The Lord Wallace of Tankerness recently took office as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, having previously served as Liberal Democrat Chief Whip in the House of Commons, Deputy Leader of the House of Lords and Acting First Minister of Scotland. Today I attended a virtual interview that he gave for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship.

Not being a lawyer, a Christian or a Scot but merely an Eventbrite-addict, I wondered if I might be asked to introduce myself and then induce some confused looks from the others, but thankfully that did not occur. At the end of the prepared questions the host (Janys M. Scott) opened the floor to other attendees, and I asked his lordship:

As someone who has been a senior figure in both Holyrood and Westminster, what would you say are the main differences – if there are any – between how England and Scotland involve religion in politics and public life?

Wallace said that in both parliaments he knew practicing Christians who brought their faith into their work and it would be wrong to suggest that one had a higher religious standing than the other. In the House of Commons it was sometimes more formalised: Every day would begin with Psalm 67 followed by the same prayers. The only change during his tenure as an MP was that following her divorce the Princess of Wales was omitted from the prayer, though Wallace and others believed that this was the time at which she would have needed divine assistance more than ever. He believed that the “time for reflection” in the Scottish Parliament, which as always faith-based but not always Christian, was more personally useful. In particular he felt there had been “something missing” in the way that after John Smith’s death the daily prayers had not made any reference to him or his family.

The session concluded with Wallace himself reading a prayer. I was grateful for the non-functionality of my own webcam as it spared me from the awkwardness of working whether it was appropriate to bow at that point, or indeed to wave at the other participants. I also attempted yet again to plug this blog in the chat box just before the connection terminated, though its relevance to this group was rather less obvious than to the heraldists with whom I more frequently congregate.

During the course of the session I looked through the list of other guests and found, as one would expect, many prominent representatives of the Scottish legal profession. The name that stuck out most obviously was Brian Gill, former President of the Court of Session, whose Wikipedia page I had only last month graced with a photograph.