• The Kalendar for 2022 – 2023 is available free!

    For years now, I’ve produced a Kalendar for the Scottish Episcopal Church with all the bible readings set out for the year.

    In the past I’ve sold it for around £4. For a range of reasons, I’m not going to be selling it this year but am releasing it online so that anyone can download it and print it out for themselves.

    It is available right here: Kalendar 2023

    Anyone who would like to make a donation because they enjoy the Kalendar so much and want to encourage me to keep doing it is welcome to do so via paypal.

     

     

4 responses to “D.I.V.O.R.C.E.”

  1. David Kenvyn Avatar
    David Kenvyn

    I am a little worried about this concept of “African Marriage”. It seems to assume that Africa as a continent is culturally homogenous. This is not something that we would ever say about Europe or Asia, and it is simply not true. Morocco has very little cultural similarity to Mozambique. In South Africa, Xhosa-speaking men are circumcised at about 16 years old. Zulu-speaking men are not circumcised. They live in neighbouring provinces and inter-mingle in the cities. I think we have to be very careful when we describe practices that are common in Nigeria or Tanzania or Namibia as African, as they may not apply across the whole continent. It would be like calling bullfighting or reindeer racing European cultural norms, when we know that they are specific to particular countries.

  2. Seph Avatar
    Seph

    I think what Christians and others need to bear in mind is that it is possible to be accepting of divorce as a fact of life while still valuing commitment and regarding marriage as ideally being a lifelong covenant. In truth, if a couple is considering divorce then there is already brokenness (or sin—although in this context the word has some uncomfortable connotations) in their relationship, and trying to maintain it purely because the Church (or, heaven forfend, God) Says No doesn’t seem to me to be in any way a holy or virtuous thing to do.

    ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’ is a lot less effective an obfuscation in writing than when Dolly sang it.

  3. David Kenvyn Avatar
    David Kenvyn

    Jacob Zuma has five wives, Desmond Tutu has one wife, Nelson Mandela had three wives and divorced two of them. What does this tell us about the concept of “African Marriage”?

    1. Kelvin Holdsworth Avatar

      I was quoting an African priest. And I agree with you.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • On Friendship – for St Aelred’s Day and the Primates

    This is an extract from a sermon I preached in 2009 after visiting Rievaulx, the place associated with St Aelred who has his feast day today. The central idea is that we would have a better world if the church had made a sacrament out of friendship rather than marriage. It seems particularly appropriate to…

  • A Welcome Forest of Deans

    Last weekend an open letter emerged from within the Church of England which asked the two archbishops in England to take a message to the Primates’ Conference acknowledging that the Church has failed in its duty of care to LGBTI members of the Body of Christ worldwide and calling for repentance. The whole letter is…

  • Conversations with Catholics (and others)

    Over the next couple of weeks, I’m trying something new and a bit different at St Mary’s. I’m offering coffee and a chat to a couple of different kinds of  people who are always present within the congregation. Tomorrow morning (Saturday 9 January 2016) I’m having a coffee morning for people in the congregation who…

  • New Year Predictions 2016

    Following recent revelations, this will be the year that former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey finally shuts up. Expect no silly press releases on the eve of Church of England Synod. (From Carey anyway). The Columba Declaration recently leaked to the press will not in fact be adopted unamended by both the Church of Scotland…