Bob Akroyd of His Majesty’s Prison Edinburgh on his life and work

He greets me effusively at the Free Kirk’s rather splendid headquarters on The Mound. There is nothing in his assemblage that conveys spiritual superintendence: casual jacket, open-necked shirt, trousers that may or may not belong to a suit and well-behaved shoes.

As a persistent Roman I’m more accustomed to seeing my churchmen in purple, gold and scarlet and their jewel-encrusted accessories. I tell him that if it had been mine to choose then I’d be in the Free Kirk for its stripped-back theological socialism that rebukes hierarchies; abjures unchallenged authority and rejects material wealth. Probably too late to switch horses now.

A mutual friend tells me to ask him about what happened at Edinburgh Prison on the hardest day of his life. This was in 2022 when he had to conduct the funeral service of his beloved wife, Heather.

“She’d had a 16-month illness with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer,” he recalls. “When she passed away in July, 2022, the prison governor and senior chaplain came to see me and said: ‘Bob, the staff want to do something; they’d all like to come to the service. Would that be okay?’

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“Of course it was, but I hadn’t expected two busloads carrying 100 staff, including retired officers. Normally, when a member of staff dies and the funeral takes place, they put the jail on patrol, meaning a skeleton staff and changed visiting times. But it’s never happened for a relative.”

It seems that when the inmates were told the prison would be locked down to allow all the officers to attend they were entirely happy to facilitate it. Believers and non-believers alike, they all had deep reserves of affection for this man who was always there for them.

“I just see the prison as my parish,” he says.

There’s something incongruous about this man, the leader of one of Scotland’s oldest established churches, each day entering a domain that points more to the existence of the devil than of Jesus. “This is where I should be,” he says.

“You need to understand that no inmate saw prison as their goal. This was never their dream. Their dreams and goals are like ours: security, family, stability.

“If people think you’re a reasonably genuine person they’ll talk to you and before long you’re talking with them about life and family and the lives they’ve left behind. I always ask if I can pray for them and for the key people in their story.

“The main criticism of Christians is they’re too quick to judge and too quick to condemn; that they’re guilty of hypocrisy and of being slow to compassion; that they see life only in black and white. But the head of the Church is Jesus and we should be about what He said and what He did.”

His Majesty’s Prison Edinburgh (Image: free)

Here he quotes from the gospel of Mathew: “‘He looked and He saw the people were helpless and were like sheep without a shepherd. And he was filled with compassion’.

“I can’t represent Jesus with word only: it has to be word and deed together. In the Acts of the Apostles, St Peter said that Jesus ‘went around, doing good’. Well, that’s not a bad model.”

Bob Akroyd came to Scotland in 1990 to study Scottish and Irish nationalism where his supervisor was the fine historian, Owen Dudley Edwards.

He describes his conversion to Christianity, as “unexpected”.

Religion “wasn’t my thing”. His flatmate had invited him to come with him to Buccleuch and Greyfriars Free Church of Scotland where he became spellbound by the late Reverend Donald Macleod who preached on Psalm 14: “The Fool says in his heart there is no God.”

“Since then,” he says, “I’ve always felt that if Christianity was to be real it needed to be active and engaged with the wider community. We began working with the Bethany Christian Trust, which works with vulnerable and homeless people.

“The gospels tell us that Jesus had a ministry to the poor, yet many of our churches are professional and middle class. Bethany was reaching that constituent group and eager for them to be involved with the hands-on stuff: the night shelter, the street caravan, the emergency hostel in Leith. That jump-started my faith.”

Several of the young people he encountered on the street were being remanded and this led to him becoming an informal prison visitor and then to becoming a prison chaplain for the last 21 years.

“I’m a middle-class academic,” he says. “But I found a real connection with people who are homeless or in prison and the criminal justice system, but also to the staff. Not many were churchgoers but they began asking me to conduct weddings and funerals. I have a great life. I spend the morning in prison; teach in the afternoon and preach at the weekends. It means I’m constantly engaging with people.”

We talk about the Free Church and the common public perceptions of it that are often rooted in ignorance and intolerance. This must surely have been a barrier to acceptance in the pitiless world of a prison block?

“Most people don’t really know the difference between Church of Scotland and Free Church. We’ve moved beyond the place where people knew enough of the church even to mock it. That means we’re pushing at an open door. I’ve found that most Scottish people who might not believe are not hostile either.

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“One of the prison officers said to me: ‘I hear you’re Free Church minister. But how can that be: you’re always smiling’. When I preach at the prison, I tell them: look, you may not like this, but this isn’t my material.”

He believes there’s much more that the government and the churches can do to understand prisons and to improve the welfare of prisoners. “If we believe what we say we believe in then we must believe that offenders can change, but are we willing to work to make that happen?

“It’s much more expensive to house people in HMP Edinburgh than in any rehab programme or facility, yet these initiatives are underfunded or stopped entirely. Something isn’t working. Let’s try a different intervention. Let’s have more pre-school programmes and after-school clubs.

“A genuinely changed life can have an enormous knock-on effect. But much of our justice policy is just removing people from society; forgetting about them and ignoring them when they’re released. No-one will win votes by creating funding for proper drug and alcohol rehabilitation.”

It’s in this large gap between the government’s words and their actions that Bob Akroyd stands. All of Scotland’s churches should be in there with him.