Here’s a video of a conversation I had with one of the members of St Mary’s last Sunday. Andy Winter was chatting to me about the way treatment and perception of HIV has changed over the years. We talked about new PrEP medicines, reducing stigma and the extraordinary news that the epidemic could be ended by 2030.
Take a look here:
My children just don’t understand it. Nor do they understand why I stay.
I suspect that the children of very many Christians in the UK these days don’t understand and don’t stay. We can see that laid out for us in page after page of diocesan and provincial statistics.
And still we are expected to cheer on Archbishops who propose amendements which would institutionalise treating women as having less authority than men and also Bishops who tell us that banning gay people from leadership roles is good.
In both these cases we are supposed to believe that these actions keep the church together. Meanwhile the children leave bewildered.
Hear what the Spirit says to the children.
What surprises me is that it’s the same term “evangelical” that went from connoting “student-ish” in the 90s to “happy” (reserving outright clappy for those of charismatic designation) to “evangelicals come in Open form too!” now to “traditionalist” in matters of Backwards Beyond Belief(TM).
Now I’m used to the arguments being “our tradition, restated more-so and louder” versus “put the Bible in context” – at least one party talking theologically.
For a fresh thought, is the CoE (in particular, but also the AC in general) a bit preoccupied with not losing any *one* bum-on-its-3-legged-seat? There is a tension in the dynamic that could be resolved well by a large-scale rotation in membership – redefine the denominational lines by issues not history – that leads to a slimy weasely position of “I sort of want to go but don’t have the honesty to get on with it so I’ll sit around being a thorn in the canonical flesh and blame the church for trying to push me out”.
Social evolution is too slow; that is where injustice lies.
I often ask me why I stay, and I’m in my late fifties. In the end, it is because I feel cheated without other people to worship with, and, well, to be a kind of thorn in the canonical flesh for the conservatives!!
The Scottish Episcopal Church has been well blessed in recent years by a close association with the Faith in Older People Project (www.faithinolderpeople.org.uk) which works to celebrate the lives of older people and develop best practise in understanding and meeting the spiritual needs of older people and their families. It seems, upon reading this book,…
Am absolutely delighted to have been included in the Independent on Sunday’s Pink List of the LGBT great and the good. It is quite a list. Pity there isn’t a party to get everyone on it together. It would be good to see more clerics on the list (there are none except Lionel Blue, I…
Just to say that I’m away from work on annual leave for a week or so. I’m not going far, but I’m not going to St Mary’s. The Vice Provost, Cedric Blakey is in charge whilst I’m not around. Usual rules apply to this blog whilst I am resting heart and mind and soul. Comment…
People of Earth. Now that you have elected me to the honoured position of Benevolent Dictator for Life, there are several rules which I must make clear. Exclamation marks shall be known forever as exclamation marks and not exclamation points. (Computer scientists are except from the first part of this regulation and may continue to…
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