What is in Kelvin's Head?

Last Year’s Predictions

31/12/2015

Each year I try to make some predictions at New Year. And each year I take a look back on Hogmanay to see how I did.

Here’s the rundown of how I did last year.

1 Those who voted YES in the Scottish Referendum will continue to behave as though they won. This may be unhelpful.
2 Those who voted NO in the Scottish Referendum will continue to behave as thought he referendum never happened. This may be unhelpful.

Well, I think I got these both right. I don’t see much sign that we’ve moved on from the referendum. Alan McManus’s magazine article was a breath of fresh air, but a rare one.

3 There will, I fear, be a Tory Prime Minister at the end of 2015.

Bang on with this one.

4 The Liberal Democrats will retain 10 – 14 seats in the House of Commons.

Well, I got the detail wrong – the Lib Dems did even worse in the General Election. When I made this prediction, most people were predicting a Lib Dem presence of 30 – 36, I think. My prediction of electoral catastrophe was just not taken seriously by those whom I know who should have taken it most seriously. I’m claiming this as a very near miss.

5 Nick Clegg will lose his seat and be Lord Clegg by the end of the year.

That’s a miss. Nick Clegg kept his seat if not his party.

6 The Labour Party will not be led by a Milliband by the end of the year.

Well I didn’t see Jeremy Corbyn coming but it was clear to me that Ed Milliband wasn’t going anywhere fast. Remember though that right up until the General Election, most of the polls predicted a hung parliament and uncertainty about who would be the PM.

7 The Church of Scotland will begin a new procedure under the barrier act to determine whether to accept ministers in same-sex partnerships who are married (ie not merely in Civil Partnerships).

Got this one bang on. Presbyteries have just voted by a narrow majority to send this back to the General Assembly for decision in May.

8 There will be legal victories for those seeking to extend Civil Partnerships to straight couples.

Well, we’ve not see as many legal victories as I expected. However, we’ve got a rather uncomfortable consultation just completed in Scotland in which the Scottish Government announced before consulting, that it didn’t want to do what a lot of people want them to do. I hope it sticks to its guns though and refuses to allow straight couples (or indeed future gay couples) Civil Partnerships.

9 Elizabeth Warren will become a household name.

Well, this one didn’t really come to pass. My fantasy of a dream Hilary/Elizabeth ticket doesn’t look like becoming a reality either.

10 (Some) straight liberals will lead the charge (such as it is) for (something less than) LGBT equality, (sometimes). Believe it or not, I’m excited by this and it is an improvement. [Remember that in 2011 I predicted that “No straight liberal in the church will feel the need to sacrifice anything at all for the gay friends they purport to support.” Things are changing a bit].

I’m claiming this one as a win. I could feel it all around me at Greenbelt but I’ve felt it in other places too. Increasingly, the things I’ve been fighting for are becoming mainstream. Deo Gratias.

11 Advances in e-learning in churches.

This one is a miss. I’ve dabbled a bit myself but there’s no real sign of denominations doing what they need to do if they are going to teach their people any better in the future than they have done in the past.

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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