What is in Kelvin's Head?

Church of Scotland Debate

20/05/2013

I’ve spent much of today listening to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly debating their Special Theological Commission that had been set up a couple of years ago to report on the way forward for that church with regard to the possibility of gay people to be ordained and inducted and to have their partnerships blessed by that church.

Three proposals emerged. The first two were in the report itself and labelled rather unsatisfactorily as the Revisionist (option A) and the Traditionalist (option B) position. Option A allows what tends to be called a mixed economy by which that church could eventually allow ministers in civil partnerships to be appointed to churches and gay couples in civil partnerships to be allowed to have their partnerships blessed. Option B would not though anyone who happened to be in a Civil Partnership already would probably not be hounded out of their ministry but no new minister in a civil partnership could be inducted or ordained. The third position emerged during the day and was moved in the name of Albert Bogle. (Confusingly it was option D – another motion C had been proposed and then was withdrawn during the process). This option D was a proposal to reaffirm the traditionalist view on these matters whilst allowing individual Kirk Sessions to opt to do as they like and choose such a minister anyway.

In each case, these were not final votes. The procedures of the Church of Scotland mean that where there are significant changes accepted by a General Assembly they then have to be put to the presbyteries of the church. The final position only emerges if a majority of presbyteries concur during the subsequent year and also the next General Assembly confirms the vote. (If a majority of the presbyteries do not concur then the process fails).

Option B fell in the first round of voting.

The commissioners of the Assembly then opted for Option D.

My own feeling is that this was a very hastily patched together compromise that is an astonishing move for the church to make.

It effectively means that the Church of Scotland has chosen by 340 to 282 to go down a path which delays the decision for another year and which is theologically incoherent and unexamined by the Commission which had been set up to consider these matters.

It means that the Church of Scotland has affirmed that it believes something whilst also giving permission to kirk sessions in the church to ignore that doctrine and do something diametrically opposed to what the church says it believes. It is not merely an untidy compromise, it is ecclesiastically and theologically incoherent.

The Church of Scotland became more congregational in its polity today. Some may feel that there are frightening implications for those in that church who support the ordination of women as ministers and elders. What else is going to become a matter of congregational choice?

All this now goes to presbyteries under the Barrier Act. (After next year’s Assembly, if I’ve understood this right).

It may be that some will leave the Church of Scotland because they have affirmed a plan that would allow that church to have gay ministers in some congregations even though the church has affirmed that doctrinally it believes that this is wrong.

It seems to me quite likely that presbyteries may refuse to affirm the proposal.

This matter was not resolved in either direction in the Church of Scotland today.

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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