Not Worthy of the Name

Prayer Resource

2010-04-16T21:32:00.002-05:00

On Monday Anglican leaders from the Global South will be gathering in Singapore. While there are many items on their agenda, including the pressing issues of religious persecution, poverty and HIV-AIDS, perhaps the most newsworthy item from our perspective will be a discussion as to how to respond to the recent direction of the Episcopal Church. Two Primates (senior archbishops) of the Anglican Communion have already written to the Archbishop of Canterbury requesting a special meeting of the Primates (with the Canadian and American Primates absent) to deal with the situation. Please pray for these godly leaders as they meet over the next week. A very helpful and informative prayer guide is available here.

Aside from offering valuable information and prayer requests for various provinces of the Anglican Communion, it includes some challenging quotations about prayer, for example:

The essence of prayer does not consist in asking God for something
but in opening our hearts to God, in speaking with Him,
and living with Him in perpetual communion.
Prayer is continual abandonment to God.
Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want;
it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life.
Prayer is not asking, but union with God.
Prayer is not a painful effort to gain from God help
in the varying needs of our lives.
Prayer is the desire to possess God Himself, the Source of all life.
The true spirit of prayer does not consist in asking for blessings,
but in receiving Him who is the giver of all blessings,
and in living a life of fellowship with Him.
—Sadhu Sundar Singh

My only regret is that this is the only quote that originates in the Global South, when they have so much to teach us abvout prayer.

Faith Matters: Will Barbie Save The Episcopal Church?

2010-04-15T14:28:00.003-05:00

Walter Russell Read questions the Episcopal Church’s attempts at “evangelism”…

… I think Anglican witness will continue in the United States. The future of the Episcopal Church is harder to predict. The looming expulsion from the Anglican Communion — a perfectly avoidable disaster which a competently led and effectively organized church could have avoided without sacrifice of principle — is likely to be a more deeply damaging blow than our befuddled leadership can quite grasp. There are many people in the pews who do not hold extreme theological views (either liberal or conservative) and have been shamed and grieved by the fecklessness and failure of their church for many years. They have endured the foppish incompetence and the self indulgent follies of the church bureaucracies and political establishment out of loyalty to a larger idea. Losing the bond with Canterbury will be a heavy blow for those hundreds of thousands of faithful Anglicans. If that wider identity and historical connection is lost, the disintegration of the remaining bits of the Episcopal church will perceptibly speed up. No branch can flourish cut off from the vine, and this particular Episcopal vine is already in trouble.

To look at the Episcopal church today and to love it and care about its future is to know what Jeremiah must have felt wandering the doomed streets of Jerusalem. The framework of the country was falling apart, the enemy was approaching and the inexorable doom stepped closer day by day. But inside the walls, the hypocrisy, folly, pretense and denial reigned on. Love of the city, rage at the rulers, sorrow and pity must have warred in his heart as he begged and pleaded that they turn, even now, to face the real horror of what they had done.

What a heritage we had, and what a waste we have made of it.

Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the country’s leading students of American foreign policy. His father, Loren Mead, is an Episcopal priest in Washington, D.C. His entire article may be found here. It is well worth the read.

A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury

2010-04-14T09:03:00.009-05:00

… Your Grace, I have urged you in the past, and I will urge you again. There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continue sorting out the crisis that is before us, especially given the upcoming consecration of a Lesbian as Bishop in America. The Primates Meeting is the only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it can act if you will call us together …

I have for some time been an admirer of Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda. He is a genuine leader in the Anglican Communion and is not afraid to speak the truth. You may find the full text of his letter here. (Click on it twice to get the full-sized text.)

Seven Stanzas at Easter

2010-04-14T08:39:00.004-05:00

I intended to put this arresting poem by John Updike on my blog at Easter. Better late than never, I suppose—and it is still the Easter season. Christ is risen!

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
 it was as His body;
 if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules  
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
 the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,  
each soft Spring recurrent;
 it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled  
eyes of the eleven apostles;
 it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
 the same valved heart  
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then  
regathered out of enduring Might  
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
 analogy, sidestepping transcendence;  
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
 faded credulity of earlier ages:
 let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,  
not a stone in a story,
 but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
 grinding of time will eclipse for each of us  
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
 make it a real angel,  
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,  
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen  
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
 for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
 lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
 embarrassed by the miracle,
 and crushed by remonstrance.

London Times Sunday Cryptic for 11 April 2010

2010-04-13T21:56:00.002-05:00

Here is this past Sunday’s London Times cryptic. Just click on it to come up with the full-sized version.

London Times Cryptic Solution for 4 April 2010

2010-04-13T21:54:00.001-05:00

Here is my solution to last week’s puzzle (April 4):

Sunday Times Cryptic for 4 April 2010

2010-04-04T20:12:00.002-05:00

Here is today’s cryptic from the London Times. I think you will find it more straightforward than last week’s.

Crossword Solution for March 28

2010-04-04T20:09:00.001-05:00

Here is the solution to last Sunday’s crossword puzzle. I have to admit I didn’t get “gobelin” (21A) or “triolet” (14D).

Good Friday

2010-04-02T17:11:00.002-05:00

Here is a lovely musical rendition of what we celebrate on Good Friday:

An interesting perspective...

2010-04-01T09:47:00.005-05:00

Here is an interesting video to bring you up to date on the world we live in today:

London Times Sunday Cryptic for 28 March 2010

2010-03-28T20:36:00.002-05:00

Here is today’s cryptic crossword puzzle from the London Times. Just click on it to come up with the full-sized version.

London Times Cryptic Solution for 21 March 2010

2010-03-28T20:24:00.001-05:00

Here is my solution to last Sunday’s puzzle:

London Times Sunday Cryptic, 21 March 2010

2010-03-22T20:28:00.001-05:00

Here is the puzzle from this past Sunday:

Solution to 14 March London Times Cryptic

2010-03-22T20:25:00.001-05:00

Here is my solution to last week’s puzzle:

London Times Sunday Cryptic, 14 March 2010

2010-03-19T22:11:00.002-05:00

Here, after an 18-month hiatus, is this past week’s puzzler:

The loser is the winner

2010-03-19T16:35:00.002-05:00

Malcolm Muggeridge was one of the great British journalists and social commentators of the twentieth century. Whether it was Communism, the British monarchy, the “new morality” of the ’60s, the media, or a host of other issues, they were all fair game for his acid wit. Occasionally he even directed his attention to the church.

This happened most notably in a feature-length film, Heavens Above. It starred Peter Sellers as a bumbling Church of England clergyman who sincerely believed in the utter truth of every word of the Sermon on the Mount. When this led to giving away the parish silver and opening the doors to the poor, it soon led to trouble with the church hierarchy.

Muggeridge was one of those many people (like Gandhi) who had enormous respect for Jesus and his teachings, but not for the church. Eventually it was the witness of Mother Teresa (among others) that led him in his sixties to turn from agnosticism to embrace the Christian faith. He saw Mother Teresa, unlike so many who go by the name Christian, as one who actually lived what she professed.

Increasingly I wonder about the church in the western world of today, and how much—in spite of our professed orthodoxy—we have adopted a theology that is foreign to the gospel. We operate on a basis of power rather than weakness. Our model has become Rambo, not Jesus.

So we (and here I include myself) end up gauging the success of a church in terms of its budget or average Sunday attendance, not by the lives that are being changed for the better through the love of Jesus. We waste millions of dollars in prolonged legal wrangles over property, never imagining the powerful witness—and the enormous freedom—we might have by just walking away from our luxurious premises. We lament the church’s waning moral and political influence in the world while ignoring the Holy Spirit’s waning influence in our lives.

The apostle Paul wrote of a God who once said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” “So,” he continued, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Paul had learned (largely through the school of hard knocks) that the message of the cross simply does not make sense in the world’s eyes: that weakness should be the source of genuine strength, poverty the fount of true riches, and death the way to eternal life. Is this not also what Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, and then proved through his own death and resurrection?

Perhaps we need to be like those two disciples on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus—to walk a few miles with Jesus and allow him to open the Scriptures to us. Perhaps like them we also will find our eyes opened and our hearts burning within us. May it lead us to embrace the foolishness of the gospel and to count it a privilege to be known as fools for the same of Jesus.

Reflecting of the recent turn of events in Los Angeles

2010-03-19T16:32:00.001-05:00

Dear fellow parishioners at Messiah:

My main purpose in writing this week is to reflect on the news that a majority of the bishops and standing committees of the Episcopal Church have given their consent to move ahead with the ordination of a partnered lesbian as a bishop in the diocese of Los Angeles.

Mary Glasspool was elected to that position at a convention of the Episcopal diocese of LA on December 5 of last year. The canon law of the Episcopal Church requires that the ordination cannot proceed until a majority of the Bishops and standing committees of all the dioceses in the Episcopal Church (56/110) give their consent in writing. This happened on March 16, and the ordination is set to take place on May 15.

There has been immediate reaction, both negative and positive, both within the United States and around the world. Here is the official statement from the office Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

It is regrettable that the appeals from Anglican Communion bodies for continuing gracious restraint have not been heeded. Following the Los Angeles election in December the archbishop made clear that the outcome of the consent process would have important implications for the communion. The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion reiterated these concerns in its December resolution which called for the existing moratoria to be upheld. Further consultation will now take place about the implications and consequences of this decision.

My own position on the matter is the same as that of Dr Kendall Harmon, Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and blogster extraordinaire . He writes:

I am saddened but not surprised by today’s news. This decision represents not simply a change in doctrine, nor a single change in practice, but an established pattern of common life. It is contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the mind of the church catholic.

This was an accident waiting to happen. In a way it is almost surprising that it took seven years from the ordination of Gene Robinson, a partnered gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire, for a second such incident to occur. That event has been seen as tearing the fabric of the Anglican Communion, which has been held together in little more than name ever since. Is this the final nail in the coffin? Will the Anglican Communion be torn apart by intractable divisions?

The fourth Anglican Global South to South Encounter is set to take place in Singapore, April 19-23. The current situation in the Episcopal Church is not their principal focus. Yet they represent the large and growing majority of Anglicans in the world, and the primates (archbishops) and others who will be present are unequivocally committed to Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth conference of bishops, which remains the official position of the Anglican Communion and which states:

• in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage;
• recognizes that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ;
• while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex; [and]
• cannot advise the legitimizing or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions…

Many of the provinces (national church bodies) represented at this Global South encounter are already out of communion with the Episcopal Church or in "impaired communion". Please pray for these godly brothers and sisters as they prepare for this important gathering.

Pray also for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and also for the godly bishops who still remain in the Episcopal Church, such as our own Visitor Bishop, Russell Jacobus of the Diocese of Fond du Lac. And let us believe that the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is more than able to bring light into this dark turn of events, to bring good out of evil, and breathe life into a culture of death.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 19 October

2008-10-23T08:17:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the absence of crossword puzzles for the past few weeks. I am just starting to get back on track after a family vacation. Here is last Sunday’s puzzler from the Times.

The Comeback Bishop

2008-10-13T14:03:00.003-05:00

An interview with Bishop Bob Duncan, by Timothy Morgan of Christianity Today:

What’s your advice to the remnant of evangelicals still in the Episcopal Church about giving up church property?

Their property isn’t worth their souls’ health. While our property is precious and important, if it becomes an overwhelming aim, it’s probably good to let go of it. But having said that, the principal thing I would say is that we’re very hopeful that the spirit that we’ve been blessed with here in Pittsburgh will produce a settlement that will [make] a better way forward across the country. We’re also hopeful that the Episcopal Church, in losing battle after battle, will finally just decide that these property battles aren’t worth fighting.

So three things: First, I hope that the way we go through this will provide a precedent both moral and legal for the way other situations might be settled across the country. Second, I hope that the continued failure of the Episcopal Church in its litigation might help it wake up and cease the litigation. And third, in any place where the property has become an overwhelming issue, it might be better for evangelicals to let go of it. Trust the Lord that he’s got the cattle on 10,000 hills. He’s able to restore to us what we lost.

Do you have any second thoughts about creation of this new province for conservative Anglicans?

