Untitled

week beginning 9 May 2004

This is one of those weeks where I am tempted just to review books and share with my adoring public what I've been reading lately. It's a sure way of filling inches of column space when I can't think of what to write.

Not that there are no subjects that require the benefit of my wisdom and comment this week. There are several issues in the public domain which are crying out for the incisive wit and investigation of a brilliant columnist (so if you find one, could you let him or her know, please?).

On the domestic front, we are cruising, as were last year, into the exam period (I refer you to last year's column on 'Parents and Exam Stress'). It's every bit as bad this year. Can anyone please tell me how to encourage teenage boys to realise the importance of their exams? I am told that teenage girls are different. We have to wait a couple of years to test that theory, but all I can say to other parents is -- please make sure that they choose subjects in which they have an interest, like Standard Grade Football or Higher Friends.

On the ecclesiastical front, I note that it's not been a good time for Scottish Presbyterians recently. Two things convinced me of this. First was the unexpected caricaturing we got from Alexander McCall Smith. I have not read much of his material, but I sleep with one of his fans. In fact, so great is my devotion to my Significant Other that I was prepared to give up The Herald for The Scotsman, just so that she could follow the serialisation of his latest novel, 44 Scotland Street.

Perhaps it's a sign that I always did prefer Glasgow to Edinburgh that I made the switch very grudgingly. Being a poor preacher, I could not afford to take both papers on a daily basis, but I have missed my daily dose of Glasgow. Anyway, I was happy to tolerate the switch until my attention was drawn to a couple of instalments last week, in which one of the characters spoke about painting the Moderator of one of the smaller Presbyterian churches (painting his portrait, that is).

All the usual caricatures came crawling out of Smith's pen. Sentences with words like 'brimstone', 'Sabbath', 'collar' and 'Presbyterian' combined to produce a sickening and unjustifiable slur on the Scottish churches. How can intelligent men produce such drivel? (Answers on a postcard, please). Needless to say, I am now sleeping with someone who is not a fan, and it looks as if I'll get the Herald back.

But, talking of rantings against Presbyterians, I also noted last week that the Daily Record (which I don't buy, I hasten to add, and nor do I understand anyone who does), took its own swipe in covering the Raasay Sunday ferry affair. According to James Traynor, all Presbyterian fanatics should be ferried to Raasay and left there without any way of getting back to the mainland.

My first reaction is to ask 'What did Raasay ever do on James Traynor?' But there is, of course, a much more serious matter in all of this. Well, there are several, I think. There is the fact of the fourth commandment and the whole tradition of Sabbath observance. Is it not more than passing strange that the very places hailed as retreats from the madness of a 24/7 consumer driven society are turning that way themselves?

Then there is the fact of the media interest. Dormant for the rest of the year, apparently, the Presbyterian churches in the Highlands are newsworthy only because they dare to object to Sunday transportation! Communities can object to windfarms or superquarries without it being suggested that they be locked up and the key thrown away. But when the Church objects to something, on serious religious and moral grounds, a journalist in a national newspaper can make sport of villifying, ridiculing and mocking her. Will the real bigots please stand up?

And on the international front, I did think of writing a column under the title -- 'Where is Saddam Hussein?' Our Prime Minister supported a President who was bombed by Bin Laden and retaliated by bombing Saddam. Our media proudly sported the capture of the former dictator. But does anyone actually know where he is now? And, if not, is that not a bit worrying?

Meanwhile, we are being treated to photographs of peace-keeping troops degrading their prisoners and fuelling Islamic hatred of the West. Can there be any greater proof of the reality of sin and evil? What else is the explanation for soldiers who can control corrupt regimes but cannot control their own corrupt hearts?

Well, as I say in all my best sermons (and often in my worst ones too), the time has gone. The books will have to wait till next week. My only problem now is -- what title do I give to a rambling column that covers exam stress, Presbyterianism and Saddam Hussein in one sitting? Like the homeless eskimo of whom one of my old teachers used to speak -- I haven't got igloo.

? Iain D. Campbell 2004