Now Here is a Bishop

I spend a lot of time criticising the bishops of Sydney for good reason. But unlike a certain mad priest in England who, because he was badly treated by one bishop has it in for all of them, I know that most of them are doing a good if difficult job.

Back in 2006 or 7, when I first began to seriously consider Dunedin as my future home, I discovered the blog of then Archdeacon Kelvin Wright, vicar of Roslyn and was impressed.  I followed his blog as he planned to complete the Camino de Santiago de Compostella.  In 2008 all was put on hold as he dealt with prostate cancer but he and his wife, Clemency, completed about half in 2009.  

I first visited St John's Roslyn on my second trip to Dunedin, this time with my sister,  in November 2008 and introduced myself to him.   I was a bit astounded and had mixed feelings when it was announced in late 2009 that he had been elected bishop of Dunedin. So I was only a parishioner for 4 weeks before he was consecrated bishop and left the parish.  I attended his consecration and was amused to find myself seated next to the wife of the bishop of Nelson.  Nelson would be the one diocese in New Zealand where I would not feel comfortable. It has a history of a close relationship with evangelical Sydney but, while the bishop has aligned himself with Gafcon, he has not been as obnoxious in his comments as Jensen.  We, (his wife and I) had a pleasant conversation while waiting for the service to begin. 

Now Kelvin and Clemency have just completed their pilgrimage on the Camino and I have followed his blog with interest.  It has not been without incident.  First Kelvin had problems with his achilles tendon but after prayer by other pilgrims he seemed to make a remarkable recovery.  Far worse,  a few days later, Clemency fell in the shower and they had to make an ambulance trip to hospital.  Thankfully there were no bones broken but she had to complete the pilgrimage (just over 100km of the total 800km)  by bus. 
Although you may not have time to read his day by day description, I do recommend "Why Pilgrimage"
Part of his comments there follow:
Personally, I am not convinced that prayers said in front of the bones of some dead bloke are any more effective than any other sort of prayers, even in the highly unlikely event that the skeletal remains belong to one of the apostles. I don´t think that the sheer hard work of walking hundreds of kilometres across a foreign land earns any sort of favour with the almighty. But I know that making pilgrimage is a spiritual practice.

All spiritual practices have this in common: they confront us with the limits of the false self, so that we can recognise those limits and grow past them, and this is precisely what the Camino does. It is a tool, in other words, whereby we make real Jesus invitation to leave ourselves behind in order that we might find ourselves. The Camino Santiago de Compostela  is not a pleasant and refreshing walk through beautiful Spanish countryside. It is not an interesting historical and cultural walking tour. Or at least, it is not just those things. The Camino challenges  and searches and judges. The Camino exposes us, we who answer its call to pilgrimage. The myriad defence mechanisms we call our personality are opened up and shown for what they are and the result is not diminution but expansion; a contact with the true self and with the great one whose ground, Says Meister Eckhart, is the same ground as that of the true self. 

And then after finishing and greeting Clemency on the final day, they went and worshipped at the cathedral in Santiago with the amusing but emotional  Botafumeiro

The first thing for me to do was to visit the crypt and pray before the bones of St. James. I´m not entirely sure why, as readers of previous posts will know, but somehow, for me the Camino was not complete until I had done this. There in a small cellar, down a flight of steps was a silver casket containing James´ mortal remains. A young woman prayed before them and then pushed several copies of her CV through the grill to lie before the coffin. Unemployment is high in Spain, and I guess both her faith and her intention were obvious, and I found the sight intensely moving. I knelt there and remembered several things. A parish priest who, at the end of his pilgrims blessing had asked us to pray for his parish when we got to Santiago. Then a farmer tending some strange (to me) crop on a sunny hillside. I smiled and waved to him and he stood, raised both arms and cried out
¡Hola! ¡Bien Camino!¡Rece por mí cuando llegue a Santiago! Hello! Good Camino! Pray for me when you reach Santiago
So before I spent time holding my children, my grandchild, my diocese, my family, before God I remembered that farmer and his nameless crop and the parish of Arzua. Bless them all, my Lord and make of them what you intend.

Thanks be to God for their pilgrimage and thanks be to God for directing me to this diocese. Kelvin is not Anglo-Catholic although the Jensens probably think he is but he is open to the Mysteries of our faith.  He is very much into meditation.  He is inclusive although more circumspect on such matters since becoming a bishop.

