What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • New article in Herald

    There’s a new article in the Herald newspaper today reporting on yesterday’s sermon and service at St Mary’s. It is prominently placed, with a nice big pic of me in the pulpit on the front page. I’d probably have preferred a different headline (they are never written by the reporters themselves) but the article is a good report of the service here at St Mary’s yesterday. 

    You can find the article here:http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/gay-marriage-war-of-words-in-churches.18684223

    There’s some quoting from yesterday’s sermon

    I’m quoted as saying thus:

    “The thing I found amazing is how busy a church can be on a Sunday morning simply by saying that everybody is welcome. That’s a position that churches share across the city but somehow, by saying that this is a place where everybody is welcome, that is the message that will draw people in. Perhaps as churches we have forgotten how to say that.”

    Asked about the messages on same-sex marriage from the Catholic hierarchy, he said: “I think people get weary of hearing a negative message from church people. What they want to hear is positive – about changing the world for the better, about justice, about love.”

    And folk who were in the congregation are quoted thus:

    Jim Whannel and Colin Johnston, members of an Episcopal church in Paisley, said: “It’s a very sad day for Christianity because of what is happening in other churches.”

    A lesbian Christian couple, Ruth and Jaye Richards-Hill, also backed Mr Holdsworth’s open invitation. Mrs Richards-Hill said: “Somebody needs to stand up and create a balance in the opinion, and I think that worked.”

    “A spokesman for the [Roman] Catholic Church declined to respond to Mr Holdsworth’s latest comments.”

    ,

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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