What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • For the cartoonists

    I used a cartoon, and a religious cartoon at that, on, my blog yesterday and yet I live.

    I sometimes pray for satirists – those who come to occasional services in St Mary’s may occasionally have heard me do so. They don’t usually get enough prayers. Today, sadly, the thoughts of the world are with them.

    The killing of the journalists and cartoonists in Paris today made me think of a divinity class I was in long ago. We were talking about feminism and ethics, that being the stuff I was made on. We had discussed non-violence and non-violent protest. Inevitably we had made an excursion around Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr and had probably had a go at whether Bonhoeffer was justified in getting involved in the plot against Hitler. We noted that these were all men, of course, and and talked about whether that was inevitably so.

    Eventually, someone said, “Yes, but what about real tyrants. What do we have to say to people facing real tyranny. Do we tell them to go floppy in the middle of the road as part of a protest when they will just get killed for it? What about tyrants – how do we deal with them?”

    There were no answers forthcoming from the class but there was from the person teaching it.

    “Make people laugh at them” she said.

    I’ve never forgotten that answer and I don’t forget it today, for all its problems.

    I realised then that words and ideas were always more potent, always more powerful than force. It was a moment when something significant made sense to me for the first time. Humour can be savage and sometimes needs to be.

    The killings in Paris do no honour to any god. They dishonour our common humanity.

    And so I turn back to my prayers.

    For satirists, humourists, cartoonists.
    For journalists. For bystanders.
    For those who take risks to disturb our peace of mind.
    For those who take risks to give the peace and security for them to do so.

    Lord in your mercy.
    Hear our prayer.

     

     

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32 responses to “Sign seen”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    What was the character of the debate? If one believes that the admission of women to the threefold ministry of the Church was an extension of an existing doctrine, not a doctrinal change, and that the dropping of the ‘filioque’ clause from the Creed wasn’t a doctrinal change either (nobody is compelled to deny that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son), the change to the doctrine of initiation was the most important doctrinal change made by the Scottish Episcopal Church not just in my lifetime but perhaps even in the SEC’s history. It amazes me that it seems to have been so uncontroversial.

    Reply
  2. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    (I don’t say I necessarily disapprove of the change. I’m quite happy not only for the unconfirmed but also for the unbaptised to be admitted to Holy Communion and would turn away no-one – except perhaps ++Judas Williams, and even then probably not – from the altar. But I can’t understand how a Church can teach two contradictory things at once.)

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      To a certain extent, saying two contradictory things at once is part of the consequence of having old liturgical formularies alongside modern ones, I think.

      (If you are not going to say something new, what’s the point in producing something new after all).

      The modern descriptions of marriage in the 2007 marriage rite don’t seem to me to be entirely consistent with the marriage rite of 1929, for example.

      It is the way we live now.

      Reply
  3. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    Well, as I said, there were several of us who spoke against the change, for one reason or another but it was passed by a fairly high majority, I think.

    It seems to me that there is just about every view about initiation into the Christian church that has ever been held is currently also held and practised in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Indeed, there are varieties of practice and procedure within congregations and even within families.

    Reply

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