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    Church of Scotland sanctions SSM

    Having already had two party leaders of Sapphic disposition, the general Scottish populace was already rather more socially progressive than the Kirk, but now the Presbyterian general assembly has voted to draft laws concerning same-sex marriage. It also poses rather intriguing questions for the DUP, given many of their supporters adhere to a similar religious denomination.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/...age-draft-laws

    #2
    The delayed introduction of same sex marriage in Scotland (a year after England) was partly due to this. They were getting at least the Church of Scotland and a few others onside and I guess the process is finally working its way through Presbyterian “canon law”.

    The conservative establishment Church of Scotland fell without much of a fight to liberal forces in a lot of ways. A female divinity student at Glasgow in the sixties noticed there was no prohibition on female clergy and got made a minister. Even socially conservative churches whether full of monied auld yins or up in the Western Isles (barring the money and success worshipping Bono style Born Again middle class evangelical joints) were against the cold sneer and destruction of Thatcherism, Lib Dems or wet Tories at prayer really.
    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 20-05-2018, 02:33.

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      #3
      I’d very much question the relevance of Presbyterianism in the 6 to the staid generally soft left Establishment if not Established mainstream in Scotland. The penal laws of Ireland also worked against Presbyterian dissenters, very different in Scotland where the episcopal church was the main target to be suppressed by the Calvinist church militant and Jacobite fearing State.

      And the existing ferocious Calvinism of parts of the Hebrides is very much severed from the Ulster strand of hating Catholicism/taigy behaviour by being a Gaeltacht themselves, and who have cordial relations with the Catholic Gaelic speaking islands south of Lewis and Harris.
      Last edited by Lang Spoon; 20-05-2018, 02:32.

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        #4
        Part of being Presbyterian is that Kirk elders can vote policy through at their individual countrywide General Assembly. There is no worldwide hierarchy. I’d say the ghosts of Knox, Melville and Calvin are found mostly in church organization in Scotland, rather than any zeal for belief in the Elect. That might not be true in the North or even Netherlands but.
        Last edited by Lang Spoon; 20-05-2018, 02:35.

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          #5
          Patrick Harvie for the Greens is bisexual. Cannae be forgetting them. If not sapphic, at least progressive. And he’s not an agent of evil like Davidson.

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            #6
            Fun fact - I once appeared on the cover of the magazine of the Church of Scotland. That is all.

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              #7
              What, Life and Work? Can’t leave us hanging like that, Furtho.

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                #8
                The ambitiously-titled Life And Work, yeah.

                My father, a Church of England clergyman and moderately keen amateur photographer, entered a picture of me in a competition run by The Guardian. He got some sort of commendation for it and so his name, if not the photo, was printed in the paper. The folks at Life And Work picked up on this and, because they liked having pictures taken by ministers on the cover of their magazine, asked if they could use it.

                The image is of me aged about 2, eating my first ever ice cream, with messy but engaging results. I’m actually referred to in the caption as “this happy young lady”, or somesuch, so technically I was a covergirl.

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                  #9
                  I was quite struck by these figures

                  The data suggests Scotland’s two largest Christian faiths, Presbyterianism and Catholicism, may be in terminal decline.

                  In 1982 the Church of Scotland had nearly 920,000 members; last year, that stood at 270,300, a decline of 70%. The average age of its congregants is now 62, and only 60,000 worship in person.

                  In 1982, the Catholic church conducted 4,870 marriages and had 273 men training to be priests. In 2021, there were just 812 Catholic marriages, with just 12 seminarians in training; it attracted only two new recruits this year. It no longer trains priests in Scotland and this year sold off its most famous seminary in Rome, the Pontifical Scots college, moving into another institution.

                  Until data from Scotland’s 2022 census is published next year, reliable figures on exactly how many people follow other faiths are hard to find but there are other indicators. Nonreligious marriages now far exceed religious in Scotland. Of the 30,033 marriages in Scotland last year, only 8,072 were religious (27%), compared with 9,140 Humanist and 12,821 civil ceremonies.

