bishops Archives - Page 5 of 12 - What is in Kelvin's Head?

Blessings abounding

I’ve been at a couple of blessings of same-sex couples recently – as a guest rather than as someone celebrating the liturgy. Neither of the recent ceremonies that I’ve been at have been in Scotland. It is more clear to me than ever that this is Â global movement and the push towards allowing gay couples to celebrate weddings is an idea whose time has come.

At the most recent of these ceremonies, the local bishop was presiding over the blessing and one of the people being blessed was a rector. The church was packed full of people as friends and parishioners gathered for an utterly joyous occasion. As has been my experience in Scotland, one of the most extraordinary things about same-sex blessings is how unextraordinary they are. People often comment that they never thought they would live to see the day when such a thing could happen in church but then when you ask them, they say that they think it is just great.

The churches are still tying themselves in ever more complicated knots over how same-sex couples tie the knot though.

At one of the ceremonies that I was at, in a part of the world where gay couples can legally get married, I went to a ceremony in a church hall that was entirely secular and conducted by a marriage registrar which was followed by the entire party processing along a corridor and up a flight of stairs to the church sanctuary where another ceremony – a service of blessing took place. Though it was lovely, it was a bit silly to have two ceremonies in different parts of the same building and hard not to feel the injustice of gay people being treated not merely differently but differently in a banal kind of way that brought no credit to marriage, church nor God in her Glory, Might, Majesty and Power.

At the other service, no legal marriage was possible so the church has devised a liturgy entirely separate from marriage but which effectively does the same thing, with vows, readings, rings and all the trimmings. My question there, is what is going to happen when straight couples come along who like the blessing ceremony and want that rather than a legal wedding. It will happen, and what will the church say then? “Terribly sorry, this isn’t for the likes of you….”

I also found myself thinking that it is now more than time for our bishops in Scotland to review their policy of not attending any blessing services. It always was a disgraceful policy – effectively making their gay friends and colleagues appear to be their dirty little secret rather than people they were proud of. Saying you are proud in private and sending a nice card won’t do and speaks more of pecksniffian pomp than gospel values.

None of this is going to be sorted until same-sex couples have the same rights to wed as straight couples of course. For my money, in Scotland, that should mean doing away with Civil Partnerships and simply opening marriage up to same-sex couples. It is the right thing to do and equality through parliamentary decision, plebiscite or legal challenge is coming in so many jurisdictions around the world one way or another that we might as well take a deep breath and get our ecclesiastical house in order so as not to do things which make us, the gospel and Christ himself appear foolish, silly or just plain cruel.

I was intrigued by Andrew Brown’s Guardian article this weekend -Â http://t.co/6UKAnEra

His conclusion is the most striking thing in the piece:

Conservative evangelicals in England have dreamed or hoped for 20 years that England could be brought back to a Nigerian or Ugandan view of homosexuality. It’s not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen within the Church of England, either. That’s true whoever becomes archbishop. The sexuality wars are coming to an end, and the liberals have won.

Someone asked me on twitter whether or not I thought that was an overly optimistic view. Actually, I think Andrew Brown is bang on – he just has the gift of being able to see slightly further over the horizon than many people can do. I might want to take issue with the idea that there is just one Nigerian or Ugandan view. Working with a Nigerian curate has taught me that there is diversity Â of opinion amongst such communities – a fact that is hardly surprising. However, I think we all know what Andrew Brown means.

The number of people holding to the hardest of hardline positions amongst the Evangelical communities in the UK seems to me to be declining quite sharply. I’m often in the company of lay people from Evangelical churches who assure me that the tough stuff about gay people is really only the view of the rector and that there is a far greater diversity of opinion than I might expect amongst the congregation. There will probably always be a number of people who can never accept gay people as equals, just as there will probably always be people who can’t accept that women and men are equal and there will regrettably be those who practise racism even now, long after it has become socially unacceptable. Though we need to work to undermine such opinion, my view is that the best way to challenge that with regards to gay people at the moment is not to fight and bicker and fall-out. Rather, we need to work for change, to organise and to simply assert that negative views about God’s gay children are a scandal to the Gospel and stop good people being able to hear the saving news of Christ.

We are now right in the middle of the process of enormous change that is taking place as the law catches up with popular opinion. It is exciting to be seeing it from different perspectives, coming in different countries.

