What is in Kelvin's Head?

Christmas in St Mary’s (with a twist at the end)

17/12/2022

Christmas is a time of joy and celebration, and there is perhaps no better place to experience the magic of the season than at St Mary’s Cathedral in the Scottish Episcopal Church. With its stunning architecture and rich history, this beautiful space offers a truly special and meaningful way to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

One of the highlights of a Christmas service at St Mary’s Cathedral is the music. The cathedral’s choir is known for their beautiful voices and their ability to bring the festive carols to life. The church also features a grand organ, which adds a sense of grandeur and majesty to the service. Whether you’re a fan of traditional carols or more modern hymns, you’re sure to be moved by the beautiful music at St Mary’s Cathedral.

Another highlight of a Christmas service at St Mary’s Cathedral is the sense of history and tradition. The cathedral dates back to the 19th century and is known for its stunning Gothic architecture. The service itself is filled with rich traditions, such as the lighting of the Advent wreath and the reading of the Christmas story from the Bible. These traditions help to create a sense of awe and wonder that is so fitting for the holiday season.

But perhaps the most special aspect of a Christmas service at St Mary’s Cathedral is the sense of community and togetherness. As people from all walks of life come together to celebrate the birth of Jesus, there is a feeling of unity and love that is truly special. Whether you’re a lifelong member of the cathedral or a newcomer to the community, you’ll feel welcome and included in the celebration.

In short, Christmas services at St Mary’s Cathedral in the Scottish Episcopal Church are a truly special and meaningful way to celebrate the holiday season. With their beautiful music, rich traditions, and sense of community, these services offer a chance to experience the magic and wonder of Christmas in a truly special and meaningful way.

If you’ve made it through this blog post this far and you have a slight sense that there’s something odd about it the you’d be correct. The post above, not in italics wasn’t written by me. It was written by a machine – specifically the ChatGPT bot that has recently been released to the world. You tell it what you want it to write and it does it.

This one was generated by the prompt, “Write a blog post about how wonderful Christmas services are at St Mary’s Cathedral in the Scottish Episcopal Church”.

Now, it doesn’t sound quite like me and it isn’t the most exciting writing there is. Perhaps it is even slightly stilted. But it is a fairly convincing attempt at the problem I gave it to do.

This technology is going to make all things new. Academia in particular is going to have to change very quickly in the way it assesses students.

This is disruptive technology. It can be used to do funny things – I could just have easily got it to write the above post in the voice of Donald Trump.

Thus: “Let me tell you, folks, this place is amazing. The music is absolutely incredible, with the choir singing all of your favorite carols in the most beautiful way. And the organ! Wow, what a sound. It’s truly something to behold…”

But this isn’t just entertainment. It is something completely and utterly new. Nothing you ever read again comes with a guarantee that it was written by a human being.

The world is changed. As someone once sent with a telegraph key, “What hath God wrought”?

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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