PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown is to address the Church of Scotland's General Assembly tomorrow – 20 years after Margaret Thatcher's controversial Sermon on The Mound.
Mr Brown will attend the third day of the Kirk's annual gathering as a guest of George Reid, the Lord High Commissioner and former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament.
In line with the convention for visiting prime ministers, he will be i
nvited to speak to the assembled 800 clergy and elders.
Mr Brown has a long connection with the Church of Scotland, having grown up in the manse. His father, the late Rev Dr John Brown, was a minister in Dunoon, Glasgow, Kirkcaldy and Hamilton.
The Prime Minister has spoken of how his upbringing helped shape his politics and beliefs.
Mr Brown addressed the assembly as Chancellor in 1999, when he took as his theme "The Economics of Hope". He used the speech to call for a crusade to free developing countries from the shackles of debt and poverty.
Mr Brown forwarded the argument that helping the poorest nations of the world was a moral as well as an economic issue.
He spoke then of values he believed were "a golden thread" throughout Scotland's history.
He told the assembly: "It is our Christian teaching – the faith I was brought up in – that when some are poor our whole society is impoverished; that when there is an injustice anywhere, it is a threat to justice everywhere.
"We are not here as self-interested individuals sufficient unto ourselves with no obligations to each other.
"We are a community bound together as citizens with shared needs, mutual responsibilities and linked destinies."
Mr Brown can expect a more positive response than the one afforded to Mrs Thatcher when she delivered her speech in 1988, at the time when the poll tax was about to be introduced and opposition parties were drawing up plans for devolution.
The Iron Lady provoked a storm of protest when she attempted to set out her understanding of Christianity and politics as she addressed the assembly.
In her controversial speech, dubbed the Sermon on The Mound, she quoted St Paul, saying "If a man will not work, he shall not eat". She told the assembly: "It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but love of money for its own sake. The spiritual dimension comes in deciding what one does with the wealth."
Morag Mylne, convener of the Kirk's Church and Society Council, said the Prime Minister would be welcomed by the assembly. She said: "There are different ways for the Church to communicate with politicians. We write to the Prime Minister and the Moderator meets him at Westminster.
"There is a sense of balance in him coming to speak to us in our formal setting."
She said Mr Brown's background as the son of the manse made his visit "particularly special" for the Kirk.
SPELLBOUND BY WORDS FROM THE PULPITALEX SALMOND has revealed that as a child he preferred to listen to sermons than go to Sunday School.
In an interview in the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work, the First Minister said he attended church almost every Sunday until he was 18.
His grandfather was a senior elder at St Ninian's Craigmailen Church in Linlithgow, and Mr Salmond takes his middle names from the minister who arrived at the church six months before he was born – the Rev Elliot Anderson.
The First Minister recalls enjoying his preaching. "I used to think it was fantastic," he said.
"I used to demand to listen to sermons rather than go to Sunday school. I would be sitting in rapt attention listening to the full thing."
The full article contains 622 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
