What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached for St Mungo – 13 January 2013

14/01/2013

I have to confess that for most of my life I did not give St Mungo much of passing thought. I certainly encountered him when I was in primary school up the road in that I remember a wonderful Primary 5 teacher in Bearsden making us do a project on the great urban conurbation that we were living so close by. The topic was Glasgow and thus we all had to draw our own version of the city crest – the bird, the tree, the bell and the fish – each representative of miracles in the lives of our patron saint.

After that I didn’t think of him again until a couple of years ago. During the time after Bishop Idris had retired and before Bishop Gregor started, there was a period of time when there was no bishop around to go to civic events. These ended up being divvied up between the Dean and the Provost and perhaps the Synod Clerk, to ensure that the Episcopal Church was represented at events which needed a bigwig.

I don’t know what I expected when I entered the ordained ministry of the church. I certainly didn’t expect to be a stand-in part-time bigwig going to events like that.

However, it can be fun – so long as you learn to smile and nod a lot you go far (more…)

7 responses to “Remember the Anglican Covenant?”

chris

24/02/2012

A timely post, with diocesan synod coming up. May well print out. (There is virtually no signal for online devices to be used usefully in the Highland Gathering Halls in Oban. Who knew?)

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Thinking Anglicans

24/02/2012

Anglican Covenant: reports and reactions…

The Church Times reports this week on the progress of voting in English dioceses on the Anglican Covenant: Covenant tastes defeat in diocesan voting. ALMOST a quarter of C of E dioceses have now voted against the Anglican Covenant. It……

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Susan Sheppard Hedges

25/02/2012

“. . .if there is any truth in that thesis, its days are numbered. . .”
As we say in my home state, ‘your lips to God’s ears.’

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Jonathan Clatworthy

25/02/2012

Excellent post Kelvin.
If the Covenant does get rejected in England, we’ll certainly need a period of time asking ourselves what really went wrong and how we could do things better. And Scotland will be well placed to set the ball rolling.

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1. kelvin
  
  25/02/2012
  
  Thanks Jonathan – and thanks for your article on alternatives to the Covenant which we are looking at next week at our Diocesan Synod next week to balance the stuff from the Anglican Communion Office.
  
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Paul Bagshaw

25/02/2012

“Some have worried that we might be the first province to declare ourselves out of sorts with the Anglican Covenant.”

They need not worry. The Philippines have already voted against it.

It also seems probable that New Zealand will vote against.

The Irish voted for it but with the caveat that it would not supplant the existing governing documents – though it’s not clear whether they would be able to sustain this.

Source: http://noanglicancovenant.org/background.html#cofe

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Alan T Perry

25/02/2012

Thanks for this, Kelvin!

What really amazes me is that the Covenant has done so well with virtually no attempt to put forward an argument (with reference to the actual text) as to why it is an unalloyed Good Thing. Proponents claim it will save the Communion without explaining just how it will do that. Those voting for it are voting for a black box.

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