What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Giving up marriage

    I was intrigued by the statement made to the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Scottish Parliament of someone representing the Church of Scotland. They seemed to suggest that if they don’t get their way in stopping same-sex marriage then they might stop conducting marriages altogether.

    BBC report here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-24063468

    I think that it is interesting in that there are quite a lot of religious people who talk about getting out of the legal marriage business. It wouldn’t particularly trouble me if we had the same situation as they have in France whereby people get married at the town hall and come to church for a religious ceremony afterwards. I think they would end up just as married before God and state if we had that system in Scotland as they clearly do in France. However, that wholesale system doesn’t appear to be on the cards.

    I sometimes find myself wondering whether I will feel comfortable doing marriages (as opposed to weddings) at such a time as the law allows same-sex marriage but the Scottish Episcopal Church doesn’t. I don’t find it difficult to think that it would be reasonable to expect straight couples to go to the registry office and come to church for a service if that is what the Episcopal Church expects of a gay couple in similar circumstances. What’s good for the gander and the gander is surely good for the gander and the goose, as the old proverb would say.

    Anyway, well done to Bishop John Armes who was also speaking to that parliamentary committee this morning. Well done particularly for making it so clear that the Scottish Episcopal Church contains people who are strongly in favour of same-sex marriage as well as those who are not. It was just a little bit more helpful than hiding behind the “the church is made up of people who have a diversity of views” which is what we usually get.

    , , , ,

7 responses to “The Archbishop, the gays and their sins”

  1. fakepete Avatar
    fakepete

    Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.

    Reply
  2. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time

    Reply
    1. fakepete Avatar
      fakepete

      @Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.

      Reply
    2. Daniel Berry, NYC Avatar
      Daniel Berry, NYC

      Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.

      As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”

      Reply
  3. Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert Avatar
    Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

    I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
    God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.

    Reply
    1. JCF Avatar
      JCF

      “Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”

      I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).

      “Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]

      Reply
  4. Daniel Berry, NYC Avatar
    Daniel Berry, NYC

    best line for me:

    You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

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

Previous Posts

  • The BA Cross Story

    I’ve been fairly hushed about the story of the banning of the cross around the neck of the BA employee. Generally, as I’ve said before, I think that people should be allowed to wear what they like, but does that work in this case? In some ways I don’t think it does. Uniform is uniform.…

  • To the Theatre Royal, Tarantara!

    As if there were not enough camp Victoriana in my life already, I took myself off last night to the Theatre Royal for a splendid Pirates of Penzance by the Carl Rosa company. It would be fair to say, upon looking around at the audience, that the young people of Glasgow have not yet discovered…