A BREAKAWAY faction of the Free Church of Scotland is furious over plans to forge links between its own college and Edinburgh University, which it claims will lead to a dilution of the church's orthodox doctrine, writes Carlos Alba, Education Correspondent.
Members fear the move will lead to an adulteration of the scriptures and the ''death of true spirituality'' in the name of ''scholarship'' and ''advancement''.
They claim other evangelical colleges which have allowed outsiders to temper their interpretation of the Bible have ended up teaching that Jeremiah never existed, that Ruth was sexist and that Paul did not write the Epistles.
The hardline Free Church Defence Association launched the attack in response to proposals to replace the Free Church College Diploma in Theology with a new Bachelor of Theology degree, validated by the university.
An editorial in its newsletter, Free Church Foundations, states: ''Critical openness is usually one of the concessions that has to be made when any fully biblical institution aligns itself with a liberal university divinity faculty.
''It means there must be teaching of modern critical views of the Bible. This is the death of true spirituality because it proceeds from the premise that the Bible is not inerrant.''
Representatives of the college, based at The Mound in Edinburgh, have been engaged in talks with university chiefs since January, aimed at striking a deal which safeguards the Church's interests.
Delegates at the Free Church General Assembly in Edinburgh this week will be asked to give the go-ahead for discussions to continue.
A letter from the college board to all presbyteries conceded the university would have a say in who is employed at the college and that a university representative would have a non-voting role at college board meetings held to make nominations to the General Assembly.
However, it assured members the college senate would continue to have responsibility for academic matters and that its main objective would ''continue to be the training of men for the Christian ministry, particularly that of the Free Church of Scotland''.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article