NEIL GLOVER has written a courageous book: an attempt to understand and to find creative responses to “the precipitous decline of the Church of Scotland”.

That decline has reduced membership to somewhere well below 300,000. Steady decline is a commonplace of mainstream Churches. But the scale and the rapidity of the decline of the Church of Scotland is a source of distress not just to its own members, but to all who admire its breadth, its scholarship, and the way in which it embodies the very idea of Scottishness. The outlook may appear bleak. But Glover believes that there will be a future, and affirms that hope as a deep truth of the resurrection.

He then sets out on a journey — exploring secularisation and its causes. He suggests that the easy response, “This is boring,” to the Church and its worship is actually indicative of a deep disconnect between us and God. Not all churches are declining: those that are growing are often on the Evangelical Charismatic wing of the Church, and are churches that pay attention to the experience of the individual.

I did wonder whether there was something to be said about the way in which Scotland has been shaped by the experience and the values of the Scottish Enlightenment. In other places, secularisation has been described as “losing the habit of God”. But the Scottish experience is almost ideological in character.

One of the most compelling sections of this book is the exploration of the search for authenticity. Glover believes that this is about learning to express ourselves courageously in our response to God. There can be no falling back on the platitudes of the past. Finding our voice means to “speak the word we have been given, to transform worlds, to be alive. This is what resurrection looks like.”

The Rt Revd David Chillingworth is a former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Finding Our Voice: Searching for renewal in the mainline Church
Neil Glover
Saint Andrew Press £19.99
978-1-80083-051-6
Church Times Bookshop £17.99