No second thoughts about it. I would have hoped that the Anglican Communion might simply recognize us as the legitimate bearers of the Anglican franchise here. But that’s not likely to happen in the short run. The significance of the Episcopal Church deposing me is much greater than what most people would assume in this battle for a province. For the worldwide Anglican Communion to see me deposed has been absolutely sobering, and even moderates are shocked and stunned by it…

How should we best interpret the recent silence of Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams?

Sometimes silence is golden. Not so long ago I wrote to him and thanked him for his silence. The silence could suggest two things. It could suggest an indifference, which I don’t think is the issue. Or it could suggest a diplomatic response in which it’s clear that the sands are shifting. The Archbishop of Canterbury and I have had regular contact, and that will continue. He is redefining his own role by his silence. He redefined the role of the Lambeth Conference. Those redefinitions are necessary in light of the emergence of a global communion. The existing Anglican structures are largely colonial. I acknowledge his authority to exercise his role the way he sees it, actually diminishing his role substantially for the future of the communion.

Is a new center emerging within Anglicanism?

A post-colonial Anglicanism with a conciliar structure will emerge. The notion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is first among equals is going to fade away. The 21st-century role of the Archbishop of Canterbury will go through the same metamorphosis that the role of the royal family went through in the 20th century. The British Empire is over, and sadly, so is a British-dominated communion.

How will conservatives negotiate the issues that divide them—women’s ordination and related concerns? Is there going to be a theological center?

The theological center on first-order issues has deep agreement. Most of us hold the issue of the ordination of women to be a second-order issue. We are committed to working with our partners in the communion as we try to come to some lasting agreement. The way I illustrate that is we are now wise enough to understand that we can’t settle the issue of reception of the ordination of women. The reason we can’t settle it is that East Africa ordains women and West Africa doesn’t. We have got to go through this together, and it’s going to take a couple generations to do it. There’s a deep commitment to one another across this divide.

Are you confident that there will be a new province for the North American Anglicans a year from now? And are you the most likely person to be the primate of that province?

The simple answers are yes and yes. I do believe that the Common Cause partners will put everything in place that we need to put in place by Christmas. The time has come. In terms of my leadership I think I understand, and those who put me in this place understand, that in this particular moment my task, my call has been to bring the partners to a place, to the creation of a province and to the beginning of its life, and then I’ll be happy to give it over as soon as it’s clear that I’m not called to do it anymore. We will operate in a way in which the primate of the province is a diocesan bishop, will serve for a term, and may be reelected for a term. Then another will take up that primacy.

How do all these events among Anglicans fit into the bigger picture?

They need to be read in the context of this great reformation in the Christian West. I thank God that it’s come as far as it has. I thank God for the people of Pittsburgh who supported me. I see a new day dawning—and not just for us, but for all our Christian partners. We Anglicans, who don’t theologically always get it right, have done something ecclesiologically that might have helped the whole Christian church.

You can read the entire interview here.

Uganda synod gives backing to US traditionalists

2008-10-13T12:09:00.003-05:00

As reported by George Conger in the Church of England Newspaper:

The general synod of the Church of Uganda has backed the call for the creation of a second Anglican province in the United States and Canada for traditionalists. Meeting from Aug 26-28 at Uganda Christian University in Mukono, clergy and lay delegates to the 19th Provincial Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed Archbishop Henry Orombi’s participation in the Gafcon primates’ council, affirmed the Jerusalem Declaration, and pledged to support the Common Cause Partnership in North America’s transition into the 39th province of the Anglican Communion.

The synod also took up Archbishop Orombi’s call for a “Decade of Mission”, while approving in principle proposed changes to the church’s Anglican ecclesiology—making shared doctrine rather than communion with Canterbury, the defining relationship of the church.

In his charge to the province, Archbishop Orombi noted the Anglican Communion’s Decade of Evangelism from 1990 to 2000 produced mixed results… The Church of Uganda grew through a “strong emphasis on evangelism.” While “we continue to grow numerically each year,” he noted, “our percentage of the population is stagnant.”

Archbishop Orombi proposed a five-fold mission programme that would focus on personal regeneration, revitalization of the churches and community, transformation of the nation, and the reform and renewal of the Anglican Communion.

While the social and economic needs of Africa and the world were staggering, they could not be productively addressed until there had been a personal transformation of the individual—beginning with the “work ethic”. “Your work is sacred. It should be done to the glory of God,” he said. While Uganda was 85 percent Christian, it had “one of the highest levels of corruption in the world. I have come to the conclusion that the word ‘corruption’ is too polite a word. Brothers and sisters, we need to call corruption what it is…it is theft. It is stealing. It is seeking first my own kingdom, and not seeking first the Kingdom of God.”

To transform the church and world, Archbishop Orombi said a Christian must first allow God to transform his sinful heart. “We need a massive commitment on the part of all Christians to agree together to seek first, not our own kingdom, but God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. If we are faithful in this, then God will be faithful to add unto us everything we need,” he said…

Delegates to the synod also continued work on the revision of the provincial constitution, with an eye towards redefining the Church of Uganda’s ecclesial ties of communion in terms of a shared “adherence to doctrine and upholding the Bible,” and ending the nineteenth century tie of communion through the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Synod affirmed the broad principles behind the changes to the Church of Uganda’s ecclesiology, backing Archbishop Orombi’s position “that as a Church we declare that ‘we are in full communion with all Churches, Dioceses and Provinces of the Anglican Communion throughout the world that receive, hold, and maintain the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the Word of God written and the ultimate rule and standard of faith given by inspiration of God, and containing all things necessary for salvation’.”

I have a lot of respect for Archbishop Orombi and for his vision of a renewed Anglicanism that is not tied to British cultural norms. You can find the whole account of the Uganda synod here.

Some dioceses leave, but worst over, Presiding Bishop says

2008-10-09T16:16:00.004-05:00

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Days after the Pittsburgh Diocese voted to leave the Episcopal Church over its teachings on homosexuality and salvation, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said she thinks the worst of the crisis in the denomination is over. She also predicted that openly gay bishops will be elected in the future, despite an agreement among bishops not to consent to such elections for the time being. Jefferts Schori, the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Church, was in Columbus today to preach at Trinity Episcopal Church Downtown, where she was elected bishop in 2006...

Jefferts Schori spoke of her grief about the Pittsburgh Diocese's decision to leave because of disagreements with the church over biblical teachings about homosexuality and salvation. "That's just profoundly sad," she said. "Arguing about fine details of theology isn't the main reason for our existence." The focus instead should be on service and evangelism, she said...

The Pittsburgh Diocese was the second in the United States to leave the church, after the Diocese of San Joaquin in Fresno, Calif. Next month, dioceses in Fort Worth, Texas, and Quincy, Ill., are to vote on leaving the Episcopal Church. Individual churches, including several in Ohio, have also decided to break from the denomination. No other dioceses have expressed a desire to leave, Jefferts Schori said. "I think we're well past the worst of the crisis," she said.

The reorganization of the Pittsburgh Diocese has begun, led by diocesan officials who chose to remain with the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said. The breakaway congregations still occupy church property, and the denomination will reclaim it through the courts if necessary. "Our job isn't to be vindictive about their departure but to say, 'We bless your journey, we wish you all the best. And if you want to come back, the door's open and we'll keep the porch light on.'"

As presiding bishop, her task is to refocus Episcopalians on the mission of the church, she said. Part of that mission is to fight oppression in all its forms, starting with racism. On Saturday in Philadelphia, Jefferts Schori apologized for the Episcopal Church's role in perpetuating and profiting from slavery.

There is a parallel between the historic oppression of black people and the challenges that gays and lesbians face, she said. "It's an age-old human struggle over who's an accepted member of the community," she said.

The worst over? Salvation no more than a fine detail of theology and not the main reason for our existence? Prosecuting parishes and dioceses, but not vindictive? Just what color is the sky in that woman's world? The whole article is here.

Two more parishes split from the Anglican Church of Canada

2008-10-07T09:20:00.002-05:00

From the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator:

A Hamilton church that voted on the weekend to leave the national Anglican church body and join the small but growing Anglican Network in Canada, says it is not breaking away.

"We are aligning with the worldwide Anglican church," said Rev. Sandy Copland of the Church of St. Peter in Hamilton, which was part of the Niagara diocese. "It's the Canadian church or parts of it that have broken away."

Votes were held at St. Peter and St. George's in Ottawa on Sunday, with overwhelming majorities. At St. Peter, 42 voted in favour and one was opposed. At St. George's, the vote was 130 in favour and 27 opposed. The churches, and others that have joined the network, believe the Anglican Church of Canada has drifted from core doctrine by taking a more liberal approach to interpreting the Bible...

Hamilton has roughly 20 diocesan churches. With the addition of these two parishes, the Network now has 21 parishes, 13 of which belonged to the Anglican Church of Canada.

This story does not seem to have had much coverage so far in Canada. You can find the whole article here.

Episcopal diocese chooses to secede

2008-10-05T16:39:00.002-05:00

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh yesterday voted to secede from the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America. At least 17 of 74 congregations elected to remain with the U.S. church. Meeting in Monroeville, the laity representatives voted 119-69 and the clergy voted, 121-33, to secede. Bishop Robert Duncan, whom the Episcopal House of Bishops deposed Sept 18 but is now "episcopal commissary" to Pittsburgh from the Southern Cone, called it "a historic day"...

The Episcopal Church views the Pittsburgh secession as a violation of canon law and claims full rights to all church property. Litigation is expected. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, primate of the Episcopal Church, said most of the worldwide church "will be intensely grieved by the actions of individuals" in Pittsburgh. Unlike in the past, however, she did not mention suing the breakaway group. "I have repeatedly reassured Episcopalians that there is abundant room for dissent within this Church, and that loyal opposition is a long and honored tradition within Anglicanism. Schism is not," she said...

The Southern Cone group will hold a convention Nov. 7-8 to elect a bishop, which is expected to be Bishop Duncan. The continuing Episcopal Diocese also expects to call a convention before the end of the year to elect new leaders, including a retired bishop to serve until a permanent bishop can be chosen.

The Rev. George Werner of Sewickley, a loyalist and a former top official of the Episcopal Church, said the denominations headquarters in New York was "to be advised" by local Episcopalians. "Many people, myself included, want to make sure that [national leaders] don't slam a bishop in here who will tear us to shreds," he said, an acknowledgement that many Episcopal loyalists are also conservative.

There is agreement that at least 17 parishes will not join the Southern Cone; and the Rev. Simons believes it could go as high as 28. Both sides also agree that many parishes on both sides are likely to lose some members to the other side. The Rev. Werner believes that splits in small churches could cause 20 to 30 of them to fail altogether...

The Rev. Mary Hays, a top official of the Anglican diocese, said she believed Pittsburgh would become a haven for women throughout the conservative movement. The Province of the Southern Cone, which does not itself ordain women, has agreed that Pittsburgh can continue to do so, she said. "Women in realignment who have a call to ordination will be ordained here," she said.

"What we have done today has been to bring the diocese fully back into mainstream Anglicanism," said Bishop Henry Scriven, Pittsburgh's former assistant bishop and now a "bishop providing assistance" to the Anglican diocese. Clergy were offered credentials from the Southern Cone, though they have two years to make up their minds. They were also given handouts for parish bulletins, explaining the vote.

You can find the whole article here.

Algoma elects college president as bishop

2008-10-03T12:50:00.003-05:00

Some encouraging news from the Anglican Journal (Canada):

The diocese of Algoma on Oct. 2 elected Rev. Stephen Andrews, who is General Synod prolocutor, as its new bishop. Bishop-elect Andrews, who is president and vice-chancellor of Thorneloe University in Sudbury, Ont., was elected on the ninth ballot, according to a brief announcement at the diocesan Web site, www.dioceseofalgoma.com

A respected New Testament scholar, Bishop-elect Andrews is a member of the Primate’s Theological Commission that published the St. Michael Report, a 2005 Canadian theological paper which concluded that the blessing of same-sex unions is a matter of doctrine, but not core doctrine. (The Commission, which is composed of bishops, priests and theologians, encourages and promotes theological discussion in the church.) He was also a member of the team that presented the Canadian church’s view on same-sex blessings to the international Anglican Consultative Council in 2005.

