Photograph by Islay McLeod
I never thought I would envy the Church of England for its procedures of legislative obstruction which, according to his retiring Grace of Canterbury, have left it seemingly blind to trends in the modern world and lacking in credibility. Its crisis has also given a surly welcome to his incoming Grace, who seems a reasonable sort of Christian, just as he was making a decent job of overcoming current prejudices against ex-bankers and old Etonians.
If the C of E had taken my presbyterian advice it would have welcomed women as bishops as readily as it has accepted them in other ministries; and I am not pleased that part of the obstruction comes from some of those who normally affirm the evangelical and reformed character of anglican tradition.
But I can still admire the tenacity of those unpersuaded to depart from tradition, even when I think they misinterpret the superior Christian standard of scripture. They are right to raise the possibility that there are many trends in modern society which the church must question and some which it must resist and try to reverse.
The Church of Scotland has never been greatly vexed by afterthoughts about women’s ordination and is helped by its insight that church order and claims to authority should be consistent with biblical guidance and not prescribed by wrenching texts out of context. But I hope it can face its own crises (of which the ill-handled St George’s Tron affair in Glasgow may be the first of many) with some of the anglican anxiety to provide for tender consciences.
In the arguments which entangle differing views of biblical authority with the secular lobbying for ‘same-sex-marriage’ and the church’s dilemma over a handful of homosexual ministers it also needs to show it can match the English provision, carried to excess in the two-thirds, three-part system of voting, which demands that significant changes command decisive approval from ‘the more general opinion of the church’.
The kirk often appears as conservative in its ways as the English church; and I extract the phrase just quoted from the Barrier Act which is meant to ensure that divisive changes in doctrine, worship, discipline and Scottish church government (of the kind feared by St George’s Tron) are not made on the whim of a small majority in one General Assembly but must be ratified by a majority of presbyteries and subsequent assembly.
But that safeguard may not be as effective as it looks. It is quite possible that small majorities in two assemblies and in the count of presbyteries might create conditions in which the present trickle of resignations and purported secessions would gather greater strength. Other parts of the church might remain in a simmering state of discontent and non-co-operation and many members, too old or too sad to secede, would be left sick at heart.
It’s also possible that some painful and trend-setting decisions might be taken in ways which attempted to evade the Barrier Act procedure. Do not think that the skills and tactics sometimes called ‘jesuitical’ are only found in other denominations. The Scots safeguards against change without overwhelming consent (or, if you prefer the fashionable liberal patois, the barriers to progress) are not as effective as those in the Church of England.
Nor, perhaps, are presbyterians as good as putting up with each other as the anglicans have proved to be over several centuries. The outlook for the Kirk is bleak if the handling of the ‘secession’ of St George’s Tron in Glasgow shows what can be expected and must be feared as divisions deepen.
It would have been so much easier, and more Christian, just to note the purported secession, affirm the legal position, and leave everyone to worship and work as before.
There must be many of us in the Kirk who admire St George’s Tron but thought the ‘secession’ premature or just plain wrong – for the argument about accepting homosexual behaviour is still to be settled and the Kirk can cope with its wider differences about the nature of biblical authority – yet are grieved and ashamed at so legalistic a response to a crisis of conscience.
It is far more than a mere public relations disaster. Such a response threatens Scotland with the debilitating acrimony which similar disputes have brought to both presbyterianism and anglicanism in the USA and which invites distorting mockery when sceptics ‘see how these Christians love one another’.
There is still time to ensure things don’t get as bad as that, though the Kirk may face a less complicated but more fundamental choice than that facing the other national church. The Church of England needs to accept women as bishops at the price of allowing its ultra-high and ultra-evangelical dissenters to huddle uncomfortably together as a church-within-the-church. Yet I expect the anglican genius for compromise to win eventually, with relatively few casualties evacuated to a papal sickbay or for some fresh-air therapy in independent evangelicalism.
The Scottish choices are already apparent, whatever sage advices may come – probably offered as options rather than a bold lead – from its theological commission on marriage due to report to next year’s assembly. It’s hard to see the commission being unanimous, although it will surely affirm marriage as between one man and one woman. Both choices, however, are painful and costly.
One is to go with the ‘trends of the modern world’, and take the tide that has carried David Cameron, Alex Salmond, and most of the highbrow media along with it and to allow that homosexual relationships should have the status and even the name of marriage. Most of those inclined to flow that way want to stop short of recognising ‘same-sex marriage’ in church law but will find it difficult to hold that position in face of a civil change in the definition of marriage, continuing pressure from powerful lobbyists, and the campaigning of a small, determined minority within the church which sooner or later would challenge whatever discipline sought to maintain the concept of marriage as hitherto defined and understood. But the cost of this choice is continuing pain and increasing division in the church.
The other choice is to accept for the foreseeable future what the Church of England has been forced to accept very temporarily in its immediate crisis over the simpler matter of church organisation: to leave things as they are – and, in the case of St George’s Tron, restore them as they were.
Maybe it would be more realistic to say ‘as they were’ in Scotland before one minister and congregation affronted conservative sections of the church and presented the 2009 General Assembly with a confusion of arguments which entangled the cherished right of call with some contemporary and biblically indefensible reinterpretation of the seventh commandment. This course would not be a vote for continuing indecision but a return to both principle and pragmatism – the principle being the traditional view of Christian marriage and the reaffirmation of the Christian choice of marriage or celibacy.
The pragmatism would be acceptance that the people of the church, ministers among them, will not only err and stray like lost sheep (as the English prayer book puts it) but will sometimes follow some pretty odd devices and desires of their hearts. The discipline that goes with this pragmatism is reactive and not inquisitorial and can cope, usually locally, with ministerial behaviour which creates division and scandal – with more problems caused by human relations than sexual relations.
The cost of this course is not merely that zealots on both sides – and I have always found intolerant liberals as dangerous as ultra-reactionaries – will refuse to let well alone, but that the Kirk will offend even more than usual those who worship the ‘trends in the modern world’ and demand’ ‘credibility’ through the surrender of belief. But it might be better for the Kirk to invite outright attack from ‘progressive opinion’ than to be damned with faint and passing praise from those who customarily deride or ignore it.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster. He is a former editor of the Church of Scotland’s magazine Life + Work
