29/01/2026
We join people across Scotland who mourn the loss of Rt Hon Lord Wallace of Tankerness KC. Until recently, Lord Wallace served as a trustee of EMMS International after engaging with our work while serving as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
We’re grateful for his wisdom and guidance, and for his significant contribution to public life through politics, civil society and the church. His wife, Rosie, children and grandchildren are in our thoughts and prayers.
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Rt Hon Lord Wallace of Tankerness KC (Jim Wallace), Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 2021-2022.
The life peer from Orkney was only the second elder in modern times to take up the role, which saw him chair the General Assembly and represent the Church, speaking out on issues important to it and its mission to follow and proclaim the example of Jesus Christ.
Lord Wallace was undergoing a procedure at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh today, but suffered complications afterwards.
Rt Rev Rosie Frew, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said: "I was shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden death of Lord Wallace.
"Only a few weeks ago, he was my host for a very special day in the Palace of Westminster in London.
"Kind, accommodating, informative, entertaining, it was both a joy and a privilege to spend time with him and his wife, Rosie.
"He served both church and state faithfully and well over many years.
"My thoughts and prayers are with Rosie, grown-up daughters, Helen and Clare, and wider family at this difficult time."
Lord Wallace grew up in a Christian family - a so-called "cradle Presbyterian" - and his late father John was an elder at Annan Old Parish Church in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway for 64 years.
In his youth, he was a member of the Boys Brigade, involved with Scripture Union, and was confirmed in the faith while a law student at Cambridge University in 1973.
Ordained as an elder in what was St Bernard's Church in Stockbridge, Edinburgh in 1981, he became a member of the Session of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall in Orkney in 1990.
Orkney minister Rev Dr Marjory MacLean served as one of Lord Wallace's chaplains during his moderatorial year.
"Jim was a faithful elder of the Church of Scotland, never compromising his faith to his other priorities, and was notable for fulfilling Sunday elder's duty at St Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, even during parliamentary election campaigns," she said.
"He had a deep respect for the Church's polity, and especially its General Assembly, once remarking that he found it a more awe-inspiring chamber to address than the House of Commons.
"In 2021, during the pandemic, he graced the Assembly as its Moderator, using his natural warmth and intellectual flexibility to make the very best of unusual circumstances, as he moderated proceedings in an almost-empty Assembly Hall with the Court's members entirely online on screens around him.
"In his moderatorial year he and Rosie charmed the congregations and agencies of the Church, and indeed the wider community, with a distinctive understanding of the religious life of Scotland from the perspective of the eldership."
In his retiring speech to the General Assembly in May 2022 after stepping down as Moderator, Lord Wallace said it was an "honour and privilege" to serve and described the experience as "truly energising".
He highlighted the work of CrossReach, which runs cradle to the grave social care support services across Scotland and described its work as a "response to human need through loving service".
"Throughout the past year, I have joined with other church leaders in calling for action from both governments to address poverty, especially child poverty," he said.
"As a Church we must surely continue to make our voice heard, speaking up for the most vulnerable as the increasing cost of living inevitably impacts on those most in need."
Lord Wallace attended the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in 2021 and told commissioners the Church has a "mission to strive to protect the integrity of creation".
"COP 26 provided an opportunity to proclaim our commitment to nurture and protect a creation which God saw was good, and to seek climate justice for those countries and communities - almost invariably among the world's poorest - who have already experienced destructive severe weather events and need practical and financial support to build the infrastructure to protect them from future ones," he said.
"Care for creation and loving and helping our global neighbours in need are faith issues, and if the march for climate justice on the middle Saturday of COP was the wettest I got during the last year, it was also uplifting to join so many from other denominations and across the inter-faith community making our voices heard."
Lord Wallace said he was pleased to sign, on the General Assembly's behalf, the St Andrew Declaration of friendship with the Scottish Episcopal Church and help take forward the Declaration of Friendship, the St Margaret Declaration, with the Scottish Catholic Bishops' Conference.
"Unity is not uniformity, but whenever we can love one another, be seen to love one another and speak with one voice – that surely must strengthen our witness to message of the Gospel in our land," he said.
A few weeks before he stood down as Moderator, Lord Wallace visited Ukraine and Hungary to find out how more than £360,000 donations, (at the time of speaking) from Kirk members are being used to support people affected by the war.
He spent two days with Church partners in the region to learn more about their humanitarian response to the impact of Russia's unprovoked military attack, which has led to the deaths of thousands of people and millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine.
Speaking after his visit, Lord Wallace said: "The resilience and vision of the Reformed Church congregations in Ukraine is quite remarkable.
"Every bit as moving is their deep appreciation of our continued prayers for them, and more specifically for peace.
"We saw that the financial gifts of the congregations in Scotland are being well used in feeding the hungry and in offering support to families and individuals."
Lord Wallace said it was Pentecost the day after he took on the role of Moderator in May 2021, "when we recall the disciples were all gathered ‘in one place', when the Spirit descended with wind and flame".
"But they didn't stay in the one place, waiting for people to come in, they went out proclaiming the good news of the Risen Jesus.
"Today we must be ready to go out from our buildings, and get alongside people, as Roxburgh puts it, ‘in our towns and cities, in homes, around tables, in the fields at work, in the meeting places of the everyday life of ordinary people'.
"At all levels, and not least in our upper echelons, we should be ready to take risks to do what is right.
"We must be eager to discern the new imagination into which the Spirit is calling us, and in our neighbourhoods to proclaim the Good News of God's Kingdom of justice and love."
Lord Wallace was the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats from 1992-2005 and served as Deputy First Minister in the Scottish Executive from 1999-2005.
He was acting First Minister following the death of Donald Dewar in 2000 and the resignation of Henry McLeish in 2001.
Lord Wallace took up his seat in the House of Lords in 2007 and served as the Advocate General for Scotland in the coalition UK Government 2010-15.
