• Predictions for 2022

    1. Boris Johnson will be replaced with a Prime Minister who is more competent, more right wing and more difficult to beat.
    2. A good year for Michael Gove (who is almost invisible at the moment).
    3. Church of Scotland General Assembly votes to allow same-sex couples to be married in church. More significantly, almost no-one leaves in a huff.
    4. No progress for those seeking marriage equality in the Church of England.
    5. US Republican Party do well at the November midterms.
    6. Midnight Mass will happen at St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow – some people will still be wearing masks but it won’t be mandatory.
    7. Lots of people discover that cryptocurrency is not the sure thing that they thought. (Losses will disproportionately affect young people).
    8. Nicola Sturgeon will be forced to announce a proposed date for an Independence Referendum against her better judgement.
    9. Lambeth Conference will take place but some people forced to participate virtually due to continued pandemic in developing world. (No new sanctions against pro-gay provinces).
    10. Working from home/hybrid working becomes normalised for big companies. Consequent increase in ransomware demands.

4 responses to “tae see oorsels as ithers see us”

  1. Rev Ruth Avatar

    My children just don’t understand it. Nor do they understand why I stay.

  2. kelvin Avatar

    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.

  3. Tim Avatar

    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.

  4. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    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!!

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