                  Prof Callum Brown, an expert on atheism and secularism at the University of Glasgow, believes Scotland has gone though a profound ethical shift and is very quickly becoming a secular country. Unlike other reformations, Scotland has not replaced its declining traditional religions with others.
                  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...hurches-morham

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                    #10
                    Thank (their) God(s) or something.

                    Albeit the Brit Establishment's Divide-and-rule horse faeces still 'prevails'​​​​​​, yet it largely gets blamed on the locals.

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                      #11
                      What the fuck kind of nonsense is that.

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                        #12
                        Ah, the 'profound ethical shift' of deciding that not watching TV on Sundays and glaring at people who do is a dull way to live life.

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                          #13
                          ISTM that it's a mistake to refer to behavioural change as ethical change. The populace stops going to church... it does not follow their ethics will change. (And would it be so bad if it did? The claim that religious observance equates to "good" morals or ethics has far too many counterfactuals to be taken seriously.)
                          Last edited by Patrick Thistle; 28-12-2023, 15:24.

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                            #14
                            I'd imagine the theological wrangling between the Frees and the Wee Frees, let alone the Established Church of Scotland, must (ironically) prove wearisome for the majority. On a more serious note, even if the article gives no definitive number for Scottish Catholics, if Presbyterianism is circa 300,000 in total, then only 10-15% of Scots appear to follow any Christian denomination, which seems a far more pronounced degree of secularism than even in England.

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                              #15
                              Remarkable how certain Scottish people still don't understand their own country.

                              On here.

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                                #16
                                That depends what you mean by "follow any Christian denomination". People might tick "Christian" on the census but if you ask them what church they'd look at you blank.

                                Edit - replying to DR

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                                  #17
                                  Of course you also have similar issues with the Irish census - roughly 10% of respondents switched from "Catholic" to "no religion" last year, but many of them may still have their child baptised and/or enrolled in Catholic schools due to the lack of a local alternative, and conversely, many of the nominal Catholics might only visit a church for Christmas, Easter and family celebrations.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Discordant Resonance View Post
                                    I'd imagine the theological wrangling between the Frees and the Wee Frees, let alone the Established Church of Scotland, must (ironically) prove wearisome for the majority. On a more serious note, even if the article gives no definitive number for Scottish Catholics, if Presbyterianism is circa 300,000 in total, then only 10-15% of Scots appear to follow any Christian denomination, which seems a far more pronounced degree of secularism than even in England.
                                    The extreme calvinist splinters and their swing tying perversions havent been relevant to almost all of Scotland since the 1970s, probably long before then (though i remember the council tying the swings).

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Discordant Resonance View Post
                                      Of course you also have similar issues with the Irish census - roughly 10% of respondents switched from "Catholic" to "no religion" last year, but many of them may still have their child baptised and/or enrolled in Catholic schools due to the lack of a local alternative, and conversely, many of the nominal Catholics might only visit a church for Christmas, Easter and family celebrations.
                                      Hence the Dara O'Briain joke about being an atheist "but still Catholic!".

                                      Back to the original OP, there's a cynical part of me seeing churches roll back their anti-gay bigotry because they fear losing customers. The old hatches, matches and dispatches touchpoints with the community just ain't there any more. Telling a chunk of the marrying populace they aren't welcome to get married in their crumbling old building just adds to that disconnect and irrelevance.

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                                        #20
                                        Quite a bit of the responses are completely unintelligible to me, and, I expect, anyone else not deeply steeped in Scottish culture.

                                        As to DR's point, I think that there is a rather profound difference between baptising one's child and having them attend a Catholic school.

                                        Quite a few of the parochial primary schools here now have a significant majority of non-Catholic pupils, which isn't seen as a particular problem by anyone concerned.

                                        I am also flummoxed by the reference to a lack of baptismal alternatives. Is baptism somehow required in the Republic?

                                        PT is, however, spot on about the misuse of "ethical shift" by the lad from Glasgow Uni.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                          Quite a bit of the responses are completely unintelligible to me, and, I expect, anyone else not deeply steeped in Scottish culture.

                                          As to DR's point, I think that there is a rather profound difference between baptising one's child and having them attend a Catholic school.

                                          Quite a few of the parochial primary schools here now have a significant majority of non-Catholic pupils, which isn't seen as a particular problem by anyone concerned.

