What is in Kelvin's Head?

Lord Carey is wrong (and not for the first time)

12/07/2014

The ability of Lord Carey to dominate the headlines during the synod of the Church of England is something that is a wonder of modern ecclesiastical communications. If I were working in the communications machine of the C of E, I’d despair of the former archbishop’s ability to step into the limelight just when one would be trying to get some kind of coherent message across.

Lord Carey makes me feel sympathy for the Church of England, its synod and its communication team. Such is his impact. He is not to be underestimated.

So, what are we to make of his statement that he is now in favour of Assisted Suicide, having been against it previously?

I’ve not written much about this topic. It is a sensitive one and one which divides people in unpredictable ways. Working in the church, you kind of get used to the way we divide on many issues. (Those who are most antagonistic to women clergy are often the most antagonistic to gay men living lives of openness etc). However in this case, I think that we divide differently and unpredictably.

I’m not persuaded by Lord Carey’s argument and don’t favour any change to the law.

I’m familiar with the argument that we must do all we can to eliminate suffering and that sometimes life has just become intolerable. I have every sympathy with those who have seen someone die in pain and distress and would do anything to have made it easier. Of course I would.

But I am also aware that people don’t die in a neat predictable way. Nor do they die isolated from the values and needs of those who are left behind. The relationship between those whose life is coming to an end is inevitably bound up with the lives of those who seek to care for them and those who perhaps should care for them but who don’t find themselves able to do so.

Offering the choice to die inevitably puts new burdens on those who are dying as well as on those who are around them. I’m unpersuaded at this time that it is in the best interests of society as a whole for the moral right of one individual within that complex of relationships to automatically trump every other consideration.

Now that’s a hard position for me to take because of two things. Firstly, I believe that we should seek to relieve suffering and act to reduce pain. I don’t believe that there is anything good about pain and unlike many religious people I think that it has no redemptive quality at all. Secondly because I think we need to give as much autonomy to the individual as we can.

How can I come to the view that I do then that Lord Carey is wrong?

Well, it isn’t just the dying person who suffers pain at the time of a death. Nor is all pain caused by purely physical causes. I’m simply unpersuaded on pragmatic grounds that allowing Assisted Suicide will lead to an overall reduction in pain to humanity. Secondly, I don’t believe that a patient has absolute autonomy if there is an economic or emotional factor in their dying that can benefit others. When people die these things are all around.

My objection to Assisted Suicide is not a particularly religious one. At least I don’t think so.

The only religious reason that I can think of which supports my position is that I think it is incumbent on the Christian to care for the vulnerable. The dying are incredibly vulnerable. They are vulnerable to those who would like them to get on with it. Those can be relatives but equally they can be doctors and health service managers too.

I can’t see any protections that could remove that vulnerability.

The reality is, not everyone dies in a middle class way with articulate, caring people around them who stand to gain nothing from their death.

For these practical, emotional and probably inconsistent reasons, I can’t support a change in the law.

Though I know many good people who will agree with him, I have to admit that, not for the first time, I think Lord Carey is wrong.

assisted suicide

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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