What is in Kelvin's Head?

Predictions 2022 – How did I do?

31/12/2022

Time to see how I did with my predictions at the start of the year.

Boris Johnson will be replaced with a Prime Minister who is more competent, more right wing and more difficult to beat.

Well, if we skip lightly over the horror of Liz Truss’s premiership, I’m going to claim this one as fulfilled. Left and right designations in politics mean less as the years go on. Prediction fulfilled.

A good year for Michael Gove (who is almost invisible at the moment).

I’m claiming this one too. He’s back in government and less invisible. If you don’t agree, you probably don’t read the Daily Telegraph. Prediction fulfilled.

Church of Scotland General Assembly votes to allow same-sex couples to be married in church. More significantly, almost no-one leaves in a huff.

Exactly what happened. Prediction Fulfilled.

No progress for those seeking marriage equality in the Church of England.

Sadly. Prediction Fulfilled

US Republican Party do well at the November midterms.

Gloriously, prediction unfulfilled.

Midnight Mass will happen at St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow – some people will still be wearing masks but it won’t be mandatory.

Yes, I did see a few mask wearers but we were getting back to prepandemic levels of attendence and Midnight Mass was a blast. Prediction fulfilled.

Lots of people discover that cryptocurrency is not the sure thing that they thought. (Losses will disproportionately affect young people).

Oh my, yes. What a mess some people have got themselves into. Prediction fulfilled.

Nicola Sturgeon will be forced to announce a proposed date for an Independence Referendum against her better judgement.

She announed on 23 June 2022 that it would be held on 19 October 2023. (Spoiler alert – it won’t happen on 19 October 2023). Prediction fulfilled.

Lambeth Conference will take place but some people forced to participate virtually due to continued pandemic in developing world. (No new sanctions against pro-gay provinces).

Well it took place but I’m not sure whether or not there were virtual participants. However, there were no new sanctions against pro-gay provinces. Prediction largely fulfilled.

Working from home/hybrid working becomes normalised for big companies. Consequent increase in ransomware demands.

Working from home is certainly still going on and there are many big companies that are planning for it continuing in some form. (Here’s a government report about it). And yes, ransomware has increased. (Here’s a paper on it from the Chartered Institute of IT).

I’m guessing that one or two people might want to argue about whether I got this all as right as I think I did – particularly the first two, but not a bad year overall.

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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