What is in Kelvin's Head?

Scottish Episcopalians Do It Together

11/06/2016

One of the things that I’ve been saying for a while is that the Scottish Episcopal Church is developing some answers for how Christians should deal with questions about human sexuality that caused so much trouble throughout the world.

Yesterday we saw some of that at work in the General Synod meeting in Edinburgh. When it came to the debate, we had something which drew us together rather than drew us apart.

Although there were just a few unpleasant and frankly hurtful anti-gay things said in the debate, almost all of it was positive. There are people who couldn’t vote for the changes that we are hoping to make but the dominant mood from most of them was that the church had worked to ensure that everyone has a place that they can be in with integrity.

The key to all this is what emerged at last year’s synod – that the time has come for us to stop forcing one another to sign up to statements about marriage that we simply don’t all agree with.

The theological and ecclesiastical reality is that we are a church that doesn’t have one defined view on a great many things. We don’t all have the same view about baptismal regeneration, salvation or the ethics of nuclear weapons. We are not a church which has a single view about sexuality which everyone is going to have to sign up to or be threatened with having to leave the church. That just isn’t who we are.

Technically, we are defining ourselves very firmly as a church which is not confessional in nature. This shouldn’t particularly surprise us but it is important that we know what we are. There are theological bonds that bind us and bonds of affection too. But we are not united around one view of human sexuality.

How could it be godly to force fellow Christians to say things they don’t believe?

How can any church think that a single view about sex will unite them?

I’ve always said that the only potential for unity lies not with sex nor bishops but with Christ. It is Christ who calls us together in the Scottish Episcopal Church; calls us together and calls us together to offer what we know about the love of God to Scotland. That is a unity worth the struggle. The fantasy that a single view about sexuality can hold a church together is busted.

The most striking thing yesterday was the generosity of those who can’t affirm this. The strong, dominant message that they gave to synod is that they can’t affirm this but that they have a space to exist within the Scottish Episcopal Church. Bob Gillies, the Bishop of Aberdeen (and the person who as a rector put me into training to be a priest) showed his own leadership in giving interviews to the press which generously noted that though he disagrees with the premise that we move to a position where gay couples might be married in church, he recognises how much has been done to keep us together.

Let the Anglican (and wider Christian) world know this – one of the solutions is to stop bullying one another into trying to say the same thing. Jesus was no bully and the apostles were always diverse. What we are doing in Scotland is thoughtful, biblical and not without its costs for us all.

There are compromises here too. This isn’t quite how I would have done things. However, I recognise that this is the best chance we have to hang together.

Yesterday I said in the debate that I wished that the BBC were turning up to report the things we had to say about refugees, the living wage and poverty or even our aspirations in mission to the people of Scotland. Instead, the media turns up because it seems like Christians are arguing about sex yet again.

If next year’s synod affirms what we did yesterday then we’ll put a stop in Scotland to sexuality being the thing that Episcopalians talk about endlessly. It is time to move on. It is time, as we discovered yesterday, to move on together.

When the vote came, I genuinely didn’t know whether the position I was supporting had succeeded or not. We needed a simple majority in each house of synod to keep this alive and then faced the prospect of trying to work towards a 2/3rds majority next year. Many said before the vote that they were unsure we would ever get that 2/3rds majority.

In the event, we had the 2/3rds majority in each house yesterday. We still have to discuss it in dioceses and have another vote next year to confirm it. But we know know that the required majority can be achieved and has been achieved because of the work done to make sure that there’s space for all who love God in the Scottish Episcopal Church, regardless of how they respond to the reality of marriage that is open to same sex couples.

When it comes to responding to questions of human sexuality, Scottish Episcopalians are doing something new.

Scottish Episcopalians are doing it together.

19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

chris

27/11/2010

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.

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Rosemary Hannah

27/11/2010

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…..

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Scottish Roundup

28/11/2010

[…] 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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Elizabeth

02/12/2010

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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Rosemary Hannah

03/12/2010

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

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Revd Ross Kennedy

04/12/2010

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.

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ryan

04/12/2010

>>>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.

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David McCarthy

06/12/2010

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!

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