What is in Kelvin's Head?

Isn’t it time to stop teaching sport to children?

11/11/2015

Isn’t it time to stop teaching children sport?

It is drug-addled, corrupt, nationalistic, sectarian, sexist, homophobic and brings out the very worst in people. Why on earth do we presume it is something suitable for children to participate in?

From time to time I am asked to comment on calls from one secularist group or another who want to get rid of religion in schools or who want access to Thought For The Day. Often religion is dismissed as something that children should be protected from. But why don’t the secularists turn their attention to sport if they really want to protect children? Surely 3 minutes of Thought for the Day is considerably less harmful than the privileged access that sport gets to every news broadcast in the world. Sport seems to have become a religion anyway but where is the organised opposition?

There have still been more Anglican bishops in the world who have come out than premier level footballers. The fear that sport can induce in young LGBT people can last a lifetime. For their sake shouldn’t we just say “No” to activities that can cause so much harm?

I want boys and girls to learn that they are equal but I look at men and women’s sporting rewards and despair. What hope is there for girls’ self esteem whilst they are constantly exposed to sport?

The city I live in is blighted by sport centred sectarianism and still the violence is encouraged by co-opting children at a very young age in school. Why do they make football compulsory for boys? Why? How are decent parents supposed to keep their children from such negative and corrupting activities? You have a right to remove your children from religious instruction but not from sport. Oh no, not from sport.

I can see the point in teaching kids about heath and fitness. I can see the point of putting gyms in secondary schools and I can see the point of teaching all young people how to swim. But the competitive, money dominated, cess-pit of professional sport is surely the last thing we need to encourage them to believe is a proper activity for adults.

11 responses to “The Joy of Evensong”

Kennedy

23/09/2014

Does England-shire have Breach of the Peace as an offence?

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1. Kelvin
  
  23/09/2014
  
  It is not an offence, but it is a concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_the_peace#England.2C_Wales_and_Northern_Ireland
  
  There may be other ways of dealing with it as anti-social behaviour.
  
  Reply
  1. Ruth
    
    25/09/2014
    
    I do hope so. The Abbey’s been there for hundreds of years, it’s not as if it could be said to be encroaching on the buskers’ pitch.
    
    Reply
Gerry Lynch

23/09/2014

I’ve long been a Choral Evensong addict. You might be interested in the article linked to, which I wrote on a similar theme. I’d also say, apropos the BCP, let alone the delightful SPB, that rumours of their death are greatly exaggerated, despite what was in many places a quite conscious attempt to kill them off.

Rather as the worship of the pre-Reformation English Church lay dormant for centuries waiting to be rediscovered, the same will apply to our historic prayer books with their wonderfully rich language, incomparable Collects and Prayers, and realistic take on the human condition.

http://sammymorse.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/why-is-cathedral-evensong-growing-and-what-does-it-mean/

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Richard

23/09/2014

Someone once described to me that evensong was the jewel in the crown of Anglican services. Never having experienced the service at that time, I had no idea what he was talking about. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to attend evensong regularly in various places where I have discovered the subliminal quality of evensong worship. There is a feeling of intense and intimate communion with God, where the music encourages one to slip in and out of meditative consciousness. Fabulous stuff- it can leave one drained in the most delightful way.
Incidentally, I have heard people complain that they don’t like evensong because there isn’t anything “to do”. Tragic.

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Susan Sheppard Hedges

23/09/2014

As a singer in a choir recently returned to the US from two weeks of ‘subbing’ at Norwich and Wells Cathedrals, I love the evensong. All the hubbing and bubbing in rehearsals previous to the service left one almost panting for breath. Then the choir gathered outside the quire as the organist played the prelude and we entered. Yes, we worried about the singing, but the prayers were most wonderful and gave even us that time to be in communion. I love it.

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Beth Thomas

23/09/2014

Summer evenings, evening chorus of birds, peace at the end of the day, time to reflect on the week past and that to come, treading in the steps that people have taken since the 16th Century plus some of the most sublime liturgical music written. What’s not to like?

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Bob

23/09/2014

Evensong at St. Mary’s is sublime you sum it up wonderfully Kelvin. A peace that passeth all understanding and speaks to the soul.

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Graham Ward

23/09/2014

I find Choral Evensong is often the easiest service to bring people who are strangers to church to. It doesn’t demand the same degree of commitment sort involvement as the Eucharist. No-one’s going to shake your hand and offer you the Peace whether you want them to or not, you don’t have that awkward moment that says “I don’t go to church” when everyone else goes up for communion and you’re left alone in the pew.
The pattern of the daily office is easily explained, as are the cycles of psalms and bible readings. The idea that this form of service has been used, virtually unchanged, for hundreds of years reminds people of the permanence of the church – and instantly makes them a part of it. And crucially, much of the best church music is not found in settings of the Mass, but in the canticles and anthems used at Morning Prayer and Evensong.

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Jaye Richards-Hill

24/09/2014

Evensong was certainly what brought me to St Mary’s at first-and it is still one of the things (along with morning prayer) that I miss the most.

I’ve always loved the service – the words,music,silence all come together for me into something which yes, very much soothes my soul.
In Cape Town, they do a Jazz Vespers once a month which is basically, Evensong with some really smooth cool jazz music…. that’s a nice twist on an old friend…

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Melissa Holloway

24/09/2014

Evensong changed our life, I think.

And afterward we would take the almost adults across the street for some of their first ales and pizza.

Now I see it was such a fleeting moment. Most evensongs seem like that to me still- wonderful and fleeting.

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