What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Scottish Episcopal Church and the upcoming Primates’ Meeting

    There’s been a little flurry of articles in the press this week about the Scottish Episcopal Church.

    “SANCTIONS LOOM FOR SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL CHURCH’S PRO-GAY MARRIAGE VOTE”

    “SCOTS ‘TO FACE CONSEQUENCES’ OVER GAY MARRIAGE”

    “GLOBAL ANGLICAN CHURCH LEADERS CONDEMN SCOTLAND FOR ALLOWING SAME-SEX WEDDINGS”

    And so on.

    The only awkward thing about all these articles is that the Primates’ Meeting hasn’t happened yet. No-one has condemned anything and no-one really knows what is going to happen.

    This press interest seems to have started in London in the middle of the week when someone gave a briefing to the likes of the BBC, the Telegraph and the Guardian. All three had identical stories which didn’t reference anyone in Scotland at all. It isn’t rocket science to come to the conclusion that someone in either Lambeth Palace or the Anglican Communion Office was briefing journalists against the Scottish Episcopal Church.

    Now, the thing about this is, as our American Episcopalian friends would no-doubt testify strongly, that there are some things which put the Anglican Communion at serious risk. Off the record media briefings against churches in the Communion put the Communion at far, far more risk than any number of weddings of same-sex couples.

    After all, Justin Welby’s own authority is undermined – seriously undermined, if people coming together can’t have any sense of confidence in those who work in Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion Office. Trust has been undermined this week and the Archbishop has the capacity either to regain it or undermine it further.

    Once that is done, the serious business of listening to one another should begin.

    For that is the point of the Primates’ Meeting – listening, not disciplining. When people talk about the Primates issuing sanctions, they have forgotten that the meeting is not a disciplinary body but is there to allow the Primates to listen to one another. The Primates have scarcely any power to discipline in any case. What can they do? There is no Canon Law that holds the communion together. Nor is there any legal mechanism that the Primates could take to chuck any of the churches out of the Communion. The Anglican Consultative Council is the only one of the fragile so-called Instruments of Communion which has a constitution and the constitution is there to hold people together not to break them apart. (And it is also regulated by English charity law and no-one wants the ACC to lose its charitable status because the Primates make an unlawful bid for power over an English charity that they are not the trustees of).

    The truth is, no-one knows at this stage what the Primates will say or do. At least 16 of them are new faces who have never been there before.

    One of them is the Most Rev Mark Strange, our own Primus. Mark will be able to speak directly about what has happened in Scotland. (He’s taking time to pray this week to prepare for the meeting and the Scottish Episcopal Church is praying with him).

    The truth is, what has happened in Scotland is a model for how the Anglican Communion can move forward and move beyond the constant squabbles about human sexuality. Here in Scotland we’ve made conscience the thing that we argued about rather than what people get up to in bed. We’ve recognised that Episcopalians take different views about same-sex relationships and we have honoured all of them. We’ve said that conscience has to be respected.

    Now the conscience thing is important to understand – for we have not simply made provision for the consciences of those who object to same-sex relationships being respected. We’ve also said that conscience clauses apply equally to those who do, sincerely and truthfully believe that God wishes to bless those same-sex couples who wish to be married in church. Those of us who believe in offering marriage to all couples have consciences too.

    We’ve tried to make it so that individual consciences are respected. It was the only possible way we could hang together. Ultimately, that is the only way that the Communion can hang together too.

    We have something to witness to that is good and godly and I’ve no doubt that Bishop Mark will be looking forward to sharing the good things that have happened in Scotland as we have discussed, wrestled, voted and prayed this through. Remember this – the Scottish Episcopal Church decided to stay together over same-sex nuptials and the Communion could decide to do exactly the same.

    For myself, as someone who has been part of this argument for longer than I can remember, I would want to say to those interested enough to listen to what has been going on in Scotland, “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

    What we are talking about are the best days of people’s lives. What we are talking about are wedding ceremonies that are full of love and grace and compassion and joy. What we are talking about is the sheer joy of welcoming diversity and setting our General Synod free from these squabbles to concentrate on the core task for our church of preaching the love of God to Scotland.

    For the love of God is what we are about. The gospel is preached here. God’s grace is known here. And God’s love is shared here. And all this as much during same-sex weddings as any other time. We’ve seen it. We witness to it.

    And nothing can separate us from the love of God. After all, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And as it happens, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor sanctions, nor off the record media briefings, nor primates, nor consequences, nor GAFCON, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

  1. chris Avatar
    chris

    Well said, Rosemary. As for this business of everyone’s having to remain quiet and reasonable while unspeakable things are spoken … I’m sorry. I have this whined at me more times than I can count, so that my own calm goes out the window and I want to rage, rage, and the advocates of calm sit in their dispassionate heaven and think all will be well if people just shut up for another generation. It’s an affront to any society that this discrimination is still allowed to be seen as anything other than monstrous, and we need to raise a storm of protest that will make this obvious to even the most chilly political mind.