In 2007, he was elected by delegates to the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod as prolocutor, or chief deputy to the primate and second executive officer. The Council of General Synod (CoGS), the church’s governing body in between General Synods, recently elected him as one of the church’s representative to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). The ACC provides consultation and guidance on policy issues, such as world mission and ecumenism, for the Anglican Communion.

A former rector of St. Alban’s Cathedral in Prince Albert, Sask., and dean of the diocese of Saskatchewan, he joined Thorneloe, an Anglican federated college of Laurentian University, in 2001. Bishop-elect Andrews, who is 52, holds a doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of Cambridge, England. He earned his master of divinity degree from Wycliffe College, Toronto, his diploma in Christian studies from Regent College, Vancouver, and his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Colorado. Ordained a priest in 1987, he also served as assistant curate at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Halifax.

He succeeds Bishop Ronald Ferris, who retired Sept. 30. As the 10th bishop of Algoma, Bishop-elect Andrews will lead a diocese with a wide mix of parishes in an area that is known as Ontario’s cottage country. Bishop-elect Andrews and his wife, Fawna, have two daughters, Clare, and Ellen. His hobbies include music, woodworking, gardening and birdwatching.

Before coming to assist me at St Paul's Church, Halifax (1986-1990), Steve had served as study assistant to the Rev. John Stott in London.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 28 September

2008-10-02T09:07:00.002-05:00

Here is my suggested solution for last Sunday’s puzzler from the London Times.

The Creedal Marks of the Church: (4) Apostolicity

2008-10-01T09:50:00.002-05:00

In what sense do we understand the church as apostolic? While Christians can no longer speak with the same authority as the apostles, there is justification in speaking of the church’s apostolicity, if by that we mean the faithful preservation and transmission of the apostles’ teaching.

The apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received…” He adjures Timothy, “…what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.”

This appears to be what Jürgen Moltmann is arguing for when he states, “The apostolic succession is, in fact and in truth, the evangelical succession, the continuing and unadulterated proclamation of the gospel of the risen Christ.” Hans Küng interprets the church’s apostolicity in terms of its ongoing fulfillment of the apostolic commission.

As direct witnesses and messengers of the risen Lord, the apostles can have no successors. No further apostles are called. Apostleship in the original and fundamental ministry of the first witnesses and messengers died out with the death of the last apostle. Apostleship in this sense of witness and mission cannot be repeated or continued. What remains is a task and a commission. … The apostolic task is not completed; it embraces all peoples to the ends of the earth.

The first dimension of this is for the church of today to listen to the apostles and through their witness to the Lord. “There is no route to the Lord which bypasses the apostles.” This means that we have no right to relativize it, to suit it to the prevalent cultural and philosophical norms of society or to our own predilections, so that the gospel no longer presents the offense of the cross and the word of God is stripped of its power. This was one of the dangers against which the apostle Paul warned in his letter to the Galatians.

We must be clear that the apostolic teaching is not the invention of the church. Nor can the church’s acceptance of the authority of Scripture be based on a functional approach, that is, on the Bible’s power to shape and transform both individual communities. Rather, the church must recognize itself as the product of the gospel of Christ and of the word of God. It becomes unmoored from its biblical and true apostolic roots only to its peril.

More Bird & Fortune: The Financial Advisor

2008-10-01T09:48:00.003-05:00

Here is a related interview. It is incredibly prophetic in that it was performed a year ago—especially the last 60 seconds.

John Bird & John Fortune on the Subprime Banking Mess

2008-10-01T09:37:00.002-05:00

I am grateful to one of my parishioners for sending me this video on how the stock market works:

The Creedal Marks of the Church: (3) Catholicity

2008-09-30T13:42:00.003-05:00

Theologically, the catholicity of the church arises out of the incarnation of Christ. As Christ has identified himself with the whole of humankind through taking on human flesh, so his people are called to make his grace known through a costly identification with the world.

Implicit in the church’s catholicity is the call to embrace the whole world, to bring the gospel to people of all nations, classes and cultures and to incorporate them into its fellowship. To quote Geoffrey Wainwright,

The differences which nature provides in the matters of sex and race have often been hardened and distorted by culture to produce division and conflict. The catholicity of the Church’s calling gives room and encouragement for both sexes and all races to place themselves under the sovereignty of Christ, which means, when expressed on the social plane, the gift of self for the good of others and of all.

The challenge that confronts the church in every generation is to be able to distinguish between what is cultural (and therefore relative) and what is divinely ordained. If they are to survive (much less be true to their identity as “catholic”) in today’s society churches have to be able to communicate in a variety of cultural forms. They will be places where people’s cultural differences are celebrated.

This is far from taking the attitude that “anything goes”. Nor is it a matter of the church adopting an attitude of moral pluralism. It will involve pain for many, as they must let go of deeply cherished cultural forms in favor of making the eternal gospel more widely known. Yet the end result will be something that truly honors the Lord before whom every knee must one day bow—“a Christian fellowship that rejoices in its diversity, and where people of different races together offer themselves to God, to love each other and increasingly share their lives”.

While the church must be prepared to speak in the cultural language of its day, it also stands in critical isolation from that culture. Once a church has to some extent become contextualized, the temptation to an uncritical identification with the culture is always present. As a result its evangelistic witness is blunted and its prophetic message compromised.

While we must be careful not to identify the Christian faith with the cause of revolution, it must be conceded that there is a tendency for established congregations to become chaplaincies to their members, instead of engaging them in challenging the idols and shibboleths of the contemporary world.

The Liturgy of the Notices

2008-09-30T13:36:00.003-05:00

I just came across this piece of liturgical advice from the Naked Liturgist in New Zealand:

Clever how he turns things on their head, or perhaps it comes naturally to people in that part of the world.

The Creedal Marks of the Church: (2) Holiness

2008-09-29T15:13:00.001-05:00

As with the unity of the church, the second creedal mark is a deeply theological statement. The church’s holiness stems not from its members but from its relationship to Christ and from the salvation that it enjoys through faith in him. This is made clear in passages such as Ephesians 1:3-14 and 5:25-27. Hans Küng expresses it thus:

It is God who distinguishes the church, sets it apart, marks it out for his own and makes it holy, by winning power over the hearts of men through his Holy Spirit, by establishing his reign, by justifying and sanctifying the sinner and thereby founding the communion of saints.

Holiness in this sense arises out of an encounter with the living God. While it is not primarily an ethical concept, holiness inevitably involves an ethical element. God not only calls men and women to himself through Christ. He also calls them to be holy and empowers them to live in holiness.

The holiness of the church speaks of the sanctification of each of its members and of the ongoing work of the Spirit of holiness in their lives. William Willimon writes of the church as a counter-cultural phenomenon, a colony of heaven.

In its very existence, the church serves the world not by running errands for the world but by providing a light for the world, that is, by providing an imaginative alternative for society. The chief political task for the church is not to provide suggestions on social policy but to be in our very existence a social policy.

Part of the church’s mandate is to encourage, model and teach a lifestyle among its members that truly lays hold of its identity as salt and light in the world. This mandate will be achieved not through an emphasis on externals, but as Christians are drawn into the costly love of Christ and begin to interpret it in terms of their own lives. Donald Bloesch writes,

What is here proposed is holiness in the world, a piety that is to be lived out in the midst of human suffering and dereliction… Holiness is a gift of God, but it is also a goal that we are called to strive for in this world, in this life. We are summoned neither to separation from nor to solidarity with the world but rather to combat with the evil forces of the world, and this means that the way of holiness is also the way of the cross.

Rowan Williams on the Stock Market Crisis

2008-09-28T18:05:00.004-05:00

Here are the concluding paragraphs of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent article in The Spectator:

Of course business is not philanthropy, securing profit is a legitimate (if not a morally supreme) motivation for people, and the definition of what’s good for the human community can be pretty widely drawn. It’s true as well that, in some circumstances, loosening up a financial regime to allow for entrepreneurs and innovators to create wealth is necessary to draw whole populations out of poverty. But it is a sort of fundamentalism to say that this alone will secure stable and just outcomes everywhere.

Fundamentalism is a religious word, not inappropriate to the nature of the problem. Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose — which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.

The entire article may be found here. I think it is well worth the read.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 28 September

2008-09-28T17:33:00.002-05:00

Here is this week’s Sunday cryptic crossword puzzle from the London Times. Click on it to get the full-sized version.

“Too Big to Fail”

2008-09-27T21:57:00.004-05:00

I thought that this piece, which appeared in this week’s New Yorker, was kinda fun:

Before you throw this letter into the proverbial round file, let’s be clear: this is the first time I have ever asked for a bailout from the Federal Reserve. I know what you’re thinking. Why do I deserve your largesse, and I do mean largesse, since I’m asking for five million big ones? The answer is simple. Like many of our nation’s financial institutions, I am simply too big to fail. If investors were allowed to witness the collapse of Freddie, Fannie, and then Andy, I can’t begin to describe what havoc it would wreak on their already frayed nerves. Actually, I can describe it: global financial calamity. I think we can both agree that, to dodge this bullet, ten million dollars is a small price to pay. (I know that I originally asked for five, but since I started writing this letter my financial situation has deteriorated in grave and unexpected ways.)

Why am I too big to fail? It’s important to grasp the critical role that I play in a wide-ranging but fragile web of economic relationships. If I go belly-up, I will no longer be able to tip my doorman when he gets me a taxi. This is not a hypothetical situation. I have studiously avoided tipping him for a solid month now. Consequently, he no longer has cash to spend at the liquor store after work, and the liquor-store owner no longer has money to spend on Internet porn. Given that Internet porn is the only fundamentally sound engine of the American economy, we’re playing with fire here. If that stalwart industry is allowed to fail, Asian porn companies will rush to fill the void, offering porn that is both cheaper to produce and way hotter than ours. What will it take to keep this from happening? There are no guarantees, but sending me a check for twenty million dollars would buy us all valuable time…

Continue reading here.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 21 September

2008-09-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

This is my solution to last Sunday’s puzzle from the London Times:

The Creedal Marks of the Church: (1) Unity

2008-09-25T10:30:00.002-05:00

What ought we to be looking for in a church? The Nicene Creed provides us with four characteristics: It should be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

What does unity mean for the church? Hans Küng remarks,

The unity of the Church is not simply a natural entity, is not simply moral unanimity and harmony, is not just sociological conformity and uniformity. … The unity of the Church is a spiritual entity. It is not chiefly a unity of the members among themselves, it depends finally not on itself but on the unity of God, which is efficacious through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Genuine unity in the church can be conceived of only as oneness in and through Christ. René Padilla writes that “the unity resulting from Christ’s work is not an abstract unity, but a new community in which life in Christ becomes the decisive factor”. A picture of this unity is given in Luke’s description of the nascent church on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:42-47. The members of the first church were men and women who had been “cut to the heart” by the gospel. They signified their acceptance of that message through their submission to baptism and the single-minded priority that they laid on the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.

The unity that Christians share in Christ cannot be reduced to mere uniformity or confused with unanimity. Paul’s image of the body of Christ with each member having its own particular function as a part of the whole, makes this clear. The unity that he envisions is a unity in diversity that depends on a delicate balance between individual freedom and mutual obligation. The unity that the early Christians shared in faith quickly translated into a unity in service and action. Such unity in service can only be on the basis of a deep oneness in faith—a shared experience of spiritual regeneration through Christ.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is David Booth Beers

2008-09-24T21:59:00.005-05:00

Once again the trusty Anglican Curmudgeon has struck gold. One of the arguments around which Katharine Jefferts Schori and her chancellor hinged their campaign to depose Bishop Bob Duncan had to do with their rather idiosyncratic interpretation of what was meant by “the whole number … entitled to vote”. Now the Curmudgeon has discovered that Booth Beers has used exactly the opposite interepretation in the legal suit against the Virginia parishes. The Curmudgeon writes thus:

From the Memorandum written to the members of the House of Bishops on September 12, 2008:

There may also be raised at this meeting the question of whether consent to the deposition of a bishop who has been certified to have abandoned the Communion of this Church must be by a majority of bishops present at the meeting at which the matter is presented or, on the other hand, by a majority of all the voting members of the House whether or not in attendance. Canon IV.9(2) states that the vote to consent must, first, take place at a “regular or special meeting of the House” and, second, be “by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote”. My Chancellor and the Parliamentarian of the House have both advised me that the canon means that the vote must be by a majority of all the bishops who are at the meeting at which the vote must be taken and who are entitled to vote.

