What is in Kelvin's Head?

Baptising

17/06/2013
There are few more joyful things to do in this world than a baptism service. Yesterday I got to baptise someone called Theodore, which of course means Gift of God. He rather enjoyed proceedings and I’ve seldom held a child more keen to jump right into the font.

People sometimes comment on how much babies seem to enjoy being baptised at St Mary’s. Some older folk sometimes say, “I thought they were supposed to cry….” to which I reply, “…and I think it is nicer if they don’t”.

Sometimes people even come out with that old medieval nonsense that the cry of a baby at a baptism is the devil coming out. Here’s your theology starter for 10: the devil ain’t in there in the first place.

If you want to make a baby cry at a baptism, here are the instructions:
- hold them upside down
- hold them so they can’t see anyone they know
- use cold water
- flick the water in their face with a large, hard shell
- hold them as though you are frightened you are going to drop them.
Otherwise,
- hold them so they can see what’s going on – sitting on the side of the font is a good start
- surround them with a sea of happy smiling faces
- warm up the water
- talk to them and mean what you say
- keep parents in sight and free from anxiety themselves
- lots of splashes
baptism, how to baptise

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

fakepete

25/02/2015

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.

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Andrew

25/02/2015

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

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1. fakepete
  
  27/02/2015
  
  @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.
  
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2. Daniel Berry, NYC
  
  03/03/2015
  
  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.”
  
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Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

26/02/2015

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.

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1. JCF
  
  28/02/2015
  
  “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
Daniel Berry, NYC

03/03/2015

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.

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