What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Predictions for 2014

    1. Remember those people who used to say, “But what is a blog…?” Well this year you are going to be hearing them say, “But what is a mooc…?”
    2. Gay men are going to start shaving again. Now that so many straight men have bought into the idea that beards are hip, it is time to mess with their fashion sense again. Consider this the memo. (Next year, the end of tattoos!)
    3. Church of Scotland General Assembly will be unable to affirm last year’s compromise on a local option for ministers who happen to be gay.
    4. More revelations relating to Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien.
    5. Number of active bloggers decreases. Influence of those still blogging increases.
    6. The real purpose of the Pilling Report will be revealed with hindsight as evangelicals begin to argue about its contents. (May take a couple of years, but trust me on this one). Initially this will be in private – increasingly in public. Having been the great unifying factor for Evangelicals for the last 10 years, attitudes to gay people will become the source of greatest disunity amongst Evangelicals for the next decade. Unappealing and unsatisfying as it is, Pilling is a watershed – it was never designed to court liberal opinion so we might as well stop moaning about it. It was designed to divide evangelical opinion and is going to be jolly successful.
    7. The Independence Referendum will be lost here in Scotland but alas, not by enough to shut everyone up.
    8. Such terrible statistics in the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway that we lose at least 4 seats on General Synod.
    9. Lord Carey will say that Christians are being persecuted in the UK, that the church is dying out or that the sky is going to fall in, and will say it at the most unhelpful time possible – probably around one of the English General Synods or Easter.
    10. We will hear about our first UK gay divorce.

    Trends to watch

    • Continued meltdown of the Church of Scotland. Ceasing to be a national church before our very eyes.
    • Internet increasingly rewards those who know how to manipulate images.
    • Economic polarization of the UK continues.

72 responses to “Baptism and the Churches”

  1. Erika Baker Avatar
    Erika Baker

    Thanks Kelvin and all for the interesting discussion. As a member of the Episcopal Church in the US, I only ever used the Baptismal Covenant in an argument against the necessity of the proposed Anglican Covenant. For me, the Baptismal Covenant is an assent to the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, so I saw absolutely no need of another covenant. In fact, I don’t see the Baptismal Covenant as something different from the New Covenant.

    With respect to whether Baptism or the Eucharist is a/the sacrament of initiation, wouldn’t the answer be both? In the early church, the person was baptized and received the Eucharist during the same service.

    Also, I wonder if people from other Anglican churches are aware of the great diversity of views held by Episcopalians in the US. That all the orders of ministry should be open to all the baptized seems to me simply a matter of the justice and equality that all Christians should strive for as members of the Body of Christ.

    Reply
  2. Erika Baker Avatar
    Erika Baker

    Sorry, I’m posting on Erika’s computer, but the comment above is by me, June Butler (aka Grandmère Mimi).

    Reply
  3. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    It’s so refreshing to read a discussion where everyone’s listening and learning through that dialectical process. Here’s my tuppennyworth: the disparaging mention of magic by churchpeople always makes my hackles go up – mostly as our Christian legacy of persecution of wise healers as witches is still largely unacknowledged and certainly unatoned – but also because the RC in me hears this as a facile Protestant jibe against metaphysics (if you want my views on that buzzword look here: http://robertpirsig.org/Alchemy.htm ) and though Vat 2 officially u-turned on slavery (yay! who says the RC church can’t change, eventually) it didn’t move away from an essentially sacramental view of Christian ministry.
    I feel that underlying this discussion may be a difference in sacramental theology. I hold the traditional view that through the creation, the incarnation and ongoing sanctification, the Spirit of God is at work metaphysically in the world and that means neither solely spiritually nor physically but betwixt and between. The RC church is just as guilty of virulent hatred of non-clerical women healers as others but the convivial nature of the relationship which sometimes occurs between Roman Catholic and ‘curandero’ (wise traditional healer) in Latin America is for me an affirmation of the ecological connections inherent in both cosmologies – though often forgotten in the RC church it must be said.
    The part of the SEC liturgy I find most alienating is ‘Lord unite us in this sign’. This speaks to me of cognition not communion. In these words I feel the lack of belief in a metaphysical reality. I feel that this discussion may have brought up a similar divide in concept about baptism: is it or is it not efficacious?

    Reply

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