Name and Shame

[davidn]

Over the past couple of weeks there's been a bit of (as we say) a kerfuffle in the Church of Scotland. I first heard about it through diarytypething and can't really summarize it better than she did - basically the situation is that an openly gay minister was democratically elected to be the leader of a church in Aberdeen, causing an uprising among the few people who didn't agree, and the result of their complaint is that an online petition (because those always work) from the wider church has gone up in an effort to overturn the decision by getting signatures from people who have nothing to do with the congregation that elected him.

Unfortunately it seems that the list is, firstly, large, and second, really quite efficiently moderated, and my own entry, from a Jim McBastard from the Church of the Holy Bigots in Texas, 100 years ago, lasted all of four minutes before it disappeared. But simultaneously usefully and depressingly, it does mean that we can check ze list of the real entries to see who supports the cause. After some tentative poking at names that immediately came to mind, hoping at each keypress that Firefox's search bar would turn red and eventually being relieved, I thought I was safe, but was then extremely disappointed to find that Manson Merchant was in at number #998. If he'd just waited a couple of minutes he could have got the thousandth. I knew him as a young-at-heart minister who was very popular with the youth group (for an example of his mentality, his method of punishment for having caught a girl in the boys' dormitory during a trip away was, after a mock trial in which I not-at-all-deliberately failed as her defence lawyer, to take her outside and 'execute' her via the medium of a large barrage of shaving cream pies), so to see that he seems to subscribe to this rather backward view was surprising to say the least.

Now, I don't believe that everyone on the list is... wrong, automatically, because a development like this would be difficult as it's quite a large move for the church away from some rules and values that it's meant to have held for a couple of thousand years. But when I was younger, our church was always more about its own community and acceptance of people (and any wrongness in my head a few years ago was never taught to me and was purely my own fault), and at that time I was completely unaware of problems like this being caused by somebody writing down what might have been some reasonably good health ideas a few millenniums ago. I've heard many suggestions for possible mistakes in translation and misinterpretations or loopholes in Leviticus before, and some of them are plausible, but... I think for the most part it's a lot of work to try and dodge around it rather than just admitting that we're oppressing people for no reason other than it says it in this irrelevant and obsolete book of laws (though I admit I wouldn't exactly say that on top of a hill under a tree in a thunderstorm, or anything).

Still, later this month as the unfairness of being able to have a decision overturned like this becomes clear, maybe it'll cause a huge split in the church whichever way it turns out. That would be quite exciting.

And as this post only contains borrowed content anyway, here's the most brief yet accurate summary of Top Gear ever, from stubbleupdate. Cheer up.

Comments

[kjorteo]

Do the ministers take vows of celibacy in this church? I know it's not universal, but in the places where they do, it never ceases to amaze me how worked up people get over which side someone is not pursuing.

[davidn]

No, Church of Scotland ministers don't have to be celibate (though I don't know whether it's that division or any of its... supersets that actually define that - I think Protestantism in general doesn't bother with it much) - though that would have made the thing all the more spectacularly pointless. In fact I nearly went out with that minister's daughter at one point, but pursuing that further would probably have caused all sorts of problems.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Argh...

On the list so far: Graham Bruno - who's my oldest and one of my closest friends... This is a bit upsetting.

Oh, Damn... Beth, my little sister. Fiona, my other little sister. [Actually, somewhat reassuringly, Beth's fiancee, Pete, isn't on there. As the son of a Minister, and... well, they're getting married in August, got engaged in March. She will be 21 in a week.] Fi's ex is. [The one of my exes who might've been isn't. Yet.] One of Fiona's schoolfriends. Graham's little sister.

One name who I recognise from my old church: one of the elders, who left when he left his wife and kids. He always seemed decent. His son's a nice guy. (Actually, he's on there too. Damn.) A very atypical thing for there. Pleased to see neither of our pastors, nor the best speaker (who's a lecturer in Divinity at Aberdeen) on there. It's a nice place, and very non-dogmatic and a really really good church.

One other person from there is on. It's one old lady ( my driving instructor's wife), my old best friend and my sister, who're signing from my church.

I'm lucky my parents aren't on there - I don't know if my mum would sign it, and although my dad wouldn't like it, I'd like to think he might at least not sign it because CoS is nothing to do with our family. I hope I'm wrong. My parents, have really strong religious believes, but if nothing, they think about them a lot, and genuinely care and believe. And, you know, my dad tends to dislike other denominations because of actual differences in beliefs, which is the best reason to. (No, really.) Though that might be reading too much into his distaste for Catholic ceremonies

My sisters don't surprise me. Beth, maybe. She's not that brigh, but one of the kindest people in the world. Fi's young, with all the attached stupidity, and studying medicine.

Graham... well, that hurts a little. A lot. Because, you know, argh... in primary school, we used to just talk all the time. And we still do talk all the time, and can, he's about the easiest person in the world. And he's a committed Tory, and studied politics. And he's a really good guy - I know him as well as anyone, have done for 18 years, and I'm pretty sure he's never hurt anyone. He's always been great to me, even though I'm a rubbish friend too much. I mean, despite being a signed up member of the Tory party, he cares about people, and is really compassionate. He's the only Tory I've ever met who's suggested a policy that actually seems to improve things for people worse off.

