"Well, what do you think of Scotland?" We've heard this question many times since our family first came here some ten years ago for graduate studies.

With American eyes my family and I survey the Scottish landscape physically, culturally, and spiritually. But our eyes are also more than just American: Scotland is our ancestral home and that of many of our friends back in the American South. A son of Dixie thrown into Scotland is like Brer Rabbit thrown into the Briar Patch!

I'll never forget the moment we first stepped off the plane at Edinburgh Airport. I was struck immediately by the familiarity of the place. "Look, honey," I said to Shirley as I gazed on the Pentlands, "it looks just like the Valleys of Virginia." No wonder so many Scots settled in the Shenandoah or along the Blue Ridge. It felt like home for so many, I'm sure, as Scotland did for us.

But after that initial embrace, everything else seemed strange. The language was the same but oh so different! Forks belonged in the left hand. Cars ought never go on the right. And "WC", though urgently needed, was a complete mystery to this untraveled couple!

But this time things have changed. Having been away in the good ol' USA for the better part of seven years now, we look at Scotland for a second time, long enough to step back and be surprised again by what we see.

Scotland is such a country of contrasts, how can anyone describe it? Lowland versus Highland, rural versus urban, Gaelic versus English, Glasgow versus Edinburgh, Lewis versus Skye! But yet, from an American perspective, there are certain things that stand out, both about the culture and the church. Let me try to hit some high spots as we tour together.

Cultural Contrasts

Cultural awareness and respect for tradition is so much stronger here than in my native land. This is not only true when the Duke of Rothesay is in town on an official visit, but even during a simple walk down the Royal Mile. Cobblestones sing out like they have for centuries. Buildings date from 1250 or 1650, not 1950. Mary Queen of Scots and Charles II were on the throne just yesterday, or so it seems meandering down to Holyrood: Knox still echoes in St. Giles and Covenanter dust still bears witness against a tyrannical state.
Wander down Main Street USA and even 1900 is ancient history of the quaint, irrelevant sort! Few Yanks will have seen something of the Reformers, fewer still of the faithful Covenanters.

But culture is more than stones and history! Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's when we first lived in Scotland, the vast scale of UK centralization was a striking cultural feature for this States-rights American. Much of this doubtless was due to the last two World Wars which so profoundly shaped this nation.

To be British was to look to London! Much of life appeared to flow out of Westminster, from road paving to foreign policy, from driver's licenses to aircraft carriers. And big British companies, such as British Airways and British Gas dominated the marketplace, to an extent only dreamed of by United and General Electric.

But now things are changing. Devolution is in the air. Instead of central control by a few wise eggs in Whitehall, Scotland has her own Parliament again, which is in theory more responsive to the people. Of course, that's only if they're not dealing with one of the new sacraments of the Post-Christian, Western elite such as gross sexual indulgence. In that case, Section 28 must go no matter what the people think!

But if they are at times silly, they are at least our silly politicians on our Mound in our capital under our flag. Every son of Dixie can instinctively understand that. Devolution is a winner, if only because it more efficiently makes us feel listened to and heard. And the church is now rightly interested in the same.

Beyond the devolving of power and influence, our family has been impressed by the quality of life in Scotland. The scenery here is the most beautiful on the face of the earth! Was not the Garden of Eden somewhere on Skye? I can't imagine that it could have been anywhere else, unless perhaps on Uist or in the Black Isle!

But there is a contrast here as well: getting around to see it all is so inordinately expensive, few can really enjoy it. Filling up with a tank of gas costs $25, while filling up with a tank of petrol easily runs over £50! In the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", there would be a riot over such charges, but here an instinctive acquiescence overflows and civilizes such base impulses. The providential result is that fewer sons of Glasgow cross the Minch than our Continental friends, and Stornoway now has a mission field at her doorstep each summer.

More cultural contrasts are evident in the media. The most thoughtful and reflective articles I've ever read are to be found in British even Scottish newspapers. What can match the stimulation of a snappy editorial in the Times, John Macleod in the Herald, his father's Footnotes, or Iain D. in the Stornoway Gazette! But at the same time, I guard the eyes of my ten year old when we go to buy, lest their innocence be exchanged for a 20p rag in a corner shop with a top shelf. Sadly, that is as true in Stornoway as it is in Edinburgh. Has the church given up caring?

On the telly, the BBC produces some of the most intelligent and stimulating documentaries known to man. But don't press 5 on the remote instead of 1 or 2, or you're liable to embarrass the whole family, sometimes even well before the 9 pm curfew. These are problems common to both our countries, but surprisingly more so here than in Mississippi. And programming has not gotten better over the last 10 years, rather worse.

In any country, like in any person, there is this confusing mixture of common grace blessings and vitiating effects of the Fall. That is true on both sides of the Atlantic, in you and in me. Culture is always on the front line of such turbulence. But where are the regenerate salt and light in this context, pointing to the Saviour and His Gospel of grace, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation? That is a common challenge all believers from every country share in our small world today.

