Gerry Lynch’s Blog

Gay Life in NI if the Conscience Clause Were Enacted

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

It was a summer Friday in 2008, and we were in a provincial town West of the Bann. Jordin Sparks was Number 1 and Ian Paisley’s tenure as leader of Our Wee Country had ended a few weeks before. We’d planned a day trip, but we’d ended up exploring a bit further than expected. It was chilly for June, but the showers from earlier had cleared into that gorgeous, soft, summer evening light that is the thing I miss most from home.

Why drive all the way back to Belfast, we thought? Why not check into a B&B for the evening, have a nice meal out, and explore even further the next day? I had just bought my first car. I could drive with L plates as long as he was in the passenger seat. I’d never driven so far before. It was all very exciting.

The local tourist office helpfully supplied some numbers, and the first number we called was very keen to let us a double room, and we were very keen on the price. There was no rush, so we’d be along in a few hours’ time. After a bit more sightseeing and church crawling, we arrived at our lodgings for the evening.

Our hostess was very definitely a West of the Bann Protestant lady of a certain age and social standing. When I said I was the Mr. Lynch who’d booked the double room a few hours before, she looked positively alarmed.

“Now, you asked for a double room”, she says, dispensing with any pleasantries, “but it’s really a twin room you want, isn’t it?”

No, I insist, we really do want the double room we’d booked. Continue reading →

Posted in LGBT, Northern Ireland | Comments Off

CONVERSION EXPERIENCE: A poem for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfT-xUV1Nok]

CONVERSION EXPERIENCE

Voice and light that left him blinded,
     Lashed him like a cattle prod.
“That you do for me is evil!
     That you thought the devil, God!”
‘Did I really intrigue murder?’ –
     Pride that led to such a fall!
Sin in haste, shed tears at leisure,
     O such sorrow, poor St. Paul.

North wind gusts from the Cathedral,
     Through the ring road traffic queue.
Thronging crowds for Sunday shopping,
     Those who cross the church door, few.
Why on earth am I so stupid?
     How could this be true at all?
Do I really think the same as
     Stupid bigots like St. Paul?

Poisoned planet filled with violence,
     While we, yawning, watch TV.
Do we really call this ‘progress’,
     As we laud on bended knee
Self-improvement, home improvements,
     Mammon, iPods and the mall.
Blanking out the hungry billion*,
     Who are we to judge St. Paul?

“As you did it for the lowest!”
     Says the maker of the spheres;
“When you let her die, you kill me!”
     Is it that our era fears?
God the execution victim,
     Refugee born in a stall –
Then, like now, it seemed too silly.
     Follow Christ, still, like St Paul.

* According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, 870 million people are chronically undernourished. This is almost exactly the same as the total population of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia combined.

Posted in Christianity, Poetry | Tagged apologetics, christian, christianity, conversion of st paul, poem, poetry, st paul | Comments Off

Thoughts on Bishops who won’t Ordain Women

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Today it was announced that Philip North, Vicar of Old St Pancras in London and a prominent member of Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic group Forward in Faith, is to be the new Bishop of Burnley. He is, therefore, someone who will not receive the sacramental ministry of women priests and bishops. Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of Glasgow, has objected to Philip’s appointment on social media today. Although Kelvin is someone I have a lot of regard for and agree on a lot of things with, I simply can’t agree with him here.

For what it’s worth, I am and always have been a supporter of the full inclusion of women in the Church’s threefold orders of ministry. It is one of the main reasons why I moved from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism 17 years ago. I rejoice that I think I can reasonably expect to see a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury well within my working lifetime. More than that, I don’t find remotely convincing either the ecumenical or the ontological arguments on which Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic opposition to women’s ordination rest. But I still don’t agree with Kelvin.

Quite apart from the personal regard in which I hold Philip, there are four significant reasons why. The first and last are specifically related to the current situation in the Church of England, and therefore may not apply so directly to Kelvin’s context. The middle two are, I think, universal. Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity | Tagged anglo-catholicism | Comments Off

Sexual and Religious Freedoms: the First Casualties of Russian Crimea?

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Rally in Kiev commemorating the deportation of Crimean Tatars in WW2. Will history repeat? (Photo (C) “kaktuse” under Creative Commons 3.0.

The excellent Forum 18 organisation, which supports freedom of religious belief and disbelief in Europe and Asia, reports a recent wave of harrasment of and raids on premises owned by Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses in what is now Russian-controlled Crimea. Officials claim they are merely searching for ‘extremist’ literature and the region’s Prime Minister has announcd a moratorium on searches until 1 January, which so far seems to be holding.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are often singled out for harrassment and even persecution in Russia. Moscow’s relationship with Muslims, however, is more complex and ambiguous. In Crimea, however, the overhwelmingly Muslim Tartar community is the largest ethnic minority in the region, annexed to Russia earlier this year, and one which has been implacably opposed to Moscow rule.

