What is in Kelvin's Head?

Coming Out, Coming In, Coming Home

01/02/2013

There’s a new online magazine launched today. It is called Mosaic Scotland, it looks gorgeous and it has an article from me in the first issue. It is classy, sassy and has articles by lots of people I know.

This is what I wrote for it:

There are not that many months that go by without someone asking me why, as a gay man, I choose to work in the church. Now, leaving aside the question of whether any vocation (nurse? teacher? dancer? fool?) is a really a choice, I do know what they mean.

After all, how can a gay man want to work in an institution which, though proclaiming itself to be going heavenward, seems hell-bent on making gay lives a misery?

Of course, life isnâ€™t quite as simple as simple questions seem to suggest. The churches are each themselves a mosaic, a tapestry or a tartan of different colours, moods and temperaments.

Just as you can be fairly sure that not all gay men like Madonna so you can be sure that not all Christians are gay hating protagonists in the culture wars. And then there are those who just love both that Madonna and the Madonna.

Iâ€™m certain about some of the things that I believe about religion but Iâ€™m positively agnostic about others. What about the claim, often made, that gay people are intrinsically spiritual people? I find myself not knowing the answer to that. And yet, the number of LGBT people whom I encounter in faith communities seems to suggest that there might be something in it.

Step by step over the last decades Iâ€™ve seen such people coming together to challenge the status quo from the inside of the religious institutions that they belong to. And in recent months the equal marriage campaign is seeing straight allies from within the churches add their signatures and raise their voices.

They are dearer to me than gold and it is they who convince me that change in the churches is on its way. Some of our straight allies are going through their own coming out process with the pain and worry that coming out seems so often to be associated with. And guess what â€“ congregations are coming out too.

Individual Christians weigh up whether it is worth being out at church and worry they will be badly treated. Similarly, individual congregations are going through agony trying to work out whether to come out to mummy and daddy â€“ the congregational structures whom they want to please but which seem locked into a sexual morality from a generation ago.

Like it or not, religion is not going to disappear overnight. Whilst the dominant discourse of the denominations is against gay rights, all of us are at risk. Whilst churches throw their considerable influence in society against the human rights of LGBT people none of us are safe.

You ask me why I stay? I stay because some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth changing.

And yet it is more than that. I stay because Iâ€™m nourished in a community of faith which includes people who donâ€™t think as I do. They help me recognise what I think is important. They help to make me whole. They make me who I am.

And I stay because Iâ€™m in the joy business. Once youâ€™ve got used to being paid to peddle joy it is hard to lay it aside. Never mind the privilege of being involved in the intimacies of being with people when their lives are falling apart. I never feel greater faith than when I stand at a grave and I marvel daily at the complex, wonderful stories that I hear from people who are working out how to be completely themselves in a world that is weird, odd and wonderful.

I recently went on a sabbatical trip away from the congregation which I lead in Glasgow.

I travelled in Canada and the USA for three months. I discovered three wonderful truths. Firstly that when I tried to discover the most interesting religious congregations to visit I kept getting referred again and again to places which were led by women and gay men. Secondly, I learnt that though church is the most dreadful thing at an institutional level it is also the most incredible network of kindness and goodwill on the planet. And thirdly I discovered the joy of coming home.

I came out in the church. My coming-out-from-the-pulpit story beats most coming out stories at gay dinner parties hands down though it is a story that Iâ€™ll leave for another day. Having come out in the church I also find it is also the place I come home to.
You ask me why I stay?

It is the place which convinces me to the core of my being that I am utterly, passionately, gloriously loved.

Now, head on over and read the rest of the magazine.

clergy, coming out, LGBT, Mosaic Scotland, priest, St Mary’s Cathedral

9 responses to “The Episcopal Way of Death”

Rosemary Hannah

02/11/2017

The greatest privilege I have ever had in the service of the people of the church was to be the person who received the coffin the night before the funeral and led Compline then. The church was on an island, and the coffins those of people I loved and honoured. It was deeply moving for everybody there. I hope one day that will be done for me and mine.

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Sr Alison Joy

02/11/2017

I have prayed washed and dressed Sisters who have died and it helped me to see that death is not scary. I have lined a number of Sisters graves with flowers around the inner edge from the inside, also helpful. The body was received at Vespers in Chapel the day before, Solemn Requiem was the next day complete with asperges and incense. We returned from the graveside and when in Chapel sung a very joyful favorite hymn for the Sister we had just buried. It was always a sad, happy, remembering occasion I hope that I will be able to have most of this too.

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Sarah Lawton

02/11/2017

This is beautifully said.

When my parents died in a car crash, we knew our Episcopal church would be too small to accommodate all the mourners; but the local Roman Catholic congregation saw our need and graciously offered the use of their space for our Episcopal funeral (including Eucharist led by two Episcopal bishops). They also offered their pall for the second coffin as we had only one. All the churches and the synagogue in town offered choir members and/or food for the feast after the service. An ecumenical, indeed, interfaith foretaste of heaven!

We placed the two bodies in closed coffins in our Episcopal church the night before; we prayed Evensong and Compline, and received a long line of visitors; and then parishioners kept vigil with the bodies all night. In the morning we prayed over the bodies before beginning the procession to the larger RC church where the (Episcopal) funeral was to be held. In this sad, glorious service sang many, many Easter hymns, and I learned that it’s possible to sing and sing even through tears. I’m told that people reconciled that day who had not spoken in years – I’ve heard it from both parties (one now a bishop).

All of which is to say: our Episcopal Way of Death can be a profound grace if we let it. It can be profound too when it’s a simple, small, quiet service for a person who has lived a long life and died of old age (unlike my parents). It’s the same words, the same truth of loss – all of us pass through this life but for a moment – the same mystery, the same words of affirmation and hope at the grave: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

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1. Kelvin
  
  02/11/2017
  
  Thank you for posting that – bearing witness to exactly what I was trying to say.
  
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2. Michael Povey
  
  04/11/2017
  
  Thanks Sarah. (Other readers, Sarah is a friend. I was at the Funeral and heard her offer the most profound Gospel Centred and Honest Grief eulogy I have ever heard)
  
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  1. Sarah Lawton
    
    29/11/2017
    
    Dear Michael, thank you for saying that. Your presence that day was a blessing to our family. That gathering, for all the shock and sadness, really did feel like a foretaste of heaven, didn’t it? A great cloud of witnesses singing with us.
    
    Reply
Ronnie Smith

02/11/2017

Having attended a few funerals in our parish recently – one of them for our Vicar, who died on Easter Eve – and being nearer to the grave myself (at 85 and still active as a priest) I appreciate, Father Kelvin, the care you take over this special subject. The Church can be so close to families at this special time – giving them a taste of ‘The great love of God as revealed in the Son’ – precious at this time.

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Tony Whatmough

04/11/2017

There are sometimes good reasons for having the cremation first, as there was for my brother yesterday especially with people traveling and wanting to be able to bury the ashes on the same day. They key is to talk with the family about what they are looking for and how it can be done.

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1. Kelvin
  
  04/11/2017
  
  Dear Tony, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve lost your brother. May be rest in peace and rise in glory.
  
  There are always reasons why people want to have a cremation first and people always believe that they are good reasons. Every single time there are reasons. My contention is that I’m unpersuaded that any of them justify changing what we believe. (What we do and what we believe being utterly bound up with one another in such circumstances).
  
  My point about funerals is very precisely that the wishes of the family are important but that no tradition will survive if we simply abandon what we believe for reasons of convenience.
  
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