“Every woman who knows Knox and his story about the ‘monstrous regiment’ and passes his statue does give a wee wry smile on the way past. The Church has moved a tremendous amount in the last 15 years.”

He infamously dismissed a female in authority as “the monstrous regiment of women”.

Now, more than 400 years later, John Knox, the founder of the Church of Scotland has been taken to task by the Kirk’s female Moderator.

The Very Reverend Lorna Hood said Knox, who decried female leadership as against God’s will, would be spinning in his grave if he saw how the Church of Scotland had embraced and elevated women to positions of authority.

The Moderator acknowledges the important legacy of the man widely thought of as a founding father of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland and of the Church of Scotland.

But Mrs Hood, who is only the third woman to become Moderator of the Church’s General Assembly in more than 400 years, questions his views of women.

In 1558 Knox published The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women in Geneva.

The text argued that it was wrong for a woman to rule over a country, and his treatise was directed principally against England’s Queen Mary, but it did not endear Knox to Mary’s sister and successor, Elizabeth I.

When Knox sought to return to Scotland from Geneva, his journey was delayed as Elizabeth refused to allow him to pass through England.

Mrs Hoods says of Knox: “I think he was hugely important to the Church of Scotland; in fact there are those who would say that he was the founder of the Church of Scotland but not in fact of Presbyterianism which was developed by Andrew Melville some years after the death of John Knox, with the Second Book of Discipline. As we go into the Assembly Hall each year at the General Assembly there’s a huge statue of Knox so you can’t fail to see him on the way past and realise how important he is within the Church.”

Despite the debt of gratitude the Church owes him and for all he did in the cause of Protestantism in Scotland, his thoughts against women jar with Mrs Hood.

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