Perhaps the authorities would like to see Crimea’s Tartars follow the region’s gay community in fleeing to Ukraine, and on this subject Prime Minister Aksyonov is considerably less conciliatory than on religious persecution. As Time reports:

“In Crimea we don’t welcome such people, we don’t need them,” he said, referring to homosexuals. If they ever try to stage a pride parade or any other public events, Aksyonov warned that the local police and paramilitary forces would “take three minutes to clarify what [sexual] orientation is right.”

One final aside – if persecution of the [Turkic if not Turkish] Tartars intensifies, might there be repercussions for Moscow:Ankara relations.

Posted in Global, Human Rights, LGBT, Religious Freedom | Tagged crimea, Jehovah's Witnesses, Prime Minister Aksyonov, religious persecution | Comments Off

Our Experience of Secret Church in Salisbury

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

This is a bit of a brain dump after the Secret Church event I helped organise in Salisbury last night. If you aren’t interested in the background to our church and our advertising programme, just click down to find out what happened during the service.

In September, some advertising material for Open Doors’ Secret Church campaign came across my desk in work. I was instantly taken with the idea: it gave the opportunity to pray in solidarity with and for persecuted Christians; to raise awareness of extreme persecution, particularly of the ‘forgotten Christians’ of North Korea; and it also looked like a fun and exciting worship event. I consequently gave it a bit of publicity on the Diocesan website, weekly e-Bulletin and monthly Grapevine, but also decided to run an event as the first thing sponsored by our new Mission, Education and Outreach Committee at Sarum St Martin.

St Martin’s is not a very large church, with a usual attendance of around 40 at the main Sunday morning service. It is a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parish (Resolutions A, B & C), now growing again after the departure to the Ordinariate of the previous incumbent with a sizeable minority of the then congregation on Ash Wednesday 2011. It has been in interregnum since.

Advertising and Attendance

Advertising JPG used on Facebook, correctly sized for the platform.

Advertising jpeg used on Facebook, correctly sized for the platform.

I produced a poster based on one of the image files sent out by Open Doors UK, and put it in a number of church and Christian venues in Salisbury City Centre. I also advertised the service on Facebook and Twitter, with images specifically sized for each platform. Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity, Prayer and Worship | Comments Off

Thoughts Occasioned by the Sunday Morning Long-Path Opening to Australia and New Zeland, 9th March 2008

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

I will go to forty metres
On this sunny BERU morn
Where the strong Antipodeans
Make me glad that I was born.

Signal bearing polar flutter
From the town of Christchurch fair,
Lands upon this Irish meadow
Answering my silent prayer.

Signals coming on the long path
From a far Australian shore,
Crossing ice and sea and jungle,
Coming to increase my score.

Sigs from Asia’s teeming cities;
Sigs from Afric’s dusty plains;
Sigs from small Pacific islands;
To this land of gentle rains.

Some ops work me with a yagi,
Some ops work me with a wire,
Some ops work me with a groundplane,
Late on eighty, when I tire.

Fickle paths on ten and fifteen
Barely open ere they’re gone.
Booming DX strong on 20.
Strong at sunset, strong at dawn.

I will go to forty metres
On this sunny BERU morn,
Sinful would it be to let those
CQ Contests rest forlorn.

Posted in Amateur Radio | Tagged amateur radio poetry | Comments Off

A Journey of the Mind to Ancient Antioch

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

A reflection on Acts 11:19-26 for Diocese of Salisbury staff prayers.

Try to imagine the world of Antioch as the refugee disciples in our reading would have known it. Antioch was the third largest city of the contemporary Empire, after only Rome and Alexandria and it was, by ancient standards, enormous, with a population of around half a million. Situated just inland from the great bend in the Mediterranean coast, near what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, Antioch’s roads ran to Asia Minor, and on to Greece and Italy; to Syria, Judaea, and on to Egypt; and to Mesopotamia and then beyond the boundaries of the Roman world to the Parthian Empire that was the forerunner of modern Iran.

Taken by the Romans in 64 BC, Antioch was favoured by them for its wealth and strategic location and the city, already large, was granted new public buildings and even a visit by Julius Caesar. It was famous for its opulence, obsession with fashion and devotion to pleasure.

By this time Antioch’s Jewish community would have been large and centuries old, and part of the kaleidoscope of ethnicities and faiths one might expect in a major metropolis of the Empire. That good road link would have ensured a steady stream of pilgrims to and preachers from Jerusalem.

Into this world came refugees from the very first persecution of Christians, which followed the martyrdom of St Stephen. Precise dating of events in the Acts is always difficult, but given that Paul and Barnabas are already part of the Christian story, we are probably talking about the mid 30s.

From today’s reading, these refugees seem mainly to have been sheltered and possibly rather sectarian Jewish Christians, native to the Holy Land. How strange the thronging pagan crowds of Antioch must have seemed to sheltered Torah scholars who had lived entirely in the world of pious Jerusalem Jews, or those who flitted between preaching in the small towns of Judaea and fasting in the desert. What did they make of the parading high-class whores and the wealthy businessmen arrayed like peacocks, one wonders? Continue reading →

Posted in Christianity | Comments Off

Praying for Ian Paisley’s Soul

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Crossposted to Slugger O’Toole…

I have prayed for the happy repose of the soul of Ian Paisley. Initially almost to make him turn in his grave, but then with sincerity. The Book of Common Prayer says that Christ died as a “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world”. Note the sins of the whole world – Christ’s death atoned for my sins, for your sins, for Ian Paisley’s sins.

