What is in Kelvin's Head?

Review of 2013 predictions

31/12/2013

I am wont to make predictions at new year. Here’s how I did last year.

1 – The UK will lose its triple A credit rating.
Got that one right – happened within weeks.

2 – The Scottish Episcopal Church will have poor statistical returns this year prompting very quiet wailing and gnashing of teeth except in Argyll.
Got that one right too – very poor statistical returns, particularly in Aberdeen and Orkney and Brechin. The wailing was all too quiet when we debated the statistics at General Synod though with the Primus seeming to indicate that either they didn’t matter or he didn’t care.

3 – At least one Church of England bishop (and maybe a pair) will be outed. (Only time I’ve retained a prediction from one year to the next).
Not yet. Not yet.

4 – The Scottish Parliament will vote for new legislation allowing gay couples to get married. (But no such weddings this year). The details of the new category of “belief marriages” will be substantially changed and much more heavily regulated than is suggested in the recent consultation response from government.
Basically another hit – Parliament did indeed vote for the new legislation though it isn’t completed yet. No weddings this year. Belief marriage proposals changed a bit, but not very much and there’s going to be a frightening amount of regulation which is not specified in the legislation.

5 – Sadly, I expect renewed campaigning for straight people to be able to enter Civil Partnerships with preparations being made for a legal challenge for 2014.
Yes – though the Scottish Parliament headed off the threat of legal challenge by promising a review. Another hit.

6 – The Coalition will have lower public opinion ratings by end of year due to public concerns as austerity measures bite. It will record one of the lowest public opinion rating of any UK govenment in modern times.
I think I got this wrong. There has certainly been a polarization in how the government is seen but they are holding up surprisingly well in opinion polls. My Liberal Democrat friends will be disappointed to hear that I think that this is because of the wiliness of Tories and not the power of the the Liberals in the coalition.

7 – The Church of Scotland will have a difficult General Assembly, but one characterised by fine speeches. They will approve a report which suggests having a theological study into blessing civil partnerships but not actual marriages of gay people. (This will please no-one who has any opinions about the matter and will thus be regarded as a success by those who don’t).
Well, I wasn’t far off with suggesting that they would not please anyone who has opinions about the matter but they dealt with it by saying that the Church of Scotland doesn’t approve of gay ministers but that local congregations could have them if they really wanted them. It was a foolish compromise that is already unravelling and a warning to us all.

8 – The Church of England will be unable to agree a way forward on opening the Episcopate to Women.
Well they’ve made some progress but they still are not there yet. Until they actually have a vote, I’m claiming this one as a hit.

9 – Justin Welby won’t put a foot wrong.
Well, he’s an impressive mover, far more so that Rowan Williams. I don’t like all he does but he has not come close to making the mistakes that his predecessor made. Appears to be wearing Teflon vestments.

10 – The new Bishop of Durham will come from a relatively small congregation in London.
Wrong – completely wrong.

So how do you think I did?

New Year Predictions

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

Eamonn

23/08/2017

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

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Philip Almond

23/08/2017

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?

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Martin Reynolds

23/08/2017

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.

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Sarah Lawton

29/11/2017

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.

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