What is in Kelvin's Head?

Made in Scotland with Love

09/06/2017

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.

10 responses to “Advertise, advertise, advertise!”

Matt Hanson

02/10/2008

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson

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Eamonn

02/10/2008

How naff can you get? It was worth listening to a professional advertiser’s comments on the Lichfield advert on the Sunday programme on Radio 4.

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Gavin Drake

02/10/2008

Adverts that make people in the church feel comfortable are likely to be completely irrelevant to people outside the church. As the instigator and creator of the Lichfield football adverts campaign I stand by them – they did what we wanted them to do. We had a target and we achieved that target. The professional advertising chap on Radio Four was anti the adverts; but he was also anti the entire Christian message as a self-proclaimed militant atheist. His best effort? “Life” – which is a campaign he created for the Billy Graham missions 20 years ago. Hardly creative (now, 20 years on) nor fresh. His message was that the church should get rid of Jesus, God and all the “after life” stuff and concentrate on making people feel good now.

One final thought, in this blog entry aren’t you demonstrating the Christian Christmas grumpetyness which you appear to be criticising in others?

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kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks for your comments Gavin.

You are quite right about my grumpityness though I was not particularly being critical of it in others. Indeed, being able to rely on other people’s grumpityness is one of the things which has ensured a lot of exposure for the CAN ads, for example, the Bad Hair Day campaign and the Meek, Mild As If one. It was the (mock?) outrage of the christian community that got those ads talked about.

I’m a fan of what the CAN do, which I perhaps did not make clear in the above blog entry.

I’d be interested to know what the target was and how achieving it was measured.

I have to confess to feeling embarrassed by the Lichfield ad but then of course, it was not aimed at me.

I also commented about past CAN campaigns here and here.

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Kennedy

02/10/2008

Having listened to the CAN adverts, I am left asking what the message was and who was the target audience? If the intention was to familiarise the audience with the characters and motifs from the Christmas story then OK, but there is more that could be said in the time.

You’ll permit me a small plug for the stuff that GRF produce.

Have a listen:

http://smallvoice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/01-ms-christianity.mp3

Yes, this uses the style of the M&S ads but I think that it communicates something about the Christian message and in a form that a non-church person could relate to.

The judges at the Jerusalem Awards seemed to like it as they awarded it the premier award in the ‘Shorts’ category at their awards ceremony last week.

If you are looking for creative audio to use in churches or schools then have a look at http://www.audiopot.org.

Kennedy

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kelvin

02/10/2008

Thanks Kennedy. I like the M and S Ad. Very clever. I always like hearing Albatross (the music underneath) because it reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago who used to play it (on large pipe organs) during communion.

One of the drawbacks of the ads that I was speaking about above is that they all depend on knowing the Christian story. That is perhaps legitimate in a Back to Church Sunday as it is presumably aimed at folk who have gone away knowing something or other.

The line about the penalty does kind of imply that substitutionary atonement is what we believe though.

The Lichfield ad certainly got a lot of coverage and if that was the intention, it succeeded.

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Elizabeth

03/10/2008

I must admit I found the racing advert amusing. The football ones leave me cold. Aside from issue about inclusivity and dubious theology, I think living in Glasgow has made me very wary of any connection between religion and football.

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Coxy

03/10/2008

I think that the football one is excellent, as does my wife (and she can’t tell the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal – I guess they do both play in red though!). How is it not inclusive of men and women? As I see it there is good build up play from Mary and Joseph before Jesus scores…

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kelvin

06/10/2008

Hi Nick

I’ve just rescued your comment from a spam filter – don’t know why it got swallowed.

At St Mary’s we tend to avoid language like “men” where what is really meant is men and women, “mankind” when what is meant really is humanity etc

This affects things like the language we use for hymns.

We’d never sing, “Brothers, this Lord Jesus, shall return again” for example. In a mixed crowd it just seems rude.

There is an ongoing degate about how far to go with this policy but by and large, language inclusive of men and women is the norm at St Mary’s and exclusive language tends to jar and be distractive when you’ve got used to more inclusive language in church. Thus the ad is something we couldn’t use because of the use of the word “man” meaning something other than just men.

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ryan

06/10/2008

The term “banter”, as featured in the ad, should also be used by no-one anyway (and only partly because of Chewing the Fat). O the amount of people that have endured abuse and had it expained away as “just banter”.

Wondering if “male” ads like this are ok if one also does female-centered advertising, or if the whole idea is hoary sexism. St.Silas does a Women 4 Women thing which I believe is popular. No Men 4 Men though.

Hope I’m immune from the st.silasite ensnaring spam filter
;-).

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