From the Opening Brief filed by Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia on [Section] 57-9 Voting Issues, prepared in part and signed on September 5, 2008 (one week before the above Memorandum) by the law firm Goodwin Procter, of which David Booth Beers is a partner (bold again added, except for the heading, which is in bold in the original):

V. The phrase “majority of the whole number” in § 57-9(A) requires a majority vote of the whole number of “members” eligible to vote, whether or not they voted.

Just as the Court can and should resolve the proper definition of the statutory term “members” as a matter of law, it should, if there is any dispute on this issue, resolve the meaning of the statutory phrase “majority of the whole number” as a matter of law. That is, does the statute require that the vote reflect a majority of “the whole number” of members or only a majority of those who actually cast a ballot?

In their efforts to invoke the statute, the CANA Congregations properly concluded that a majority of “the whole number” was required…

… Furthermore, the Congregations did not simply schedule a congregational meeting at which a vote of those present could be taken. Instead, they went to great lengths to ensure a majority vote of all those who … were eligible to vote…

The Congregations’ own case law … confirms that the above understanding of “majority of the whole number” was correct…

Accordingly, the phrase “majority of the whole number” in § 57-9(A) refers to and requires a majority of the total number of a congregation’s “members” over the age of 18, regardless of how many or how few actually cast a ballot.

TEC’s brief attached a copy of Merriam-Webster's definition of “member” to enhance its argument. Let us do the same here, and attach Merriam-Webster's definition of “hypocrite”:

1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Leaving the Episcopal Church

2008-09-24T09:53:00.004-05:00

It’s not about lifestyles; it’s about believing that Christ is God

Here is a fine op-ed piece that appeared today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It is by Wendy Paff, faculty member in the English departments of the University of Pittsburgh and La Roche College.

For centuries, all Christian denominations shared core beliefs, of which the most central is that Jesus Christ is God and is a member of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Over several decades, many self-titled “progressive” Episcopalians have abandoned as superstition the faith as written and agreed to by the worldwide Anglican Church, of which the U.S. Episcopal Church is a fraction. They have rejected beliefs unquestioned in mainstream Christianity; for example, that Jesus is both man and God, as evidenced by his historical resurrection.

The core of our differences does not lie in the high-profile issues of lifestyle, such as gay marriage or ordination, but in our understanding of who Jesus is. Their departure from all that is Christian is now so great that most members of our worldwide Anglican Church cannot in good conscience celebrate the Lord’s Supper with these progressive Episcopalians.

Many bishops and priests in the Episcopal Church today believe God is an impersonal spirit like “the force” in Star Wars, and that Jesus represents only a good example and teacher, but not God. That is not Christianity.

These leaders claim they represent a majority. They do not. The majority of Anglicans still believe in the tenets of Christianity, as do the majority of Christians worldwide.

The notes, phone calls and letters of support sent to former Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan following his deposition last week (and some in anticipation of it) from every corner of the globe, from “nonprogressive” Episcopal bishops and from leaders of other denominations indicate that any majority claimed by those who voted to depose him is a lie. The kangaroo court of the deposition itself broke every Episcopal rule for such proceedings and reported as a majority vote numbers which are questionable given the number of bishops eligible to vote who were not present.

A difference in beliefs within the Episcopal Church is distressing, but is not necessarily reason to leave. Unfortunately, many of those who hold “progressive” beliefs have gone further than disagreeing with Christian tenets. They have hijacked the denomination into which I was confirmed more than 30 years ago.

These leaders have become intolerant of the traditional Christians in their midst and have sought systemically to suppress those whose beliefs remain Christian by refusing to ordain or appoint them as priests or bishops. Faced with the inability to worship and witness as our faith dictates, we have sought to leave and maintain our membership in the worldwide church from which the Episcopal Church has alienated itself.

In response, we have been harassed by those who call themselves tolerant, as the deposition of Bishop Duncan illustrates. Remember, he was deposed in anticipation of an act not yet taken and with the intent to intimidate those in the Pittsburgh Diocese who soon will be voting on whether to leave the Episcopal Church. We have even been asked to heed his deposition as a warning.

As a good (and agnostic) friend of mine exclaimed,“If they don’t believe in what the church teaches, let them leave and create their own group.” Since they haven’t, and since they have sought to silence us, we must leave.

I seek to leave the Episcopal Church because it no longer teaches or represents that which I believe as a member of the worldwide Anglican Church—that Jesus Christ is God and that He died for my sins and rose again.

Let me add a final note on the assets held by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. We traditional Christians have been accused of attempting to “abscond” with that which belongs to the Episcopal Church.

I am leaving the Episcopal Church regardless of the eventual disposition of those assets. I am leaving as a matter of conscience and belief. However, those assets were entrusted to an institution which held fast to the beliefs I now hold by people who shared those beliefs. Those people would not recognize or validate the Episcopal Church as it now exists. That church now desires to use those assets in ways they would not agree to. Who is violating their trust?

Further Reactions to the Duncan Deposition

2008-09-24T09:34:00.003-05:00

Here is part of what Mark McCall of the Anglican Communion Institute has written:

Prior to the meeting of the House of Bishops last week The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. warned that the “proceeding against Bishop Duncan clearly belong[s] to a larger effort to create an office of Presiding Bishop, and a way of proceeding in the present season, at odds with the constitution and canons of this church.” Following the questionable vote, ACI noted that “the legitimacy of the House’s action and the Presiding Bishop’s leadership has been placed in serious question before the eyes of the Communion and the larger public. No one should minimize the role this may play in the unfolding re-establishment of the Communion’s common life.”

The rest is here.

Here is part of a statement from Archbishop John Chew and the Province of Southeast Asia:

The Province of Southeast Asia will continue to support, remain in full communion and prayerfully explore steps to strengthen our shared life with Anglican leaders like Bishop Bob Duncan and the Diocese of Pittsburgh as well as other TEC bishops who respect the mind of the Communion and remain faithful to the teaching of Scripture as expressed in the tradition and life of the Church. We urge those who have not chosen to ‘walk apart’ to work actively and sincerely with the Windsor-Covenant Process and other measures agreed at the Communion level. This is probably the only remaining opportunity to bind the Communion together out of this crisis which will strengthen our future common life, witness in the world and our place as an Anglican ecclesial family within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The rest is here.

Give us new province, say orthodox

2008-09-24T09:11:00.008-05:00

Here is some of what Ruth Gledhill, of the London Times, has written in reflection on the recent deposition of Bishop Bob Duncan:

Even though Dr Rowan Williams is not planning to comment and has instead headed of to Lourdes with several busloads of Anglican pilgrims, hoping no doubt for a miraculous healing for his church, six of his bishops have today put out their own statement of support for Bishop Duncan. And as we report, one of those bishops, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, has in an interview with me today repeated the call for a new province first made by the Gafcon leaders at their conference this summer. I’ve always held out the hope in my own heart that the split would not come this side of the Atlantic. But I’ve recently spent a little time with some extremely senior laypeople in the conservative moment. They are not “names” familiar to the blogosphere. But it seems there can be little doubt. What has happened there will happen here. Expect property battles and more in years to come…

It has crossed my mind recently that Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is secretly one of the “orthodox”. That can surely be the only reason that she has created a martyr who is now being venerated by evangelicals worldwide, and who is poised to become the sanctified leader of an orthodox movement that is demanding, and might well get, its own province.

Have we come so far from our Catholic tradition that we have forgotten the power of martyrdom, on which the Western church is built? Does no-one in TEC understand any more the meaning of sacrifice?

Because a martyr is what Bob Duncan now is. The Episcopal Church should not need a heretically catholic Anglican such as me to tell it that the next step up from martyrdom is sainthood. Bishop Duncan’s office has been inundated with emails, phonecalls and letters of support since the ill-advised deposition. Since Friday, he has had personal messages from six primates, including ++Anis and ++Chew, indicating their intention not to recognise the deposition and to support the Pittsburgh “remnant”. There have been all kinds of other ones as well from various bishops, clergy and laity all over the world. They are being catalogued on a new site, set up specially to venerate the deposed bishop.

And now in England, six bishops are pledging their support and saying they will continue to recognise him. Surely that is momentous enough to warrant an archiepiscopal comment? Or perhaps all pretence of episcopal collegiality has been abandoned…

In a telephone interview [Dr Michael Nazir Ali, Bishop of Rochester] said:

“Quite a few American bishops had come to Lambeth, knowing that nothing would change afterwards. I do not think we can take seriously what they agreed at Lambeth. This is of a piece with other meetings where they have been present, have agreed things and where nothing has happened afterwards. This does show that a structural solution is needed for the orthodox in the American church. There must be immediate relief. No talk about panels doing things in the future. We need, they need more importantly, immediate relief from this kind of action taken against them. I hope that a province in due course of the orthodox in America will be recognised in the Anglican Communion.

“Here are loyal Anglicans whose only fault is not wanting to change what they have received. We have been hearing for some time that the orthodox want to be recognised in America. I am not saying that there might be a province straight away. There may be steps to recognising the constituency first, in some way, providing for oversight, which is absolutely essential, and recognising Common Cause Partnership and its leaders as Anglicans in good standing. But in the end I cannot see how we can avoid recognising some kind of entity of the orthodox in the US. I hope [the split] does not come to Britain. That is something we have been working on, to keep the unity of the Church of England intact.”

The rest of her article, which includes the full text of the letter from the six English bishops along with a letter from Bishop Wallace Benn of Anglican Mainstream, is here.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 14 September

2008-09-23T07:36:00.000-05:00

Here is my solution to the cryptic crossword of 14 September:

The Bishop of Upper South Carolina on the Deposition

2008-09-22T13:41:00.008-05:00

Here is what Bishop Dorsey Henderson wrote to his diocese following the meeting of the House of Bishops:

The following is a fairly accurate account of my statement to the House at the very beginning of discussion:

As an attorney—and self-appointed President of the House of Bishops Bar Association—I am wondering whether we are permitting the letter of the canons undermine the spirit for which the canons were crafted.

Let me say clearly that I concur completely with the finding and certification of the Review Committee. My only concern is with the timing. There is no question in my mind that +Bob Duncan intends to leave The Episcopal Church—and in his heart and mind perhaps already has. I don’t doubt that Duncan intends to do exactly what he has said he will do, personally, and with his diocese.

I am persuaded by the legal argument of the (Presiding Bishop’s) Chancellor regarding interpretation of the phrase ‘whole number of bishops entitled to vote’; it is akin to my own views on that issue. So I do not question the validity and legitimacy of our action in finding that John-David Schofield had abandoned.

And I am concerned, too, about the legal issues (especially those relating to property), should abandonment by Duncan not be found at this particular point in time. I appreciate the presentation already made by Bishop Sauls (who had discussed relevant laws of Pennsylvania), but expect that, despite our action, the matter of title to property will nevertheless end up in the secular courts.

But I am influenced heavily by the impact on relationships—relationship within The Episcopal Church and relationships within the Anglican Communion, if we act now rather than acting AFTER the Pittsburgh Convention has its second reading on the proposed constitutional change. To be sure, there will be a price to be paid whether abandonment is determined now or then—but I think the cost will be considerably higher if we are seen to act precipitously. There is a matter of “good will”, of mercy, as well as justice, which I consider relevant.

Yes, Duncan intends to abandon within the meaning of the canon—no doubt in my mind whatsoever. But I think the finding of abandonment will be viewed as less unacceptable, less unfavorably, if the diocesan convention has acted the necessary two times, rather than just one. I also believe that we should put the ball back in Duncan’s court—let the decision be his, not ours.

