Kirkish stramash

There’s nothing like a good schism to get the theological juices flowing. Sadly, what is happening in the Kirk is absolutely nothing like a good (potential) schism. This stramash is over the appointment of a minister who is living with his male partner and this is unacceptable to a vocal minority of traditionalists and conservatives (conservative minorities are often vocal).

The protesting minority in this case are under the umbrella of The Fellowship of Confessing Churches, whose covenant contains the following:
We recognize God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We acknowledge the great harm that has come from our failures to maintain this standard, and we repent and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.
http://www.confessingchurch.org.uk/

Not surprisingly with such inflexible notions, they are agin any minister who chooses to live with his or her same sex partner. They have set up an online list of signatories who are equally agin this sort of thing. 6000 people have signed it, and counting .

What interested me when I saw this news was curiosity as to whether an old boyfriend of mine, who became a minister, had signed it. It took a while to casually trawl through this number of names, but I got caught up in it and began to notice the odd name I knew from churches in the town I grew up in. Delightfully, the minister of the church that I joined several decades ago and which still insists on sending me newsletters has not signed. Neither did I find the name of old boyfriend, which surprised me a little, because umpteen years ago when I knew him his intolerant attitudes to women were a prime cause of his dumpedness. I have to hope he matured into a decent human being (being a Christian is no guarantee of tolerance).

While engaged on my self-appointed mission to inspect the names, several things are worthy of comment.

Vast numbers of people signed as Mr & Mrs Reactionary, whose joint signing would only count as one person. I tried to fathom why this was not apparent to all those people. I idly speculated that perhaps Mrs R snuck onto hubbie’s computer and signed him up too. Alternatively, that Mr R was making the old time biblical assumption that as woman is part of man (Adam’s rib and all that) then her individual signature would not count anyway. Or maybe they are so dim or unused to online protest that they didn’t think it through. I’m rather grateful, as I’d have taken even longer to scroll through if all these conjoined pairs had separated long enough to complete the online process to register their individual protest.

Of the 6000, far too many were women. It is fairly well known that amongst churchgoers there are more women than men, so depressingly more women jumped up and signed. If only they would use their energy to further the position of women in society by working from within their congregations then we could all admire them more.

Best of all was the section reserved for Non-Church of Scotland signatories. Some people have gained PhD’s in this subject, so I’ll not be trying to analyse this in any depth, but I found it all fascinating. In fact I once worked with a woman whose thesis was on church schisms, therefore I was prepared for the presence of the Free Church of Scotland, the United Free Church (my grandmother attended this), and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) (with and without brackets).

However, the Presbyterians had more varieties than I knew of. There was a hefty presence from the Associated Presbyterians, but fewer from the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Previously, I only knew of Presbyterians.

The Pentecostals were out in some force and included, for listing purposes, those who claimed membership of Pentecostal/Charismatic, while others were solely Charismatic. There were extremely few Methodists, or Roman Catholics, and sundry members of small local gatherings. While the Brethren were better represented with Open Brethren, Christian Brethren, and Christian Brethren – Evangelical.

Considerably more numerous were the Baptists, whose passion for the truth can be divined from the array of versions. There were plain old Baptists, Scottish Baptists, Zion Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Independent Baptists, Independent Reformed Baptists and the intriguingly named Strict Baptists. Did those last named wander into this looking for a more arcane discussion?

In the section reserved for those signatories from other parts of the world, the first up were the Southern Baptists. I was obscurely comforted by that.

Finally, there were those who tried to cover all bases or maybe couldn’t make up their minds. I include in this list, the Interdenominational, Multi Denominational and the Non-Denominational.

Ultimately, this all forces people to consider their views on tolerance of people's lifestyles and just because someone who avers a calling to the ministry in the Kirk, happens to have a particular relationship preference should not provoke this international storm of reactionary outpouring. Rather I hope an open discussion will help more in the Kirk to live up to their espoused Christian tolerance for difference and equality.