What is in Kelvin's Head?

Providence and Vocation for Liberals in Public Life

27/06/2015

So far as I can tell, most Christians believe that right at the centre of the public square there grows a tall tree called Christians Ethics. And Christians think that they sit up in its gentle branches presiding over the moral dilemmas of this world greatly blessed by what the good Lord has given unto them.

Christians tend to think that they hold a privileged position when it comes to moral decision making.

And Christians are wrong.

And this isn’t just limited to Christians either. It applies to other faith groups and even to non-believers, who sometimes seem to presume that the Tree of Atheist Goodness is nudging just a little higher than everyone else’s tree and that this means that the privileges of Being In Charge of morality should naturally cross over to them.

They are wrong too. And mostly for the same reasons.

Ten years ago I was a candidate in a General Election for the Liberal Democrats at a time when being a Lib Dem was both more popular and more respectable than it is today. (I’m no longer a member of the party as it happens, and didn’t vote Lib Dem at the last election).

When you are a candidate in an election, you have to be prepared for people asking you questions before they cast their vote. For a relatively small number of people will chose how to vote directly on the basis of their interaction with candidates over questions which they care about. You have to be ready with an answer about taxation, abortion, nuclear weapons and so on. Political parties tend to help out with answering these questions – when you sign up for a party ticket you sign up to represent a particular manifesto of positions after all. However, manifestos don’t cover everything and in any case, some people want to interact with a candidate directly.

The most difficult question that I had when I was a candidate came from a couple who were obviously thinking very deeply about how they would cast their vote. Their question was along these lines: “We are disposed to vote for a liberal candidate but we hesitate to vote for you because we know from your profession that you are a Christian. To be honest we are worried about the values that you hold and we presume that your values are not our values. We don’t think Christian values are particularly nice values. Can you reassure us that if elected you will conduct yourself as a Liberal rather than according to a Christian agenda?”

It was a great question and made me think a lot. I did engage with the couple and in the end they told me that they did indeed intend to vote for me.

I was lucky in being able to talk to them about the issues they were concerned about and put my own position over which in the end was not that different from their own. There was no alternative but to go through things issue by issue. As it happened, being able to talk at first hand about being a gay member of the clergy did give them some reassurance.

But the point is, they had come to the view that Christians have a considerably more unpleasant ethical position than decent people in society.

And I fear that this is increasingly the case and that most Christians neither believe that others hold this view nor care about it either. After all, they are still up in their tree.

Today there is a new interview with Tim Farron that has been published and it bears some reflection. Tim is likely to be elected as the Leader of the Liberal Democrats over the next couple of weeks. It is a car crash of an interview and heralds the fact that the decimation of the liberal cause in British political life is not yet complete. Its likely new leader seems intent on finishing off a liberal tradition that is already gasping for breath.

First we’ve the headline: “Maybe God’s plan is for me to lose a bunch of elections and be humbled”

Then we’ve the content which shows that the headline is lifted out of a quote of jaw-dropping stupidity both politically and theologically.

Farron believes that everyone will go to either heaven or hell. “I think the Bible is clear. Everybody has something coming after.” As a non-believer, will I go to hell? “Well, it’s not for me to make that judgement. It’s a real cop-out, this one, but Abraham says: ‘Will not the judge of all things do right?’ And at the end, no one will disagree with the justice of what God has done.”

I ask if he consulted God when considering whether to stand for the party leadership. “Of course you do, of course you do. Obviously you ask for His guidance.” Does he think God has a plan for him? “I think He has a plan for everybody.” I’m not sure what that means. “Well, God is sovereign. Dreadful things happen in this world, but that reminds us that we need a saviour. I don’t go round fixating that God has some major plan for me. Maybe his plan is for me to lose a bunch of elections and be humbled. God’s plan could be that some pretty brutal things happen to you. But the one thing I fall back on is that God’s overall plan is good.”

One wonders where to begin. It seems to me that what we’ve got from Tim Farron here is bad politics and even worse theology.

Let us presume for a moment that God is in the business of direct meddling in human politics. (I don’t think that God is in that business, but let us presume that it is true). Might we not think that God in her wisdom might have more on her mind than whether Tim Farron or someone else leads a political party which is likely to be locked out of power for years? We might also draw breath at the idea that if God wants Farron to lose a bunch of elections and be humbled then “God’s plan” might be for the Tories to be in power. Is someone really as capable of giving such a crass quote to the newspapers really going to lead a political party in the UK?