A few months ago I met him in the local hardware store and had a brief chat, then 5 minutes later we met again in his local supermarket and, as it is not mine, he was able to direct me to what I wanted. Now that is a helpful bishop.

I probably would have small disagreements with him at times, we are both human,  but I am very grateful to be in the Diocese of Dunedin.

More on Bishop-Elect Kelvin Wright

In a comment to my previous post Rev Ivan Ackeroff directed me to a news item on Rev Kelvin's attitude to same-sex ordination.

Just before my first visit to Dunedin in November 2006, the Bishop of Dunedin, George Connor, had ordained to the diaconate a same-sex partnered man, Juan Kinnear. The local news was full of the debate. The Three Archbishops of New Zealand had opposed the ordination and there was plenty of criticism from certain sections of the New Zealand Anglican Community. It seemed to be mainly left to the then Dean of the Cathedral to support the ordination in the press.
Dean David Rice is now the Bishop of Waiapu ( centred on the city of Napier in the North Island) so his stand does not seem to have prevented his preferment.
There was loud opposition from the parish of St Matthew's which is located south of the Cathedral and is clearly evangelical. I wrote to the parish telling them I would not be choosing that parish when I moved to Dunedin. I am sure they were broken-hearted, they did not reply.

Apparently Rev Juan Kinnear was ordained a priest a year later with little if any press.
He is Honorary Priest assistant at the cathedral. I may be wrong but think he is an academic at the University of Otago. On my last visit to the cathedral in November 2008, at the Remembrance day service , he was in the clergy procession.

On my first visit in 2006 I chose an area of the city where I hoped to live. As mentioned the suburbs I have chosen are within the parish of St John's Roslyn.
I discovered the priest, Rev Kelvin Wright had a blog and I have been following it. He also uploads his recorded sermons but I have only listened to a few. In November 2008 I also worshipped at St John's and while Kelvin preached that day, a woman presided at the Eucharist.

I was not sure of Kelvin's attitude to same sex ordination but as he had not vocally dissented from the ordination of Juan Kinnear (and he had been Vicar-general of the diocese so presumably his views would have carried some weight)  and his blog showed him to be a moderate within the church, I felt he would at least be sympathetic. He has placed my blog on his blog roll and did comment at least once, so he was not horrified that an outspoken  gay man plans to move into his parish.

In the recent news article, responding to criticism from Juan Kinnear he is quoted
"From my perspective, I am not yet a bishop, have not yet had an opportunity to canvass the whole mind of our diocese on this matter, and would greatly welcome Juan's obviously well-researched opinions on this matter any time he wishes to meet with me and share them.

"Apart from that, I feel I have clearly stated my position and, at this point, do not have anything further to add."

It had previously been reported that he plans to stick to the church's policy, and observe the moratorium on the ordination of partnered gays and lesbians.
But he believed the policy "inevitably will change", as the views of New Zealand society changed.

"Social attitudes change.

I think the church will change its attitude too."

I decided to search Kelvin's archive of sermons especially those preached around the time of Juan's ordination and found on 26 November 2006. Who should be ordained? summarised as Homosexuality and the Bible, and Dunedin's recent controversial ordination.
You can listen to the sermon. 
Generally he argues that while the Bible condemns homosexuality in Leviticus it also allows slavery, selling one's daughter etc. Women who are not wearing hats are disobeying a Pauline instruction. He explains that homosexuality is not a choice anymore than lefthandedness and that he did not choose to be heterosexual. However at the end he asserts that while the church is so divided on the ordination of gay people it would be better to refrain.  This seems to be the stance he has taken in the press interview last weekend. 

I would ask him, why he, therefore, will presumably ordain women as the same argument can be advanced that it will upset some church members.  I presume he will argue that women now generally have the numbers but not gay people as yet. 

However they did not have the numbers when women were first ordained in the Episcopal church and I doubt the numbers were there when Penny Jamieson became the first woman to run a diocese, the diocese of Dunedin and  under whom Kelvin worked. 

Bishop-elect Wright is so far advanced to the homophobes and misogynists who run the Diocese of Sydney that  I am still happy to move to the Diocese of Dunedin. I can just hope that a time will come, not too far distant, when he will believe there is no reason why a suitable gay person should not be ordained.