FORMER Moderator of the Church of Scotland the Very Rev Lorna Hood has spoken for the first time of the health crisis that risked leaving the Kirk with no-one to preside over this year's General Assembly.
Just as she had been told she needed an operation to correct an enlarged thyroid pressing on her windpipe, the moderator-in-waiting, the Rev Dr Angus Morrison, was also diagnosed with a serious health condition requiring surgery.
The Kirk was forced to hastily reconvene the committee which appointed Dr Morrison and select another candidate, the Rev John Chalmers, who was abruptly appointed moderator with only days to prepare before presiding over the General Assembly.
Mrs Hood received the news that an X-ray had found her serious condition while on a work trip to Athens, and had to persuade doctors to let her end her year as moderator before going into hospital. "They were not willing to agree to that until I had a biopsy and another scan.
"At the same time the Rev Morrison had a relatively serious health crisis as well and had to drop out due to his own illness."
Her condition, which left her breathless and tight-chested, saw her taken by ambulance to hospital before her trip to Greece, then released pending the outcome of tests. The problem has now been corrected, but has left her with speech problems and an inconvenient ban from singing hymns.
"My voice is still not right. It is quite rough and it just goes after a time. I'm not allowed to sing at the moment,and I've had to turn down several requests to speak," she said.
Mrs Hood said she was relieved the Church had not faced a major schism over gay marriage in her year as moderator. "I kept telling people it wasn't going to happen. People wanted to find a compromise, nobody wanted the church to split," she said.
As moderator she was not allowed to take a personal view but says she has become increasingly liberal about the issue. "I'm still working through my personal view. I come from quite a strong evangelical background, but there's no doubt I have moved.
"I've met people who have a strong Christian conviction, who felt that for a long time the church didn't have a place for them. If you've been brought up in the church but can't get married in the church, because of who you are, while someone who has never attended is allowed to have a pretty wedding in the church, that didn't seem right to me."
Literal interpretations of the bible are often unhelpful, she adds. "If the bible is interpreted strictly, I couldn't be preaching. I think you can feel God is still speaking to us today in a different way, and telling us something else.Young people look at all this and don't understand what we are on about.
"We need a balance between being a part of the modern world and society but also being willing to say at times what we think is wrong."
In her time as Moderator, Mrs Hood also spoke up about gender discrimination in the church, particularly after a visit to Skye where she was told she could only preach in three parishes, because she was a woman. "In my own ministry I always said I never experienced prejudice in the church. It was only in my moderator year I was hit by this prejudice," she said.
In fact, while she was training, she says: "I had some advantages being a young woman minister. I got opportunities a young male minster wouldn't have had."
This included a trip to Ottawa when the church was looking for a younger woman to help balance its delegates. "I ticked all the boxes," Mrs Hood says.
But she is aware that in some parts of the country women cannot be elders. "I've also been told that past moderators have not been able to preach in certain areas because of their theology. But gender is not a choice. One woman who can't be an elder because of her gender is one too many."
Glasgow University will today award Mrs Hood an honorary degree. She will receive a doctorate of divinity and said she was delighted and humbled by it. "I'll accept in on behalf of all those women parish ministers around the country who have just got on with the job," she said.
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