Church Contrasts

Like the old High Street in Edinburgh, Scottish churches are striking to New World eyes, no matter where they are. Most are Victorian or earlier remarkably romantic to the American visitor large structures, pointing to a more culturally Christian age.
However, the heart-throb can be short-lived in some cases. Few escape the descriptors "dark" or "cold", and some sadly qualify for "musty" and "empty". Take no offence these traits are common across denominational lines, most often controlled by past history, climate, and economy. But they are realities in which the church here lives and seeks to minister, with all their advantages and disadvantages.
What a contrast to churches in the States: no church offices with secretaries, no real classroom space for dozens of age groups, no multiple halls for different occasions. Yes, there are newer buildings, like the fine ones in Smithton and Perth. And there are models of renovation, appealing to their local community, such as Resolis. But to be honest, functionality is not a common trait in many places, at least to eyes accustomed to American excesses.

But what might be felt to be lacking in facilities is so often made up for by the people. Numbers may be smaller than in the States (outside of Stornoway and Back!), but commitment is much more significant. The Free Church families I know are good as gold kind, generous, pious, unassuming. Doubtless much of this is due to generations of traditional Highland and Islands family influence flowing down the years.

Thus, the challenge for the Free Church today, as we seek to build upon those family ties, is reaching out not only to our own but also to incomers and Lowland folk who need the Lord as much as ourselves. Perhaps some American ideas like adult Christian Education, Men of the Covenant meetings, and Women in the Church groups would be of help in this. Culturally adapted and at times theologically corrected, they might thrive like potatoes in Perthshire!

Not only are her people a strength, but even an American can see that the Free Church's ministry is worth it's weight in gold! Theologically sound, with a knack for practical Gospel work in their own back yards, they are good men who study the lives of their people as well as the precious Scriptures. They all attended the excellent denominational College, gaining a unity of training, outlook, ethos, and interaction so important to the preservation of a wider, corporate church life.

Oddly, this American is quite thankful for the financial troubles in past months, because it is now opening the church to using the College in new ways ways of being of service to the already ordained, the wider church, and indeed whole world. What if the doors of the Free Church College were thrown open to any student who wished to come? From Peru, from Romania, from India they would stream, receiving a grounding in the Scriptures second to none. Should tuition fees be a barrier to such missionary endeavour through the Church's College? If the College and Senate are already there, why not use this church resource to its full potential?

If the Free Church ministry is chronically underpaid, little pity is in order because it is mostly a self-inflicted wound. Motivated more out of a love for Scotland and her need of the Gospel than anything else, these ministers cannot resist the temptation to multiply ministries to their own hurt. By American standards, salaries would be doubled but the ministry halved. Instead, the Free Church ministry pinches the flesh and preaches the Word all the more broadly across the land.

Are there weaknesses and dangers? Of course it's always that way this side of heaven. Perhaps the greatest danger I see is the potential lapse back into a part-time ministry, as wives with young children go out to work, forcing ministers to devote themselves to childcare along side their other duties. With no culture of local church offices and the resulting professionalism which flows from it, there is the danger that not only will preaching and pastoral work be compromised, but respect from the surrounding culture for the ministry may be discounted as well.

The ministers in your pulpits are a credit to the Kingdom! This does not mean, however, that things have been easy for them. Many, if not all, have been traumatized by the recent troubles. Many a good man has been caused to doubt his calling and competence in the face of such upset. The depth of wound is difficult to underestimate. If there's a word to describe the Presbyters among us now, it is "relieved": they are now of one mind practically and theologically as not before in recent memory.

Final Observations

In American eyes, your own Recent Unpleasantness marked a difference not just in style but also in substance. From foreign shores perhaps it is easier to see the contrast between the caustic influences of English Separatism on the one hand and the more sane traditions of Scottish Presbyterianism on the other. We have such a divide in the American Reformed scene too, so you are not alone!
Each tends to draw the lines of grace and guilt in different places. For one, membership and discipline are matters of heightened idealism: the visible church must always look just like the invisible, lest revival not come in the land. For the other, the visible church is a covenant community, whose entrance and exit gates are controlled by clear biblical norms, her people living together on a more regular basis and the blessings of God not so controlled by the will of man. In these areas, small distinctions can make a world of difference - the difference between acceptance and rejection, fairness and obsession.

The recent split in the Free Kirk was not just a dispute over terms of evidence in a discipline case: it was the clash of two world-and-life views with two different models of spirituality. And after all the pain and heartache, is there anyone who can doubt that the Lord of the Church will not bring even greater blessings out of the whole affair?

Like an individual, it is important for the corporate church to ask prayerfully before the Lord what unique gifts and graces He has given. These heightened spiritual resources to no small degree constitute His special calling to her in the wider Kingdom and Vineyard.

The unique calling of the Free Church among the churches today doubtless includes awareness of her history, her theology, and her community. She has much to offer Scotland and the world. The need to prayerfully continue to seek such God-given vision has never been greater.

At least with these American eyes, that's what I've seen more clearly this time around.