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Recent headlines and posturing have given the distinct impression that the Lewis Sabbath is all but gone. Caledonian Macbrayne’s exercise in consultation has flagged up a new issue in this whole debate over Sunday sailings, and one which panders to our present obsession with human rights.
The argument appears naively straightforward: by not providing sailings seven days a week, it has been opined, CalMac are discriminating against residents of the Western Isles on religious grounds, and human rights are being violated.
I am no legal expert, but it is difficult for me to see how anyone is being discriminated against in the current provision. If a shop is closed on Sunday, as most shops in European villages seem to be, I accept that fact. I don’t consider for one moment that I am being discriminated against. I accept the fact for what it is, a distinctive feature of the local culture, and I live with it.
The fact that the ferry has lain dormant in Stornoway every Sunday for the past sixty years has not violated any human rights; it has actually upheld them. It has allowed the boat and its staff to rest; it has honoured the conscience of port staff, and it has given a fair deal to all, respecting the widespread opinion of many native islanders and others, that there is something uniquely special about the way things are done in Lewis.
The fact that the movement for change has become so vociferous, and appears to be hovering on the brink of success, will no doubt be celebrated by many. Our Sabbath will not be handed over without a struggle, especially if the attempt to do so is only to satisfy a directive from Brussels.
The religious element in the argument seems to be the bug-bear. There is, unquestionably, a religious principle underlying the closure of commercial properties and ports of entry in Lewis on the Lord’s Day, grounded in the high view of the law of God which has been part of the DNA of our Hebridean culture over many years.
But for those who will have eyes to see, the fourth commandment was never meant to be a threat, but to regulate our lives according to a timetable of work and rest, leisure and worship. The economy of our island always was fragile, but was never more robust than in the days when the fishing boats and ferries were berthed on Sunday and people went to church to worship. Nobody ever argued that emergencies should not be attended to, or that necessary work could not be done.
But there has been a gradual and systematic erosion of that belief system that saw, first, the Skye ferry run on Sundays in the 1960s, the Lochmaddy ferry in the 1990s and the Berneray ferry in the new millennium. The jewel in the crown of the secularist lobby would be to watch the MV Isle of Lewis sail out of Stornoway harbour on a Sunday.
But I have always argued that whether public opinion is for it or against it, there is a higher law to which we are answerable, and to which we do well to give our attention. In a day of pluralism, that law insists that there is only one God, and that it is our duty to worship him. In a day that tolerates immorality and blasphemy, that law demands respect for all that is holy and pure. In a culture that wants everything on demand, that law regulates our days by a much higher, and more beneficial standard.
As a society we have inverted the whole process, and turned God’s law on its head. We raise an outcry at the scandal of MPs’ expenses, and are shocked periodically when we see what is being done to young people, or old people, in our nation. Yet these are only symptoms of something deeper, for which we are all culpable: they are the consequences of inventing our own standards of ethics and morals.
Which is why, legal opinions and counsels notwithstanding, there is a case that can be made on moral, religious and spiritual grounds, for preserving the best of Lewis culture and society, and for maintaining the current status of timetabling provision.
I continue to hope, and pray, that the political correctness of legal opinion will not become the pretext for a rejection of the past. We have a great legacy, and a great community. We tolerate one another cheerfully: church and state, at least in our corner of the Empire, recognize their mutual responsibilities and their respective duties. The Lewis society in which I grew up, and which I hope my grandchildren will also see, was, to use Knox’s verdict on Calvin’s Geneva, ‘the most perfect school of Christ to have ever been on the earth’.
It is the tipping of that balance between church and community that threatens us if we become dominated by a secular mindset and dump our Sabbath in the Minch.
Dr Iain D. Campbell is Pastor of Back Free Church of Scotland, Isle of Lewis. This was a column the Stornoway Gazette refused to publish.
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