What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • What’s on your church website right now?

    Just a gentle reminder that people are looking for church services and Christmas events to go to right now. (Yes, right this minute. Today. Really.) It is worth asking what they will find if they go to your church website.

    One of the things that astonished me last Christmas was hearing people at St Mary’s saying that they had come to us because their local churches were not having any Christmas events or services.

    “Oh yes they are!” I replied in true panto style.

    “Oh no they’re not!” they replied, “we’ve looked, there’s nothing on their websites”.

    The time in the year when people are most eager to try out a new church and most welcome invitations to church seems to be around Christmas. Can I suggest that everyone reading this take a look at their own local church website and if they don’t find the details of the Christmas services prominently displayed, get hold of whoever does their website and very gently and lovingly and with every ounce of Christian compassion you can muster, bend their ear.

    That includes those responsible for diocesan websites which give a page to each of their churches. Remember, if those pages are there, google may well find them first. If people find webpages which list churches where the latest news is any older than last month (never mind last year) and where the words “No events at present” are shown in the week before Christmas, it might be said that you can’t really blame them for not turning up.

    Times of Christmas services at St Mary’s can be found here. Note that they don’t follow the same pattern as last year. We’re living on the edge, we are. 

    Right on the edge.

    ,

4 responses to “Book Review”

  1. Peter O Avatar
    Peter O

    I think you miss the point of the book Kelvin. It’s meant to be a guide to listening to *all* sides of the debate, not just those you agree with. That’s what makes the last section so good, because it forces us to deal realistically not just with the genuine evidence on the causality of homosexuality, but also the fact that some people *do* see remarkable change in their sexual orientation (and that others don’t).

    I wrote my own review here.

    Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    We were not called by the last Lambeth Conference to listen to all sides in the debate.

    Reply
  3. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Ruth Gledhill has posted a PDF of the whole thing, for those interested:
    http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/files/Final.pdf

    Reply
  4. Rosemary Avatar
    Rosemary

    I’ve now read the ‘scientific’ section – thanks for the link ryan – and I thought it was mixed. I thought Glynn Harrison made a serious attempt at dispassion. I think it is a fair point that any person must decide their own priorities, and the final argument must be between theologies, not sciences. I was not so impressed by David de Pomerai – though one could hardly quarrel with his conclusion that we simply do not know exactly what makes one person homosexual and the next heterosexual. However his whole argument was bedevilled by assumptions that, e.g. homosexual men will be more effeminate than straight ones. Anecdotal evidence instantly produces examples where it is the straight male siblings who are drama queens and run from spiders, while gay ones take it all in their stride.

    It must be accepted that both gay and straight people live with voluntary or enforced celibacy with no ill effects – and that some people can change their sexual orientation and live happily with the change. What I found truly heart rending were the desperate attempts and the high cost to those who actually did succeed in changing orientation – however much Harrison denies the skin colour analogy, it reminded me painfully of those endless jars of skin lightener which encrust Sri Lankan chemists, where beauty is measured in skin tone. Because whether or not genetic, orientation is not a simple free choice. But I suppose the answer would be: ‘And what is?’

    The final point, though, is always the same. Is Christianity a religion of an authoritative book, or an authoritative Person?

    Reply

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