I also consider it important that we attempt as much as possible to separate what we think and feel about Bob Duncan (and others considering similar moves) from the greater good of Christ’s mission and Church-that is, separate personalities from what, by God’s grace, we can do to promote more effectively both the mission AND the unity of the Church.

I am anxious to hear the thoughts and opinions of others, but this is where I am at the moment. I am not compelled, or even impelled—but I am inclined to vote no on a finding of abandonment now, and to vote yes on any effort to suspend action until after the Pittsburgh convention acts.

My prayer for myself at this point is similar to the line from the hymn we sang today during Morning Prayer: ‘Listen to the voice of wisdom…’

After several hours of discussion and prayer, I ultimately voted “no” on the proposed resolution which would authorize the Presiding Bishop to make a finding of abandonment as defined by the canon. The resolution, however, passed…

As I stated for the benefit of that draft: “This is one of the most somber and solemn occasions in my experience as a bishop. It is a time for prayer for all of us—especially for Bishop Duncan and the Episcopalians of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.”

While I don’t go for all of his arguments in favor of eventual deposition, I am left with the wish that all the bishops (or at least half of them) might have shown the same sense of fair-mindedness and care for the church as this man! You may find the text of his whole letter here.

London Times Cryptic Crosswords for 14 & 21 September

2008-09-21T16:49:00.005-05:00

Here are the London Times cryptic crossword puzzles from last Sunday and today. Click on each of them to get the full-sized version.

Where from here?

2008-09-20T10:51:00.002-05:00

Along with the two previous articles (“The Episcopal Church and the Lambeth Quadrilateral” and “A Sinking Ship?”, these are words that I wrote to my parishioners earlier this month, before the deposition of Bob Duncan. That event has put parishes such as ours in an even more critical position, as will the reactions that will follow it both in the US and more widely in the Anglican Communion.

We stand at a crossroads. Decisions being made on a global level will have repercussions that may reach down through generations. Although on a smaller scale, the same holds true on the local level as well. How do we remain part of a church that, though necessarily flawed and incomplete, still manages to exhibit the creedal characteristics of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity?

The final paragraph of the Windsor Report, now four years in the past, is both prophetic and sobering:

There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together. Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart. We would much rather not speculate on actions that might need to be taken if, after acceptance by the primates, our recommendations are not implemented. However, we note that there are, in any human dispute, courses that may be followed: processes of mediation and arbitration; non-invitation to relevant representative bodies and meetings; invitation, but to observer status only; and, as an absolute last resort, withdrawal from membership. We earnestly hope that none of these will prove necessary. Our aim throughout has been to work not for division but for healing and restoration. The real challenge of the gospel is whether we live deeply enough in the love of Christ, and care sufficiently for our joint work to bring that love to the world, that we will “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4.3). As the primates stated in 2000, “to turn from one another would be to turn away from the Cross”, and indeed from serving the world which God loves and for which Jesus Christ died.

There is ample evidence that many in the Anglican Communion, although refusing to acknowledge it, have by their actions chosen to “walk apart”. To date none of the Instruments of Communion, including most recently the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, has been successful in counteracting the trend. It appears that we are witnessing the gradual dissolution of the Anglican Communion, in Bishop Tom Wright’s words, “like a slow-moving train wreck”.

On a pragmatic level, where does that leave us at Messiah? There are a number of options available to us. What follows are five, but no doubt there are others as well.

(1) Do nothing. We could decide simply to hang tight, keep a low profile, and hope and pray for the best, all the time seeking to hold to our distinctives and to remain a place of lively orthodoxy. I would warn that this path is neither as simple nor as straightforward as it might at first appear.

(2) Reaffirm the Windsor Report. The Vestry has already expressed its commitment to the content and recommendations of the Windsor Report. While it seems that forces within the Communion have worked together to subvert the implementation of the report, the time may not quite have come for a final pronouncement of death. The Covenant Design Group continues to meet, and it may be that there is just enough energy left among the orthodox primates and bishops to make it work. In any event, once again endorsing the Windsor Report would be a moderate (some would say minimal) statement to our bishop and diocese that we choose to remain within the mainstream of Anglicanism and oppose the theological and moral innovations of many in the Episcopal Church.

(3) Apply for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight. In March 2004 the Episcopal Church House of Bishops opened up the option of receiving pastoral care from a bishop other than the diocesan. The plan is outlined in a document entitled, “Caring for All the Churches” A number of churches across the country—both conservative parishes in liberal dioceses and liberal parishes in conservative dioceses—have already chosen this option, with varying degrees of success. A proposal to take this step has already been brought before our own Vestry and is under consideration. Presumably the delegated bishop would be available for consultation and godly advice, and for occasional liturgical events, principally confirmation. It should be noted that the stated purpose of the plan is “for reconciliation”.

(4) Seek to negotiate a redirection of diocesan apportionment monies. This is also a step that a number of parishes have taken, again involving negotiation with the bishop and other diocesan authorities. For a number of years the Episcopal Church has given support to a variety of questionable projects and causes. The current multi-million dollar litigations against parishes choosing to leave the denomination is a scandal and as such, insupportable. To allow for some choice as to the designation of apportionment funds, be it on an individual or a parish-wide level, may be seen as an act of responsible stewardship, as well as a grass-roots level opportunity to express opposition to the church’s actions.

(5) Plan to align with the “new province” when it forms. At this stage it appears unlikely that a new province on North American soil will receive broad endorsement from the rest of the Communion. The six GAFCon primates have for the time being held back from recognizing such an entity, perhaps until after the meeting of all the primates early in 2009. In a few days’ time Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will make the unprecedented move of calling upon the Episcopal Church House of Bishops to depose Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, without any previous inhibition, without en ecclesiastical trial, and following canonically questionable procedures. Within a month the convention of the Diocese of Pittsburgh will vote on whether to transfer its out of the Episcopal Church and temporarily into the Province of the Southern Cone, joining the Diocese of San Joaquin, and likely to be followed by the Dioceses of Forth Worth and Quincy. This means that within a month or so the whole ball field will have altered, in that, technically at least, there is the possibility of the establishment of such a province. As to what this will lead to in terms of the wider Communion and of the barrage of legal suits that undoubtedly will be launched we can only speculate. Whatever the case, it will be a far cry from Ephraim Radner’s “orderly separation”.

I think we at Messiah need to take a careful look at each of these potential avenues. At this time I cannot tell exactly where that may lead, as I do not know what the future holds. My hope is only that we would do it within the framework of, and out of a deep commitment to, the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church”.

Episcopal Church House of Bishops Deposes Bishop Robert Duncan

2008-09-19T16:19:00.006-05:00

This is a very sad day for the Episcopal Church. The Living Church reports:

The House of Bishops brushed aside procedural challenges and deposed Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church Sept. 18.

The final tally was 88 yes, 35 no, with four abstentions, according to one bishop. Those results are not official, however.

Present were 128 bishops. Not present were 15 who could not attend for a variety of reasons, including the bishops of Texas who are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Nine did not respond and were not present, according to Episcopal News Service.

Immediately after his deposition from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church, Bishop Duncan was welcomed into the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, according to Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables.

“As was resolved by resolution made at the Provincial Synod in Valparaiso last November 2007, we are happy to welcome Bishop Duncan into the Province of the Southern Cone as a member of our House of Bishops, effective immediately,” Bishop Venables said. “Neither the Presiding Bishop nor the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church has any further jurisdiction over his ministry. We pray for all Anglicans in Pittsburgh as they consider their own relationship with The Episcopal Church in the coming weeks.”

While Bishop Duncan continues to believe that the deposition is unlawful, he will not challenge it prior to the end of the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s annual convention unless forced to do so by the leadership of The Episcopal Church. On Oct. 4, diocesan convention deputies will consider the second and final reading of a constitutional change that would realign the diocese with the Province of the Southern Cone.

With the passage of that constitutional change, the diocese will be free to welcome Bishop Duncan back as its bishop. In the meantime, under the diocese’s governing documents, the standing committee will serve as the diocese’s ecclesiastical authority.

“This is of course a very painful moment for Pittsburgh Episcopalians,” said the Rev. David Wilson, president of the standing committee. “The leadership of The Episcopal Church has inserted itself in a most violent manner into the affairs and governance of our diocese. While we await the decision of the diocesan convention on realignment to a different province of the Anglican Communion, we will stand firm against any further attempts by those outside our boundaries to intimidate us.”

The roll call taken at the meeting, showing how each bishop voted, is on Stand Firm. You can read letters and statements of support for Bishop Duncan here.

A Sinking Ship?

2008-09-18T10:21:00.004-05:00

The Episcopal Church has been likened to an ocean-going liner that is headed on a path towards shipwreck. In our case, the captain appears not only prepared to go down with the ship, but intent on herself taking the ship down. Expensive litigation, disregard for the church’s canons, and the rejection of Jesus’ own words in the gospel can only serve to further weaken and divide the church. Meanwhile many of her officers and crew are below decks puncturing the hull.

The turning radius of the Titanic as she approached the fatal iceberg on the Atlantic in 1912 was nearly three quarters of a mile. Many would agree that the good ship Episcopal is already within that radius, headed for unavoidable disaster. “We are in schism,” wrote our own bishop from the Lambeth Conference on July 30. Ephraim Radner, a member of the international Covenant Design Group of the Anglican Communion, has called for “an orderly separation”, echoing the bishop of Winchester’s comments during the Lambeth Conference.

To take the imagery further, many have let down lifeboats. The Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America, the Charismatic Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Episcopal Church and a whole host of forty or more others (most of them small splinter groups), are made up of individuals and congregations that have departed from the Episcopal Church over the past thirty years.

Meanwhile, others have brought their own rescue vessels alongside, with the offer of taking endangered Episcopalian parishioners, congregations, and now even dioceses, into protective custody. The Anglican provinces of Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and the Southern Cone have all taken these measures over the past six years or so.

To join with either of these movements is tempting. Yet there is a difficulty. We know where the Episcopal Church is headed. Yet we cannot be certain that where either the lifeboats or the rescue vessels will take us is any better. Most of the lifeboats are likely to remain just that: small clusters of angry people who find their identity in being in opposition to the teachings of the Episcopal Church, and who will eventually sink into oblivion.

There is considerably more hope in the rescue vessels. Increasingly, they are working in synchrony, under the banner of the Common Cause Partners. In addition, the archbishops of the respective provinces have made it clear that their actions are intended to provide only a temporary sanctuary until a more permanent solution is found—in our case the establishment of a new Anglican province on North American soil.

However, there are factors that make this a very fragile convoy: differences of opinion over the role and ordination of women in the church, the issue of continuing overlapping jurisdictions within the province itself, and the question as to whether the new province will ever gain recognition throughout the Anglican Communion, to name just three. Each of these could seriously compromise the seaworthiness of the new vessel, and potentially cause it to founder.

The Episcopal Church and the Lambeth Quadrilateral

2008-09-17T14:39:00.001-05:00

Tucked away on page 876 of the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer, following the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, there is printed a document that I believe you will not find in any other prayer book in the Anglican Communion. It is “The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral 1886, 1888”.

Originally devised and adopted by the US House of Bishops in 1886, its four points were intended as principles that would form the basis of negotiation towards Christian unity with other church bodies. Their document was discussed and debated at the Lambeth Conference of Bishops two years later, where the following slightly revised articles adopted:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation”, and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the baptismal symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
(c) The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him.
(d) The historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his church.

Moving the clock forward one hundred twenty years, imagine if that same Episcopal Church in the United States, the very body from which the Quadrilateral arose, were applying for unity with the Anglican Communion. How would it fare?

In relation to the first article, the Episcopal Church no longer regards the Holy Scriptures as “the rule and ultimate standard of faith”, much less “the revealed Word of God” (the words proposed originally by the US House of Bishops in 1886). The now disgraced Bishop John Bennison has often been quoted as saying, “We (the church) wrote the Bible and we can rewrite it.” At the time he was saying nothing new, but simply voicing a proposition widely assumed in the Episcopal Church. At many points the Bible is being “reinterpreted” in ways that are contrary to its own meaning. In other cases it is being rejected altogether in favor of the findings of contemporary sociologists and psychologists.