                                          I am also flummoxed by the reference to a lack of baptismal alternatives. Is baptism somehow required in the Republic?

                                          PT is, however, spot on about the misuse of "ethical shift" by the lad from Glasgow Uni.
                                          Not so much an issue at secondary level anymore, as most towns have non-denominational schools of some description (Irish-language or vocational), but at primary level, rural areas can only realistically support one option, which, by and large, remain Catholic schools - even the Church itself has encouraged divestment of patronage recently, but when parents have been surveyed, they have elected to maintain the status quo in most cases.

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                                            #22
                                            It is an interesting cultural difference that rural communities in the US rarely struggle to support multiple school options.

                                            A large part of that, of course, is an acceptance of kids traveling for up to an hour each way as being completely normal.

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                                              #23
                                              I contemplate these issues a lot.

                                              Having a relatively high rate of church attendance and membership does not seem to have made the US very Christlike. The sort of people who believe Jesus stood for imperialism and gun rights will disagree, but I think I could make a strong argument for that if I tried to write a dissertation on it. IIRC there is some sociology studies that back that up.

                                              But, on the other hand, having so many people who think the world is 3,000 years old and having the speaker of the house believe the Bible is a guidebook for the American empire (spoiler: it is not) and so forth doesn't seem to have done much to hold the US back as a contributor to science, innovation or other academic pursuits. Not yet, anyway. And a lot of that comes from institutions founded, at least initially, by churches.

                                              In the UK and Western Europe in General, church attendance/membership is negligible. That hasn't led to moral collapse, unless one defines "moral collapse" in a circular way such that morality is defined by going to or belonging to a church, which I don't. And, in so many ways, the political and economic systems in Europe are more conducive to people caring for each other than ours is.

                                              But not as much as one might hope. There's still a lot of racism, xenophobia, and all around hate in Europe and the people in charge may not say they believe in their divine right to rule, but that they sure as hell act like it. And I'm not sure Europeans as a whole are more scientifically literate or "rational" than we are. At least, if they are, the difference doesn't seem to be making as much of a difference as it ought to.

                                              It's perplexing. I suppose the issue isn't really about religion, but that the US political system was set up, from the beginning, to allow small minorities of entrenched interests to block change or progress on any issue, whereas parliamentary systems are more democratic.

                                              But, in the UK and Europe, the system was set up to prop up established church hierarchies (and the buildings themselves) even when they aren't really giving people what they want or need. In the US, new denominations and new independent churches emerge (and die) all the time in response to the market demand.

                                              I'm not really sure what point I'm making. But I suspect that if you could go back to Huxley and Wilberforce in 1860 (or whenever there was a conflict between the traditional church and progressive) and tell everyone that the church would be all but dead in the UK, I imagine people on both sides of would be very surprised, and disappointed, in how things have turned out. The traditionalists would be disappointed to learn that the church was not the only thing holding society together, and teh progressives would be disappointed that a lot of the same old problems persisted.



                                              Somewhat related...I do not understand why so many Europeans who don't care about or believe in anything else the church does still want baptisms, weddings and funerals in a church. I thought maybe it was just bet-hedging or a kind of vague Unitarianism, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

                                              As we discussed on another thread, weddings don't count in the UK unless they're in a church or specific kinds of government offices. That makes no sense either. What ought to make a wedding legit is that the two people involved both enter into it willingly, understanding whatever legal consequences it carries. The way we normally do that in the modern world is by having those people sign something with witnesses. It doesn't matter where they sign it.
                                              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 01-01-2024, 19:46.

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                                                #24
                                                I think the answer to the last bit is tradition and pomp. Like the reason we still have a royal family. But church funerals are dying out and christenings will be next. Weddings will last longer because films and TV like the glamour of it.

                                                (note also that "Europe" isn't really a unified thing in this regard)

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                                                  #25
                                                  You can have a humanist wedding in Scotland outside of a council registry office, ive been to one in a hotel fucntion room, and it counted as a legal marriage. Humanist weddings and funerals are now more popular in Scotland than churchy pomp.
                                                  Last edited by Lang Spoon; 01-01-2024, 23:12.

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