Pastor Glass Relying on a 'revival'

By MURRAY RITCHIE
PASTOR JACK GLASS............. If he is returned to Westminster via Hillhead this month he says, he will owe his election, not so much to the voters, but to a “wave of religious revival.”

Pastor Glass has dedicated his life to achieving a twentieth century reformation in Scotland, and by standing as the “Protestant Crusade Against the Papal Visit” candidate, sees his campaign as a milestone on that journey.

He tried once before in 1970 and polled a respectable 1200 votes as a Protestant Independent in Bridgeton. “This time we are in an unknown area. I have entered because I feel it is the will of God and I leave the result with Him. Who can say? It may be that God has time for a revival of this kind before election day.”

At the age of 11, Jack Glass became a born again Christian. Son of a middle-of-the-road Kirk couple he was converted by the Salvation Army. He can talk for hours about what this conversion meant to him, suffice to say it led him inexorably to terrible fundamentalism in which his understanding of Christ’s teaching is inviolate law. This relentless obedience to his understanding of Christ has made him an opponent of almost everyone and anyone, the ultimate protester.

Often it has got him in trouble with the law. In Rome he has been shunted four times by the Vatican Police. Scots Catholics noticed him in St Peter’s Square at the sanctification of John Ogilvie. The Pastor was waving a placard saying “No Pope Here”, rather an odd message given the surroundings. When they asked him to pose against the Vatican and sign autographs, he agreed without demur.

In public he rants and uses violent language in protesting at Popery, pornography, abortion, homosexuality and all the other objects of his disapproval. In private, he smiles and talks quietly, and with charm.

He has never hurt anyone in his life, yet he is not a pacifist. How could he be, he asks. Jesus used violence in the temple. Enough said.

Now 45, with two grown up children and a teenage daughter, his is a familiar face in Hillhead where he has his home. His sponsors in the by-election all came, he says, from down his street. Weary of denying he is a bigot, he insists his war is with Catholicism and not Catholics.

Each week he preaches to a congregation of 80, “If all the people who have gone through my church were still with me, I’d have the biggest church in Scotland,” he says. “But my standards are too high for many. Christ went to Calvary. He went the whole way for me. I should therefore go the whole way for him. Not many have been able to stay with the Pastor’s demanding theology. In his time, he has denounced the Orange Order and attempted, in his own words, to bring the Billy Boys to Jesus on Sundays, away from their social clubs and into church. He doesn’t get on too easily with Ian Paisley, who was one of the ministers at his ordination. He is too much of a “Bible Belt Billy Graham who sacrificed his Calvinism, who now goes for easy believism and walk the aisle, raise the hand type of thing.”

Moon of the Moonies, another enemy, takes the glory from Christ and must be resisted. The list is long and the labour of protesting has now lasted 16 years and included trips to the United States. Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Kenya. “I’ve been to Rome more times than some Catholics.”

Of all the abominations which attract his protests, the ultimate is the Pope. For the message in detail, see his manifesto on the Anti- Christ which is a collector’s item. Summed up, it says in colourful language that the Pope is an impostor who claims to be King of Kings, and the new Messiah.

His message to the voters of Hillhead has reached every home. The Pastor’s campaign is financed from his own pocket and by his flock. His congregation pay him £79 per week of which he returns 10%.

Many detest Glass and see him as a force for bigotry. Some editors have adopted a policy of ignoring him, always a dubious journalistic practice, on the basis that he will go away. Come March 25 he will probably not be in the Commons and he will be back to his life of protest with as much success as before. For the moment, however, he enjoys a moment in the limelight, and so far it has done no one any harm.

Extract, Glasgow Herald 16.3.82