As for the creeds, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are no longer accepted as “sufficient” (i.e., the minimum) statements of the Christian faith. John Spong, retired bishop of New Jersey has refuted virtually every article of the creeds, without ever being censured or even challenged by any of the official bodies of the Episcopal Church. Our own bishop contends that to be a Christian it is necessary only to believe in the Trinity and the incarnation. What about Jesus’ death on the cross for our salvation? What about his resurrection from the dead? How can any system of belief that does not include them (much less the other teachings embraced by the creeds) be called “sufficient”?

With respect to the two sacraments, there is increasing momentum in the Episcopal Church (again virtually unchallenged) to offer the bread and wine of the Eucharist to all, regardless of whether they have been baptized or shown any other evidence of Christian faith. This popular trend, which is becoming widespread in the name of “radical inclusivity”, robs both sacraments of their meaning.

Finally, the American church’s lack of commitment to the historic episcopate became evident in 2003, when a partnered gay man was consecrated as a bishop. It cannot be argued that this was merely a local adaptation. This act was entirely without warrant biblically, historically or ecumenically, as the firestorm that has come upon the Episcopal Church from both inside and outside the Anglican Communion gives ample evidence. Yet the Episcopal Church defends its action aggressively as a “prophetic” matter, with the arrogant expectation that the rest of the church will follow along in due time.

Thus the Episcopal Church has repeatedly demonstrated by its own actions that it is not a part of any recognizable historic Anglicanism. This has been reinforced by its staunch refusal to live by the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, to follow in any serious way the gracious recommendations of the Windsor Report, or to heed the repeated calls of the Primates of the Communion to draw back from its rebellious path.

Episcopal blood-letting

2008-09-17T14:30:00.005-05:00

Here is how Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times, describes what will be happening at this week’s meeting of the Episcopal Church House of Bishops:

When Robert Duncan was elected Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh in 1997, he was the dark horse local candidate who defeated the out-of-town contenders for a job in what used to be a quiet diocese. At the time, he was thought of as more an administrator kind of guy; far less flashy than his revered predecessor, the silver-haired Alden Hathaway.

Then in 2003, the Episcopalians OK’d the consecration of the world’s first openly gay bishop: Gene Robinson of New Hampshire and Bishop Duncan became a leader in the Network, a group of conservatives fighting to stay in the Episcopal Church but disheartened by its increasingly liberal tendencies. As those tendencies got more and more onerous, various dioceses, including Pittsburgh, announced they were considering leaving the Episcopal Church, which in Pittsburgh’s case would mean a flight of millions of dollars - $43 million is one figure being bandied about—in church assets.

Pittsburgh Episcopalians will vote Oct. 4 whether or not to leave the denomination. They are not alone. The Diocese of San Joaquin, Calif., has already left although the Episcopal Church has instituted another bishop to try to rebuild. Being that senior Episcopal bishops in California have endorsed the California’s Supreme Court's May ruling giving civil marriage status to gay unions, the San Joaquinians probably saw what was coming and decided to flee.

The Diocese of Fort Worth votes in November on whether to leave the Episcopal Church. Most are heading toward the Anglican province of the Southern Cone, a South American province headed by Greg Venables, a bishop who has taken numerous conservatives around the world under his ecclesiastical wing.

Where it gets interesting is that Presiding Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori has been gunning for Bishop Duncan’s ouster for almost a year. She tried to get three senior bishops—including Virginia's Peter J. Lee, to sign onto this but not all three would do so. [She has written] explaining her legal reasons for getting around this requirement to place a vote to oust Bishop Duncan on the agenda of this Thursday’s Episcopal House of Bishops meeting.

[Bishop Duncan] is refusing to attend the HOB meeting in Salt Lake City and say a vote to oust him is violating the church’s constitution and canons. One major reason is that a vote to kick out a bishop must be assented to by the majority of the church’s bishops—and it’s commonly known that a majority don’t attend the HOB meetings. Bishop Jefferts Schori says the vote shall happen nonetheless and “the discipline of the church shall not be stymied”.

If the HOB decides Bishop Duncan has “abandoned the Communion” of the Episcopal Church (that is the wording of the charge), he would be the latest of several bishops so removed. Usually most of these bishops have already removed themselves by the time there’s a vote to expel them. This time is different as Robert Duncan is still a sitting bishop.

It is my earnest hope that some of the bishops present will have the courage and integrity to vehemently oppose this action. The original article, which has links to some of the documents referenced, is here.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 7 September

2008-09-14T21:01:00.002-05:00

Here is my proposed solution to last Sunday’s London Times cryptic. I hope I may be able to put today’s puzzle on line later in the week.

Truthful Language and Orderly Separation

2008-09-10T12:11:00.003-05:00

The Anglican Communion Institute published this stunning paper by Ephraim Radner yesterday:

The Anglican Communion is currently pursuing a number of activities in response to the acrimonious struggle over sexual teaching and discipline within our churches. These activities have been encouraged by the Communion’s leadership, including at the recent Lambeth Conference. I have, to various degrees, been a supporter of these activities, not least because I have trusted those who have promoted these means towards ecclesial healing. I am increasingly skeptical, however, that the way these activities have been framed – descriptively and practically – represents the true nature of our disputes.

Categories like “moratoria” and “reception” and “listening”, for instance, are now prominent elements in our strategic ecclesial discussions. Unfortunately, they no longer appear to be useful categories, in large part because they do not accurately reflect the actual relationship of expectation and possibility that the disputing parties hold, one to another and with respect to their own commitments. When one party says, while responding to the request for a “moratorium” on specific actions, “yes we will consider it; but there is no going back on our underlying commitments”; and another party says at the same time, “yes we will consider it; but only on the condition that you others give up your practical commitments”, then the very category of “moratorium” functions in very different ways in each case. Similarly, when “reception” is a “process” that seeks to discern the Christian authenticity of an innovative practice, but also does so by the very means of rooting that practice within the life of the church in different areas, the notion that discernment has a possibly restraining role to play seems practically undercut. Or when “listening” presumes an ecclesial practice even as it refuses to evaluate that practice, one is not so much listening as receiving justification ex post facto.

Indeed, the practical logic of the situation we are now in as a Communion has exposed the inadequacy of these categories, and has raised questions about the very nature of “council”, consensus, and decision-making. With this, our churches have been challenged to reconsider from the ground up whether or not we are capable of maintaining the integrity of our common life at all…

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt, recently aroused comment when he suggested that, post-Lambeth Conference, the means for an “orderly separation” betweem Anglican churches who stand opposed to the practice of gay inclusion who do not, be devised and pursued: “I continue to see a negotiated ‘orderly separation’ as the best and most fruitful way forward for the Anglican Communion. The experience of this Lambeth Conference […] has again convinced me that the Anglican Communion cannot hold in tension convictions and practices that are incompatible, and so not patent of ‘reconciliation’, without continuing seriously to damage the life and witness of Anglican Churches”. It was this reference to “orderly separation” that struck many as significant, coming as it did, not from the bigoted reactionary that some have wrongly made him out to be, but from a bishop who has steadfastly stood for and offered witness on behalf of the imperative and blessings of ecclesial Communion among Anglicans. His admission that such an “orderly separation” may be necessary at this time is significant because, in fact, he has worked hard for unity and believes in it. It is this kind of admission that should spur us to hard thinking.

Indeed, I do not want such a separation. I pray against its demand. It is not something that I think our Lord confronts, in his own heart, with anything but sorrow. But I agree that the sheer practical dynamics of the situation we are now in may well uphold Bp. Scott-Joynt’s views. It is not so much that the Lord will weep, but that even now He is weeping…

But what shall we say of “orderly separation”? Such a separation of parties – leaving aside its shape — may be necessary, if the integrity of language, practice, formation and witness is to be maintained, even with clarity of concepts and categories restored. That separation is not to be prayed for as an end in itself; but the means needs to be soberly formulated and allowed to be used so that the firm embrace of asymmetrical logics can find its resolution in coherent lives that no longer threaten common dissolution. In fact, it could be argued that any church needs to have as part of its ecclesial polity some means within it either to resolve such asymmetrical logics or to disentangle them from its common life.

It may be that separation is not to be desired; it may be that it is not inevitable, in the sense that nothing determines its integral imposition upon the Communion, except finally individual and collective desire. But it now looks as if separation is simply necessary, not historically so much as logically and morally. A more adequate vocabulary that takes the place of “moratoria,” “reception”, “listening”, and so on makes this logical necessity plain by showing the conditions of coherence. And the survival of catholic Christianity makes plain the moral necessity of such orderly separation by demonstrating the demands of one logic over the other. It is separation that preserves Anglicanism as a Catholic form of Christianity.

Some have suggested that the Covenant and the process leading to its adoption would, of itself, if not deliberately at least as a matter of course, provide the “orderliness” by which a separation, if needed, could indeed unfold. If it is to be the Covenant and its process, this indicates that we must not fear the kind of clarity and accessible steps of implementation that would allow for such differentiation if that is indeed the end towards which the present logics turn out to be moving. This is a key realization: for if such fears drive the Covenant process, the destructive dynamics of the present situation will surely prevail. A Covenant that makes clear that diversity has its limits and attaches consequences for violation of those limits preserves Communion while holding open the possibility of reconciliation.

And if the Covenant is not to allow this, for deliberate reasons as to its purpose and shape, then some other means must be devised if the end is finally proved to be desirable. I believe that this challenge must now be accepted, even among those who have spoken clearly against any Covenant that has the capacity to disentangle our current cross-purposes: if not this, then what? If one leaves things as they are, in some belief that “this is how it must be” one has succumbed to a dumb fatalism. If one insists only on ad hoc adjustments or deals struck between dispersed individual congregations and bishops, this will end in the dissolution of communion as Catholic integrality. The alternatives of doing nothing or of positively encouraging the current of spontaneous disintegration and dissolution continue to move in the same direction: profound Christian incoherence. And in Scriptural language this is described in terms of “double-mindedness”, as James puts it, or finally, of the duplicity that comes from the failure to say “yes, yes” and “no, no”. It is a failure, as Jesus says, that “comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

I call the paper “stunning” because, as a member of the Covenant Design Committee, Dr Radner has been consistently in favor of maintaining the unity and integrity of the Anglican Communion. It seems that he is one of a growing number of moderate conservatives who are beginning to recognize that, in the current state of affairs, this may no longer be possible. You can find his whole paper here.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 7 September

2008-09-07T15:20:00.002-05:00

Here is this week’s Sunday cryptic crossword from the London Times. Click on it to come up with the full-sized version.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 31 August

2008-09-07T15:18:00.002-05:00

Here is my solution to last week’s Sunday London Times cryptic crossword puzzle:

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 31 August

2008-08-31T14:42:00.003-05:00

Here is this week’s cryptic crossword puzzle from the Sunday London Times. Click on the image to get the full-sized version.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 24 August

2008-08-31T07:44:00.000-05:00

Here is my solution for last Sunday’s puzzle from the London Times:

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 24 August

2008-08-25T19:58:00.001-05:00

Here is yesterday’s cryptic crossword puzzle from the London Times. Click on it for the full-sized version.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 17 August

2008-08-24T21:44:00.001-05:00

Here is my proposed solution for last week’s puzzle from the London Times. I expect to have this week’s puzzle up tomorrow.

The New Evangelical Politics

2008-08-19T21:58:00.003-05:00

Here’s an interesting op-ed piece from the Washington Post analyzing the recent presidential forum at Saddleback Church.

Anyone who still doubts that the evangelical Christian world is going through a political revolution was not watching Pastor Rick Warren’s presidential forum this weekend. The era of reducing Christianity to a narrow set of ideological commitments is over.

Just a few years ago, who would have imagined that Barack Obama and John McCain would hold a discussion of this sort in a church? Who would have thought that the session would be moderated by an evangelical pastor who was emphatic in counting both the Democrat and the Republican as his “friends”? Who would have predicted that in such a setting, the issues of abortion and gay marriage would not dominate the pastor's queries? Oh, yes, and who would have anticipated that the passions of the pastor in question would be engaged not in the divisions created by the culture wars but in the imperative of civility in politics and the plight of the world’s 148 million orphans? Here’s betting that the next president will help some of those orphans find homes.

