What is in Kelvin's Head?

Apologies have consequences too

15/04/2016

The world seems to be full of bishops apologising to LGBT people.

However, there seems to be a curious absence in the world of LGBT people freely accepting those apologies and being thus able to take their place as full members of the churches.

In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that. However, it is also equally clear that there’s little change in substance.

Much the same applies in the Anglican world.

Earlier this year, we had the most profound words from the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury. However, we must begin to ask whether they were empty words or words that mean something.

After the Primates’ Meeting he was reported to have said that it was a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality”. This was widely reported at the time as an apology to LGBT people. This was at the meeting at which the Primates decided to take action that would punish the US based Episcopal Church for treating LGBT people as, well, ordinary people. Such action was somehow too much for some members of the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop was left trying to explain that the action against the US Church was not a set of sanctions but rather a set of consequences. Oh, “all actions have consequences”, the Archbishop reminded us again and again.

The trouble for the Archbishop is that apologies have consequences too. Actual apologies that is. Apologies that don’t mark a new start, that don’t demonstrate a turning around, that don’t exhibit that metanoia experience that we all know is the gospel in action, are indicative of rather cheap grace and don’t amount very much to being apologies that should be taken seriously.

Justin Welby has his work cut out as Archbishop of Canterbury and he has my sympathies and sometimes even my prayers. However, his work won’t make any coherent sense if he goes around making insipid apologies to gay communities whilst all the while being the public face of a body which is engaged in persecuting LGBT people in its actions. The sanctions/consequences/actions against the US church were symbolic of the real persecutions that LGBT people face daily, particularly those LGBT people who live in parts of the world where we have most to fear. And the trouble is, in the church we believe rather strongly that symbols matter rather a lot.

I’m not sure what the opposite of grace is, nor what the opposite of a sacrament is. Perhaps we need to coin a word. The “consequences” that that Archbishop had the misfortune to be explaining to the world’s press after the Primates’ Meeting seem to me to the the outward sign of an inward and yet curiously visible spiritual cruelty.

You don’t get to be a front for that kind of speech and also be taken seriously when making apologies to the very people who are on the blunt end of the actions.

The trouble for bishops making apologies is that real apologies have consequences too. Real apologies mean turning things round; doing things differently; starting anew. And the fact that we’ve not seen that yet indicates that we shouldn’t take the apologies of the Archbishop of Canterbury as meaning anything other than that he’d rather people didn’t think he was beastly.

But beastly is as beastly does.

This week some of the pernicious “consequences” of the Primates’ Meeting have been worked out in the context of the rather more healthily constituted body the Anglican Consultative Council which is meeting in Lusaka at the moment. And all the while the threat remains that other churches in the communion which dare to be nice to those poor unfortunate homosexualists might also be consequenced themselves.

The Anglican Consultative Council is supposed to be a body in which the voices of lay people and clergy who are not bishops is heard internationally. It seems rather a pity then that they’ve just elected not only a bishop to chair it for the next six years but one of the Primates themselves.

How long will it be before we realise that we’ve got a bigger problem with the Episcopate in the Anglican Communion than we have with LGBT people who just want to get on with the rather extraordinary calling of just being an ordinary follower of Jesus.

Only this week I heard of yet another person unwilling to join the Anglican Communion because it is known for being at best ambivalent about the way it treats LGBT people. These disputes are costing us members and we should not take seriously mission initiatives which come from those who are making mission in Western countries almost impossible.

And still the absurdities of the situation grow. This week one of the churches which the Church of England (and my own church for that matter) is in full communion with decided to open marriage to same-sex couples. The Church of Norway joins the Church of Sweden in doing this joyfully and thus welcoming gay and lesbian people fully into its life of faith. This passed with almost no comment in the Anglican world. Are gay Norwegians really not as spiritually wicked to those of an anti-gay persuasion than gay people from Little England? Are gay Lutherans just not worth a schism? If not, why not? Do we think that these Lutherans, upon whom we’ve expended rather a lot of ecumenical agape in recent years, just can’t help themselves? Why are gay Anglicans in the US the target and not gay Lutherans in Norway? I have to confess I just don’t get it. Does one church have better lesbians that the other. Or more wicked ones?