Paisley’s sins? In my book, they were grievous.

Would The Troubles have happened without Paisley? Almost certainly, in some form or other. Would they have been as bad without him? It’s difficult not to believe that many people in their graves would still be alive today if he’d ended up the pastor an independent Baptist Church in North Wales.

As the Northern Ireland of Craigavon and Brookeborough became untenable in the late 1960s, that booming voice with its hypnotically rhythmic, staccato, delivery was everywhere. Denouncing O’Neill and his successors as ‘lundies’, or traitors; weaving grand conspiracy theories about Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholics, and implying that any amelioration of the anti-Catholic bigotry of the old Stormont state would only empower the conspiracy; popping up in Nationalist strongholds to start riots around marches and flags. Later, as The Troubles got worse, so did he.

His main object was always to destroy the Ulster Unionist Party and its old establishment hierarchy, whatever the cost to his country and his own community, so he could become Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He never had the slightest idea of what he would do if he achieved it. It was a suitably limited aim for a man made big only by the Fisher-Price scale of Northern Ireland. Continue reading →

Posted in Christianity, Northern Ireland | Comments Off

Jesus Went to Birmingham. Did the People Let Him Die?

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Every Eucharistic service, in whatever Christian tradition, is a recreation of the Last Supper. I’m at a work conference in Birmingham at the moment, staying in a hotel bang opposite the Cathedral, so I joined the 8 a.m. congregation there today for the service that I was taught, unfairly, to call Muddled Matins and Holy Confusion.

We were 12 congregants, like the apostles, gathered around the altar where the priest played the role of Christ. In Christ, we are always being made new: the priest was a woman. For two millennia it would have been a vanishingly rare event, although not as unheard of as the sceptics admit. Now, at least in the churches which emerged from the Reformation, it is commonplace. That should not deflect us from how wonderful and glorious and new it all is. The Holy Spirit continues to renew His Church.

How could we have been so blind, for so long, to the truth expressed so plainly in Scripture by St. Paul barely two decades after the Resurrection? There is no longer male nor female, for we are all one in Christ. To say that a woman cannot represent Christ at the altar is, to my mind, dangerously close to saying that God did not so much become man in Christ, but male.

And we 12 whom the priest fed with Christ’s body and blood were a reflection in miniature of the final heavenly banquet, where people from every tribe and nation will gather. We were young and old; men and women; black, white and Asian. Some were in good suits on the way to an office job that doubtless paid for a comfortable bourgeois life; some were obviously very poor to the point were they could have been sleeping rough. All of us equal in God’s eyes, all of us citizens of the family of holy screw ups we call the Church.

The sun streamed through that magnificent east window depicting the Ascension, Christ triumphant over death and going ahead of His people to prepare a place for them in Heaven. In the glorious silence between the words, the sounds of a vibrant city waking up to glorious September sunshine percolated through the walls.

Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity | Comments Off

Two Ceasefires and A Coming Out: A Memoir

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole…

I’ve been thinking about coming out. There have been a few horror stories doing the rounds recently: Vicky Beeching’s harrowing life and those of Lyra McKee’s friends. It’s made me think about how it was for me, all those years ago. If I’m honest, it was a banal tale set against a bizarre backdrop.

Maybe it’s just because I’m home, for the first significant amount of time since Chris died, sleeping in the room where I came out to my Mum, and this all happening on the 20th anniversary of the first IRA ceasefires, but I can’t pull the threads of my coming out from the tapestry of mid 1990s Belfast into which they were woven.

1994 is starting to be a long time ago. It was just before the internet arrived; it was a year that started with the last whites-only government in Africa still in office, if only marginally in power. John Major was the Prime Minister, and his government was consumed with moral panic about illegal acid house raves. It seems like a different world, with the tiny details often being the most dramatically different. There were more pubs and fewer pawn shops. Newsagents near schools were wreathed in the fug of chainsmoking Sixth Formers at 4 p.m. There was no Tesco or Sainsbury’s in Belfast, only local supermarkets like Stewart’s.

In Northern Ireland, 1 September 1994 was a great watershed. It is still the most logical point at which to divide recent history into a ‘now’ and a ‘then’. Before, The Troubles simply were and, to my generation, always had been. My memories are of an endless succession of road blocks and traffic jams; of young men in uniform in patrol, with English accents and heavy weapons which would be aimed at you, following you down a street; of dead people on the news and footage of haggard young women in black crying at funerals; of heavy wood beams put across the front door at night, to buy possibly vital seconds in case an assassination squad broke it down with a sledgehammer; of an acute awareness of where was ‘safe’ and where was ‘dodgy’.