This is a significant year for John Knox, writes Ed McCracken. It is 450 years since the Scottish Reformation, when Scotland split from the Catholic Church and became a Protestant country, of which Knox was a key architect.

It could also be Knox’s 500th birthday, but the exact date is unknown thanks to the 16th century’s lax record-keeping, but experts believe he was born between 1510 and 1514.

The Scottish Government, so keen to celebrate Burns last year, has said it plans no official events. The Church of Scotland, for which Knox and the Reformation acted as midwives, has been cagey. The official line is that individual congregations can decide whether they want to hold an event. The Kirk’s central office is planning no major event to mark the Reformation. Ironically, of all the denominations the Catholic Church has been the most vocal in welcoming an event.

“It would be interesting to know more about Knox himself and his motivation,” said Ronnie Convery, director of communications from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow. “We would not want to shy away from it and are happy to participate in anything that would help Scotland come to better understand its religious roots and culture.”

All in all, there is an official sense that Knox remains a particularly jagged thistle for the nation to grasp. Besides, who wants to raise a glass to a killjoy? This attitude, argues Harry Reid, a former Herald editor and author of a new book on the Scottish Reformation, is pervasive but completely misguided.

“He is not at all hard to celebrate,” he said. “This is what confuses me. He was not a killjoy. There is this image of him as some demented fanatical wild man who hated the notion of people enjoying themselves. But this was absolute nonsense. He was a fierce man and a fiery preacher. Religion was central to everything. But he was a very gregarious man. He liked the ladies and they liked him. And maybe the most telling story of all, when he lay dying he had a big hog’s head of wine and asked it to be opened for his friends to enjoy.”

Central to Reid’s book, Reformation: The Dangerous Birth Of The Modern World, is that Knox used the Reformation to usher in a “blueprint for a new Scotland”.

In 1960 the Church of Scotland held an ecumenical commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Reformation, something Reid would like to see repeated. Richard Holloway, then a young Episcopalian curate, attended. Now the retired bishop of Edinburgh and respected author and broadcaster, Holloway is also puzzled by the lack of events around both Knox and the Reformation.

“I don’t know why the Church of Scotland aren’t doing more,” he said. “Maybe because in these ecumenical times we don’t want to be celebrating something that split them from the Roman Catholic church and started a whole trend in dividing Christianity. But it is intriguing. It is one of the pivotal events in Scottish history, made modern Scotland.”

However, Holloway said Knox should not be celebrated. “We should mark him,” he said. “The word celebrate is too unsubtle.”

• Full story at the Sunday Herald.

• Filed under History, Media, Roman Catholic Church, Scottish Christian News Monitor.