What is in Kelvin's Head?

Blessings abounding

01/10/2012

I’ve been at a couple of blessings of same-sex couples recently – as a guest rather than as someone celebrating the liturgy. Neither of the recent ceremonies that I’ve been at have been in Scotland. It is more clear to me than ever that this is Â global movement and the push towards allowing gay couples to celebrate weddings is an idea whose time has come.

At the most recent of these ceremonies, the local bishop was presiding over the blessing and one of the people being blessed was a rector. The church was packed full of people as friends and parishioners gathered for an utterly joyous occasion. As has been my experience in Scotland, one of the most extraordinary things about same-sex blessings is how unextraordinary they are. People often comment that they never thought they would live to see the day when such a thing could happen in church but then when you ask them, they say that they think it is just great.

The churches are still tying themselves in ever more complicated knots over how same-sex couples tie the knot though.

At one of the ceremonies that I was at, in a part of the world where gay couples can legally get married, I went to a ceremony in a church hall that was entirely secular and conducted by a marriage registrar which was followed by the entire party processing along a corridor and up a flight of stairs to the church sanctuary where another ceremony – a service of blessing took place. Though it was lovely, it was a bit silly to have two ceremonies in different parts of the same building and hard not to feel the injustice of gay people being treated not merely differently but differently in a banal kind of way that brought no credit to marriage, church nor God in her Glory, Might, Majesty and Power.

At the other service, no legal marriage was possible so the church has devised a liturgy entirely separate from marriage but which effectively does the same thing, with vows, readings, rings and all the trimmings. My question there, is what is going to happen when straight couples come along who like the blessing ceremony and want that rather than a legal wedding. It will happen, and what will the church say then? “Terribly sorry, this isn’t for the likes of you….”

I also found myself thinking that it is now more than time for our bishops in Scotland to review their policy of not attending any blessing services. It always was a disgraceful policy – effectively making their gay friends and colleagues appear to be their dirty little secret rather than people they were proud of. Saying you are proud in private and sending a nice card won’t do and speaks more of pecksniffian pomp than gospel values.

None of this is going to be sorted until same-sex couples have the same rights to wed as straight couples of course. For my money, in Scotland, that should mean doing away with Civil Partnerships and simply opening marriage up to same-sex couples. It is the right thing to do and equality through parliamentary decision, plebiscite or legal challenge is coming in so many jurisdictions around the world one way or another that we might as well take a deep breath and get our ecclesiastical house in order so as not to do things which make us, the gospel and Christ himself appear foolish, silly or just plain cruel.

I was intrigued by Andrew Brown’s Guardian article this weekend -Â http://t.co/6UKAnEra

His conclusion is the most striking thing in the piece:

Conservative evangelicals in England have dreamed or hoped for 20 years that England could be brought back to a Nigerian or Ugandan view of homosexuality. It’s not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen within the Church of England, either. That’s true whoever becomes archbishop. The sexuality wars are coming to an end, and the liberals have won.

Someone asked me on twitter whether or not I thought that was an overly optimistic view. Actually, I think Andrew Brown is bang on – he just has the gift of being able to see slightly further over the horizon than many people can do. I might want to take issue with the idea that there is just one Nigerian or Ugandan view. Working with a Nigerian curate has taught me that there is diversity Â of opinion amongst such communities – a fact that is hardly surprising. However, I think we all know what Andrew Brown means.

The number of people holding to the hardest of hardline positions amongst the Evangelical communities in the UK seems to me to be declining quite sharply. I’m often in the company of lay people from Evangelical churches who assure me that the tough stuff about gay people is really only the view of the rector and that there is a far greater diversity of opinion than I might expect amongst the congregation. There will probably always be a number of people who can never accept gay people as equals, just as there will probably always be people who can’t accept that women and men are equal and there will regrettably be those who practise racism even now, long after it has become socially unacceptable. Though we need to work to undermine such opinion, my view is that the best way to challenge that with regards to gay people at the moment is not to fight and bicker and fall-out. Rather, we need to work for change, to organise and to simply assert that negative views about God’s gay children are a scandal to the Gospel and stop good people being able to hear the saving news of Christ.

We are now right in the middle of the process of enormous change that is taking place as the law catches up with popular opinion. It is exciting to be seeing it from different perspectives, coming in different countries.

What Andrew Brown writes about in the Guardian, I’m seeing with my own eyes. How about you?

bishops, LGBT, Same Sex Marriage

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