From the Bishop
Bishop Sermon at Culloden Memorial Service
Thursday 1 May 2008

Sermon Preached at a service of Commemoration for those who lost there lives at Culloden. The service took place in the church of St John the Evangelist, Inverness on the 13^th of April 2008 using the 1637 Scottish Liturgy.

Baptism at Stonehaven Jail

“The trouble with your church is that you pray for the royal family that must be because you are the English Church”. This is a comment made to me when I was school by a teacher who should have known better; That comment fired me up as a young man, fired me up to really look at the history of my church, its real history not just the romantic one that I had been given by elderly and worthy ladies in the Cathedral in Aberdeen. You see I knew all about the baptism through the prison bars in Stonehaven, I knew all about Bishop Rose’s conversation with The Prince of Orange, “I will support you as far as my conscience and my God allow”, and I knew all about the injustice of our treatment, after all we were only fulfilling our oaths of allegiance when we declared for the Stuart cause.

Of course all of this is a simplification of what really happened and I have to add, a distortion of real history that allows us to so often be put to one side as romantic fools living in the past. I believe though that we often need to go back before we can go forward.

In 1689 and 1690 the Scottish Church made a decision, with the support of the new authorities on the throne. The Scottish Church would become Presbyterian and a struggle over church order which had torn great holes in this nation for over a hundred years would come to an end, Bishops would be a thing of the past and all would be loyal and obedient to the new government.

It all sounds so simple and so intelligent, sitting in Edinburgh or Kensington drafting it all together, the reality was that people wanted things to carry on as normal, we don’t like change.  Therefore those places that were traditionally Presbyterian accepted the new order; the Highlands, Aberdeenshire and Angus which were solidly Episcopal did not. Bishops moved out of their churches but the congregations continued to seek their ministry, clergy remained in post much loved by congregations, the churches, I suspect would have simply come together as deaths and old habits changed.

This though didn’t allow for human nature and for the nature of monarchy. The exiled Stuarts thought to regain their throne or thrones and looked to those who had suffered set back through their departure to help them. In every attempt to return the Stuarts to the throne, Episcopalians were involved on both sides of the argument, as in the rest of Scotland these actions divided families, communities and churches. That we need to always remember.

By the time we reach the weeks leading up to the battle on Drumossie Moor, those who worshipped as Episcopalians here in Inverness, had lived through a growing number of restrictions placed upon them. These had followed the rising of 1715 when a substantial amount of support for the rising had come from Episcopalians. The presence of the Jacobite army would have allowed a real sense of freedom to the church, but I also suspect a sense of foreboding. News would have arrived of the destruction of every Episcopal Church in the path of the government forces. This Diocese had seen the destruction of the church in Huntly and Keith and following the crossing of the Spey we lost Fochabers, Elgin, and Duffus, the clergy now homeless and living with those brave enough to give them shelter.

The weekly service in our Inverness church, the forerunner of this one, saw the attendance of many of the well known names of the Jacobite army, the communion service was shared amongst clansmen, townspeople and officers and the liturgy was the one we use tonight. The army that lined up on the moor received communion on the day of the battle from Episcopalian Chaplains a number of whom would later suffer for their presence on the field.

Following the Battle this diocese then lost the church here in Inverness, our churches in Fortrose, in Thurso: which effectively wiped out Episcopal worship in Caithness for the next 100 years, Tain and Arpafeelie where the lay minister led his congregation into the hills to escape. In effect Episcopal places of worship almost ceased to exist,

The 1746 Toleration Act demanded that every Episcopalian priest needed to register by 1^st September, take an oath of allegiance to King George and to abjure the House of Stuart, first penalty for disobedience, 6 months imprisonment, second Transportation for life.

In 1748 the Penal Act decreed that every priest or deacon ordained by a Scottish Bishop could not be recognised for registration and that all previous registrations were null and void, he was prohibited from leading public worship and in private he could serve no more than four people not of his family.

By 1792 when the repeal act was enacted we had three aged bishops and 40 priests, a shadow of what we had been. That repeal and the conditions set out in it leads me back to my opening statement. We pray for the monarch because that is what we were required to do if we were to be free. In order for this to be checked upon we were required to keep our doors open during worship. The other parts of the act included the statement; no cleric shall be free to serve in England unless ordained by English or Irish Bishop and that we must subscribe to the 39 Articles of Religion, an English formulary.

In 1804 the Scottish Episcopal Church agreed to all of this and that is why we pray for the monarch at every service, why our doors remain unlocked and why some find it expedient to call us “the English Kirk”.

But why did we agree to these conditions, why did we “give in”? Well I believe we did it for reasons of Faith.

We believed and continue to believe that we have something distinctive to offer the mission of Christ here in Scotland. We have a wonderful liturgy, we have an open and distinctive membership, and we have a richness of spirituality and doctrine, all things that could only be shared if we put our past into perspective. We needed to be free if we were to live our lives of ministry and mission in the world. We must live for now and the future not for the past however romantic and honourable.

I will never disown the heritage of this church, nor, I hope discredit the courage and conviction of those who suffered for it and for their loyalty to King and country. But I firmly believe that those who struggled on the moor above us, those who struggled on both sides of the argument, are not honoured if we simply refuse to move on and learn from those experiences.

We have a life because of their struggle, we have a mission to ensure that the world can live without such conflict; we have a church that, built upon their sacrifice, has a future to be a part of Scotland and to offer its life in the service of God and his people of all backgrounds.