Scotland the free?

One of the most significant forthcoming socio-political decisions will be the question (whatever that questions is) of Scottish independence.

Yet, with few exceptions (Honey From the Lion's Belly - a lecture by Doug Gay) it does not seem to have generated much 'evangelical' theological reflection and certainly not as much attention as other red hot topics such as same gender marriage. 

Perhaps this is right - I mean politics has nothing to do with our Christian faith has it - except of course from an early age I have heard at worst the mantra and at best the confession that Jesus is Lord of all of life.

Or perhaps it is simply I mix in Baptist circles and the free church position of the separation of church and state means that this is not an issue of concern to us - except that this separation should not be equated with non-engagement but invites engagement from a particular perspective of 'free church' and 'free state'.

Or perhaps it is simply that the issue is clear, nationalism is a bad thing - except that what is under discussion here is not whether or not we will live in a nation state but whether our choice will be for the present British nationalism or a future Scottish nationalism.

There are a whole pile of things to be teased out here and perhaps one 'service' we can offer to the wider 'society' albeit it in 'thin' form emerging from our own practices should be to create and stimulate contexts for people to think and engage in the processes of discussion about this issue, although that might presume that we are actually doing such ourselves.

Or perhaps we should be encouraging the conversation not simply to be about 'economics' but about 'ethics' - will a Scottish independent nation that upholds human rights legislation be a better form of nationalism than a British nationalism which wishes to remove the 'human' in favour of the 'national' constitution.

Do I have a bias in this...of course not...aye right