Rennie as minister of Queen's Cross Church in Aberdeen will be taken at the General Assembly, the Kirk's supreme body, this evening.

But The Scotsman has learned that motions – called overtures – are being drawn up that propose delaying a final decision on the Kirk's overall position on gay ministers for two years.

"People are scrambling to find some middle road on this," one member said.

Many believe such a deferral is necessary to avoid the biggest split in the Church since the Disruption of 1843, which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. The sensitivity of the issue was clear last night, after the Kirk confirmed it would not be broadcasting the Rennie hearing on its website, even though all other debates have been available to the public. A spokesman said the reason was that the assembly would be acting as a court.

The Rev Ruairidh MacRae, of the pro-gay evangelical group Courage Scotland, said the move was disappointing and contrary to the Kirk's efforts to be open and transparent.

The General Assembly will meet from 6:30pm to hear a complaint against Mr Rennie's appointment.

It will also hear a motion from the Presbytery of Lochcarron-Skye to prevent the Kirk from appointing or ordaining any more openly gay ministers.

The debate and hearing, expected to continue into the early hours of tomorrow, will be the culmination of a tumultuous period in the Church's history.

Since the beginning of the year, when 12 evangelical members of the Presbytery of Aberdeen complained about the appointment of Mr Rennie, the controversy has grown. An online petition against the appointment has received more than 12,000 signatures.

However, as the court hearing approached, one Kirk source close to the evangelical wing said members were desperate to find a way to avoid a split.

"We need to limit the damage," he said. "But I think that if there was any attempt to place pressure on evangelical members to accept this by those in authority, there would be a danger it would blow up in their face.

"The Kirk is just not used to this amount of attention. You can see that they are looking for a measured debate."

One motion put forward by the Rev Dr John McPake, of East Kilbride, proposes that a commission be set up to carry out a study on the issues surrounding homosexual clergy, which would not report back for two years. It would also place a moratorium on "all courts, councils and committees of the Church" making any comments on the issue until the report is produced, effectively gagging them.

Evangelicals have voiced disquiet at such a motion and the suggestion that they would be barred from preaching about it in church.

But the evangelical source said: "There are ways in which it could be massaged and changed to make it work. John McPake is quite confident. He thinks he's going to be the knight on the white horse by pushing this on for two years."

However, a liberal member of the clergy said there was already another counter-motion on the cards. "There was a form of words being put together that takes a different slant on the existing counter-motion," he said. "So the McPake motion will not be the only thing on offer.

"There will undoubtedly be moves to amend the wording of both of them. It's all about trying to give some people more options and to give the General Assembly some space to think about this. It's only natural we try to find the best way through – it's what people want."

But a senior Kirk member said while a further report might be a "legitimate and proper" way of dealing with the issue, it was unlikely members of Lochcarron-Skye presbytery would be satisfied unless they received a proper answer to their motion.

Though the evangelical wing has played down the likelihood of any immediate physical split from the Kirk, it has been acknowledged that the gay issue could speed up the drift of members from the Church.