What is in Kelvin's Head?

Guest Post: Why I am an Episcopalian – Christine McIntosh

18/09/2012

In this Guest Post, Christine McIntosh reflects on why she is an Episcopalian. Chris lives in Dunoon, doon the watter from Glasgow and blogs at www.blethers.blogspot.com

â€œOh, so youâ€™ve said goodbye to reason, then?â€ Maybe I had. At the age of 27 I had just informed my father that I was going to be confirmed in the Cathedral of The Isles – not, I add, because I thought my parents might want to be there, but to explain why I would not be celebrating my 28th birthday on the actual day. Nominally Presbyterian, but not having had any truck with church since the age of 10, I had encountered the beauty, the mystery and the music of the Piskie church on Cumbrae, where I had met the old Dean, George James Cosmo Douglas, while singing Evensong for a week with our quartet. When he died at the age of 84, we sang the Kontakion for the departed over his coffin – and that was it. I was clobbered. Thatâ€™s what it felt like – an explosion of certainty, followed by consternation. Suddenly it was all true, this stuff Iâ€™d been singing and chanting, and I didnâ€™t know what to do next. The only person I could discuss it with was dead. I was lost before Iâ€™d begun. (I ended up being prepared for confirmation by Iain MacKenzie, the Rector of Holy Trinity, Dunoon, and the rest is history – why else would I have moved there from Glasgow?)

Now, all that reflects the emotional state of someone who has just lost a friend for the first time – for friends are different from family. I was at my first funeral, ever. I was singing wonderful music in a state of emptiness, in a numinous place. I reckon God took a chance while the barricades were down. But the manner of my conversion gives the clue to why Iâ€™m a Pisky rather than anything else. In that early experience, back in the late 60s and early 70s, I found the mysterious element that still makes belief possible – the silence that allows the other to take over, the refusal to pin things down and thereby diminish them. That is why, for all the joy of an exuberant Cursillo service or the happiness children can bring to a church, I still need time to be silent, space to avoid distraction.

Music, then, and liturgy with all its poetic possibilities, and room for questioning and unknowing, and open-ness to change – these keep me the Piskie I became in 1973. And as my entire Piskie life has been lived in the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles, Iâ€™ll add one more thing. In Argyll, there is always a sense of life lived on the edge – the edge of Scotland, the edge of Europe, but also the edge of a precarious journey, a ridgewalk through faith with the winds of God blowing round my head. There is no room for complacency in the church I know and love. And that suits me just fine.

Christine McIntosh, pisky, Scottish Episcopal Church, why I am episcopalian

11 responses to “We should be wary of declaring martyrs”

Eamonn

08/04/2015

Agree totally. I find myself in a comparable position vis-à-vis the mass canonisations of the ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War, which assume that all those worthy of commemoration were on the same side.

Reply
Michael Russell

08/04/2015

Anyone killed for professing their faith is a martyr. ISIS is an equal opportunity martyring machine. The various faith communities targeted, including Islamic ones, should build common ground to dismember ISIS. I simply fail to see the point in quibbling about who is a real martyr and who is not.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2015
  
  Is it your view that someone is a martyr for Christianity because they cannot recite a verse from the Qur’an?
  
  It seems to me that whilst some men and women of violence are being claimed to be martyrs if they should be shot by law enforcement agencies whilst pursuing paths of terror that there’s a huge amount to be gained by determining who is a martyr and who isn’t.
  
  Reply
  1. Bro David
    
    08/04/2015
    
    Not being able to explain a quranic verse was merely a way of discerning if someone was not Muslim. However, is it not just as great a presumption to think they weren’t martyrs, as to think that they were.
    
    The early church seemed to accept that all who were crucified or sent to the lions for their Christianity were martyrs. Perhaps not all did so as a statement of faith, but were nominal Christians caught up with the rest. But the church didn’t seem obliged to footnote who didn’t qualify.
    
    I’m not sure that I understand why your are hesitant. It seems a quibble. I don’t think anyone is leaning toward canonization here, just speaking of them as a whole.
    
    Reply
Jo

08/04/2015

The SEC still keeps the feast of Charles, King and Martyr. I don’t think we get to be too narrow in defining who is or isn’t a martyr.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  09/04/2015
  
  Actually, Jo – that’s not quite right. The SEC keeps the commemoration of “Charles I, King, 1649”
  
  There’s no mention of him being a martyr in the calendar (and the current calendar superseded and replaced the one in the prayer book). There are plenty of people who are named as martyrs such as Agnes the week before Charles or indeed “Charles Mackenzie of Central Africa, Bishop, Missionary, Martyr, 1862” the very day after Charles.
  
  It would appear that rather careful thought was given to whether to describe Charles as a martyr and though he is included in the calendar (not least for founding one of our dioceses) any notion of martyrdom is absent.
  
  Reply
  1. Jo
    
    09/04/2015
    
    Thanks for the correction, I hadn’t realised there was that detail of difference between the SEC and CofE.
    
    Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

Of course, King Charles was a Martyr and is commemorated as such on January 31st each year. The trouble is that Anglicans have no real mechanism for declaring people to be saints or martyrs. Having referred to two recent horrific incidents on the African continent where Christians were slaughtered simply for being Christians, I wonder what the Provost of Glasgow thinks about the Ugandan Martyrs of the 19th century and would you personally regard them to be martyrs? As you know 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics were killed by the Kabaka for refusing to submit to King Mwanga’s corporal intimacies. The Roman Catholics were beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1964 but what of our Anglican Ugandan brothers – where they equally to be regarded as martyrs, or would you deny them that honorific title?

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  10/04/2015
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Calendar is again very clear: “Charles Lwanga and his companions, 1886, Janani Luwum, Bishop, 1977, Martyrs of Uganda”
  
  I have no idea why anyone would say that the SEC has no means of declaring someone to be a martyr. Not only do we have such a mechanism, we use it.
  
  Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

It would be interesting to know how this mechanism works in the SEC in deciding who is eligible to join the noble army of martyrs? Bishop Edward King of Lincoln is widely regarded as a saint South of the Border. I think it was Archbishop Lang who was asked how it was decided that Bishop King had reached sainthood status and the answer was that he was given a Collect, Epistle and Gospel to commemorate his saint’s day – 8th March, the day of his Heavenly Birthday.

Reply
Harry Campbell

19/04/2015

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not,” the Ethiopian communications minister Redwan Hussein told AFP.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

What a shame the Archbishop couldn’t have said something similarly inclusive about the victims of the Kenyan massacre, and all such massacres, without caring about what their religion affiliation may or may not have been.

Reply