{"id":71848,"date":"2025-05-20T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T11:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/special-service-marks-80-years-of-christian-aid\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:42:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:42:40","slug":"special-service-marks-80-years-of-christian-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/special-service-marks-80-years-of-christian-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Special service marks 80 years of Christian Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The Rt Rev Dr John Armes attended a special service on Saturday 17 May marking the 80th anniversary of Christian Aid. The service, which took place at St Giles’ in Edinburgh, included music from the Wild Goose Collective, Sisken Green and poetry especially written for the anniversary, as well as keynote address from John Swinney MSP, First Minister of Scotland.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Bishop John commented following the service: “I was excited to be at St Giles, thanking God for Christian Aid\u2019s 80 years of service. The First Minister spoke powerfully about the millions of lives enriched by its work, and he is right. The scope of Christian Aid\u2019s impact is staggering, and this has been achieved in no small part thanks to the thousands of volunteers, fundraisers, and staff from across Scotland and around the world, including many members of the Scottish Episcopal Church and our ecumenical partners.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“Christian Aid is our development agency, putting into practice Jesus\u2019 call to seek the Kingdom of God above all things, to love our neighbour and to be good news for the poor. Its work over these decades has not only blessed others; it has been a blessing to us too. So long as there is work to be done, may Christian Aid and its partners always be there at the forefront.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Patrick Watt, the charity\u2019s Chief Executive, spoke of the development agency\u2019s history of helping others and its resolve to continue this work, \u201ctoday, tomorrow and the day after that we will give, act and pray together.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>First Minister John Swinney in his keynote address said:\u00a0\u201cOn the 80th<\/sup> anniversary of Christian Aid, I want to recognise their incredible legacy of supporting those most in need through their international development and humanitarian response work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cThe Scottish Government greatly values our longstanding partnership with Christian Aid. I want to thank the organisation for their continued input to our Humanitarian Emergency Fund and for the delivery of impactful climate justice, humanitarian and development projects over the many years we have worked together.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Christian Aid\u2019s UK and Global Church Ambassador and former Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Very Rev Sally Foster-Fulton, said the service was about looking backwards and forwards at a time when being a compassionate global neighbour is as important as ever. She said:\u00a0 \u201cEight decades is a milestone anniversary \u2013 80 years of raising our voices and working and walking with those living in poverty. We exist now, in 2025, only because there is still extreme poverty and social injustice all around us in our world. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cEvery human has the right to live life in all its fullness. The service was about reflecting on what Christian Aid has achieved to date while recommitting to the future, as there\u2019s so much still to do. We stay hopeful that an end to global poverty is possible \u2013 and the unstoppable power of hope drives us on.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Christian Aid was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, as churches in Scotland and around Britain and Ireland responded to the huge refugee crisis in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Since then, the charity has launched Britain\u2019s longest running charity fundraising week (Christian Aid Week, which runs for 7 days every May), helped found the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) and continues to campaign on issues from the climate crisis and debt justice to ending violence against women and girls.<\/p>\r\n

–<\/p>\r\n

Images used courtesy of Christian Aid \/ Julia Forsyth.\u00a0 Main image L-R: the <\/em>Very Rev Dr Angus Morrison, the <\/em>Rt Rev Dr John Armes, Bishop of Edinburgh, the <\/em>Very Rev Sally Foster-Fulton, Christian Aid\u2019s UK and Global Church Ambassador, <\/em>Val Brown, Head of Christian Aid Scotland. <\/em>First Minister of Scotland John Swinney. <\/em>Patrick Watt, CEO, Christian Aid<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rt Rev Dr John Armes attended a special service on Saturday 17 May marking the 80th anniversary of Christian Aid. The service, which took place at St Giles’ in Edinburgh, included music from the Wild Goose Collective, Sisken Green and poetry especially written for the anniversary, as well as keynote address from John Swinney […]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73514,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71848\/revisions\/73514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}