Incidentally, the “Will not the judge of all things do right?” quote comes from Genesis Chapter 18 and Tim Farron seems to have been reading the Living Bible paraphrase. What you need to know is this – it comes straight out of the Sodom and Gomorrah story. It is interesting that given the controversy surrounding Tim Farron’s voting record on gay rights that he lifts a quote from scripture right out of that particular ancient saga. It is also interesting that he chooses a portion of scripture where many liberals reading it might well say that the human being (Abraham) in the story had a more secure grasp of justice, righteousness, compassion and fairness than the God depicted there, who is indeed said to rain down arbitrary terror upon people.

A lot of the trouble here comes from the idea that God has an overall plan. Tim Farron believes it but I don’t – or at least not in that way. If God has a plan then it is not unreasonable to ask why God is hanging about and not implementing it more quickly than God does. Providence gives us a God to blame for the way things are rather than giving us a prompt to take responsibility as autonomous subjects both for being honest about our past and in driving the future forward towards justice.

I tend to believe much more in vocation than in providence. I’d be happy to hear from any political leader about how their religious views (Christian, Muslim Buddhist, Atheist or whatever) give them a drive to bring about a better world. I believe in people being in touch with an inner calling to put the world to rights.

However, I’m very suspicious of people believing God to be on their side and believing that they are in the business of implementing God’s plan for the world.

Tim Farron seems to me to be unfit to lead the Liberal Democrat party and I say that as one of the very few who predicted the near wipe-out of Liberal Democrat seats that took place at the General Election.

I’ve been troubled by the attitude of Lib Dem friends to his voting record on LGBT issues. Farron famously voted in favour of giving registrars the “right” to opt out of dealing with gay couples. This has been dismissed as a side issue by Tim’s supporters. The trouble is, these are not side issues, these are my rights.

The election of Tim Farron will show that the party has learned nothing at all from the Tuition Fees debacle. At the time of that disaster, the party chose pragmatism over party policy. Choosing cheeky-chappy Tim Farron as leader because he has a good record in winning elections despite the fact that he has an illiberal voting record on key touchstone issues seems to me to be remarkably similar.

The trouble is, choosing good policy over pragmatism is exactly what liberalism actually is.

gay, LGBT, Tim Farron

10 responses to “Response from the College of Bishops”

Father Ron Smith

12/01/2015

Thank you, Fr, Kelvin, for making the contents of the SEC Bishops’ Response to the Letter from 50 people concerned about their attitude towards the openness of the Church to the prospect of its eirenic treatment of clergy and Church members – desirous of solemnising Same-Sex monogamous relationships in the context of Marriage.

It seems to me – an outsider, but a member of the New Zealand Anglican Church – that the Letter has challenged your Bishops to positive action on behalf of Christians – and others – who consider faithful Gay relationships to be equally acceptable to God as those of heterosexuals. The Church, surely, must act to affirm faithful monogamous relationships on both sides of the spectrum.

Let’s hope your General Synod will move ahead to affirm such relationships, so that the Church may get on with other aspects of its mission; knowing that human justice for ALL people is paramount in the propagation of the Gospel. If SEC is pro-active in this important matter, it can only encourage churches like my own – in ACANZP – to follow suit.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  12/01/2015
  
  The General Synod is, to some degree, inhibited from sorting this out until the bishops themselves decide to back a proposal which would allow all to flourish in the church.
  
  The synod contains the bishops and they have an effective veto on canonical legislation.
  
  I’m baffled at the moment as to why they have not rallied around a position which allows all of us, both those in favour and those against, to act according to our consciences in this area. I think that this is a position which would re-unite the church again. I know those who disagree with me on the substantive question about lesbian and gay relationships who are as mystified and as frustrated as I am that we are taking so long to deal with this and who, like me, want to get on with the business of letting Scotland’s people know that God loves them.
  
  Everyone I know says they want to come to a resolution which does not de-church other Episcopalians. The position that the bishops have taken comes very close to de-churching some of us and I remain greatly concerned for the Province as a whole.
  
  Reply
2. Christine McIntosh
  
  13/01/2015
  
  Amen.
  
  Reply
Pam

12/01/2015

From my reading, it’s a carefully worded document that attempts not to pre-empt what may happen at Synod. Talking to each other face-to-face is always better than written communication, in my opinion. This issue does need a resolution and I’m sure that people on both sides of the debate, in good faith, would want to honour each other. Bishops have a tough job but so do the people who don’t get the opportunity to attend Synod, for whatever reason.

Reply
Chris Hansen

12/01/2015

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being talked about by people who would rather not talk to me. This “listening process” that the C of E is going through is bull. They’ve been doing variations on that for years. Nothing comes out of it except more conversations. No progress is made thereby.

