Sounds of Iona February 2025: ‘Till everything cries Glory’

‘Till everything cries Glory’ 

‘One Church or there will be no Church…. One World or there will be no World.’ (Bombs and Bishops, George F MacLeod, 1958) 

With this cry to unity George MacLeod opened his address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 29th May 1958 at the end of his moderatorial year. Framed under the enigmatic title ‘Fission and Fusion’, by this he meant that the church will only survive if we speed up our work towards unity; the world will only survive if we speed up the renunciation of nuclear weapons. These two inextricably linked concerns are ones for the whole world: ‘Neither Church Fusion nor Nuclear Fission are domestic issues’ said MacLeod, who had just returned from extensive travels in Asia and the lands now called Australia. 

These words reached the ears of Assembly commissioners a short 13 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, and the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The rubble of war was still very much present in the rebuilding of lives, homes and creation. Rationing had ended in the UK only five years previously. 

The western churches, ‘fissured in a hundred sects, atomised, submerged’ in 1958 according to MacLeod remain scandalously disunited now despite attempts by many including the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity which has just passed.  Nations continue to hurtle towards war with the spectre of biological and nuclear warfare never far from our thoughts. 

Our world has never been more atomised. The images of destruction and rubble seeping out of Gaza are as devastating as any post-war images we may have seen. According to the United Nations, while globally the number of wars has been declining since the UN was established in 1946, instances of ‘conflict and violence are currently on the rise.’ 

And still there is hope. 

I choose hope when I see the work of our friends in Justice & Peace Scotland who are coordinating prayer and protest for peace outside the Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base on 2nd August to mark the 80th year since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I choose hope when I celebrate the determined work of our partners at  Christian Aid Scotland to forge unity across our churches for the sake of all the world’s poor. And I choose hope when I open my eyes to the concerted commitment and wisdom of our Members and Associate Members across the globe, joining in our Common Concern Networks, to change the narrative in our world to one of justice and peace; to a cry for Glory in the midst of chaos. 

MacLeod’s final rallying cry at Pentecost 1958 was this: ‘There is but one body [of Christ]. When we partake of the Sacrament…we partake with every Anglican, every Orthodox, every Roman, in his Body…. There is our starting point for a united Church… Here is the key to the transfiguration of our world, till everything cries Glory…’