What is in Kelvin's Head?

Women Only Train Carriages and All Women Shortlists

26/08/2015

Here’s the thing – I’ve actually been on a women only train carriage.

Just before being ordained I won a scholarship to travel to an orthodox country and went to Egypt to meet the Coptic Church. Actually, the truth is, I chose Egypt because I needed to come up with such a glittering application for the scholarship in order to win it and get some time away from my ordination training in Edinburgh. In the end, I discovered that the scholarship had only one applicant and that I could have won it and had a lovely time skipping around Greek islands instead of going to the Egyptian desert which was a much more tricky trip. However, the nature of tricky trips in countries like Egypt is that they are character forming and no mistake.

Mistake is very much what I accomplished when trying to take a ride on Cairo’s metro system however. I ran down the platform to catch a train that was just about to leave and jumped on just in time. Just in time to see about 100 female eyes swivel in my direction as the doors closed behind me and I realised that I was on a women only carriage. (The last carriage on the train was designated for women and children).

I’ll be honest and say that I’m quite enjoying Jeremy Corbyn’s ability to think outside the box. He said today he would be interested to hear what people (particularly women) thought about women only carriages as a way to safer travel.

I’m against the idea myself. I can understand anyone wanting to be able to travel in greater safety than they may feel they can currently travel. However, I think that women only carriages are the thin end of a rather destructive wedge. I can’t see that it is good for society to take policy decisions that are predicated on the idea that men are beasts and can’t help themselves. Zero tolerance to violence must be the answer I think, not purdah. The argument for women only carriages is not far from an argument for women wearing burqas. And yes, I’m aware of feminist Muslims feeling empowered by shrouding themselves from the gaze of men but no, I’m not convinced that’s a balanced, proportional or even particularly effective way of challenging sexism and male violence.

Interestingly, whilst the women only train carriages idea has caught the public imagination, I’ve become aware that a political party that I once was a candidate for is debating the introduction of women only shortlists again. And again, I’m not in favour. It seems to me that the idea that you can challenge the sexism that leads to women not being elected for things by introducing sexism against men is daft. However, it isn’t only daft, it is unlikely to succeed. And I think that because, unlike quite a lot of people in the Lib Dems these days, I’m a liberal. That means I believe in tackling root causes. The root cause of women not being elected is sexism within political parties and within society. I don’t buy the idea that sexism would disappear all of a sudden with a few more women leaders. I think that’s patronising in a number of directions. People who can’t sort out sexism in their own political party should not in my opinion be given a share in running the country. All women shortlists are not the answer to sexism. Challenging sexism is the answer to sexism. It isn’t easy but fights worth winning never are.

Incidently, I’m opposed to gay only shortlists and black and ethnic minority only shortlists too even though I often argue in favour of greater representation and visibility in both areas than we have seen hitherto.

From time to time people have a go at me about why we’ve not got any women bishops here in Scotland. They changed the rules in England and got women as bishops very quickly. We changed the rules ages ago and haven’t got one.

My answer is always the same. Which of our current bishops do my interlocutors think should be bumped off and which women do they think would be automatically elected in their place? We’ve got no vacancies for any new bishops at the moment and haven’t had many elections in recent years. There’s only been one election in which there was a female candidate and the electors chose a different candidate anyway – my current bishop. I was there at that election and don’t believe gender played any strong part in the selection. Most of the electors were bewildered that the world’s press came and camped on the cathedral doorstep and befuddled when they were told that it was because one of the candidates was female. “Really? Really?” was the common cry as people came in to vote pushing past the press ~~people~~men.

I’m often surprised that my church world is more diverse than other worlds I encounter. My congregation looks and feels a good deal more diverse than the people I encounter at the opera or theatre. It is also more diverse than the recent cohort of leaders in training that I met on Common Purpose.

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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