What is in Kelvin's Head?

I.D.

30/09/2013
Thinking Anglicans has the story that all of us in the Scottish Episcopal Church should be thinking about at the moment. One of the most important stories that concerns Episcopalians in Scotland for quite a while.

It is to do with the recent release of figures from the last census – the one that was conducted in 2011.

The figures are absolutely fascinating.

Firstly, there are a lot more people who claim to think of themselves as Anglicans in Scotland than might have been expected. However, the majority, the vast majority of them don’t think of themselves as Scottish Episcopalians.

Here are the figures:

Church of England 66,717

Episcopalian 21,289

Scottish Episcopal Church 8,048

Anglican 4,490

Church of Ireland 2,020

Church in Wales 453

Total 103,017

Now there is a lot to say and I’ll probably not say it all today.

Firstly, notice how many people in Scotland claim to be Church of England.

If we add together those making a claim on an identity that thinks of itself as Episcopal we get 29 337. That is less than half of those who claim to be Church of England.

We’ve got a wee identity crisis and we need to start to think about it.

Now, note the number of people who were actually turning up at church in the same year (drawn from the Annual Report of the Scottish Episcopal Church). This was 14 126. So about 14% of those who claim to be Anglicans in Scotland are turning up on a typical Sunday in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

We’ve got a wee turning up problem and we need to start to think about it.

Now, take a look at the number of people whom the church claims belong to it – again from the Annual Report. That same year we claimed that we had a membership of 34 916 whilst we had a communicant membership of 24 650.

For a church which is in so many places primarily a Eucharistic church (that’s what we do) then we’ve got a wee faith problem and we need to start thinking about it.

I was very keen that we discuss the church’s statistics at last year’s General Synod. We did talk about them but I’m not entirely sure we did as much with them as I had hoped we would. The Primus tried to be upbeat about them and say that you don’t learn everything about a church by its statistics and that he found things to be hopeful.

For myself, I only partly agree with him. I think there is a lot of hope about in the Scottish Episcopal Church – far more than amongst my presbyterian friends whose church, despite being many times bigger than my own, seems to be collapsing at a local level all across the country. However, I think we can learn things from numbers and I wish these census statistics had been available at Synod. I think that reflecting creatively on the numbers is something that we need to do at every synod.

Disappointingly we don’t have census figures that we can apportion to dioceses – if we did we could see positions of relative strength and look at where the church was doing least well at attracting people who not only ought to be connected to it but actually claim to government that they are connected.

Here are some hunches:
- We’ve a significant branding problem. There’s only one church of the Anglican Communion in Scotland yet even the census report (based on write in responses) has six different lines relating to us.
- Some of the people who claim to be Church of England will make their way to the Church of Scotland and never know the difference. This infuriates Episcopalians but we should be thinking about why we are so invisible to those people.
- The various diocesan mission schemes that are underway are not working terribly well and not likely to work terribly well. They all seem to have been devised by people who are living in an age before the internet began. None are using particularly well, the central tool that people use to drive trade, create impact, generate conversation. Until we start to get this right we are going to decline. Individual churches which opt out of this are opting out of survival.
- We need to talk about our identity in terms relating to various levels of debate about Scotland and England. A long time ago, Canon Alice Mann (who helped us so much as a Province) said that we needed to do a lot more work on this. We’ve not done it and we are suffering from not having done it.
- Our corporate identity (motto, visuals and name) are such that they always need explaining and are used badly. I’ve been to churches recently who have described themselves (in every font and style imaginable) as:
  - Scottish Episcopal Church
  - Scottish Episcopal Church (Anglican)
  - Scottish Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion)
  - Scottish Episcopal Church (In full communion with the Church of England)
  - A member church of the Anglican Communion and Evangelical Alliance
  - and with no denominational affiliation at all. (eg my own congregation).
- Numbers matter hugely
- We need to work very hard on our national profile. Bishops have a special role to play here and though they’ve been doing a lot better at being local voices in the press recently we are not really creating much Scotland-wide impact.
- We’ve changed our corporate identity before and at least have to talk about doing so again.
- The Mission and Ministry Board cannot focus on anything because its remit is too large. It needs to be split in two and there needs to be a rethink of which committees go with which boards. For example, maybe Communications and Mission (or even better Outreach or Evangelism) have something to do with one another.
- Mission is a word that is so widely and inappropriately used that it now means nothing except when one is applying for a diocesan grant.
Our identity crisis is revealed by asking people from outside the church what they think we are. “Oh, are you the Church of Richard Holloway?” say the intelligensia. (Yes, still they do).

“Oh, aren’t you just the English Church?” say a whole bunch of others.

Now we need to think about these things. What should our next step be?
census, corporate image, England, English Church, identity, Scottish Episcopa Church

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