A few months ago I mentioned a very odd story from Scotland, where, in 2012, the Glasgow Presbytery of the Church of Scotland drove one of its largest congregations out of their own building, which they had just contributed $5m to refurbish, under threat of lawsuit. There were many evil deeds by the church officials, all reported in the national Scottish press. The church bureaucrats even sent bailiffs to a prayer meething, to seize the hymnbooks, paid for by the worshippers, from the hands of the worshippers. There was a scandal, the Church of Scotland was covered with obliquy, and the same officials released a very tetchy and less-than-honest press release which was duly savaged by the press. The church building was empty and the officials prepared to dispose of it; the congregation had started a new free church; and the church officials looked like fools and liars.
Such stories have happened before. They happen whenever a church ceases to exist for its principles and becomes governed by bureaucrats concerned only with “business as usual”. When the parishes come into conflict with the church bureaucracy, the latter invariably behave very badly. But I thought that this was the end of the story.
It would seem not. Today I happened to look at the Wikipedia page for the church, St Georges Tron, which I last looked at back in 2012. And … miraculously, the story had vanished! There was a bland paragraph about how the congregation had “seceded”, and that was it. The paragraphs, with references, that described what had happened and why the church was now empty, had all vanished.
A little investigation revealed that someone had created an account, “User:BigAl246”, and used it solely to do those edits to that article. It had also made an edit to the article the minister of the church, William Phillips.
It is pretty difficult to think of anybody outside of the Glasgow Presbytery of the Church of Scotland who would have a motive. Who else would want to conceal the facts? The editor is, presumably, a press officer for the Church of Scotland, or one of the guilty men behind the scandal.
I do wish we knew the name of the wicked man in the Glasgow Presbytery who orchestrated all this evil. I suppose it comes as no surprise that this man and his friends are willing to try deception afterwards.
It is always curious to see a rotter at work. Apart from anything else, it is amusing to see someone willing to do something wicked, and ashamed of the bad publicity, but not of his evildoing.
It will be interesting to see if anyone at Wikipedia cares.