What is in Kelvin's Head?

Where does the Church of Scotland stand?

21/05/2013

It has been a pretty confusing 24 hours for the Church of Scotland. My prediction yesterday morning that the news would be reported inaccurately was bang on. There have been very many reports in the media about the Church of Scotland that have been inaccurate. And you know what? The media are not the ones to blame.

Yesterday afternoon after a very long debate the Church of Scotland thanked the Special Theological Commission that it had set up to examine whether blessings of gay couples could be permitted and issues around the ordination of gay clergy in relationships. Rather than accepting either of the proposals from that Commission, they adopted a hastily cobbled together deliverance which I think seemed to the Commissioners to be a compromise.

Then the press got hold of the wrong end of the stick, led by the BBC which reported the news entirely inaccurately. Robert Piggott was on the TV all last night saying that the Church of Scotland had changed its policy on gay ministers but that some congregations could opt not to have them. In fact it was the reverse – they accepted a proposal to bring plans to a subsequent 2 Assemblies to maintain the view that the Church of Scotland does not accept gay relationships but that individual Kirk Sessions (ie the elders in a congregation) could have a minister in a gay relationship anyway if they really wanted one.

I think it is one of the greatest attempts at Doublethink since the Church of England allowed women to be ordained but allowed some people in the Church to think they hadn’t been ordained.

This kind of thing does the churches no good. When decisions like this are made it seems like a compromise, which appeals to people who don’t want to hurt or upset anyone and who think that the fundamental thing that needs to be done is to keep the church together.

Yesterday the Church of Scotland decided to follow a path towards crucifying its own internal integrity. You can’t expect to flourish if you say that something is doctrinally wrong but that you’ll turn a blind eye to congregations doing it anyway. It means you’ve lost sight of what truth is. And that isn’t really suppose to be an option for God’s people.

As an Anglican, I obviously don’t say that from a position of any superiority. Indeed, we tolerate things in the Anglican Churches which are just as bad and worse.

The question was asked yesterday as to what happens if a congregation want a minister who happens to be gay but a presbytery doesn’t want a person who happens to be gay. The answer came from the top table that the presbytery could not overule a kirk session. I find it almost impossible to understand how this will work in practise. A friend gave me the example that currently a presbytery cannot refuse to ordain a woman – being female is not grounds for refusing to ordain or induct according to the highest court of that church so therefore such an ordination cannot be presented. I simply don’t see how a General Assembly can affirm a “traditionalist” anti-gay position and then insist that a presbytery has to ordain someone because a local kirk session demands it.

It is certainly the case that yesterday the Church of Scotland accepted that some people are gay. However, it didn’t really deal with it. It accepted that some people affirm gay people but still affirmed a position which condemns that affirmation.

The Moderator of the General Assembly, Lorna Hood is being quoted as saying “This is a massive vote for the peace and unity of the Church.”

It seems to this outsider looking in on the General Assembly that its own moderator hasn’t understood what it was she was presiding over yesterday. This is a decision that will be challenged next year, challenged at every presbytery through the subsequent year and challenged and fought over at the following Assembly. Then, even if it succeeds, it will be challenged inevitably through cases brought to further Assemblies. This isn’t peace, it is a vote to enshrine the war in the life of the church for the forseeable future.

Church of Scotland, gay, General Assembly, lesbian, LGBT, Lorna Hood, ministers, same-sex

20 responses to “Apologies have consequences too”

Andrew Cain

15/04/2016

You say so often and so eloquently what I feel.

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1. Father Ron Smith
  
  16/04/2016
  
  Food for serious thought, Father Kelvin. I don’t suppose there has been any objection raised by the Church of England Bishops about the liberalising ativity of our Norwegian partner’s in Christ. It is this continuing double-mindedness that exposes us Anglicans to the charge of structured hypocrisy. Keep up the good work you are doing on your web-site. Christ IS risen, Alleluia!
  
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Alan Wilson

15/04/2016

Thank you, Kelvin. It’s certainly a change of the mood music going on, but self-lacerating apologies are subject to the law of diminishing returns unless they indicate what we call “Metanoia” – change of mind, aka repentance. This means things real change. Without it, apologies breed cynicism, not hope. When, for example, a bishop tells us he is ashamed whenever he encounters homophobia in the church, curious minds want to ask him “when did you last encounter what you call homophobia in the church? What was it like? How was it separable from the ideology that validated it? And since it’s such a shameful thing, what are you going to do about it?”

