CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: 'Why I'm rooting for Kate Forbes to be First Minister'
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As a Christian, I’m impressed by SNP leadership candidate Kate Forbes’ wisdom and apparently heart-felt commitment to what’s best for Scotland. And I admire her courage in being utterly forthright about her Christian beliefs.
There’s no reason why her faith should be problematic if she becomes First Minister. She has undertaken to be a “servant of democracy” and to “defend to the hilt the rights of everybody in Scotland, particularly minorities, to live and love without harassment.”
The visceral criticisms levelled at Ms Forbes early in the campaign, after she had honestly answered questions about her faith, were disturbing. Some of us Scots seem reluctant to respect the rights of people of faith to hold, and to express, faith-based convictions. Kate Forbes is a brave reminder that the voice of Christian faith will never be silenced.
Within the Church too – the world-wide community of people who love God and seek to follow Jesus – there are different voices, different views on some issues. I think it’s important that these voices too are not silenced,
Thus I was glad when Inverness Cathedral’s Provost Sarah Murray both applauded Kate Forbes’ courage in sharing her beliefs, and added that she personally was glad “that I can officiate at weddings for anyone who has found the person they wish to spend the rest of their lives with.”
"The visceral criticisms levelled at Ms Forbes early in the campaign, after she had honestly answered questions about her faith, were disturbing. Some of us Scots seem reluctant to respect the rights of people of faith to hold, and to express, faith-based convictions. Kate Forbes is a brave reminder that the voice of Christian faith will never be silenced."
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Some argue there’s no room for different convictions in the church, since it is not a democracy, more a theocracy, guided by God through the Bible. But this implies that in every case we can clearly apply in our time teaching given in the Bible to a very different age.
And in recent centuries Christians have revised their thinking about slavery, about remarriage after divorce, about women in ministry.
All Christians agree that theocracy is not a question of coldly applying old texts, but of living in relationship with God. Kate Forbes agrees – her beliefs are guided not by the “diktat” of any church, she says, but “according to my faith.”
We Christians do not worship the Bible – we worship a living Jesus who is love, whose every action is prompted by love, even the healing we call judgement. Rules were only ever intended to set us free to be what God made and meant us to be. And sometimes Christians disagree about what love looks like in the grey areas of life.
But the extent to which Scotland is blessed by the compassion of Christian people who daily seek to bring the love of Jesus into all levels of Scottish society is immense. We would be blessed as a nation by having Kate Forbes as our First Minister, and I’m rooting for her.
