Free at last

Week beginning 16 January 2005

Last Saturday, January 15th, marked the seventy-sixth anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday. His struggles against segregation, oppression and racial division have long been celebrated and the nature of his work often referred to in this column. But it is another question entirely whether his dream that 'sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.'

How wonderful, therefore, that on the anniversary of King's birthday, the very phenomenon of which he dreamed a generation ago should be realised: not, perhaps, on the red hills of Georgia, but in the villages of Back.

Others dream too, and for those who have long explored the commonalities of Gaelic psalm singing and the American Presbyterian tradition of lining out the hymns, it was a landmark occasion to combine the two in the Outer Hebrides. And it was a particular privilege for my congregation to host our wonderful visitors from Alabama, to hear them sing and to have our services punctuated with an 'Amen' here and a 'hallelujah' there.

Part of the thrill of the experience was to reciprocate the hospitality shown to a group of us who went over to Killen Alabama last year to sing Gaelic psalms there. We choreographed an evening which included the singing of Gaelic psalms in our church and the lining out of hymns in our school. Others can judge the similarities between our two traditions; for me it was just wonderful to have so many Christians together, of so many diverse congregations, in the one place.

Someone asked me afterwards what effect this would have on our own congregation. I suggested at least two. I think it opened our eyes to the sheer breadth of Christ's church. We pray, of course, that the glory of the Lord will cover the earth. We dream with the psalmists and prophets of the furthest ends of the earth giving glory to God. We remind ourselves that Heaven's population will be emigrants from all the world's parts. We believe in one holy, catholic church.

Then we see it with our own eyes and hear it with our own ears. How can we ever imagine that God's people are all white? Or that they all speak Gaelic? The church of Christ is a body -- a big body -- and we need every part for it to function. The white church needs the black church. The indigenised Christianity of black Alabama needs the naturalised Christianity of the Hebrides. Now our dream of Christ's universal reign will be nuanced by the experience of fellowship with those who look different to us and worship differently from us, but who have discovered along with us the preciousness of saving faith in Christ.

So does this mean we will change our mode of worship to include verbal hallelujahs and choral performances? Not at all -- the second effect our experience of black gospel will be, I think, to make us appreciate all the more the forms peculiar to our own culture and tradition. I am no traditionalist; but I do value tradition. I value it even more after I am exposed to another form, much as I enjoy it.

One person shouts his 'Amen' in church; another shouts it in his heart. One sways to 'Go down, Moses', another to a Gaelic precentor putting out the line. One stands where another sits. But even our habits are sanctified, and it is our great privilege to be able to come back to the rich spiritual heritage of our Reformed Calvinism, our exclusive psalmody and our biblical preaching with thankfulness that God builds his church by contextualising his word in our different cultures.

Two generations after Martin Luther King, however, and our friends from Alabama will return to a world in which many of the issues which King pursued in his campaign of nonviolent resistance have been realised, and many of its aims reached. But I am not so sure that our experience of segregated worship at Back last Lord's Day will be experienced in many places over in the Southern States. There are black Presbyterian churches with few whites, and white Presbyterian churches with few blacks in them (except, perhaps, on the catering or janitorial staff).

The segregation is less apparent, but no less real in some places. It is so difficult for us, with little experience of such discrimination, to appreciate the struggles that have gone on and the battles still to be fought.

So perhaps we need to make sure we learn something else. We need to learn about the unity of our race, the brotherhood of man, the diversity of what the image of God in man really means. We need to recover our sense of the dignity of all human beings, equal in the sight of God, and one with us. We need to outlaw anything that threatens that sense of human identity, whether it is the politics of the BNP or the failure of the modern church to pursue the inclusive policy demanded by the New Testament.

I think we have been enriched by our slice of black American Presbyterianism over the past week. We have enjoyed fellowship, Gospel singing and the education that comes with cultural exchange. Now I shall look forward to swaying in my seat and putting my silent Amen to the singing of the Gaelic psalm in Back next Sunday. And I shall accompany my prayers for Alabama with thanks to God for my own congregation, who continue to mould me in ways that they cannot even begin to know.

? Iain D. Campbell 2005