The notion that Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular are by nature right-wing creeds has always been wrong. How can a faith built around a commitment to the poor and the vulnerable be seen as leading ineluctably to conservative political conclusions? And when political commentators talk about “evangelicals”, they are almost always talking about white evangelicals, forgetting that millions of African Americans are devout evangelical Christians and are hardly part of the conservative base. The civil rights movement was one of the greatest faith-based mobilizations in American history, even as it also drew on the energies of thousands of secular liberals who walked hand in hand with believers.

Warren is an important figure not just because he’s sold tens of millions of books but also because he has been leading evangelicals out of a political dead end that chose to ignore large parts of the Christian message. In 2004, Warren took the view that Christians should vote on a short list of “nonnegotiable” issues, including abortion. But in 2006, on Fox News, of all places, Warren declared: “Jesus’s agenda is far bigger than just one or two issues… We have to care about poverty, we have to care about disease, we have to care about illiteracy, we have to care about corruption in government, sex trafficking.” That is the new politics of evangelical Christianity.

None of this means that white evangelicals will convert en masse to the Democratic Party. McCain, who carefully touched every hot button on the control panel of religious conservatism, will certainly get a substantial majority of their votes. The question is whether Obama can cut the Republican margin among white evangelicals by, say, five or 10 points. “If Obama ever establishes any kind of trust [with evangelicals], there will be a noticeable shift,” the Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church outside of Orlando and a leading evangelical moderate, said in an interview. “It will not be huge, but it will be significant.”

The fact that the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency took place at all is a sign that both parties intend to fight for the votes of religious Christians… Will this make a difference? During his hour with Warren, McCain was crisp and relentlessly on-message, no doubt winning over many for whom opposition to abortion trumps all other causes. Obama was more a wrestler than a boxer as he struggled with the big questions. For a Democratic nominee four years ago, a meeting at Warren's church would have been an away game—if it had taken place at all. This time around, Pastor Rick made sure that in a Christian house of worship, there would be no home-court advantage.

The whole article is here.

An Anglican Calendar

2008-08-19T14:25:00.009-05:00

From Lent & Beyond, here is a calendar of some upcoming events of interest to Episcopalians:

August 20-24 - GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) primates meet in Europe

September 3-4 - CAPA (Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa) standing committee and primates meet

September 5 - Rio Grande bishop search committee and transition committee meet

September 17-19 - Episcopal Church House of Bishops meets, Salt Lake City

September 27 - Southern Virginia bishop election

October 3-5 - Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota diocesan conventions

October 4 - Pittsburgh diocesan convention

October 10-12 - Eastern Oregon diocesan convention

October 13-17 - last meeting of the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music before the Blue Book is released, Ashland, Nebraska

October 17-19 - Dallas, Eastern Michigan, Northern Michigan, Fond du Lac, Southwest Florida diocesan conventions

October 20-23 - Executive Council, Helena, MT

October 24-25 - Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Northern Indiana, West Virginia, Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin diocesan conventions

Oct 31-Nov 2 - Northwest Texas diocesan convention

November 7-9 - El Camino Real, Idaho, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Quincy diocesan conventions

November 13-15 - Long Island, Fort Worth, New York, Northern California diocesan conventions

The intention behind publishing this list is that we pray earnestly for the Holy Spirit’s gracious intervention and overruling at each of these events. Here is a prayer I like, from the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer (page 816, adapted from a prayer by Archbishop William Laud):

Gracious Father, we humbly pray for your holy catholic church.
Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace.
Where it is corrupt, purify it;
where it is in error, direct it;
where in anything it is amiss, reform it.
Where it is right, strengthen and confirm it;
where it is in want, provide for it;
where it is divided, heal it;
for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior.

You can find the full calendar here.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

2008-08-19T14:12:00.005-05:00

From A.S. Haley, otherwise known as the Anglican Curmudgeon:

The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton has put up on her blog what she says is a leaked copy of an email sent by the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan of the Diocese of Pittsburgh to an undisclosed recipient. Apparently now private emails are to be added to the type of “evidence” to be adduced in favor of the charges that Bishop Duncan has “abandoned the communion of this Church” that will be the subject of an invalid resolution to depose him at the House of Bishops meeting in Salt Lake City in September…

If the email is genuine, it certainly contains no surprises. Bishop Duncan is straightforward in discussing what is the matter with the Windsor Continuation Group's call for three moratoria: on further ordinations of non-celibate gay or lesbian bishops, on further blessings of same-sex unions, and on cross-border interventions by bishop…

That there is no moral equivalence between the first two moratoria and the third is indeed a fact that was recognized in the Windsor Report and again by the Primates meeting at Dromantine. So, there is nothing new there.

That the process of separation cannot be “frozen” is also a given. As the quotation above states, the Constitution of the Diocese of Pittsburgh requires a second vote on any proposed change once a change has first been proposed and approved at an earlier convention. So the vote on October 4 will go forward regardless of anything TEC, the WCG, or anybody else, for that matter, does (but see below). And in that vote, which will be secret, Bishop Duncan will have only one ballot to cast, along with everybody else… Thus there is nothing in this statement that should be offered in support of the resolution to depose, either.

The third and the fourth reasons given in the statement quoted above are also simple assertions of fact, and have nothing to do with any personal intentions or thoughts of Bishop Duncan on “abandoning communion”…

The House of Bishops will meet in Salt Lake City on September 19, and will proceed with this pre-programmed farce. The first sign of what is to come is that there will probably not be a sufficient number of retired bishops present to produce the required number of assents to deposition. The violations will thus commence when Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori, as the Chair of the meeting, overrules the objection by Bishop Duncan that the House cannot vote to depose him because he was never inhibited first, as Canon IV.9 in plain English requires. The next violation will be the taking of the vote itself, and the third violation will be in the Presiding Bishop’s overruling yet one more objection based on the Canon—that the requisite number of Bishops in the House are not present and voting. And the fourth violation will occur when the Presiding Bishop declares to the assembled bishops that the resolution passed—even though the lack of the required number to vote for deposition will mean that the resolution actually failed. The fifth and final violation will occur when Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori signs the certificate of deposition.

So, five new violations of the same Canon in just the space of a few days, for a new egregious record. And that will be only the beginning! For watch what the Presiding Bishop and her minions immediately will start to do in the Diocese of Pittsburgh once the deposition is announced: they will probably move against the Standing Committee and “depose” them, just as was attempted in San Joaquin. There may even be an attempt to get an injunction against the Convention's going forward with the vote on October 4, if they can find a compliant judge…

The Episcopal Church proves by its manifold illegal acts that it is not a lawful organization any more, and thereby provides the justification for leaving it—in order not to be corrupted by even more illegalities, still to come (in the cases of Ft. Worth and Quincy). And the Rev. Kaeton and others like her circulate purloined private correspondence in an effort to drum up enthusiasm for taking yet more illegal action, so that the invasion of privacy becomes the justification for what those who will vote to depose already think they know: that “abandonment” has indeed occurred, and Bishop Duncan is guilty as charged. Well, if he is guilty, then it must be for committing a thought-crime, since nothing has happened yet on the ground. But TEC and its liberals are doing their level best to see that what they are punishing before it happens will then actually occur. And that is what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can find the original post, which includes the text of the email in question, here.

2008 Olympic Athlete Donny Robinson

2008-08-19T13:58:00.003-05:00

From christianity.about.com:

Donny Robinson won the 2006 National Bicycle League Championship and the 2007 USA Cycling BMX National Championship. Now, for the first time in Olympic history, BMX bicycling is a competitive sport at the 2008 games, and Donny is determined to win a gold medal. Though small in stature, he is considered a David in the world of BMX Goliaths. Not only is he passionate about racing, Donny is passionate about his faith in Christ. As a Christian athlete, his infectious faith spills over into everything he does, revealing a relationship with God that forms the foundation of his zeal for life.

How does your faith influence you as an athletic competitor?
I know that God has a purpose for my life, and he has blessed me with this talent to be a BMX racer for a reason. Entertainers and athletes have more power over today's youth than any political leader or the like could have. So, I know I need to use my talents to spread his Gospel, and that drives me to be successful, so I can make an impact.

Do you ever face difficult challenges because of your stand for Christ?
There have been many times when I've been looked down upon, for my reasons why I don't act a certain way or participate in certain activities, or even why I thank Jesus for things. But, it's not as bad now as it was in the past. Most people I'm around know that I try to live the most Christ-like life I can, and they accept what I represent. I know that if I'm able to compete in the Olympics, there will be much harder times when I'll have pressure to stand my ground for what I believe in. The cost will be worth it though.

Who would you name as a personal hero of the faith?
I have always been the smallest rider in all of my classes, so everyone has said I'm the David in the BMX world of Goliaths, so definitely, David is a hero for the faith he had. Also, my dance teacher, Sara Kirkland, my team manager, Erick "Big E" Bartoldus, and a fellow BMX competitor, Randy Stumpfhauser. These people have led me to Christ and shown me how true Christ-followers live. I thank them for inspiring me to be a better person.

What is the most important life-lesson you have learned?
It's hard for me to speak of my faith because, truthfully, I know I fall way short of what Christ wants from me. I don't think I should be proclaiming anything, when I see some of the things I do sometimes. I know God's mercy renews me every day. He wants us to shine for him, and we want that too.

You can find the whole interview here.

Public Meeting in St Paul with Anglican Communion Network Leader

2008-08-18T16:15:00.004-05:00

The Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton will be in St Paul for a meeting of rectors of Episcopal Church parishes in the Anglican Communion Network. Daryl is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and the chief operating officer of the Network.

Alongside the rectors’ meeting, there will be an open forum with Canon Fenton (and possibly others), where we will have an opportunity to learn more about the Anglican Communion Network and its role in the realignment currently taking place in the Anglican Communion. With the Lambeth Conference and the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) having just taken place, we may be gaining a clearer picture of where the Communion may be headed over the next months.

The forum will take place at

Messiah Episcopal Church
1631 Ford Parkway, Saint Paul 55116

Tuesday, August 26, at 8 p.m.

I hope that you will be able to attend, and that you will take the opportunity to invite any others you think would be interested.

Forum probes deepest differences

2008-08-18T16:00:00.007-05:00

Here is how one of our local papers covered Rick Warren’s interviews with John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback Church:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama shared the stage for only 36 seconds Saturday but in separate interviews gave a preview of the fall debates, offering sharply contrasting responses on social issues and personal world views. On the stage at Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, they briefly hugged each other and smiled, belying a nastier campaign between them that has taken place long-distance and over the airwaves. The hug was preceded by an hourlong interview with Obama and followed by an hourlong interview with McCain in the vast, warehouselike church before an attentive, enthusiastic audience of 2,200 people.

Asked what their biggest moral failings were, Obama referred to his “difficult youth” when, he said, he experimented with drugs and drank alcohol. “I trace this to a certain selfishness on my part,” he said. “I couldn’t focus on other people.” McCain pointed to his first marriage, which he almost never does publicly. “My greatest moral failing, and I have been a very imperfect person, is the failure of my first marriage,” he said gravely.

The candidates were interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, one of the most popular evangelical pastors in the country and author of The Purpose Driven Life. The forum, which Warren arranged through calls to the candidates, whom he knows, reflected the importance of religion in American life and politics. It also marked the coming of age of a broader brand of evangelicalism that is more socially minded and diverse than the orthodox religious movement of the Christian right. Warren embodies the changing of the guard of that movement, away from traditionalist figures like Pat Robertson, and the scope of his questions reflected those broader interests…

Asked to name the most significant issue he had changed his mind on in the past 10 years, Obama cited the 1996 welfare reform bill signed by former President Bill Clinton. He said he initially opposed it because he believed it would have “disastrous results”, denying millions of women economic support, but he now believes the law largely has been successful. McCain pointed to offshore drilling. “We gotta drill now; we gotta drill here,” he said and took a poke at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes it. “I know there are some here in Cal-eee-fornia that disagree with that position,” he said, mimicking the governor’s accent.

