The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland failed last night to uphold a Biblical position on homosexual practice, and has rejected the appeal of dissenters from the Aberdeen Presbytery. The judgment of God is already on the Church. It leaves the evangelicals that remain within her in a difficult position and we can only pray for them that God would give them wisdom.
The sadness that many will feel can be heard in the tone of the statement made by Rev Ronald Morrison, minister of Alness Parish Church, which can be heard here.
Doggie's Breakfast 
Hi Stephen,
I share in the sadness and will continue to pray for the evangelicals involved.
However I find it really hard to agree with the way that you’ve framed this post. When an organisation sticks its approval on the most far-gone excesses of immorality, we’re talking about the falling off of the last remaining vestiges of the fruit from the tree. But it also means that the roots were dug up a long long time ago – the fruits of the last remaining vestiges of outward morality don’t fall off until the corruption has worked its way up through the trunk and the branches.
That happened when forms of theological liberalism became the predominant belief-system in the church. To use all the language of church, and go through all the motions of playing church (sitting in assemblies, debating and discussing, etc.) when the battle for the gospel had been lost, is re-arranging the deck-chairs. The real profound sadness I think we should feel is not just for liberals who want to behave like liberals – that’s not surprising. The profound sadness should be that evangelicals lost the battle for the gospel years ago and have been playing a pointless game since then – and even now can’t see it, or see what to do next. They justified to themselves carrying on after the gospel had been lost and the foundations were removed, and now it seems are going to have another pointless internal debate to see if there’s another way they can frame a definition of the “church” that will allow them to carry on to play the game even amongst the smoking rubble now that the building has collapsed – or if the game’s now well and truly up.
The “difficult position” these brethren are in are one that they have brought upon themselves. They persuaded themselves that accepting those who deny the gospel as fellow ministers, and playing the game of participation in a “church” with those who wouldn’t agree to the basic tenets of the faith, was a legitimate thing to do. Eventually that left them having to make a stink when the last vestiges of outward morality were openly denied as they are now. If they’d made the same stink over the gospel, and presented a motion that no minister should deny this, they wouldn’t be now left in this farcical position.
Love in Christ,
David
David,
You are right. It is with sadness I have sent of my resignatation letter to the session clark. In my letter I point to the undermining of Genesis as fundamental to the problems we now have.