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/04/2016
  
  The real disconnect for me is that Justin Welby is someone who clearly does know something about what reconcilliation is. He can’t have done that job in Coventry and not known and he can’t have named reconcilliation as one of the key strands of his time as Archbishop without knowing that metanoia is part of the deal if that is what you are chasing after.
  
  However, I can only come back again and again to the possibility that there are those who simply think that LGBT are indeed actually worth less than real people.
  
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  1. June Butler
    
    18/04/2016
    
    Kelvin, after I read your words about the empty apologies by authorities in the church after which their behavior does not change, I could not help but think what you stated in your comment, that the leaders, with exceptions like Alan Wilson, believe LGTB folks are lesser. What else can we think? My advice would be to stop apologizing and be honest, which would be a step in the right direction, because at least the hypocrisy would end.
    
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adrian copping

16/04/2016

Thank you for this. Something similar has been happening here in Wales in the past week or so where our Bishops have apologised AND issued some prayers which are authorised for use in connnection with ministry to LGBTI people. This is to be welcomed as a sign of a step in a positive direction but, at the same time, leaves a lot of questions and many disappointed.

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Bob Webster

16/04/2016

Saying it is a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality” is not an apology. At best it is a request that someone should stop making him feel bad. That could be the people doing the persecuting, or it could be us who should just be quiet and preferably go away. An apology would be “I apologize for the hurt I have caused and as a consequence of recognizing my sin I will cease that behaviour and do everything I can to get others to stop as well.”

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Ruth Richards-Hill

16/04/2016

Kelvin, you are an expert at stating things so eloquently that makes everyone else in the Anglican communion squirm.

I was not oblivious to the fact that as a lesbian woman I entered a family of churches with a huge diversity of attitudes towards my sexuality. It was only because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ that I felt safe to come into the church despite my “flaws” and receive baptism. Is my baptism any less valid because I am a lesbian?

As a convert from Orthodox Judaism I suspect that I am sometimes more acutely aware than others at what should be in my mind a glaring hypocrisy. Rabbinical thought always looks for an alternatives to explain why a certain situation does or does not apply according to halachah (ecclesiastical law – much like the canons). But the balance either exists or it doesnt. Jesus speaks about divorce and makes it quite clear that its not really an option, while in rabbinical law, it certainly is an option. We are taught that he came to fulfil the law and yet we his church are part of a new covenant are we not? The church seems to have taken the easy way out and will marry people who have divorced, but will not marry gay couples. So if divorced people are part of the new covenant, why arent us gay folk?

I could get into all the biblical quotation arguments and as someone that reads Classical Hebrew better than most Anglicans I know, I have no fear in taking a stand on my point. (My Greek needs a little more work however.) That said, I dont see a balanced biblical foundation for excluding some that are automatically excluded by literal translation of scripture, but not others, but rather an inherited bigotry and hypocrisy that continues to thrive simply to satisy the whims of member churches whose societies havent quite experienced the journey that ours has. While that doesnt invalidate their position, neither does it invalidate the position of our society and our spiritual progress should not be hindered to satisy the agenda of those religious leaders that appear to be pandering to the demands of those churches that have not walked the path of ours.

I have arguments that cover more than simple translations and exegesis particularly surrounding what the rules were both before and after the death of Christ, but those are for another day. I know that I am a baptised Christian and Jesus loves me as much as any other, not because I am gay or straight, but because I am one of his, and therefore he wants me to thrive within his covenant rather than the stifling, unreasonable and hair splitting laws that came before – Ones that I personally know how incredibly impossible they are to live by, no matter what your sexuality, or colour, or intellectual ability. – I was there once.

When our Bishops and leaders realise that Christ died exactly to make the Christian lives of the likes of me equally valid as straight people, then perhaps we’ll make a little more progress and not see these “apologies” as merely lip service. Its almost embarrassing to LGBT people for whom their faith is a core part of their lives. It certainly is for me.

