What is in Kelvin's Head?

Finding a place to be

11/10/2024

I heard of another church that is due to close this week. It is in a place some distance from me but a church community that I once knew and like many church closures, it seems incredible to me that this particular one is closing down. As it happens it is one of the very many Church of Scotland closures that are currently going on. The congregation in question, such as it is these days, will be invited to join with another congregation. It is a rare merger of churches which produces a church with the strengths of both congregational parties. The strong likelihood is that the resulting congregation will be less than the sum of its two parts.

My own denomination is not immune to this kind of thing. Some of our churches are very vulnerable. Some of them are coming to the end of their natural. However, our decline feels a little different to that of many churches.

Scottish Episcopalians have been here before of course. We’ve already been wiped out.

I’ve read articles recently that have been well trailed online suggesting that the Church in Wales and the Anglican Church in Canada face complete wipe out within a short number of years. Existential collapse is a real risk. Those writing the articles that I’ve been reading are firmly of the view that it is all the fault of the wicked liberals with their desire to stamp out the true faith by treating men and women alike and with their perverse notion that stability and love should be foisted on same-sex couples as a possible way of living on this earth.

Life is more complicated of course. Much more complicated and much more interesting.

When you witness these things from the perspective of a church that has already been wiped out, maybe they feel different. The Scottish Episcopal Church came within a whisker of being wiped out in the years following 1689. Politics started it. In the same way that trains stop because of the wrong kind of leaves on the line, the Scottish Episcopal Church pretty much hit the buffers because of the wrong kind of king on the throne. The organisational structure of the church died. But its spirit never did. And I want those who are in churches which face terrible demographic change over the next few years to know that. It is relatively easy to close church buildings. But the essence of a denomination is harder to kill off if it does its basic business and leads people into the presence of God.

One of the signs of organisational collapse in church structures is increasing desperation within regional and national jurisdictions.

The trouble is, desperation is not a successful mission strategy.

Few mission strategies are terribly successful to be honest, and I find myself thinking a lot about that.

Might God be telling us something in this area?

The mission strategies which seem to aim to turn every Christian into a little missionary to recruit more people into the fold seem spectacularly unsuccessful.

I think we need new and more interesting metaphors for doing all of this. If it is just about turning people into recruiting agents, I’m not sure I’m interested and from all I can see, God doesn’t seem to be all that interested either.

I think instead that Christian communities that provide the space and the resources for people to live life in all its fullness tend to be magnetic. The dominant way that faith seems to be being passed on now that Christendom (the expectation that everyone belongs to the faith already) is over, seems to be the simple force of attraction.

People are attracted to those living lives that are full of old-fashioned joys like faith, hope and love.

And people are attracted, deeply attracted, attracted more than most church folk can imagine, to places where they can find the space and the resources to simply be and find themselves loved by God. Some of that is played out in the “thin place” spirituality with which we are very familiar in Scotland. But church folk have lost the basic plot if we lose the idea that crossing the threshold of a church means something. To enter a holy place is a holy thing and there’s work to be done to tell people that the God of the mountaintop has a heart for the city and the God of the island pilgrimage is waiting for pilgrims back at home in the spaces we can find where the buzz of life is at its most exuberant. Churches have always been places where the experience of the unexpected and the uncanny can lead people to all that is holy and all that is true.

Pilgrimage may be a more useful word than mission for a lot of modern people. Conversion for a great many people seems to feel more like a walk in company to a holy place than the turning on of a light.

That’s not to say that everyone has the same experience. They don’t, and we should rejoice in those who find themselves suddenly experiencing the overwhelming and shocking love of God. But we should pray that the same love also gives them a heart to know that this won’t be the experience of everyone. It never has been in Christian history and I suspect it never will be.

Churches still have a purpose whilst they are places where people can discover the God who lurks in the world offering change for the better and good news and redemption for all.

From the perspective of a living congregation in a denomination that has been wiped almost off the face of the earth in the past, from the perspective of a city where Episcopalians were persecuted and still held fast, and from the perspective of a denomination that has more than its fair share of modern problems, I still feel remarkably and ridiculously hopeful.

