Church of Scotland Helping to Put Scots Dialect Back into Sermons

The Church of Scotland is compiling language packs to help ministers deliver sermons in the Scots dialect in a bid to dispel the image of the Church as a middle-classed, Queen’s English institution, reports The Times.

|TOP|The latest initiative from the Kirk stems from the hope that the broad Scots sermons will reverse the declining church attendance figures throughout Scotland.

The Church of Scotland has seen a loss of 60 per cent of congregation members over the last 40 years.

According to The Times, the initiative is an attempt by the church to reconnect with “all social classes”.

The Kirk hopes the move will help deconstruct its negative image among working-class parishioners as well as repair some of the damage caused by the Church of Scotland’s failure to translate the Bible into Scots during the 16th century.

The Times reports that supporters of the initiative want to see a shift away from the portrayal of God as a speaker of “received pronunciation” (RP) which epitomises “top end of the scale” Englishness.

|QUOTE|“What will irk any Scots activist, and at least some Scottish theologians, is that God is portrayed as an RP English speaker,” said Dr Alasdair Allan, senior media relations officer of the Church of Scotland.

“While there’s plenty of guidance for ministers who want to use Gaelic or English in services, a preacher of Scots would hardly know where to start when it comes to looking for readings, hymns, ideas for prayers and sermons, and knowing which register or vocabulary to use,” he said.

The Kirk’s worship and doctrine committee has commissioned a group with establishing a Scots resource base to provide teaching support, materials and guidance for ministers.

|AD|Dr Allan welcomed the move, agreeing that it would attract Scots back to the church and help the language merge into modern culture.

“The Kirk hasn’t had the best of names for progressing the Scots tongue. When it translated the Bible into English in the 16th century rather than Scots, for all sorts of social and political reasons, Scots missed out on development of the language and of standard spelling,” he said.

Dr Allan added: “The Kirk needs to be clear it’s speaking to all parts of Scotland – not just one social class – and that it breaks down the association of Scots with lower social groups. It has to be able to speak to this segment of the population that uses Scots.”

Donald Smith, director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre and a member of the working group is currently working on Scots versions of services and prayers, and of the Common Order.

“The move will recognise cultural diversity,” he said. “We live in a linguistically diverse and dynamic society and we need to recognise all the different flavours in Scotland,” he said.