James Aitken Whyte was a leading Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 theologian and Moderator of the General Assembly

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

The Moderator of the General Assembly of Church of Scotland is a Minister, Elder or Deacon of the Church of Scotland chosen to "moderate" the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which is held for a week in Edinburgh every May....

 of the Church of Scotland

Church of Scotland

The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....

.

Biography

James Whyte was brought up in Edinburgh and studied philosophy and divinity at Edinburgh University. After his ordination in 1945 he spent three years as an army chaplain

Chaplain

Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...

, and then served as a parish minister at Dunollie Road Church in Oban

Oban

Oban Oban Oban ( is a resort town within the Argyll and Bute council area of Scotland. It has a total resident population of 8,120. Despite its small size, it is the largest town between Helensburgh and Fort William and during the tourist season the town can be crowded by up to 25,000 people. Oban...

 (inducted 1948) and Mayfield North in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 (1954). In 1958 he was appointed Professor of Practical theology and Christian ethics

Practical theology

Practical theology is the practical application of theology to everyday life. Richard Osmer explains that the four key questions and tasks in practical theology are:# What is going on? # Why is this going on?...

 at St Mary's College

St Mary's College, St Andrews

St Mary's College of the University of St Andrews, in Fife, Scotland - in full, the New College of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary - was founded in 1538 by Archbishop James Beaton, uncle of Cardinal David Beaton on the site of the pedagogy or St Johns College .St Mary's College was...

, the divinity faculty of the University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

 and was Principal of St Mary's 1978-82. His academic work focused mainly on the study of pastoral theology

Pastoral theology

Pastoral theology is the branch of practical theology concerned with the application of the study of religion in the context of regular church ministry. This approach to theology seeks to give practical expression to theology...

, liturgy

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

 and ecclesiastical architecture. He served as convenor of the General Assembly's Inter-Church Relations Committee. He was moderator of the 1988 General Assembly. Whyte's first wife Elisabeth died during his moderatorial year. He was survived by his second wife Ishbel and the daughter and two sons of his first marriage.

Public profile

James Whyte was a highly influential figure in the Church and in Scottish life, largely because of his reputation as a pastor. Four events brought him to the centre of public attention.

During his time as Principal of St Mary's it came to light that one of his students had previously served a sentence for murder. There followed a public controversy about whether this man could become a minister of the Church. Whyte argued on the basis of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness and persuaded the General Assembly not to block the ordination.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

 was invited to address the 1988 General Assembly and gave the speech which the press dubbed the Sermon on the Mound

Sermon on the Mound

The Sermon on the Mound is the name given by the Scottish press to an address made by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 21 May 1988...

, which attempted to suggest a theological basis for her style of capitalism. As Moderator, Whyte responded by presenting her with church reports on housing and poverty. He professed himself astonished at the public controversy which this relatively restrained censure unleashed. In his speech to the General Assembly the following year he recalled (referring to the Conservative baron Sir Nicholas Fairbairn

Nicholas Fairbairn

Sir Nicholas Hardwick Fairbairn, QC was a British politician.He was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Kinross and Western Perthshire, elected in 1974 and 1979, and Perth and Kinross, elected 1983, 1987, and 1992. He was Solicitor General for Scotland from 1979 to 1982...

): "one knight-errant looking for a windmill to tilt at even described me as 'Satanic'!"

As Moderator, Whyte was called on to preach at the memorial service for the victims of the Lockerbie disaster on 4 January 1989. This sermon was widely cited in the press and had a great impact:

"That such carnage of the young and of the innocent should have been willed by men in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. What is our response to that?

The desire, the determination, that those who did this should be detected and, if possible, brought to justice, is natural and is right. The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain.

Justice is one thing. But already one hears in the media the word 'retaliation'. As far as I know, no responsible politician has used that word, and I hope none ever will, except to disown it. For that way lies the endless cycle of violence upon violence, horror upon horror. And we may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men. To show that we are what? To show that we are prepared to let more young and more innocent die, to let more rescue workers labour in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity. That is what retaliation means."

The full text of this sermon was published in Laughter and Tears pp 92-5.

After the Dunblane Massacre

Dunblane massacre

The Dunblane massacre was a multiple murder-suicide which occurred at Dunblane Primary School in the Scottish town of Dunblane on 13 March 1996. Sixteen children and one adult were killed by Thomas Hamilton before he committed suicide.-Timeline of events:...

 in 1996 the families of the victims requested that Whyte conduct the memorial service on 9 October that year. The text of the sermon he preached on this occasion appears in The Dream and the Grace pp 125-9.

Whyte was renowned for his witty comments on Scottish public life. When the Conservative

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 government privatised

Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...

 the Trustee Savings Bank

Lloyds TSB

Lloyds TSB Bank Plc is a retail bank in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1995 by the merger of Lloyds Bank, established in Birmingham, England in 1765 and traditionally considered one of the Big Four clearing banks, with the TSB Group which traces its origins to 1810...

 in 1985 he wrote a three-sentence letter to The Scotsman

The Scotsman

The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....

: "Bankrobbery is the word we use to describe the crime of stealing from a bank. But what word can we use to describe the crime of stealing a bank? Words cannot describe the crimes of government!"

Publications

• Laughter and Tears: Thoughts on Faith in the Face of Suffering, Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 1993, ISBN 0-7152-0682-6.
• The Dream and the Grace: Sermons on Healthy and Unhealthy Religion, Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 2001, ISBN 0-7152-0777-6.
• (co-edited) Worship Now: A Collection of Services and Prayer for Public Worship, vol 1 Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 1972 ISBN 0-7152-0199-9; vol 2 Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 1989, ISBN 0-7152-0633-8.
• An interview with Whyte: Kenneth Roy, "A Present for Mrs Thatcher" in Kenneth Roy, Conversations in a Small Country, Ayr: Carrick Publishing 1989, ISBN 0-946724-22-9, pp 41-8