It’s been 30 years since Luis, the grandson of a Scotsman, last brought the message of the Gospel to Scottish shores.
For much of June, Luis, his son Andrew, and teams of evangelists from more than a hundred Highland churches of all denominations have been reaching out to the region through a combination of preaching, music, skateboarding, sports and good old fashioned fun. What’s struck Luis in the last few weeks is just how much Scotland has changed.
“There was still a lot of spiritual interest back then and even those who didn’t go to church were open and the response was fabulous,” he says, recalling his 1979 to 1981 Glasgow Crusade. “But in one generation you can definitely sense the secularisation and lack of church attendance. I have asked young people ‘do you go to church?’ and they look at me like I’m crazy. So it’s been sudden, most sudden.”
It’s not just Scotland that is drifting from its Christian roots, but the rest of the UK and Europe too.
“I think we need to speak spiritual truth because I feel that Europe’s atheists are on a rampage, attacking,” he said.
“I call them atheist fundamentalists because the way they attack believers is outrageous – insulting remarks, mocking, putting down, despising, as if somehow a believer is an idiot and we are nothing but fools.
“Certainly we’re not the brightest people some of us but there is a good company of people who are in high places who are believers.”
The MPs’ expenses scandal is, according to Luis, yet another indication of a “UK-wide renunciation of Christian ethic”. One of the reasons the scandal has generated so much anger amongst voters, he feels, is that Britain has “rightly prided itself on its high moral and ethical standards of conduct in public life”.
“But so long as Britain strays from its centuries-old institutionally embedded Christian heritage, it is inevitable that the moral lines in society will blur,” he says. “It is my sad prediction, based on past experience worldwide, that if that shift continues, the MPs’ scandal will become the national norm, not the exception.”
The spiritual drifting that concerns Luis the most, however, is that taking place among the nation’s young people. Just last weekend, a 22-year-old man who as a child raced against Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton in karting competitions died of a suspected drug overdose in a McDonalds toilet cubicle. He was the fourth person in Inverness to die of a drug related death in the last two months.
“If I’d gotten here last week I could have talked to him. Maybe the Lord could have changed his life,” says Luis.
Alcohol is another concern of his. He expressed his sadness at seeing a young man being escorted out of a wedding reception only to stumble to the ground because he was so intoxicated with alcohol.
