What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • So, let me get this right…

    Let me be sure I’ve understood this.

    From sometime next year or the year after, a gay couple will be able to get a Civil Partnership, then come to a Scottish Episcopal Church for a blessing from a Scottish Episcopal priest, make promises to one another, exchange rings, have them blessed, sing hymns and have a Eucharist celebrating their union. And then they will be able to convert it to a marriage soon after (what a day later?) by filling in a form and paying a small fee. Or maybe they will not even need to go through the Civil Partnership bit and just be able to come for the whole blessing thing after getting married.

    And that’s going to be OK with just about everyone. Admittedly not absolutely everyone but not far off.

    And we are now currently insisting in submissions to the Scottish Government that the same Scottish Episcopal Church is opposed by virtue of our doctrine to same-sex couples getting married.

    And we expect government (and the general population) to take us seriously.

    Have I understood that correctly?

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One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

    Reply

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