THE Church of Scotland is helping its ministers to deliver sermons in Scots dialect amid concerns that God is being portrayed as a speaker of the Queen’s English.

Language packs are being compiled by a kirk working group to encourage more clerics to speak in their native tongue.

The church hopes that it can reverse the trend of declining congregations by ridding itself of its English middle-class image.

By using Scots the church, which has lost 60% of its membership in the past 40 years, hopes to reconnect with “all social classes”.

Supporters of the move want to see a shift away from images of God as a speaker of “received pronounciation” (RP) which epitomises “top end of the scale” Englishness.

They anticipate that the move will help to break down negative links with working-class parishioners and repair some of the damage done by the kirk’s failure to translate the Bible into Scots in the 16th century.

While a handful of modern-day ministers conduct some services such as weddings and communions in Scots, the majority are taken in English.

A group has been formed under the church’s worship and doctrine committee to establish a Scots resource base that would provide teaching support, materials and guidance for ministers.

“What will irk any Scots activist, and at least some Scottish theologians, is that God is portrayed as an RP English speaker,” said Dr Alasdair Allan, senior media relations officer of the Church of Scotland. “While there’s plenty of guidance for ministers who want to use Gaelic or English in services, a preacher of Scots would hardly know where to start when it comes to looking for readings, hymns, ideas for prayers and sermons, and knowing which register or vocabulary to use.”

Allan said the move would attract Scots back to the church and would help the language to merge into modern culture.

“The kirk hasn’t had the best of names for progressing the Scots tongue. When it translated the Bible into English in the 16th century rather than Scots, for all sorts of social and political reasons, Scots missed out on development of the language and of standard spelling.

“The kirk needs to be clear it’s speaking to all parts of Scotland — not just one social class — and that it breaks down the association of Scots with lower social groups. It has to be able to speak to this segment of the population that uses Scots.”

Allan said that the church would offer support in the form of an in-house publication and through offering self-study books and CDs.

Donald Smith, director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre and a member of the working group, is developing Scots versions of services and prayers, and of the Common Order — a guidebook on forms of worship for weddings and funerals and the blessings of new churches and new babies.

“The move will recognise cultural diversity. We live in a linguistically diverse and dynamic society and we need to recognise all the different flavours in Scotland,” said Smith.

“This is part of a movement in the church to recognise that Christians should interact with the indigenous culture.”

Robert Fairnie, secretary of The Scots Tung, an organisation campaigning for the wider use of the Scots language, is backing the move but fears that it could drive some people out of the church.

“It’s unfortunate that so many people have been brainwashed into having a psychological cringe about Scots, regarding it as slang or something to be ashamed of. It’s fine for them to use it among friends but when it comes to formal situations they get goosebumps.

“It will take a few generations to get away from this kind of attitude and holding services in Scots is a start.”

According to government estimates about 1.5m people speak Scots, although Fairnie believes that the true number may be nearer 2.5m.

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