What Andrew Brown writes about in the Guardian, I’m seeing with my own eyes. How about you?

So out of touch

Sometimes you get through a lovely day at church and then look online or look at the papers and wonder just how Christian leaders manage to go about getting such bad press on behalf of an organisation which is at heart full of people who are basically generous and loving.

Such was my weekend.

I was struck last week by a letter in the Herald from someone from the Church of Scotland who was trying to explain to someone who was exasperated that (in their view) that church seems unable to give clear comment in public and seems to lack someone articulate to speak for it to the press.

It included this paragraph which made me very cross indeed.

Denominations that hold to the “one person speaks with all authority” model run the risk of being out of line with a majority of their own members. Our presbyterian model of reflection, consultation, debate and discernment may struggle at times to respond to a 24-hour news cycle or a demand for an instant quote, but at least it has an authenticity rooted in the real life of the church.

It made me cross because that first sentence is so obviously untrue. (And seems to reflect a certain rather unpleasant anti-catholic strand that can appear to come from the presbyterian churches). And yet, it made me even more cross because of the kernel of truth that it does contain.

Let me explain.

It is very obviously untrue because, at least in the Episcopal system I know best, there is no “one person speaks with all authority” model. Our bishops meet in synod with the rest of the church, they go to more meetings than they know what to do with, they spend hour upon hour consulting, conversing and just generally chatting with people in the pews and those who fill their pulpits. Generally speaking, I’d say that the bishops that I’ve known have put themselves about quite a lot and I think they would all be quite offended to be accused to speak from a “one person speaks with all authority” model.

And yet.

After the weekend we’ve just had, you wonder whether church leaders do PhDs in how to get out of touch with the people whom you are trying to lead.

Three examples will suffice to prove the point that there just might be something in what the author of that letter was getting at.

Firstly, over the border, we must consider the home life of our own dear Church of England. They are meeting in General Synod this week. And they find themselves in the absurd position of being shown to the nation as chosing how to write discrimination against women in ministry into their canons and codes of practise. I’m not going to get into the details here. All I want to note is how silly this makes us all appear to the world. (And by the way, being a fool for Christ is not the same as sabotaging the gospel, which is what we see all too commonly). My point particularly this morning is that it is the bishops of that church who bear particular responsibility for making it worse by tinkering with legislation which was already an uncomfortable compromise. Not only that, but the synod was led down that path previously precisely by Rowan Williams and John Sentamu. A huge dose of responsibility lies on the doorsteps of the Archepiscopal palaces in Lambeth and Bishopthorpe.

Then, closer to home, we’ve got the RC Cardinal in Scotland using the papers to “declare war on gay marriage” and pledge to spend Â£100 000 (Â£150 000 in some reports) on opposing it. Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Well, everyone except perhaps those who actually go to Roman Catholic churches and put money in the coffers. You don’t need to go to twitter to see the outrage expressed there. There have been people having tweet competitions to suggest better uses for the money – paying for counselling for gay Roman Catholic youth damaged by their church was one of the suggestions I saw being bandied about.

And yet, the evidence we have from independent sources suggests that there is quite a strong level of support for equal marriage from Roman Catholics. By and large, Roman Catholics believe in marriage and seem to believe it is more than strong enough to withstand a few more people opting in.

And then even closer to home, we’ve got Bishop David going to the US Episcopal General Convention and trying oh so hard not to take sides. (See his comments here: http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=2591#comments).

Now, I understand the politics of that situation. I understand immediately how uncomfortable it would be for a primate to go into that situation arguing against the Covenant. However, that there is a primus with a mandate from his church. Given the overwhelmingly clear majority in this church against the Covenant, it seems to me that explaining why the Scottish Episcopal Church said such a clear “no” to the Covenant has to be a part of the point of going. We didn’t simply say yes to the communion, after all, we said no to the covenant itself.

Well, actually, I think we said, “NO!!!!”

Whenever there are progressive values around, it so often seems as though Christian leaders will flee in the opposite direction for fear of scaring the horses.

I don’t know how we have come to such a low place as this. Nor do I understand how anyone forming an opinion of the church who does not already belong to it would feel any desire to enquire of what faith means.

And thank you for asking – yesterday’s day at church was just lovely.

Blessings abounding

So out of touch

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