It isn’t just that there’s work for us still to do. It is that there’s work for God to do in us. And God might well have some good news for those who have reason to pause in holy spaces and wonder for a while.

A distinctive glimpse of heaven managed to survive the organisational collapse that we faced in the past.

Will it survive current challenges?

Well, I wouldn’t bet against the Holy Spirit.

We’ve been here before.

church, decline, growth, mission, Pilgrimage

5 responses to “The Affirmation of a Transgender Person”

Jean Mayland

28/07/2015

That is very good. I hope it will be used in England

Reply
Andrew Amanda Leigh-Bullard

29/07/2015

I want to thank you for sharing this. I recently testified at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church on the importance of including a name change rite during the revisions of the Book of Occasional Services. I’m glad to see that other places in the Anglican Communion are looking at ways to celebrate these highly spiritual moments of transformation. This service is beautiful and I hope it will see a lot of use.

There are a couple of things I’d like to point out as a genderqueer Christian. While often toted as the example of “inclusive” language, the phrase of “his/her” is gender exclusive. It creates the expectation that the people using the service will fit into a “female” or a “male” box. This leaves out those who use other pronouns (ex. they, ze, em, etc.). When there is a cultural expectation of exclusion seeing binary phrasing often leads those of us who are genderqueer, bigender, gender fluid and many other identities feeling like we need to ask “does this apply to us?” and “can you change the wording so I can participate in this?”, which is a terrifying experience.

The focused narrative of transition from one gender to another is also problematic for me as well. While many transgender individuals do transition (socially, medically, or legally) others may feel pressured to transition but be unable to do so or may not wish to transition at all. Due to a lack of information, I transitioned from female to male before I learned that I could be transgender without checking every box of the predominant trans narrative. This meant that to fully claim my identity I later went through a second transition, from male to bigender when I realized that even the less discussed aspects of my existence were just as real and valid as those whose story matches the mainstream narrative. Even now I wouldn’t say my transition is “complete” and I certainly haven’t reached the “other” gender. Having lived as a woman, a man, and both at once I can testify things aren’t as opposite as they may appear.

I’d like to delve a bit deeper into what it means for me to be both female and male using the language that first taught me I could exist. I first learned about the richness of my gender as I listed to faithful priests describe the mystery of the Incarnation with reverence and awe. As they spoke with wonder about the God who sent Jesus to us, fully divine and fully human, I met a creator of boundless potential. In that meeting I found silence to hear how my different experiences of gender fit together. Raised a girl, who grew into a man, who then found femininity rising and began to say Compline in a dress at home, while being terrified that they would be discovered as not being “trans enough”. In Christ the pieces fit, as he could never be less than 100% divine nor less than 100% human, so I had been given the gift of being 100% a man and 100% a woman.

Because my queer gender is so firmly rooted in the language and experience of faith I feel especially drawn to ensuring our churches are open and ready to see the spiritual gifts of all trans people, not only those who fit cultural expectations for men & women.

Thank you for your witness. I offer these stories and comments to further the conversation. It means a lot to me to see priests promoting trans affirming spaces across the globe.

Reply
1. Phil Gardner
  
  05/06/2017
  
  I think ‘his/her’ should have been in italics: it’s meant to be a placeholder for whatever pronoun is appropriate for the person being baptized, and isn’t intended to exclude people of non-binary gender. I agree it’s not ideal, but unfortunately we don’t have a word that means ‘any appropriate gender pronoun’. In this case the text could read “Renew N’s life in Christ” and leave it to the president to use either the name or the appropriate pronoun.
  
  Reply
Rev. M. Rodrigues

30/07/2015

As a transgender priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, I am simply delighted to see this liturgy. I hope we can do something similar here before too long. Any other information about trans liturgies from any one/anywhere would be really welcome. And I do agree with Andrew’s insightful comments, thanks.
M.

Reply
1. Kimberly
  
  04/06/2017
  
  The point, though, is that this is not specifically a trans liturgy. It’s a liturgy for all the baptised. It assumes that our primary identity is in Christ, and our differences are held creatively together as we share in communion and are held in the body of Christ. It’s affirming because it says ‘this is a step on the journey. You already and eternally belong.’
  
  Reply