What is in Kelvin's Head?

Review of 2013 predictions

31/12/2013

I am wont to make predictions at new year. Here’s how I did last year.

1 – The UK will lose its triple A credit rating.
Got that one right – happened within weeks.

2 – The Scottish Episcopal Church will have poor statistical returns this year prompting very quiet wailing and gnashing of teeth except in Argyll.
Got that one right too – very poor statistical returns, particularly in Aberdeen and Orkney and Brechin. The wailing was all too quiet when we debated the statistics at General Synod though with the Primus seeming to indicate that either they didn’t matter or he didn’t care.

3 – At least one Church of England bishop (and maybe a pair) will be outed. (Only time I’ve retained a prediction from one year to the next).
Not yet. Not yet.

4 – The Scottish Parliament will vote for new legislation allowing gay couples to get married. (But no such weddings this year). The details of the new category of “belief marriages” will be substantially changed and much more heavily regulated than is suggested in the recent consultation response from government.
Basically another hit – Parliament did indeed vote for the new legislation though it isn’t completed yet. No weddings this year. Belief marriage proposals changed a bit, but not very much and there’s going to be a frightening amount of regulation which is not specified in the legislation.

5 – Sadly, I expect renewed campaigning for straight people to be able to enter Civil Partnerships with preparations being made for a legal challenge for 2014.
Yes – though the Scottish Parliament headed off the threat of legal challenge by promising a review. Another hit.

6 – The Coalition will have lower public opinion ratings by end of year due to public concerns as austerity measures bite. It will record one of the lowest public opinion rating of any UK govenment in modern times.
I think I got this wrong. There has certainly been a polarization in how the government is seen but they are holding up surprisingly well in opinion polls. My Liberal Democrat friends will be disappointed to hear that I think that this is because of the wiliness of Tories and not the power of the the Liberals in the coalition.

7 – The Church of Scotland will have a difficult General Assembly, but one characterised by fine speeches. They will approve a report which suggests having a theological study into blessing civil partnerships but not actual marriages of gay people. (This will please no-one who has any opinions about the matter and will thus be regarded as a success by those who don’t).
Well, I wasn’t far off with suggesting that they would not please anyone who has opinions about the matter but they dealt with it by saying that the Church of Scotland doesn’t approve of gay ministers but that local congregations could have them if they really wanted them. It was a foolish compromise that is already unravelling and a warning to us all.

8 – The Church of England will be unable to agree a way forward on opening the Episcopate to Women.
Well they’ve made some progress but they still are not there yet. Until they actually have a vote, I’m claiming this one as a hit.

9 – Justin Welby won’t put a foot wrong.
Well, he’s an impressive mover, far more so that Rowan Williams. I don’t like all he does but he has not come close to making the mistakes that his predecessor made. Appears to be wearing Teflon vestments.

10 – The new Bishop of Durham will come from a relatively small congregation in London.
Wrong – completely wrong.

So how do you think I did?

New Year Predictions

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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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!

Reply
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!

Reply
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?

Reply
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.

Reply