What is in Kelvin's Head?

I respectfully disagree…

02/07/2022

I respectfully disagree with the latest College of Bishops statement on Aberdeen and Orkney and I do so in two respects.

Firstly, there is no mention of a mediation process in Canon 53. If the College of Bishops wishes to use Canon 53 section 11 and subsequent sections, then they should follow the procedure laid down there and name the bishop who is hearing the dispute. The bishop in question should publish the terms under which they are going to determine the dispute and the date on which the hearing will take place. Canon 53 does not allow for the resolution of such disputes to be outsourced to other individuals or organisations. (Sections before section 11 do not apply to disputes within a diocese). The procedure outlined in Canon 53 Section 11 and the following sections is clearly a decision making process and not a process of mediation. (In any case, my personal view is that mediation processes are seldom appropriate in cases where bullying is alleged and where there are discrepancies of power between the parties involved).

Secondly, anyone making a claim of bullying against a serving bishop or any serving bishop wishing to make a claim that they have themselves been bullied by anyone subject to the Code of Canons, should be explicitly invited by the College to make a complaint under Canon 54.

Canon 54 can only be initiated by someone who is a member of the church. My view is that the College should make public appropriate arrangements for the bringing of a complaint by anyone who has subsequently left the church – specifically that the complaint would be passed to a (communicant) diocesan registrar or the clerk to the Episcopal Synod to be initiated formally.

Making vague references to the “Disciplinary Canonical process” of the church in a press release is unhelpful. Canon 54 is what the process is and the College of Bishops should long ago have insisted that people use it to bring allegations.

This is not the first statement by the College of Bishops with regard to these matters that has given me cause for concern. In a statement last December the College asserted that neither the Primus nor the College of Bishops had the power to suspend a bishop. The Code of Canons is very clear that bishops can be suspended and that only the Primus can do so and that this can only be upheld or not by the Episcopal Synod (which is the same body of people as the College of Bishops). The due processes governing how these things can come about are found in Canon 54 (Of Offences and Trials) and Canon 6 (Of Diocesan Bishops and their Jurisdiction and of Bishops’ Commissaries).

For the last few years I’ve been a member of a review group which has been carefully considering whether the disciplinary canonical processes of the church need to be updated. In time, I hope that they are. However, the canons that we currently have remain in force. Bishops require clergy to take oaths to uphold the Canons. Bishops themselves take oaths that they in turn will uphold the canons of the church.

I regard members of the College of Bishops as colleagues and friends and remain willing to discuss these matters with any of them or indeed with any member of the church. A number of the members of the College of Bishops have heard me say privately what I now assert here, that for the good of the whole church, the College of Bishops needs to return to the Canonical norms of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

I will not be discussing this matter with any journalists. The opinions expressed in this post are explicitly with regard to the College of Bishops and do not constitute a comment on anything that may or may not have happened in the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, about which I have little knowledge.

The Code of Canons of the Scottish Episcopal Church can be found here: https://www.scotland.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/Code-of-Canons-2020.pdf

7 responses to “Gender Segregation in Universities and Elsewhere”

Nick Brindley

13/12/2013

The issue that Universities UK was advising on wasn’t single sex meetings but segregated seating, which is significantly different. They were talking neither about organisations nor meetings that were closed to members of either sex but of segregation by sex within a single meeting open, on that basis, to all.

This isn’t to say that it isn’t important to think about the issues you raise, just that they are substantially and importantly different from the issues raised by the UUK advice, which in turn are different (as UUK say in this response http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2013/11/25/external-speakers-guidance-segregation/) from those raised in the subsequent debate)

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1. Kelvin
  
  13/12/2013
  
  I also remember about 15 years ago welcoming a straight couple into an Anglican congregation who told me that they had never sat together in church before, it being the custom where they came from in rural Wales for men and women to sit on opposite sides of the aisle in church.
  
  They also told me that it was the custom to put up on a board what everone had given the previous week.
  
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Kelvin

13/12/2013

Thanks Nick – I wasn’t aware that this was what had caused it. I don’t think my comments are irrelevant to that situation and some of the discussion I heard on Today was broader than simply over seating.

I am reminded of the performances of (I think) Oleana by David Mamet in which the audience was seated in gender segregated seating. It was an interesting experiment and one that made many uncomfortable.

I struggle to think of any situation where I would support gender segregated seating on the basis of the preference of the speaker.

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RevRuth

13/12/2013

In Homerton Hospital 10 years ago they had invested big bucks in a stunning multi-faith chaplaincy centre. Women Muslim patients still said their prayers in the stairwell.

I say No to segregation.

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Nick Brindley

14/12/2013

I certainly wouldn’t want to (try to) introduce segregated seating into my churches but that’s a slightly different question from telling others they’re not allowed to segregate, which is what’s in question in this case. The advice from UUK was that Universities should tolerate meetings being held in their premises where seating was segregated. The advice was not aimed at anyone who wanted to segregate but at the owners of buildings such people might want to use. From the point of view of the Church we’re more likely, I would think, to be in the position of the University than that of the meeting organisers, since segregated seating is more or less unknown in contemporary British Christian settings (as far as I know).

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/12/2013
  
  I’ve only encountered segregated seating in Coptic churches and in Synagogues.
  
  As I said above, I have met people who have lived their lives in the UK in a church which did practise segregated seating.
  
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Duncan

14/12/2013

Good points, well made.

The thing that does disturb me a little in this debate (refreshingly absent from your piece) is the shrillness of the liberal voices I have heard (particularly on Radio 4) about that fact that, on occasion, consenting adults might want to sit in separate groups.

Listening to them, it was as if one of the 10 commandments had been broken. (“Thou shalt not sit in a group comprised only of members of the same sex where there exists a group of the opposite sex in close proximity.”)

IF there is no coercion, overt or implicit, then surely people are free to sit ‘where the heck they like’ (to quote the University spokesperson speaking on this issue.)

What it did raise for me, however, is the fact that coercion is rarely absent from group gatherings of any sort – where the pressure to conform can be strong. And churches are as ‘bad’ at this as any other group. Group norms – whether voiced by the shrill cry of left-leaning liberals, or conservative Imams, or vicars on Sunday – are stubborn and powerful little blighters. I’m not sure that legislating them in – or out – really works.

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