What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Made in Scotland with Love

    Today is my ordination anniversary. Nineteen years ago today on St Columba’s day I was ordained priest. For most of that time I’ve been promoting the fundamental equality of gay and straight people in the church. With others, I founded Changing Attitude Scotland 13 years ago.

    And so it will surprise no one that I’m excited by the vote, overwhelming in two houses, on a knife edge in the house of clergy, yesterday, that means that those who wish, in the Scottish Episcopal Church will be able to conduct marriage services for same sex couples.

    It isn’t a way of doing it that would have been my first choice. If I could have had what I wanted I’d have had a straight vote committing the church to equality and marriages of same sex couples everywhere. But that won’t happen. The church chose a different route, simply respecting the conciences of all – those in favour and those against. It was, in the end, a better motion than I would have devised.

    I was moved beyond words yesterday to hear the speeches in Synod. Moved by people, unlikely people sometimes, who agree with me. Moved too by the presence of those who don’t agree but who see this as the only answer that will give us peace. And moved by those who disagree, those for whom this decision weighs heavily.

    But I was moved overall that we are a church that just chose overwhelmingly to stay together over gay marriage. We need and love one another.

    In the end I didn’t speak in the debate. My church spoke for me and I’m proud of it.

    This wasn’t a vote about gay people. It was a vote about what kind of church we want to be.

    This is a mainstream Anglican response to the question that has beset us. Not building windows into other men’s souls and also respecting the consciences of all. This is what Anglicans do. This is who we really are. And this is the only solution that will work in the Anglican Communion. Let it be seized on by all who seek peace and goodwill.

    This solution to the Anglican agonies of recent years bears the label – Made in Scotland for Export.

    Made in Scotland with love.

4 responses to “To be an Episcopalian is not to be respectable”

  1. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    Superb take on this difficult story from Matthew, and the other stories of Jonathan Daniels and Robin Angus. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Philip Almond Avatar
    Philip Almond

    But Mark records Jesus as saying, ‘Permit first to be satisfied the children;for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to the dogs to throw[it]’. That word ‘first’ tells us that Jesus already knows that there will be a ‘second’, that his ministry will extend beyond the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

    These words of Jesus also suggest that ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of [the] house of Israel’ refers to this phase of his ministry.

    Also, if the following incidents were earlier in time than the incident of the healing of the woman’s daughter, your

    ‘In that moment, she seems to know his mission to save the whole world considerably better than he did. And she changes him. He thinks again’.

    is disproved.

    Luke’s account (chapter 4) of the visit to Nazareth, because Jesus’ reference to Naaman and the widow of Sidon suggest that he was aware that his mission, like that of Elijah and Elisha, would extend beyond the covenant people.
    Matthew’s account (chapter 8) of the healing of the centurion’s servant, giving rise to Jesus’ ‘And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
    Jesus’ explanation (Matthew 13) of the parable of the tares of the field: the one sowing the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world (my emphasis); the good seed are the sons of the kingdom; the tares are the sons of the evil one.

    What are your reasons for being sure that these three events are later in time than the healing of the woman’s daughter?

    Reply
  3. Martin Reynolds Avatar
    Martin Reynolds

    We do not live for the poor, we do not live with the poor, we do not identify with the poor.
    We wear silk vestment adorn ourselves with elegant titles and eat at the best tables and are welcome in the highest corridors of power.

    Reply
  4. Sarah Lawton Avatar
    Sarah Lawton

    Kelvin, thank you for your email today pointing back to this sermon. I appreciate your pointing to Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who was a friend of my parents. My mother always felt she had a part in his death, I think, because she was one of the organizers of the seminary group that responded to the Rev. Dr. King’s call for church leaders to go to Selma, and it was she who persuaded Jon to go. One of her last acts on this Earth was to help put his name on our Church’s calendar (first reading, General Convention 1991). But then, we are baptized into Christ and therefore each other, which is I think what you are saying in this sermon. That means we are implicated in the ills of this world but also share in Jon’s martyrdom. We live in the hope of resurrection but the way there is through the utter scandal of the cross. Jon in his latter months of life rejected theologies of complacency and also self-righteousness as he committed himself to a ministry of presence.

    Martin Reynolds, there is no question our particular church tradition has some history with money and power. My own little congregation identifies strongly with the poor, the folks sleeping rough right outside our doors, and the immigrant families of our neighborhood. Our Sunday services can be a little chaotic as a consequence of the varieties of folks in various states of mind who come on a Sunday, but our spiritual life as a congregation is pretty good; it honestly feels like a gift to be there in the communion circle. We’re a longtime LGBT congregation, so I think it’s part of who we are to have economic diversity and also a rejection of traditional social masks. We’re also deeply rooted in prayer, which is how we got through worst of the AIDS years and all the funerals.

    Reply

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