Rev Dr John E Brown, MA: born October 26, 1914, died December 7, 1998
''MY father did not just preach about the need for a moral compass, but for us, as brothers, he was that moral compass - and still will be.'' At the funeral service for the Rev Dr John Brown in Aberdeenshire on Thursday it was his eldest son, also John, who stressed the lasting influence of his father on the values that shaped the thinking of himself, Gordon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Andrew.
He recalled being taken with Gordon to his first ''real football match'', Raith Rovers v East Fife at Starks Park, Kirkcaldy, 40 years ago. ''We were cheering just the home team only to find dad applauding good play from both sides - it was a lesson he taught us whether on the football field, in politics, or in life, there was always something good to say about everyone.''
John Ebenezer Brown was born at Peattieshill Farm, near Largo in Fife, in 1914, and educated at the Bell Baxter High School in Cupar and St Andrews University, where he graduated MA in 1935, going on to a BD in 1938. He was a consistently distinguished student, routinely collecting merit and first class certificates, and winning medals in both Hebrew and systematic theology.
After an assistantship in Govan, his pastoral career began in Dunoon in 1939. Thereafter his 40-year ministry took him back to St Mary's, Govan, then to St Brycedale, Kirkcaldy, and St John's, Hamilton, from where he retired in 1980. In 1930s and wartime Govan he saw poverty and suffering that permanently shaped his attitudes and, though never talkative in party political terms, he remained committed to social justice and effective action against remedial social distress in his life.
He was an outstanding example of an increasingly rare kind of churchman: at once scholarly and committed to the highest standards of pastoral care. His sermons - a selection, A Time to Serve, was edited by his sons as a surprise 80th birthday present - combine lucidity and literacy with deep spiritual understanding and a profoundly practical Christian faith.
As his ministry advanced, his stature among his parishioners and colleagues grew. Endlessly patient, utterly without rancour, and blessed with a compendious memory for people and the complexities of parish and presbytery life, he was a friend and support to the least privileged in society - the manse kitchen did its bit to feed the homeless - and also a safe and valued pair of hands in the kind of difficult circumstances which arise from time to time even within the Church of Scotland. His honorary Doctor of Divinity, awarded by St Andrews in 1979 for services to the parish ministry, was well deserved.
His steadiness, kindness, tolerance, sympathy, and deep faith made him an ideal parish minister. His pastoral career coincided with several chapters in the history of industrial decline in central Scotland - shipbuilding on the Clyde, the linoleum industry in Fife, and coalmining in Lanarkshire. His concern for the human consequences of social and economic change was a career-long theme, and one that powerfully influenced the early thinking of his middle son.
His scholarship in Hebrew and his knowledge of scripture combined happily in one of his more unusual interests, his leadership at a crucial time of the Church of Scotland Committee on Israel. He travelled regularly to the Holy Land and enjoyed taking groups of parishioners to the holy places and St Andrews Church, Jerusalem.
His retirement in Aberdeenshire was long and happy. He continued for many years in supply preaching, enjoyed village life, and kept in touch with his sons and their growing families.
In April 1997, days before the General Election, he and Elizabeth celebrated their golden anniversary with all the family. Though frail, he was active to the end. On Monday he went out in the snow to post a birthday gift to an older friend in an eventide home. On his way home he collapsed and died.
Not only did he practice throughout his life a concerned, caring, and confident approach to life's troubles, he regularly inspired it in others. In the course of what proved to be a last family holiday, he and his three-year-old grandson were walking across the foyer of Crieff Hydro. Alexander looked up at him and said: ''You don't need your stick, grandpa. Take my hand.''
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