I've spent so long gaming with him; I've got a card of sympathy for my Granny's death from him on my desk. I've got an incredibly nice and cool well-designed chess/draughts/backgammon set he found in Istanbul a couple of years back and gave me for my 21st. His family and mine have spent the last ...10ish +(?) Christmas days together. I love him like a brother who does only good things and lives a long way away so I don't have to see and fight with often. AND has a birthday on a holiday, so I can never forget it, a useful quality for faux-family members. Plus he never forgets mine, because it's the day before his sister's. But I'm getting side-tracked. I guess the reason it really hurts is that I didn't know he feels that way. I thought he was smarter. But he's a traditionalist through and through. It's sad, too, because he, like my parents, is a strong Christian who's very active in a supportive church, entirely out of choice. Like my parents, it's not the way he was raised - he chooses faith, from parents who're not into church. And he's never been afraid to make fun of himself.

Now... The statement itself. A practicing gay minister would be a huge precedent: I don't think it's at all wrong for anyone who's a member of the Church of Scotland to protest, in that they believe that their church shouldn't let people in homosexual relationships be pastors. And I've got nothing to do with the CoS.

Anyone else, well, it's not really anything to do with them. And I'm disappointed in the people with those beliefs, especially the many who I know, truly, to be kind, generous, compassionate loving human beings, who put everyone before themselves.

Curiously, I don't know why it bothers me so much. But it does.

I should probably mention this to them, shouldn't I?

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I think last week I was just really angry that some people were getting involved in something that has nothing to do with them - for example, the thousands of people from other churches and other countries who signed the petition. That, and the fact that Christianity is supposed to be about love and acceptance, so it seems contradictory that they want to openly denounce anyone. Maybe it's the influence of Catholicism on my upbringing (my parents are a "mixed marriage" and although they're nominally CoS, my mother's theology is well, interesting), but I've always believed that we're all a bunch of miserable sinners, so when people use their religious beliefs to justify going after one particular type of sin to the near-exclusion of all others, it isn't a balanced view of the teachings. Have you ever seen a church that put as much energy into campaigning against greed as some will put into the witch-hunts against sex education or gay couples? It comes off as a hypocritical attempt to make others' behaviour seem worse than one's own.

I'm trying to talk someone into staging a low-key protest during the General Assembly, because I've got a fantastic idea for it. We'll get a bucket of rocks - or possibly, for our safety and ease of transport, bits of sponges spraypainted grey to look like rocks - and invite the person without sin to step forward and throw the first stone. So far I haven't found any co-conspirators, but everyone thinks it's a fantastic idea.

[davidn]

It does sound like a fantastic idea - although potentially dangerous to your health with the first variant, if someone really does take it a bit too literally...

Acceptance and just... being a good person is what everything seemed to be about in the church I grew up with - the whole idea of religion causing splits in the world instead of bringing people together was something that I was to learn later on, unfortunately. And now that you mention it, I can't think of the more heinous sins being particularly campaigned against either - but I think that might be just because they're obviously wrong, and the things that those churches put so much energy into are things that have very good arguments for them and therefore need a bit of effort to demonize!

I've also just remembered that on the same trip away I mentioned in the post, somebody put a bottle of Tabasco sauce into the minister's tea. That'll show him.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

The last bit appeals to my vanity.

The List doesn't appeal to me

[tastyniall.livejournal.com]

its the hundreds of BB officers, sunday school teachers that have signed it.

Unfortunately, the overture from Skye and Lochcarron has potentially more affect than the Scott Rennie Case:

Whereas:

1. the Church’s historic understanding of the Biblical teaching on homosexual practice has been questioned in recent years.

2. a lengthy period of reflection has elapsed without a resolution of the issue.

3. it is undesirable that the courts of the church should be asked to judge on individual cases in advance of any such resolution.

It is humbly overtured by the Reverend the Presbytery of Lochcarron-Skye to the Venerable the General Assembly to receive the Overture set out below,

“That this Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit, re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between a man and a woman”.


at what level does it stop? does this mean that sunday school teachers/the organist/etc have to be vetted? The other problem is that its starting to encroaching on employment law, so my other half has been following this quite closely!






as an aside, here's a press release made my my church's minister-elect.

THE bitter row over the appointment of a gay Angus preacher to a north-east church deepened last night after the chaplain of Grampian Police branded critics “terrorists”. The Reverend Georgie Baxendale, one of Scotland’s first female preachers, said members of evangelical group Forward Together were “fundamentalists”, unwavering in their quest to block Scott Rennie’s move to Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen. The Inverbervie minister claimed the group was using the same “scaremongering” tactics which were employed in the late 60s to put the “fear of death” into Assembly delegates to try to prevent women becoming ministers. – Press and Journal

could be interesting, given a few members of my church have signed it!

[pami-zee.livejournal.com]

The sermon on Sunday at Chapel was pretty good - the guest preacher, although not specifically saying yes or no about the petition, spoke about how sad it would be if it got through, and what message that would send to non-Christians about the faith. I thought it was all very good, as when she mentioned it I was practically bouncing up and down with rage and I was all ready to walk out if she said she supported it. Not that anyone except members of the choir would notice if I left, but it's the principle of the thing.