This topic surfaces regularly and the last time I posted on it was back in October, 2006. However, this past week two new items appeared that brought this into focus again.
Specifically, it is usually the Scottish Presbyterians that get typed as too serious and joyless. This past week press coverage brought my attention to an article in the September issue of the regular publication of the Free Church of Scotland, the Monthly Record. The press coverage brought other people’s attention to it as well since the church set up a special page for it on their web site. The issue of the magazine is about “Enjoying God” and the editor, David Robertson, wrote the lead article is titled “ The Joy of Calvinism” and begins with this sentence:
The definition of a Calvinist as being a person who is miserable at the thought that someone somewhere is actually enjoying themselves’ is sadly all too typical of the popular misconception of the Free Church (and other forms of Reformed Christianity) in Scotland today.
The writer goes on to say how the culture sees religion, particularly the Scottish Presbyterian kind, as “doom, gloom, blackness, depression and joyless,” how everything that is wrong with Scottish society and even the weather get blamed on Knox and Calvin, and how the Prime Minister of the UK, Gordon Brown, is always labeled by the media as a “dour Presbyterian Scot (the three words always going together).”
The article then reminds us that if we are miserable at our human condition, if we “complain, moan, and have a spirit of bitterness” it is “not because of [our] Christianity — it is in defiance of it.” (emphases in the original) The author is not denying the true pains and challenges of our human lives.
His point in the article is that Christians should enjoy life more than non-believers because we know the source of our blessings, God the giver of all good gifts. In so doing, we should enjoy the good things in life as gifts from the one we worship, not worship the good things as idols unto themselves as those who do not know the ultimate source was God. “The ultimate joy is to know God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And if we cannot thank the triune God for what we are doing, eating, drinking or watching then we should not be involved with them.” He goes on to talk about worship and say “Every service should be a celebration.” It is not an argument for a particular “style” of worship, but our attitude towards worship and how we approach such things as the content of prayers and the tempo of hymns.
While not a current article, I and others discovered it this week and it stands in contrast to some comments from a politician about Scotland that reinforces this stereotype. Interestingly the comments are also old, five years old to be exact, but were brought to light this past week by a Freedom of Information request. The comments were made in an e-mail by Mr. John McTernan, now serving as a top aide to the Scottish Secretary. In that old e-mail he tells a colleague that they will enjoy their trip to Sweden, “It’s the country Scotland would be if it was not narrow, Presbyterian, racist, etc, etc. Social democracy in action.” At the time Mr. McTernan worked for the Scottish Arts Council. Mr. McTernan is claiming that the comments were taken out of context and are old. The ruling Scottish National Party is using this as evidence of what Mr. McTernan’s Labour Party really thinks of Scotland. I won’t go any further into the national politics of this, for that you can see the news on-line, including a story from Scotsman.com.
The point here is that the church can be joyful about the proper things and that would help to not only reverse the perception of Reformed Christians, but attract people to Christ.