What is in Kelvin's Head?

How not to have a synodical discussion

13/06/2014

This afternoon I’ve been engaged in a discussion at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church about same-sex marriage. At least, that’s what it was supposed to be about. Often in the afternoon it felt like a discussion about how to have a discussion. (All of this was being facilitated by Hugh Donald of A Place for Hope initiative of the Church of Scotland NB correction from earlier text)

We began by someone challenging the process by speaking against the motion to suspend the standing orders and go into a different mode of meeting. That challenge didn’t fly, but a quarter of the synod members didn’t want to go into small groups. That’s quite a high proportion of dissatisfied customers to begin with.

We were then invited to listen to a conversation amongst some people who were part of a previous conversation at Pitlochry that had been limited to invited people only. Already we were into the territory of people feeling excluded from a process – at my table there were two of us who would have liked to have been at Pitlochry but who had found ourselves excluded from it.

The conversation that we were invited to watch went on for a bit and they all agreed that Pitlochry had been wonderful and transformative. (Guess what that feels like if you’ve been excluded!) However it was difficult to hear much about what they had talked about at Pitlochry.

But the worst thing from my point of view is that this conversation that we were invited to witness had no participant who was ordained and gay.

It was the antithesis of the principle that you don’t speak about people without including them in the conversation. There were plenty of ordained people who happen to be gay in the room too – just not invited to be part of that conversation.

Then we went into table groups where we were expected to talk about gay people’s personal lives without having any warning of what the questions would be and without any reference to the fact that straight people have a sexuality too. (The questions very clearly made gay people the problem the church was trying to solve).

For some reason, the people who went to Pitlochry who had a great time there who have come back saying how much wonderful listening was going on are finding it terribly difficult to listen to those who were not there or who have any criticism of the process.

At the end of all this, bumping into some of my gay friends in the room, I saw one brushing back tears (and I knew they were fury tears not just ordinary upset tears), another was still fizzing about the questions and was heading off to have a go at one of the bishops about how manipulative it had been, another with his head in his hands saying “how long can this go on” and another patiently trying to explain to straight liberal so-called allies why being asked to wait another year (yet again) did not feel like a step forward.

Rounding off this session of the Cascade process, the Primus spoke of how well it was being conducted and how well it was going.

He does not walk in my shoes.

Cascade Conversations, gay, LGBT, pisky, Scottish Episcopal Church, synod

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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