What is in Kelvin's Head?

Reaching the Unconnected

24/10/2015
There’s an interesting report in a local newspaper today here in Glasgow which suggests that half of the households in the city do not have access to the internet. The local library service is trying to give people computing skills and access via community hubs in local libraries.

I’ve long had a concern about a developing digital underclass in society and yet I also lead a congregation which is very much online and which couldn’t really function now without the expectation that nearly everyone involved has access to the internet. That means a wee bit of careful thinking. After all, if we claim to be an inclusive congregation then what does that mean if half the people in the city don’t have access to the primary means of communication that the congregation uses?

Some of my answers to this have changed a little since I first started using the internet in order to be able to reach people.

Here’s a few things I think people in churches need to remember.
- Friends are the best evangelists for new technology (and most other things too). Getting people to buddy up to learn new skills is one of the most effective ways of getting people online.
- Tablets and phones are much easier for some people to get their heads around than sitting at a computer. Some people may not even think they have internet access when it may in fact be sitting in their pocket. For a long time, optimising web-pages for mobile access and visibility on smaller screens didn’t really matter in terms of the reach that a website would have. Now it matters hugely. I think it is more likely that many people will get themselves connected through such devices than by going to sign up for a course at a local library which demands going and sitting at a frightening machine worrying about not being able to type.
- Churches do need to think about the unconnected. Do they need a champion? Do they need a missionary? Will some congregations specialise in reaching the diminishing group of people who remain unconnected?
- There are different types of unconnected people. The church should worry far more about those who are unconnected due to issues of poverty or lack of education than those for whom opting out of the internet age is a preference. There is a huge difference between a late middle aged man who runs a company who has simply relied upon his secretary to do all of this in his working life to someone who simply can’t afford a decent phone contract. Some people genuinely need help in order to get online. Others are choosing to be people who will increasingly matter less in society and who will have particular disadvantages. There is little that we can do but to respect that choice but we should not pander to that choice by devising our communication systems around it. For example, we’ve just started an online magazine and there will be those who want to say to me that we shouldn’t do it that way because of those who are not online. My reply to that is to ask them to show me a church where everyone reads a printed out magazine and then I’ll take what they have to say seriously. Print was never a magic bullet and isn’t now. Some people choose not to read what you have to say no matter how you say it.
- So, it remains my view that the existence of people who can’t access the internet should not prevent churches from using the internet in order to communicate with those who are online. The reality is that vast numbers of people in Scotland don’t read newspapers and have no knowledge of what lies therein. It just means we need to have some consciousness of those who don’t. I’ve come across a number of people who are very willing to buddy up with those who are not online and who are happy to print out snippets for their friends from time to time.
- Remember that digital access is a justice issue that should from time to time be addressed by our Church in Society people. But remember – the primary task is to work for greater access, not to limit the use of the internet because of those who have none. The progressive thing to do is work for digital inclusion not dumb-down or limit effective online ways communicating.
- Think about where the internet is going. Text is still important online but the truth is, video is snapping at its heels. Remember too the ways in which the web is sneaking into the living room. Many of those who are currently unconnected are going to get their first taste of the web through their tv. That means ever increasing use of video and if people want to reach others in the years that are to come then now is the time to brush up on video skills.
digital inclusion, internet

7 responses to “Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind”

BobS

16/03/2026

You lucidly illustrated an example of a family seeking to pressurise someone to influence the process of death. But what was possibly missing was the voice of the person nearing death. Where was their perspective, their reasoning? Assisted Dying starts and driven by the person dying. They are the ones who, with mental capacity, take those steps, if necessary, to expedite death at that final stage. They, together with medical experts, make those decisions.
The examples cited refer to a family desperate for a skiing holiday and your concern of funeral directors making money through direct cremations.
I fully agree with your desire for a better palliative care system. Having witnessed their work it is amazing. But that is another argument. To conflate the two dismisses the voice of those seeking assisted dying.
Your concern over assisted dying seems to be interwoven by a call for improved palliative care and a demise in direct cremations.

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1. Rev Owain Jones
  
  16/03/2026
  
  Respectfully, Bob S, I think you’re overlooking the one thing that struck me very forcefully from this incident. I’ve always felt profoundly uneasy at the likelihood – I’d say ‘moral certainty’ – that the voice of the dying will in some cases be influenced, even swayed, by the dying person’s assumptions, inferences or intuitions (correct or not) about the needs of those closest to them, and even their desires. These desires might not be articulated, or even correctly guessed – but they might, and as soon as the dying person is subject to them, they are, by definition, influenced in their decision. At that point, Assisted Dying can no longer be said “to start and driven by the person dying.” I’ve been there for a long time – but what I suddenly realized reading Kelvin Holdsworth’s post, was that there’s a much darker issue here, and it relates to a fundamental principle to which I’ve always adhered. Please bear with me, and entertain for a moment an analogy which you might consider to be extreme, and which I’d be appalled to hear deployed by the religiously fanatical opponents of Assisted Dying. It’s this. I have always been opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, but very prominent among them is that it takes to an extreme the testing of a fundamental principle of justice (which I know I’m modifyng here to make the analogy a better fit, and of course, you’re free to take issue with that): “It is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent person be punished unjustly.” I’m aware that there’s a very significant separation between that and this, but I don’t believe it amounts to ‘clear blue water’. Let me try and articulate my conviction in a reasonable way, for you to consider, even if you reject it. I think that there’s a huge danger inscribed in legislation which will, of a moral certainty, permit circumstances in which unwilling dying individuals give assent under pressure to the active premature termination of their lives. This holds true even if a hundred times as many individuals assent freely, and even actively seek, such termination. One of the things that always made me uneasy about the Vulcans was the assertion that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. There seems to me to be no way in any legislation to protect the needs and rights of the few in this issue. At the very least, I think that needs to be acknowledged openly by proponents of Assisted Dying. If we’re about to be taken across a Rubicon, I believe that everyone, on both sides of the decision, need to acknowledge that. (Incidentally, I completely agree with Kevin Holdsworth’s horror (I hope I’m expressing that fairly) at ‘Direct Cremations’ and the way they’re advertised. They seem to me to be open profiteering from the death-phobic culture in which we’re immersed. I fear that the impulses behind Assisted Dying as currently advocated may be a good-faith manifestation of the inability of society to look at the full actuality of human mortality and the relationship between life and death. I may be deluding myself, but I think I’d say that even if I were an atheist.
  
  Reply
2. Val Dobson
  
  16/03/2026
  
  You are wrong to connect funeral companies’ promotion of Direct Cremation with the push for assisted dying. Nowadays, many families simply cannot afford a “proper” funeral / cremation, and funeral grants come nowhere to covering the the costs. The funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs.
  
  Reply
  1. Kelvin
    
    16/03/2026
    
    I’m happy to speak out about funerals being too expensive. However, it is manifestly not the case taht funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs. If they did they would promote these as being about price. They don’t – they promote them as being about not causing a fuss, which is the point I’m making here.
    
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Nigel Kenny

16/03/2026

Thank you for your wise and persuasive words – may they influence MSPs to vote against the Bill.

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Chriatine McIntosh

16/03/2026

Thanks for this, Kelvin – I’ve been thinking more about this as contemporaries begin to vanish from this life.

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Helen Leslie

16/03/2026

Thank you Kelvin. I am someone who has spent the majority of my working life caring for people at the end of their lives. You said exactly what I would want to.

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