”˜There is not going to be a great schism.” The Rev Lorna Hood is sitting on a sofa in the drawing room of an elegant town house in Rothesay Terrace, the official home of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh.
With one sharp sentence she has fired a tranquiliser dart into the pink elephant in the room.
Officially, there is still a moratorium on discussing whether the Church of Scotland should ordain practising gay ministers but next Monday’s debate and vote at the General Assembly is set to be the most divisive the Church has faced since the Disruption of 1843 when a predecessor as moderator, Dr David Welsh, walked out with 450 ministers and founded the Free Church of Scotland. There has been suggestions that, once again, ministers are strapping on their hiking boots.
“With one sharp sentence she has fired a tranquiliser dart into the pink elephant in the room.”
Errr no, with one sharp sentence she has managed the remarkable feat of speaking and whistling in the dark at the same time.
And talk about mixing metaphors – “the pink elephant in the room”????