Rev Dr A Stewart Todd,
born 26 May 1926, died 2 September 2009
Stewart Todd might have been created by central casting for the role of a Church of England bishop. Impeccably and almost always clerically dressed – he continued to wear a frock coat when presenting a report to the General Assembly long after the practice had been abandoned – with a style of speaking which was “anglified” to say the least, and an attitude to worship which some thought so “high” as to be stratospheric, he seemed sometimes to belong to a different age. But behind the appearance there was a very sharp mind, theologically extremely able, and a sense of humour which was more self-deprecating than those who were amused by him realized.
Todd was born in Alloa and educated at schools in Dunipace, Denny and then Stirling High School. He went to the Universioty of Edinburgh and graduated with honours in classics in 1947 and then took a BD at New College. While studying there himself he tutored other students in elementary Greek. A year’s postgraduate work at the University of Basle was followed by a year as assistant minister at St Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh with the famous preacher Adam Burnett.
In 1952 he became minister of Symington in Lanarkshire, and the following year he proved that his linguistic abilities were not confined to the classics when the ground-breaking work by Oscar Cullman, Early Christian Worship was published in English, partly translated from the original German by Todd. Two other translations were to follow.
After eight years in Symington Todd moved to the parish of North Leith, and then, in 1967 to St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen, where he was to spend over twenty five years.
Stewart Todd was associated throughout his ministry with the two organizations which are closely identified with the sort of worship which its critics like to dismiss as “high” and its supporters describe as “liturgical”, the Scottish Church Society and the Church Service Society. He was President and later Honorary President of both. He was a member and from 1974-78 Convener of the General Assembly’s Committee on Public Worship, and, as such was the person most closely identified with the controversial Book of Common Order, published in 1979. There had been several previous books of model services, none of which were officially authorized, and the 1979 book was no exception. But it was widely criticised because its orders of service were based on the belief that Holy Communion should be the normal act of Sunday worship in the Church of Scotland. The arch-critic of anything which seemed to smack of the Church of England, Dr Andrew Herron complained that the book seriously departed from accepted practice. Professor Duncan Forrester, however, less intemperately, described it as “on the whole canny and sometimes pedestrian”. An ultra-presbyterian grouping, the National Church Association produced a very conservative production in response, The Reformed Book of Common Order. In addition to the Committee on Public Worship, Todd was a member of the Church Hymnary Trust, and of the committee which produced the third edition of the Church Hymnary in 1973.
From 1990 to 1995 Todd was Convener of the General Assembly’s Panel on Doctrine. He was elected Moderator of the Presbytery of Aberdeen in 1980, given an honorary doctorate by the University of Aberdeen in 1992 and appointed a chaplain to the Queen in Scotland in 1991. He retired in 1993 to live in Buchlyvie. His wife and one daughter predeceased him and he is survived by two sons, a daughter and five grandchildren.
Published in The Herald