Revd Dr David Whiteford, CBE,
born 16 December 1918, died 21 February 2010
One of the tensions which the Church of Scotland faces is the tension between supporting Kirk ministers who are chaplains to the armed forces and examining critically the reasons behind any particular armed conflict. That is a tension which chaplains to the forces have to live with not just annually at the General Assembly but day in and day out. David Whiteford, who has died at the age of 91, spent most of the years of his ministry in army chaplaincy, and rose to be Deputy Chaplain General spoke passionately in the General Assembly for the armed forces, and most particularly for the forces’ chaplains. At a time when there was a growing view in the church opposed to nuclear weapons, when he retired from service in the army David Whiteford became a powerful supporter of Conservative defence policy.
David Whiteford was a son of the manse. His father, who also lived to reach the age of ninety, was the United Free Church minister in Lockerbie and then Coatbridge, so David was educated at Lockerbie Academy and then Blairhill Secondary, but when his father, by then a minister of the reunited Church of Scotland moved to Leith in 1931, he was sent to George Watson’s College. He took an arts degree at Edinburgh University and then went to New College where his divinity studies were interrupted by two years’ service in the RAF. He spent an assistantship with the redoubtable Hugh Douglas in North Leith and was ordained as a chaplain to the forces in 1943, completing his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1946.
Whiteford was to spent almost forty years in the forces, a dedicated and committed chaplain. From 1966, when he completed a PhD in Scottish Church history, until his retrial in 1971 he was Deputy Chaplain General and an honorary chaplain to the Queen. On leaving the Chaplains Department he became parish minister of Gullane.
In 1976 he was asked to become Convener of what was then the Maintenance of the Ministry Committee. David Whiteford headed a formidable team in the General Assembly, along with the secretary of the committee George Lugton and assistant secretary Tom Balfour. Always the master of his brief and with the natural authority which had been recognized in his career in the army, along with his colleagues Whiteford drove forward his aim of the provision of an adequate minimum stipend for ministers. If some found him less willing than they would have liked to compromise, none doubted his absolute commitment to improving the rewards, never exactly great, of the ministers paid least by the Church. His administrative and organisational skills, which had been recognized in his appointment as Deputy Chaplain General, were exercised in a reorganization of the Church and Ministry department.
As well as a very demanding Assembly Convenership, David Whiteford was a most diligent member first of the Presbytery of Haddington and Dunbar, where he chaired the Planning and Readjustment Committee, and when that Presbytery united with Dalkeith to become the Presbytery of Lothian he was elected its first Moderator. He retired in 1985.
He was awarded the CBE in 1972 and is survived by his son and two daughters and their families.
Published in The Scotsman