Hundreds at Pastor Jack's Funeral

VICTORIA MATCHELL
HUNDREDS of mourners yesterday paid their final respects at the funeral of one of Scotland’s most controversial religious figures, Pastor Jack Glass, who died last week, aged 67.

More than 200 people joined his widow Peggy, grown up children, Martyn and Jayne and their families at the Zion Baptist Church in Glasgow, which he founded, to say farewell to the outspoken firebrand.

Inside the modest sandstone church, many of the mourners wept openly as the coffin, with a single wreath of yellow roses, was laid at the side of the pulpit.

Martyn Glass paid tribute to his father before the gathering. “It is good to be surrounded here today by men who did know my father and through the difficult times, the highs and the lows, who stuck with him.”

He added: “There is so much I could say about my father’s life but I would be here for the next few hours.

I tend to think back on the years when you are a child and you always love to spend time with your dad.

“Special times were when my mother would go out to a Thursday women’s meeting and it was just us with dad”

John McDermott, a church Elder, also paid tribute to the preacher, saying: “He was ridiculed, mocked by the nation, hated and despised but he never lost his faith. He was a lovely man and a man who knew God.

Pastor Jack was due to be buried in his home town of Killearn this afternoon. The founder of the church passed away at his home after a long battle with lung cancer.

Some of the pastor’s highprofile campaigns included a demonstration against Pope John Paul ll’s 1982 visit to Scotland and opposition to the music of Marilyn Manson

In 1982, he claimed that the Pope had “no right to set foot on our Protestant island”.

He founded the Zion Baptist Church in 1967 and began his unrelenting one man mission to lead the people of Scotland away from the devil,

During a 30 year period he picketed shows by comedian Billy Connolly in protest to a sketch in which Connolly translated The Last Supper to the Saracens Head pub in Glasgow’s east end.

At the 1999 Edinburgh Festival, Pastor Jack led an 80-strong demonstration to picket the opening night of Terence McNally’s play Corpus Christie, in which the son of God discovered his sexuality with Judas.

The Scotsman 2.03.04