What is in Kelvin's Head?

A blessing for Vicky Beeching

13/08/2014

I see from my twitter feed that there is a big church story in the press just breaking as I write this. Vicky Beeching has talked about being a gay woman for the first time. It is a big story because she has a strong public profile which she has worked hard to build up and because a lot of her music is sung in big evangelical churches in the USA and elsewhere.

Earlier this year she revealed that she was supportive of LGBT people and causes and received both support from some and condemnation from others. Vicky’s situation seemed particularly poignant since her income partly depends on her songs continuing to be circulated and sung by some of the very people who might be inclined to condemn her.

At the time, she was quoted as saying:

It’s important to me to retain evangelicalism as part my Christian identity. I don’t think the two [evangelicalism and supporting same-sex relationships] are incompatible. I don’t want to lose what evangelical means; there are so many good aspects of it. The Bible is as important as ever; my LGBT theology comes from a high view of scripture, not throwing the Bible out the window. People have accused me of watering down what the Bible says, but for me it’s about using the brain God has given us to put the verses [about homosexuality] into their proper historical context.

I simply don’t know whether the attempt to retain evangelicalism as an identity whilst being lesbian or gay is possible – it wasn’t for me. However I’d want to wish her the very best in trying to work it out.

My own experience of coming out quite publicly (ie in the pulpit) at a similar age is that everyone I heard from was supportive. If there were any who were upset or critical they managed to keep it to themselves.

All this is highly pertinent to the post I wrote about what it means to be an Evangelical. There are people who attend Evangelical churches who wouldn’t recognise my description – for them the camaraderie and the music are far more definitive of who they are than anything about theology, the cross or the bible.

I don’t know what will happen to Vicky Beeching’s reputation amongst Evangelicals now. However, just as Alan Bennett famously said that Cranmer didn’t die for English Prose, neither is Evangelicalism defined by the sexuality of who writes its choruses. At least, one hopes not.

I want to wish Vicky Beeching a blessing as she negotiates a new world. What she has done in being honest is a big thing. She must not be defined by whether others accept her or not. So, a big blessing for Vicky Beeching today, I say. She will have given lots of people a lot of hope and helped many to stay in touch with God simply by doing what she has done so publicly.

Eternal God of truth and love,
bless those who come out this day with joy and delight,
bless those who fear honesty with greater maturity,
bless those who look for love this day and every day.
Amen.

Christian, coming out, gay, lesbian, LGBT, Music, Vicky Beeching

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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