And it leaves people like the Archbishop of Canterbury exposed. He may have a gift at the moment of keeping many (though clearly not everyone) in the Anglican world talking to one another and that’s not to be sniffed at. However, there is a danger that whilst the talking goes on, the church becomes so internally incoherent that it risks looking spectacularly foolish in public.

And that is not what being a fool for Christ is all about.

10 responses to “Where does the Church of Scotland stand?”

Robin

21/05/2013

I understand your sentiments, but both on this issue and on the ordination of women in the Church of England the weary words of Mrs Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the Paycock’ in reply to her son, who scorns the Irish Free State and wants an Irish Republic or nothing, are inclined to come to mind:

“To be sure, to be sure — no bread’s a lot better than half a loaf.”

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Nick Brindley

21/05/2013

I think you’re right to think this is a disastrously wrong-headed attempt to avoid having to think the issue through, although we may not agree on what would be involved in such thinking (almost nobody agrees with me!)

I think we need to revisit some pretty fundamental problems on the nature of the moral authority of the Bible, the meaning of “salvation” and what ministry is to make any real progress with this issue and there appears to be depressingly little appetite to do this in a spirit of mutual trust and of trust in the leading of the Spirit guiding our interpretation of scripture

http://loveswork.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/failing-to-be-biblical-reflections-on-church-of-scotland-sexuality-debates/

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Frank keefe

21/05/2013

This is what happens when you water down Gods truth so the secular world will think what a progressive church you are.When a small secular wedge is pushed under a church door you can bet a larger one will be pushed under it in the not to distant future.I believe a liberal minded church like the Church of Scotland is more dangerous to the Christian faith than atheists like Richard Dawkins and his followers. Jesus found it hard to convince the Pharisees of their misguided beliefs if He walked our earth today He would find those modern day Pharisees in the Church of Scotland even harder to convince.

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1. Rosemary Hannah
  
  21/05/2013
  
  Well, there you go – I think the exact opposite – that Jesus, who plucked corn, and healed, on the Sabbath, would be out partying tonight with all sorts of disreputable people. The Pharisees were the people who stuck rigidly to the law, breaking it even as they kept it. Jesus was the one who re-interpreted it.
  
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  1. Frank keefe
    
    21/05/2013
    
    I find it amazing how those who look for sin to be accepted would try and use Jesus to back them up.First Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.The Pharisees abused Gods law with their legalism.Its why He said about the rescue of a sheep on that day.He didnt re-interpret it He was showing them how it SHOULD BE KEPT as God ALWAYS intended it.Its the church who is doing the interpretation and Jesus certainly wouldnt be “out partying” such disrespect of our Lords holiness is often the way with liberal ” Christians” Instead of the church being a light to the world that worlds darkness is putting out that light.
    
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    1. kelvin
      
      21/05/2013
      
      Bless you for your faith, Frank. May it bring you happiness and joy.
      
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Graeme Cowie

21/05/2013

It’s a fudge, no doubt. And one which, far from preserving the “traditional” Kirk actually serves to undermine it in a number of ways, particularly concerning the status of “doctrine” and who gets to determine what it is, or at least what practical meaning it is for something to be “doctrine” rather than merely a personal religious sentiment. Explicitly to permit complete deviation from “doctrine” by congregations is not very Presbyterian, and the “traditionalists” either didn’t seem to realise that, or they care about preserving substantial doctrines at the expense of, well, what makes the Kirk the Kirk.

