What is in Kelvin's Head?

The morning after the day before

19/09/2014

Yesterday was an extraordinary day in Scotland. I don’t think that any of us really knew how tense it was all going to get until the day itself.

There is much to celebrate in the turn-out, which was phenomenal. In recent weeks, people have engaged in a political process in ways I’ve never seen before and which to be honest I couldn’t have foreseen.

Last night I tweeted that I was hoping for a No vote but that if it was a Yes then I hoped that the Yes would be overwhelming. In the end the vote was a slightly stronger No than most people seemed to think possible at the end. However, the truth is, no-one that I spoke to yesterday during the polling was prepared even to guess. We simply didn’t know what the outcome would be.

I have to say that though I was clear that I was hoping for a no vote, there has been much that has impressed me in the Yes campaign. Much of that campaign was positive and throughout the campaign it did indeed seem as though the momentum lay there.

I’ve been consistently unimpressed by the Better Together campaign. It was negative and miserable throughout. It never represented what I felt at all. I was far more impressed with the campaign run by those with whom I disagreed on the independence question itself.

The Yes campaign won the social media battle hands down but not the wider argument. And I think the reality is that Independence has been decided for a generation. This was the time for that change if it was ever going to happen – an ineffective Labour party in Scotland, a hated coalition of Liberal Democrats and Tories in government, charismatic and hopeful leadership on the Yes side and the most powerful street campaigning I’ve ever seen were all things that seemed to make the case for change more powerful.

Those of us in Scotland have decided that we don’t want to leave the United Kingdom. However let the message ring out that no-one who voted yesterday wants to live in Foodbank Britain.

I found listening to those who disagreed with me on the Independence Question that I very often agreed with them on their motivation for seeking significant change.

I remain convinced that the only solution to the West Lothian Question that will be stable is major constitutional change in a federal direction. I’m not satisfied by the idea that Westminster can continue as usual but with Scottish MPs just not voting on matters that affect England only. I want to see an English Parliament. I want to see major reform of the House of Lords. I want to see more devolution towards local government. I want to see fairer (and slightly higher) taxation, particularly a higher council tax to pay for better local services decided on by local people.

We have disagreed about how to achieve change but there are values that have come to the fore, largely through the incredible campaign that the Yes side have fought that we can unite around. I have many friends who will be disappointed, hugely disappointed today. However there is an enormous amount in which they can be very proud. An outstanding turnout, a campaign that brought social justice right to the fore, change being talked about by everyone in politics and political engagement across the board from people who have never cared or voted before. These things have changed Scotland for the better and when the dust settles we will see that things can never be the same again.

One of the members of my own congregation who is one of the strongest supporters of the Yes campaign I know said to me yesterday, “Even if it is No, Yes has won”. He meant, I think that the positivity of the Yes campaign can’t be killed off and that constitutional change is coming anyway. I know that he and many others will be disappointed by the actual result. However, I agreed with him yesterday and I agree with him today.

#indyref, independence, Scotland

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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