I’m aware that this cartoon was drawn for another situation. However, this is kind of how it feels to be gay in the Scottish Episcopal Church at the moment. My guess is that other people feel it too.
We need to pray for a different style of leadership.
Urgently.
My thanks to Dave Walker for making this and other great cartoons available to post occasionally on blogs and to Andrew Swift who drew my attention to it.
It seems to me more and more important for us to rediscover the idea of the divine inspiration of the reader of scripture as well as that of the authors.
Thank you for this, Kelvin. I agree with you wholeheartedly. After all, only the author truly knows what was in his head when he wrote it and indeed, where the inspiration came from.
Oh, and I enjoyed the rest too.
Once again I’m listening to this late at night. Definitely food for thought and prayer. I was outside in the rain tonight, I really like the idea of that I was not just wet, but drenched in Grace. Thanks Kelvin.
Good Night.
I believe that everyone has a right to freedom of thought. Freedom of speech is a circumscribed fact of life in the UK and it is certainly an interesting idea that reading can be inspired, but who is the arbiter of what is inspired and who is the arbiter of what is apostate. I may believe with all my heart that I am divinely inspired, but I still have to convince other people that this is the case and that I am not being grandiose etc. If I pontificate about a text in the common domain, I may well have to justify myself and/or defend my position at some considerable cost, which I may or may not be willing to pay.
Thank you for your comments.
Jonathan – I think that I was suggesting that we see both the authorship of texts and the reading of texts as activities that can be inspired. I think that there has to be some dialogue between author and reader.
I also think that in the history of looking at biblical texts, some people have emphasised the value of the text to the individual whilst others have read the text in community. (We might also presume that the texts themselves were gathered in community). I don’t think that I’d like to lose sight of that idea of inspiration coming when a community reads a text together. That idea is important to me as it counters against the idea of individuals thinking that they (alone) are divinely inspired.
It seems to me that more people have believed that they alone were the only proper source of truth or inspiration or legitimacy than has actually been the case.
Having heard this text spoken of many, many, many times in the context of Luther’s reading, I must say it was an enormous relief to hear this other way of reading. This tempts me to return to other texts of Paul’s that might be worth re-reading without Evangelical/Calvinist/Lutheran-coloured glasses.
Kelvin, I agree that there has to be a community, but pretty universally in churches I have been to the Minister has preached and the community has continued to be fragmented. Also there is no chance of dialogue with dead authors and in the realm of art, once a work is in the public realm it is available for multiple interpretations which the artist may well never have considered. Even legal documents which attempt to define the law are interpreted by the judiciary. There is little chance for art or literature or the bible to be consistently read because the implications of certain phrases or sentences may reside in the way that they are written rather than in the mind of the author and the definitions may be too loosely drawn.
Many thanks for your comments.
Coming back to St Mary’s was rather a shock yesterday. In the time that I had been away at General Synod every piece of equipment known to every broadcast engineer in Scotland appeared to have been put in the Cathedral. This is the weekend that a number of pieces of music are being recorded in…
Thanks are offered by the Primus for the Synod Eucharist and worship Retiring Conveners are thanked Also chairs for sessions and those who have debriefed them Joe Morrow is thanked for being assessor to the Primus Kennedy Fraser is thanked for the IT Also Rob Warrent and yours truly for updates online Cursillo for tea…
Synod debates the 3% quota figure for this year. The way of calculating the quota distribution has been questioned from the floor by Catherine Meikle. Prof Peatie says it is a complex thing to do. She also tells us how work she believes has been done to save money. The motion is to put set…
Synod enthusiastically gives permission to the members of the youth network to speak.
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