To an extent, though, you could see it coming. I think the traditionalist wing sensed they would lose if it was a straight choice (unfortunate phrase) between 2A and 2B, and so tried to push for something that retains a symbolic attachment to historical doctrine whilst letting liberals have the lion’s share of the cake they want, which is to be able to ordain those in committed same-sex relationships and to be done with it. I know for a fact that a fair whack of liberal commissioners were swayed by 2D (not including my parents, who are CofS ministers who voted with option 2A), many seeing it as a way of letting the traditionalists have some sort of phyric victory whilst in fact enabling ministers to be in civil partnerships without any lasting problems. It is much more likely that 2D will make it through Barrier Act procedure now that it’s got the traditionalists’ name on it, and notwithstanding the extra year it’s going to take to turn it into a proper overture, I think the consensus of the Kirk is that they really want to stop talking about this.

The new system ought to be fairly robust once the Legal Questions Committee have had their teeth dug into it. The clear intention was conceded by the movers that they did not intend for Presbyteries to be able to discipline or annul decisions made by Kirk Sessions seeking to be allowed to appoint ministers in civil partnerships, and for a lot of liberals (and actually, a lot of those on the conservative wing too) this will be seen as a critical part of the compromise if it is to be laid to rest. My only real concern is that if the traditionalists are for any reason unhappy with the implementation by LQC it could lead to the whole debate re-opening in GA 2014.

It’s clearly not enough for many liberal ministers, elders and members of the Church of Scotland, for whom this still presents a partial sense of “separate not equal” for congregation and minister alike, and it probably makes it more difficult for the theological position of the kirk formally to be moved away from same sex relationships being sinful, now that the “practical harms” are in a significant sense out of the way, but by Church of Scotland standards, it’s a major step forward for a very broad church, and one which has probably saved it from a major schism (though a handful of churches may still leave over and above The Tron and Gilc South). For those of us in the Kirk 5 years ago, this would have been virtually unthinkable, and momentum has picked up since the Rennie case 4 years ago. The good fight goes on, and hurdles remain, but if it gets through Barrier Act procedure I think the practical objectives, in a Kirk which already offers substantial liberty of personal opinion in matters of doctrine which do not enter into the substance of faith, have largely been met, albeit in a roundabout way.

For more of my thoughts on this matter, see:

http://www.predictableparadox.co.uk/2013/05/church-of-scotland-religious-progress.html

and

http://www.predictableparadox.co.uk/2013/05/presbyterianism-cracking-at-seems-cost.html

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Margaret of the Sea of Galilee

22/05/2013

And it still does not properly address how LGBTQ people (single or in civil partnerships) will be dealt with (dealt to?) when they offer themselves to Presbyteries as feeling called to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. Will they be asked about their orientation? Questioned? Interrogated? What responses will allow them to or prevent them from pursuing that call?

Who is this Albert Bogle anyway – is he about to become the first to be beatified by the Kirk and for what exactly? By-passing (even disregarding) Kirk “Order”, convincing his important friends to let him bulldoze ahead and his less important friends to print off 700 and something copies of a Deliverance which is incoherent and unimplementable.
Off to read Revelation for other signs of The End Times…
.

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Peter W Nimmo

25/05/2013

Kelvin, you make lots of good points in your post. But just to clarify- what is the doctrine and practice of the Scottish Episcopal Church on this issue? Does your doctrine approve of persons in civil partnerships being clergy, and is that put into practice?

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1. kelvin
  
  25/05/2013
  
  Yes – there are quite a number of clergy in civil partnerships. In England, Anglican clergy in civil partnerships are supposed to declare that they are “celibate”. That isn’t the case in Scotland.
  
  The pension scheme in Scotland recognises Civil Partnerships by giving such partners the same benefits as wives or husbands in marriages. Civil Partners also are treated in the same way with regard to housing as a straight spouse if a relationship breaks down.
  
  Any candidate for ordination who is in a Civil Partnership is expected to be honest about that at selection.
  
  The bishops of the church announced a few years ago that they would not consecrate anyone as bishop who was in a Civil Partnership. They were clear at the time that this was a moratorium. However it is not clear to me whether that moratorium still stands. I do expect there to be questions about that at the coming Synod.
  
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