Ministers in contention for Moderator job

THREE ministers are in the running to be the next Kirk Moderator, with the unenviable task of chairing a potentially divisive debate on gays in the ministry at next year's Church of Scotland General Assembly.

The Rev David Arnott, a former business convener of the Assembly, has been nominated for the year-long post along with Bo'ness minister the Rev Albert Bogle and the Rev Peter White, now at a church in Glasgow, but who was minister of St David's Church, Broomhouse, from 1974 to 1990.

The Assembly in May is set to be dominated by the issue of whether practising homosexuals should be allowed to be ministers in the Kirk.

Last year's Assembly approved the appointment of openly gay minister Scott Rennie to a church in Aberdeen but put the recruitment of any more gay ministers on hold for two years to allow a special commission to examine the issue.