What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • World AIDS Day 2014

    Here’s the final video in the series of conversations that I’ve been having with Marion Chatterley the Chaplain at Waverley Care.

    World AIDS Day video 2014 from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

    In this video, the tables are turned and Marion gets to ask me the questions.

    She starts by asking me why churches don’t seem interested in HIV AIDS issues during most of the year. We talk about people in pews and pulpits who are themselves living with HIV.

    We talk about why there’s stigma around HIV and return to the connection between what the churches and their leaders have been saying about marriage and keeping people safe from HIV.

    I remind Marion that there’s only a few hundred yards of Scottish streets where gay people might feel comfortable holding hands and talk about why relationships are still frightening and still being hidden because churches are not challenging discrimination and are indeed promoting it by their language around sexuality.

    We talk about the phrase “Well, it isn’t living up to God’s ideal” and the way that my denomination is failing me as a priest.

    We talk about early HIV prevention campaigns and what the churches might be saying now. We also talk about the churches’ obsession with acts and bodies and how I think that while current policies from church leaders focussing entirely on the sexual element of relationships remain then the devil will go on winning.

    We return to the theme of healthy relationships that has come up in each of the videos, including negotiation in relationships and how to find someone you can stay safe with.

    The other conversations can be seen below.
    (more…)

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5 responses to “St Strumpet?”

  1. Mary Brown Avatar
    Mary Brown

    How about the wife of Jesus, airbrushed out of the story by later misogynist Christians? See Starbird, M “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar” and other books by her. She is an ex-Catholic who set out to refute the Holy Blood, Holy Grail story and ended by being convinced that Jesus and Mary were a married pair (and an archetype of the male/female balance principle). There’s a wonderful window in Kilmore Church, Mull. Check it out – whoever created it intended it to represent J and M as husband and wife, and M is clearly pregnant. Of course, there is no unchallengeable evidence that Jesus was married, but what I would like to ask the sceptics is why, given that He was the word made flesh and dwelt among us, is it unacceptable for Him to have been a sexual being? Why have later Christians considered sexuality, even in a loving relationship, to be something disgusting? Because they have, we are now stuck with the nasty views of the NotW brigade that sex is either an acceptable leisure activity or something gross. As Margaret Starbird points out, if we restored Mary as Jesus’ beloved consort we would be creating a much more wholesome myth!

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      It is a little like the arguments that might be made of the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple though, isn’t it? All very attractive and neat if you come from a particular point of view but not really backed up with enough evidence apart from modern presumption, presupposition and desire.

      Reply
  2. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    I think the arguments on Jesus being married are very far from being liberationary. Rather, they’re the natural end-point of the Evangelical mindset that homophobically (and unbiblically) divides the world into Normal Heterosexual Married types and the demonised Other. “It is better to marry than burn” might have some mysognistic readings conducive to the fundamentalist world-view, but it hardly most naturally supports the idolatarisation of particular heterosexual relationships.

    If I had a pound for every time a nominal Sola Scriptura type had told me that St.Paul had to have been married (presumably because Our Lord’s asceticism and disinterest in heterosexual marriage is bad enough) then I would be a very rich man indeed 😉

    Interesting post Kelvin! Had no idea that St.Mary M even had red hair Perhaps she could be reclaimed as the Patron Saint of Gingers and Other Persecuted Minorities? 🙂

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      Oh, her hair was red, Ryan. Flaming Red I believe.

      Reply
  3. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    How reginal! 😉

    Reply

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