    Reply
  2. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    For the comfort of Kelvin, however, let me add this. The people who promote discrimination against queer folk very frequently neither want them dead not yet unborn. What they actually (though mistakenly) believe, is that gay people would be just the same if they were straight. That the person would be just the same, because who you desire is some kind of bolt-on accessory which you can pick from the shelf and have or not have, like adding an MP3 player to your car, or just having a tape deck. Now I know that is a terrible misunderstanding, but it is not actually quite as terrible as wishing that the essence of people was somehow different.

    FWIW I do remember teaching a session on this to students, having asked them to imagine what people 100 years from now would think of our attitudes, and having one student tell me that in 50 years all gay people would be ‘cured’, and my suppressing my fury then and trying to explain why I did not want my friends and relatives ‘cured’ – and all the emotion catching up with me in my room at midnight, resulting in tears and all-but lying on the floor banging my heels and screaming. I suppose it was less actionable than banging a student’s head off the wall…..

    Reply
  3. Scottish Roundup

    […] debates at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod under the stark title, Preferring me dead. More jauntily, the damsel of the dancing scones writes about blogging’s transformative […]

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  4. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    I wanted to post on this when I first read it (via Google Reader) but for some reason the internets wouldn’t let me on the site.

    It’s hard to read this difficult words, but I think it’s very important that they’re said. I have only the smallest glimmerings of imagining how difficult it must be to be be a gay or lesbian priest now and fear that all too often I am prone to ignore the wider actions of the Anglican Communion because I’ve found it too painful and aggravating. But ignoring it is my privilege and no good in the long run.
    And on this issue, as on others, I find it unhelpful to advocate a quite and slow approach. Movement is not always uni-directional and I agree with Kelvin that we seem to be moving backwards, at least, as far as the SEC College of Bishops and the Anglican Communion leadership is concerned. The softly, softly approach is not justice and is not by any stretch of the imagination the only means by which justice is reached. On this issue, as on others, the question is, if not now, when?

    And I really, really dislike gay and lesbian Anglicans being sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the ++Rowan. This is what happened in The Episcopal Church across the pond in 2006 and thank God General Convention saw fit to reverse the decision in 2009. Loyalty tests of such kind are horrendous!

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  5. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    And bluntly the only loyalty worth giving is loyalty to Truth and God.

    Reply
  6. Revd Ross Kennedy Avatar
    Revd Ross Kennedy

    I didn’t listen or read about anything voted on at the recent C of E Synod so can’t comment.

    But frrankly I’m bored with all the obsession with sexuality – I just wish we could obey our Lord’s command to love one another.
    But let me say this to lFr Kelvin, I for one certainly don’t want you dead. Life would be so dull without you – I would miss your blog and your excellent sermons ( which I must confess I sometimes plagiarise – bless me Father for I have sinned….) Don’t agree with much of what you say on sexual ethics but accept without question your devotion to our Lord and your ministry at St Mary’s.

    Prejudice and intolerance certainly smother any real opportunity for real debate. However, I have experienced this as much from those on the theological left (including correspondents to this site) as well as those on the theological right.

    The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

    I’ve also heard many liberals express a definite wish for all those who dare to oppose the consecration of women to the Episcopacy to get out of the Church… or maybe even to drop dead.

    The fact is that lots of people experience prejudice for a variety of reasons – a friend of mine who trained as a male nurse in the 1960s experienced a great deal of prejudice from his female superiors and as a result an absolute block to any promotion.

    Others are discriminated against because they are too short or too tall or too fat , or not intelligent enough or didn’t attend the right university and even for daring to choose to be a ‘closet gay’!

    There is a whole suffering world out there to which we are called upon to bring hope and help in the name of Jesus. So let’s stop focusing on our own personal problems and obsessions and get on with preaching the Good News.

    Reply
  7. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    >>>The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

    If +Richard was talking about Forward in Lace types then he might have had a point ;-).

    More seriously: can you cite any ‘liberal’ church that is suggesting denying the sacraments to conservatives? Or pining for an age when violence and discrimination against evangelicals was accepted as a good? These days, people have less tolerance for ‘I’m not racist,but…’ or ‘I don’t *hate* Jews, but….” or “the sexes are equal, but” rhetoric but anti-gay discrimination on religious grounds often goes unchallenged. So while it is of course important to challenge all forms of prejudice, there are no major ‘Christian’ Institute type lobbies endeavouring to defend and legitimise persecution of the fat, tall,or short.

    Reply
  8. David McCarthy Avatar
    David McCarthy

    Oh, I know that in the secret halls of the likes of Facebook, there are many who feel free to exhibit prejudice against churches and individuals who don’t fit the bill. That reveals what is truly in the hearts of people. I’d hope that no-one would permit such diatribe and speak out against it, just as I have done to those on ‘the right’ who speak and behave badly.

    As for you, dear Kelvin, there are many who disagree with you, but in our wee bit of the Church, I seriously doubt if there is anyone who would “prefer you dead”. You are a gifted minister – we’d miss you!

    Reply

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