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Ruth Harley

16/04/2016

Any child in my Sunday School group could tell you that repentance is not just “saying sorry” it is “saying sorry, being sorry, and changing”. Possibly ++Justin’s words make it as far as the first of these, but I’m not convinced they signify the second, and the third is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I should send my 5 year old theologians to Lambeth and/or Lusaka to explain! Or perhaps it’s just that those who are issuing these ‘apologies’ aren’t really thinking in terms of repentance, or seeing the need for it, at all.

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Mark Falby

16/04/2016

Apologies mean nothing if not backed by action.

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Junia

16/04/2016

Well I did recently get brutally and spectacularly dumped by an American lesbian, so perhaps they just are naturally more wicked over there…

In seriousness though, thank you for this wonderfully elegant post, Kelvin, summarising so much of what I have felt since ++Justin’s statement in January. I’m starting to get a little sick of being apologised to.

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1. Cynthia
  
  17/04/2016
  
  Speaking as an American lesbian, I’m sure the Norwegian lesbians are much better people, and that we are “naturally more wicked…” 😉
  
  Kelvin expresses well the debacle of January. But interestingly, Justin just delivered an amazing sermon at ACC-16 that marks a major change of heart and theology if he’s sincere. We’ll see. A lot has happened since January.
  
  Have a look at the sermon, it’s in the Anglican Communion news. I’d hate to think that those are just empty words. Time will tell. But I want hope.
  
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  1. Kelvin
    
    17/04/2016
    
    Could you point us towards the sermon, Cynthia. I’m not seeing anything at all that’s new in relation to the things I’ve written about above.
    
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    1. Cynthia Katsarelis
      
      17/04/2016
      
      Here it is: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/04/new-calls-for-new-times-archbishop-welbys-presidential-address-to-acc-16.aspx
      
      To me this seems like a new direction, born of recent realities, and perhaps inspired by the Holy Spirit.
      
      Of course, my hopes could be typical, off-the-charts American optimism. We wicked American Episcopal lesbians just know that the Promised Land is at the end of the next rainbow.
      
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      1. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Cynthia – this is what I was writing about above. It isn’t a new direction. It is what I’m complaining of. Talk of reconciliation whilst not engaging in it.
        
        There’s not a word in it about a new direction on the way the ABC relates to the Anglican Communion’s troubles. Not one.
      2. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        It seems like he was asking people to focus on the major characters, climate change and religious violence, and to work together within our diversity. That sounds like a new tack. Of course, it will be interesting to see if this translates into action. Will the discrimination against married clergy stop? Will the ABC stop pandering to the primates who didn’t show up to ACC-16?
        
        You might be right, you seem very prophetic to me. But I want you to be wrong this time. I want hope, and to work together on things that actually matter.
      3. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        There are simply no signs of what you hope for, Cynthia. None.
      4. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Perhaps not. But I was recently a TEC delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women where I met a posse of awesome women from the Anglican Communion Women delegation. We had great interaction and they affirmed a “walking together” statement they wrote in 2007. It says they are staying in communion, no matter what the guys do. We women in TEC are drafting a response, graciously receiving and affirming the statement. Against this, Justin doesn’t stand a chance and he might as well change his tune.
        
        PS. One of the awesome delegates was a Rachel from St. Andrew’s, Scotland.
Richard Barnes

17/04/2016

I was really hopeful about the Anglican Communion’s purpose from reading Rachael’s blogs from UN CSW last month. But not for long. ABC Welby’s Sermon reads like a random speech generator and says much the same as he’s been doing for months in global fora.
It’s like a couple who talk about the garden and the difficult neighbours because they don’t want to talk about their sex life.
Clever way to end ACC with everyone apparently united by talking about bigger issues.
But to read ++Welby asking for nuanced theology, when he’s totally binary (Christian=happy, healthy, wealthy & wise) just made me laugh.

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Robin

19/04/2016

> In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that.

I don’t see any change of tone in the following, which is the beginning of paragraph 251 of “Amoris Laetitia”.

> 251. In discussing the dignity and mission of
the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as
for proposals to place unions between homosexual
persons on the same level as marriage,
there are absolutely no grounds for considering
homosexual unions to be in any way similar or
even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family”.

I’d call that a monumental snub, deliberately administered, or an equally deliberately administered drenching with cold water.

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