What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • A sermon for Y’All

    Here is a sermon that I preached on Sunday. You can find the audio here. (This one is more fun to listen to than to read, I think).

    I have learned in the course of my travels that it sometimes takes people a few minutes to atune to the way I speak. I’ve learned that people sometimes need a few sentences before they get used to my accent – the way that I speak.

    And of course, it works the other way around too.

    I am getting used to listening to the sounds of voices that I am not used to hearing. And of course, coming to here, the first time I’ve been in the South has meant me having to listen extra carefully.

    Before I came on this here I decided to lose weight and get fit. Over the course of a year I managed to lose 30 pounds. What I hadn’t realised was that when I came to the South, the hospitality would be such that I would put those 30 pounds back on. During breakfast.

    Whilst I was eating that first breakfast, I had something to ponder. For the very first night that I was here I had the strangest of dreams. I’ve been up at Sewanee, the University of the South. It is a beautiful university and an excellent seminary and I was their guest. That first night, I dreamed that I had encountered angels. It is a strange dream to have these days though it would not have been particularly unusual in Biblical times. [Indeed, one might think that a very great deal of John’s Revelation, part of which we heard this morning, was just such a dream].

    Anyway, I woke up on my first full day in the South absolutely sure that I’d encountered angels in my dreams. And as I came to, I desperately tried to remember what they had been saying. I knew that something was important. I tried and tried.
    However, to this day, I can’t remember anything of the conversation.

    I do remember one thing though. (more…)

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7 responses to “Ask! Tell!”

  1. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    Count me in as a straight supporter of gay people, clergy or lay. But count me in, too, as one who respects people’s right to privacy. As a hetersexual male, I would not expect to be asked about my sexuality, or to be pressurised into being explicit about it, had I chosen to remain unmarried.

    Reply
  2. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    I think that issues of privacy are a long way away from issues of whether one’s life should suffer for chosing to be open.

    Both important issues but they are very different issues one from another.

    Reply
  3. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    I am about to “out” myself as a straight supporter of gay clergy in the Church of Ireland by getting a letter published in my local paper!

    It is one thing to have a personal (private) opinion and whole different thing to go public with that view. Feels quite liberating actually!

    I sort of wonder how I got to this point given that I used to be a fairly moderately against full inclusion in the life of the Church…

    I suppose it is the natural result of the way my thinking has been developing over some time, especially by engagement with liberal/progressive anglican thought and seeing that there IS another way to be Christian (as opposed to the dominant conservative evangelical ethos that prevails in my part of Ireland).

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      Good for you, Steven.

      My guess is that the repercussions of the Very Rev Tom Gordon and his partner coming out about their partnership are shining little rays of light all over the Church of Ireland at the moment, occassionally illuminating things which some would prefer to be kept in darkness.

      > I sort of wonder how I got to this point given that I used to be a fairly moderately against full inclusion in the life of the Church…

      Don’t be surprised – so was I. So were most of the people I know who now advocate on behalf of progressive causes in the church. One of the things that is happening at the moment is that the really hard line anti-gay voices are being undermined by the people they thought they could rely on. It makes loud, cross voices crosser and louder. The sound of those shrill voices is the sound of people who are being squeezed from every direction.

      Reply
  4. william Avatar
    william

    What’s in Kelvin’s Head?
    Confusion? Compassion?
    Wisdom? Folly?
    Light?Darkness?[in the Johannine sense]
    Humility? Arrogance?
    Obedience?Disobedience?
    Hopefully there’s a “next bishop” somewhere near!!

    Reply
  5. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    I agree with you. One of the points I make in the letter to the Portadown Times (the original clergy statement was published in that paper on 16th Sept – see Thinking Anglicans) is that it seems that evangelical clergy in Ireland were happy with a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and it is the publicity that is causing the problem now – after all it must have been well known that Tom Gordon was living with his partner over the last 20 years!

    It is also ironic that three of the signatories of the clergy statement were women – i.e., those previously ordained following the development of a generous and inclusive theology of Christian leadership (in spite of Saint Paul’s issues). They now seek to use their authority to prevent others from benefiting from the very development that they benefited from…

    The only issue, I suppose, is that this development did take the Church of Ireland by surprise and the silence from the Bishops has been unhelpful.

    I would be interested to know your views on the tension between acting innovatively (perhaps, unilaterally) and the need to respect the whole body of Christ etc…

    The situation in TEC in respect of the ordination of Gene Robinson as Bishop, by contrast, involved an open and transparent development that went through the standard procedures of the Church. I know that in this case the issue is in respect of a civil partnership – which it was Dean Gordon’s “right” to enter under the law of the RoI but the significance of this move for the wider Church of Ireland would not have been lost in either himself or his Bishop.

    I still think he did the right thing but I am sympathetic to the criticism that these issues should not, in general, be dealt with an ad hoc manner… Although in fairness to Dean Gordon I am not sure if the debate would have ever got on the table if he had not acted as he has done.

    Reply
  6. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    I think that there is a difference between electing a bishop and who a person choses to make a committment to.

    One is very clearly a public office that needs the consent of the people. The other falls within someone’s personal life.

    I wouldn’t say that is irrelevant and nor would I be so stupid as the recent Church of Scotland statement that said of a Church of Scotland minister entering a Civil Partnership that it was entirely a personal matter. It very clearly isn’t.

    However, I would say that it requires a very different level of consent to being a bishop.

    Clergy living arrangements get complicated very much more quickly than those of other people because very often they are living in housing provided by the congregation. That, if anywhere is where issues of public consent come in.

    Generally speaking, I think that the provision of housing infantilises the clergy and is undesirable.

    Once civil partnerships were introduced, people had the choice of either liking them or lumping them really. Clergy entering into them were an inevitable consequence of their existence.

    Most people I know think that the demands of the Church of England that clergy in civil partnerships promise to be celibate demonstrate a quite disgusting pruriance on the part of bishops making such demands.

    Reply

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