What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Antisemitism Notice

25/03/2026

Someone asked me to share the note that we put in our service sheets in St Mary’s about antisemitism. This has evolved over the last few years but the statement below is what it looks like at the moment. We’ve also changed the pattern of readings we use at St Mary’s. In particular, we no longer read the whole of the Passion According to John on Good Friday, preferring to intersperse some passages from it with others from scripture. We are also no longer singing the Reproaches as part of the Good Friday liturgies and are still looking for an alternative text.

Once I would have thought that these things didn’t matter. Right now I think they matter very much.

A Note on Holy Week

During Holy Week, there will be readings from the Passion narratives from the gospels, as has been the custom for Christians throughout the centuries. These texts need to be read carefully and thoughtfully. The term ‘the Jews’ in the Passion readings applies to particular individuals and not to the whole Jewish people.

There is some debate amongst scholars as to how the words which have been translated as “the Jews” should now be translated. Some would translate them as “the Judeans”. Others would retain the traditional reading whilst acknowledging the harm that has been caused by the ways in which these words have been used.

Whichever translation is used for individual words in the Passion Reading, Christians need to be aware that Holy Week has historically been a time of increased antisemitism and of antagonism and violence towards Jewish people. This is a matter of repentance for Christians.

References in the scriptures and in the hymns and prayers to those who accused Christ or killed Christ are references to historical figures. These people do not represent the Jewish people or Judaism.

At a time of increased antisemitism in the world, some verses in the Scriptures may be better dealt with in thoughtful study and reflection rather than the drama of public liturgy.

Members of the Christian community are invited during this week to think of the times when we have turned against Christ and to reflect on the possibility that had we been present at the time, that perhaps we would have found ourselves to be amongst those who called for him to be crucified.

antisemitism, Holy Week

18 responses to “Twenty Years On”

Sarah

02/10/2009

The time has passed in a blinking of an eye and yet….
Special time, special place, special people.

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Rosemary Hannah

02/10/2009

I met one of my best friends there 37 years ago when we were both bejantines. She happens to be spending this week with me. She is a Rev. Dr these days – I never even made it to the coveted blue scarf. Heigh ho.

Not one female member of staff in my day at all. They used to say ‘how nice to have the ladies with us’ -some of them – while I ground my teeth.

I think there is more to it that ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ – in that openmindedness is not prescriptive of either. It is the way you think not your conclusions, as a brief study of a certain kind of library shelf will reveal. There, Bauckham is no more welcome than Hampson.

From my own experiences of students, I would say that (alas) even very conservative Biblical studies still come as an almighty shock to very many.

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Steven McQuitty

03/10/2009

What about the Church of England colleges, like Ripon, Ridley Hall, Westcott etc…?

Does anyone have any inside knowledge?

By the way I have jumped ships and become an Anglican Christian as opposed to a Presbyterian Christian…just started attending my local Church of Ireland parish church, which happens to be Bishop David’s last parish!

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MadPriest

03/10/2009

In England, in order to save money, the dioceses are insisting that ordinands are trained on part-time local courses. This means that they do not have the choice of traditions but have to study under the ethos of the local scheme. Unfortunately, as is the way of things nowadays, these local courses are dominated by Fulcrum type evangelicals.

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kelvin

03/10/2009

Oh, don’t get me started on training ordinands.

I don’t know anything much about the C of E colleges. I was briefly accepted to study at one of them (known as one of the two bishop factories), when the principal of TISEC decided that she didn’t want to teach me. I visited it once and decided that all the students were frightened of the principal there. I wasn’t convinced that traditional seminary based teaching was any better than the pickled seminary that TISEC had become.

We always trained together in Scotland, Madpriest. The idea of training based on churchpersonship seems rather odd.

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fr dougal

03/10/2009

Well, the old Coates Hall was supposed to be a “non-party” theological college, but a friend of mine came to study there as an evangelical ordinand and pointed out that it actually was distinctly Catholic in ethos. It might be more accurate to say that in Scotland the training reflects the ethos of the Province – which means it is catholic in ecclesial outlook rather than evangelical.

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David | Dah•veed

03/10/2009

I went to graduate seminary in the USA after completing a five year Licenciatura in Human Behavior (psych & soc) in Mexico. The accrediting agency for schools of theology is joint for the US & Canada, so I assume most schools in Canada are very similar to the US.

I started at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. I finished at Northwest Theological Union, Seattle, WA. I did one summer stint at Vancouver School of Theology, Vancouver, BC, sitting at the feet of the Rt. Revd. John Shelby Spong. (I drank all of my Kool Aid, thank you very much!)

In the US & Canada it seems that accredited seminaries fall into two basic categories. The first is a “conservative” seminary with a statement of faith set in stone that a student must subscribe to at some point in order to be allowed to continue their education at that institution. The curriculum then consists of spoon feeding that prescribed belief system into the students so that they might spew it back on exams.

The second is a “liberal seminary” which has no proscribed beliefs per se and has a curriculum which equips the students to do theology, and leaves what they believe to them to work out. The professors will grade you on your proficiency of using theological methodology and may critique you on how you arrived at your stated conclusions.

The three seminaries with which I was involved were in the second category. I hear Perkins has a few more evangelically minded professors than when I was there. NTU failed as I and my same year classmates completed our courses and finished our exams. My degree was a four year ThM. We never got our degrees, we cannot get transcripts, but they cashed all of our checks!

Which has something to do with why I am a psychologist and not a priest.

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Robin

14/10/2009

> It was whilst I was there that I joined the Episcopal Church and became an Anglican

It was excellent that you joined the Episcopal Church, but why on earth did you become an Anglican? I was one for three years, when I lived in Cambridge in the 1970s, but I’m glad to say it did me no permanent damage.

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