The trick is to push the bishops to take a stand and do some prophetic leading.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  12/01/2015
  
  The current process in the Church of England is related to the Cascade Process that we’ve had in Scotland.
  
  Some people have benefitted from the process here. There’s no getting away from that. It has been a good thing for some but by no means all.
  
  Some have felt very disappointed and upset that the bishops themselves now appear not to have been working in accord with the principles of the process itself.
  
  And some, like me who have been working for change in this area for years, were excluded from the design of the process and from its major set piece provincial event.
  
  Reply
FakePete

13/01/2015

I feel very angry reading that.

Reply
Steven

13/01/2015

Dear Kelvin

Interesting developments. Not much in that letter really.

What would you do if you were Primus?

The reality is the SEC has always (at least in my mind) been open to a more progressive stance on this kind of issue and yet does contain those for whom this would be (very?) difficult.

Would you seek to maintain unity by some kind of compromise (CoE and women Bishops) or would you forge on ahead with prophetic change leaving those who didn’t like it to make their own choices (like the Episcopal Church)…?

The New Testament Christians didn’t seem to care much for unity at the expense of integrity and justice.

For my own part I think it is better for churches not to try and fudge this issue (look at the terrible mess in the Church of Scotland) but to agree a position and then firmly pursue same, come what may. People would not tolerate an institution that allowed a minority of people to adopt racist positions and so it should not really be any different for those who want to maintain positions that discriminate against same-sex couples.

All this is – of course – easy for me to say.

Steven

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  13/01/2015
  
  What would I do if I were the Primus? Well that’s a good question.
  
  The first thing I’d remember is that the Primus is simply the spokesperson for the College of Bishops and doesn’t have the authority that, for example, an archbishop might think he possesses.
  
  I would however as a bishop argue in a favour of a solution which allowed people to act according to their conscience in this area. I don’t agree that people should be forced to “firmly pursue” a particular stance over this issue. It isn’t who we are. In fact I think the problem at the moment is that people are being forced to pursue a position that they don’t agree with and that situation is unsustainable.
  
  The reasons for not forcing people to marry gay couples are these:
  
  1 – No gay couple wants to be married by someone who has been forced to do so but who would really prefer not to.
  
  2 – It would be illegal anyway and our canon law determines that we will abide by Scots Law.
  
  3 – We already have a precedent with divorce – no-one is forced to marry anyone who is divorced, they can chose whether or not to do so. I think that is a reasonable compromise and it has served the church well.
  
  4 – I don’t think anyone should be compelled to marry anyone and that is the situation that we currently have.
  
  However there are some positive things that a Scottish bishop could do at the moment. Although I agree that same-sex marriages cannot take place in churches or be done by SEC priests until there is a decision made by General Synod I don’t agree that it is the case that someone cannot affirm allegiance to the canons of the church because they happen to be in a same-sex marriage.
  
  I think de-coupling those two issues is urgent.
  
  I would argue in favour of an equal opportunities policy for the church.
  
  I would try to seek a way of bringing forward a synodical resolution which would allow same-sex marriage, allow those who don’t want to be party to it not to have to be and I’d argue in favour of that as a godly compromise that would allow us to get on with our gospel business of sharing the good news.
  
  If I were the Primus I would probably be encouraging the College of Bishops to allow me to say publicly that we regretted that some people had been excluded from the Cascade Process and I’d seek to commit the College to a more consultative leadership style. In particular I’d want to say that there should never be a process about people that did not include them in the design of the structures of the conversation. I’d want to say that we would never construct a conversation about the ministry of women without women being involved, we would never construct a conversation about ethnic minorities in the church without appropriate consultation with people who belong to ethnic minorities and I’d commit the church never to make the mistake that has been repeatedly made of constructing a conversation about LGBT people without their involvement.
  
  If I were wise, I’d be learning a lot more about the experience of trans people because I’d realise that trans issues are inevitably coming our way.
  
  Does that answer the question?
  
  Reply
  1. Steven
    
    13/01/2015
    
    Yes, it does rather. Thanks.
    
    For the avoidance of doubt I would not advocate forcing anyone to marry anyone. When I said it is better to adopt a position and then pursue that I meant in terms of whether or not to permit equal marriage in the SEC (which is not the same as saying that all priests would therefore be compelled to marry gay folk).
    
    We have just filed an equal marriage petition in Belfast, so thoughts and prayers all welcome!
    
    Steven
    
    Reply