An anti-religious protest group called for an American youth choir to be banned from coming to Scotland.
The Scottish Secular Society questioned why a group of Evangelical youth from Texas were “even allowed” to enter the UK, on the grounds of their religious beliefs.
The group’s leader hit out at a branch of the Prestonwood Ministries Baptist organisation in Plano, Texas, which carried out a week-long trip to the northern UK last week.
Megan Crawford of the SSS raised the prospect of Evangelical Christians being kept out of the UK ahead of an appearance outside the Waverly Mall shopping centre in Edinburgh.
She told The Herald: “We are very concerned about megachurches who have a growing interest in coming over to Ireland, Scotland and England and pushing their extremely fundamentalist agenda.
“Why are they even allowed here to try to affect our laws and lives?”
The paper also reported that the choral performance (pictured above) went off without a hitch.
It said “they sang, performed and handed out prayer cards” to passing shoppers.
Ominously, the newspaper added that there “was no outward sign” of what the church “really stands for”.
It then outlined church leaders’ opposition to equal marriage legislation and support for Donald Trump.
The report raises the question of how the choir was “pushing their extremely fundamentalist agenda” if it was impossible to discern from anybody watching.
Meanwhile footage posted by the ministry online shows its members undertaking the dangerous and subversive work of collecting litter, painting fences and otherwise helping out in the often-deprived communities they visited.
Calls for banning opinionated Americans are nothing new in the UK.
Earlier this year more than half a million people signed a petition to prevent Donald Trump from entering the UK.
The measure was debated in Parliament, where MPs quickly concluded that he had done nothing to warrant a ban, which would usually be reserved for criminals and hate preachers.