McCain received the more rousing response from the audience, made up largely of church members in Orange County, one of the most conservative areas in the country. He told more anecdotes but also filibustered more. One of the few points when McCain left the audience silent was when he said he favored stem-cell research. Obama skirted a question about when life begins, saying that determining such a thing was above his pay grade and sending murmurs throughout the audience. McCain said simply, “At the moment of conception.”

Asked to define marriage, Obama and McCain gave the same answer: that it is the union between a man and a woman. But Obama also said he opposed a constitutional amendment defining marriage that narrowly and said he supported same-sex civil unions. “For gay partners to visit each other in the hospital, I don’t think limits my core beliefs about what marriage is,” he said. McCain said courts in California were wrong to approve same-sex marriages but also said somewhat vaguely that that “doesn't mean people can’t enter into legal agreements.”

Warren asked Obama why he wanted to be president. He stumbled a bit at first, then said that his mother had always drummed into him the basic idea of fairness and empathy. “That’s the thing that’s made America special,” Obama said. “I want to be president because that’s the America I believe in, and that American dream is slipping way. We are at a critical juncture economically. We are at a critical juncture internationally. Our politics is so broken, Washington is so broken that we can't bring together people of good will to solve these problems.” He concluded, “I think I have the ability to build bridges across racial lines, across regional lines, and I hope I have the opportunity to do so.”

On abortion, Obama declared: “I am pro-choice, I believe in Roe versus Wade, not because I’m pro-abortion, but because ultimately I don’t think women make these decisions casually.” He also said, “I am in favor on limits on late-term abortion if there is an exception for the woman's health.” McCain said he was “pro-life” and would be a “pro-life president”.

Asked to name three people on whom he depended for sage advice, Obama named his wife, Michelle, and his maternal grandmother. For a third, he named lawmakers as varied as Sen. Edward Kennedy, of Massachusetts, a liberal, and Sen. Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, a conservative who opposes abortion rights. McCain named Gen. David Petraeus, who led U.S. troops in Iraq; John Lewis, the veteran civil-rights leader; and Meg Whitman, former chief executive of eBay who is also a top adviser to his campaign.

The whole coverage is here.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 17 August

2008-08-17T22:11:00.001-05:00

Here is the latest cryptic crossword puzzle from the Sunday London Times. Click on it to bring up the full-sized version.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 10 August

2008-08-16T21:07:00.001-05:00

Here is my proposed solution for last week’s Sunday Times cryptic crossword.

Rowing for gold

2008-08-13T09:08:00.004-05:00

Another Olympic testimony from Athletes in Action, this time by Canadian rower Jane Rumball:

If you ask rower Jane Rumball what the three most important things in her life are, she doesn’t have to think long to answer: “God, my husband and my family,” Jane says. “Rowing and school take up much of my time, but if I didn’t have those three things my life would mean little.” Perhaps those are different priorities than you would expect from the woman with a World Championship gold medal and medal potential for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Jane sees her family as a necessary support structure. “My family knew me before I was an athlete and they just want me to live a happy and fulfilling life,” she says. “My husband wants to see me pursue the things that God has gifted me with.”

God hasn’t always been a factor in Jane’s life, but in her first years at college her parents’ divorce, a failed relationship, and shattered rowing dreams all collided and she was left with a sense of desperation and emptiness. As she struggled with her own challenges she observed the life of a fellow rower who had been cut from the team yet seemed unfazed. “It bugged me that she could have that peace and hope when it seemed beyond my grasp,” Jane says.

While Jane puzzled over what she saw in her former teammate, another friend helped bring it into perspective. “Someone from Athletes in Action explained to me that Jesus Christ had died for my sins, and that I could have real hope,” she says. “I chose to believe it and my life was dramatically altered. Later I found out that my teammate [who was cut from the team] was a Christian, and it all made sense.”

In the years following, Jane’s life has taken on a new sense of purpose. “Without that hope, without that knowledge that God loves me and has a plan for my life, I would have dropped out of meaningful living a long time ago,” she says. As Jane Rumball races towards the 2008 Olympics, she does so without fear, knowing that the results of her competing are only a small portion of what is really important in her life.

Surprised by the Spirit

2008-08-12T14:31:00.003-05:00

Bishop Michael Smith of North Dakota writes to his diocese to share reasons for his hope regarding the future of the Anglican Communion in the wake of Lambeth Conference 2008.

In my opinion, the most important document to emerge from this Lambeth Conference was not the bishops’ “Lambeth Indaba: Capturing Conversations and Reflections from the Lambeth Conference 2008,” but rather the “Concluding Presidential Address to the Lambeth Conference 2008” by the Archbishop of Canterbury. No one questions the theological or intellectual acumen of Archbishop Rowan D. Williams—or for that matter the depth of his spirituality. (He was at his very best at this Conference, particularly as he led us in a 3-day retreat in Canterbury Cathedral.)

However, many on both sides have been frustrated by his seeming reluctance to take strong positions or actions as the current crises have arisen. Rowan Williams seems to be the quintessential Anglican as his writings often follow the well known formula “on the one hand X, on the other hand Y.” Rowan Williams on the final day of the Conference, in contrast, was a surprisingly different kind of leader than the one to which we’ve become accustomed. It’s my sense that he was freed and empowered to give some specific direction based on the confidence he received from the general agreement indicated on certain matters from the Indaba reflections:

“We have quite a strong degree of support for a Pastoral Forum to support minorities, a strong consensus on the need to examine how the Instruments of Communion will best work, and a recognition…that a Covenant is needed… Before the ACC meeting next year…I intend to convene a Primates’ Meeting as early as possible in 2009. I shall look within the next two months for a clear and detailed specification for the task and composition of a Pastoral Forum, and I shall ensure that the perspectives of various groups looking at the Covenant and the Windsor process, as well as the Design Group for this Conference help to shape the implementation of the agenda outlined in the Reflections document, and are fed into the special meeting in November of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC. We may not have put an end to all our problems – but the pieces are on the board. And in the months ahead it will be important to invite those absent from Lambeth to be involved in these next stages. Much in the GAFCON documents is consonant with much of what we have sought to say and do, and we need to look for the best ways of building bridges here.”

This, in my opinion, is a leader moving forward in the confidence that the vast majority of his fellow bishops are clearly behind him. Other surprises:

• … There can be no doubt that the Windsor Process and the Anglican Covenant are still very much in play. (Actually, this should have come as no surprise as acceptance of invitations to the Lambeth Conference “carried with it a willingness to work with the Windsor Report and the Covenant as tools by which the future of the Communion could be shaped.” )

• The Windsor Continuation Group recommended, in the period leading up to the establishment of a Covenant, the honoring of the three moratoria requested by the Windsor Report: ordinations of persons living in a same gender union to the episcopate; the blessing of same-sex unions; and cross-border incursions by bishops. “There is widespread support for moratoria across the communion…,” the bishops discerned, adding, “If the Windsor process is to be honoured, all three moratoria must be applied consistently.”

• The Windsor Continuation Group also recommended, in the period leading up to the establishment of a Covenant, “the swift formation of a ‘Pastoral Forum’ at Communion level to engage theologically and practically with situations of controversy as they arise or divisive actions that may be taken around the Communion.” After consideration, the Indaba groups indicated “clear majority support for a Pastoral Forum…and a desire to see it in place speedily.”…

• On the day we discussed human sexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury explained that the reason we were not revisiting the 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1.10 was that it remained the commonly held teaching of the vast majority of the Anglican Communion.

Some will argue that there is nothing new here, that these are the same Windsor recommendations that have been ignored and failed to mend the “tear in the fabric” of the Anglican Communion. I disagree. What has changed is that the vast majority of the world’s Anglican bishops have indicated their willingness, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, to stand behind them. The way of healing and reconciliation is clear now. The blame and burden for making permanent the divisions we are now experiencing is squarely on the shoulders of those who choose to ignore the requested moratoria. The Archbishop admits “there will be those for whom ‘covenanted restraint’ is conscientiously hard, even impossible.” One hears echoes here of his distinction between “constituent” and “associate” membership in the Anglican Communion in the 2006 essay “The Challenge and Hope of Being Anglican Today.”

Admittedly, there are unanswered questions here. Will the Covenant have “teeth”? What will be the basic level of adoption of the Covenant, the province or the diocese? Will there be time for General Convention 2009 to act on it or will it need to wait for General Convention 2012? What of covenant congregations in non-covenant dioceses or covenant dioceses in non-covenant provinces or vice versa? Will those bishops crossing diocesan boundaries be willing to delegate oversight to a Pastoral Forum? Will General Convention be able to show restraint by not rescinding Resolution B033 or authorizing rites of blessing for same-sex unions? Obviously no one knows with certainty, but as these questions are answered it’s my sense that a renewed Anglicanism in communion with the See of Canterbury will emerge for mission in the twenty-first century. I do know that where there is a gracious will, there can be found a way forward that respects the consciences of all. I trust the Holy Spirit to surprise us once again with answers to these questions…

It just might be the case that God has surprised us once again by using our current divisions to strengthen us and form us into a body of Christians and a Church we might not have been otherwise. Maybe, contrary to our self-understanding, we actually have only been a federation of independent churches after all, but that God is molding and forming us into a real communion of interdependent churches to his honor and glory. Gratefully, I think we are beginning to understand that this enterprise is not about us. It has always only been about the broken, hurting world which the Father loves and desires to save, heal and restore through the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I give thanks to God for calling us to share in his mission as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church we know as the Anglican Communion. May the One who has begun this good work among us bring it to completion!

These are excerpts from a longer document which I received by email. I will post a link when it becomes available online.

The Lambeth Conference 2008—and the future of the Anglican Communion

2008-08-12T10:12:00.006-05:00

Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester, reflects on his experience at the Lambeth Conference:

So much about “Lambeth 2008” was wonderfully encouraging, moving and often humbling… By the second full week of the Conference I and many other bishops had come to the view that the programme as a whole was designed to ensure that the Conference should not seek to offer any clear guidance or teaching on any issue, because of the potentially divisive effects of our starting upon the plenary debates, and the voting, which alone would enable the Conference to articulate a particular view comparable to that of “Lambeth 1998”. To me and to many others this had the effect of legitimising, in the life of the Conference and by implication in the Communion, the whole range of convictions about same-sex relationships and about the use of Scripture. There was little if any sense that the Conference was bound by Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference; and over and over again participants were encouraged to think especially of their “context”—with the tacit but clear impression that “context” could indeed, as some insist, powerfully influence Christian teaching; and that a world-wide family of Churches could continue with radically different teaching on the content of the Holy Life in different parts of the world, even when all are in communication in seconds through the Web.

For many of us, and perhaps especially for many Bishops from the developing world, these impressions were exacerbated by the extent to which the physical environment of the Conference was strongly coloured by the well-organised and well-funded activities of groups and individuals lobbying against the Communion’s teaching expressed in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and for that publicly advocated by The Episcopal Church and those who think like it. Around a third of the stalls in the “Market-place” were taken by those lobbying for change in the Communion’s teaching; Bishop Gene Robinson was quite often around the campus and extensively “hyped” by the British media; and news-stands at strategic points around the site offered copies of a near-daily news-sheet, The Lambeth Witness, sponsored by InclusiveChurch and providing its “take” on events and people, while looking as if it might be an official organ of the Conference!

On the other hand, early in the Conference 19 Primates from the developing world sponsored a meeting which gave an opportunity for Bishops broadly in sympathy with the “Global South” in its emphasis on orthodox teaching on the use of scripture, on the person of Christ and on same-sex relationships, to hear from some of their leaders in the Conference and to offer each other mutual encouragement. Well over 150 bishops attended, from Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and England as well as from the developing world. Many of the latter had persisted in coming to Canterbury in the face of persuasion to join Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya in staying away (but five Kenyan Bishops and the wives of four of them braved the criticism of their colleagues to come to the Conference). That afternoon and throughout the Conference we greatly missed what would have been the strong participation of those who stayed away.

At the beginning of the second week I e-mailed letters to our own Partners, the Archbishops of Rwanda and Uganda, expressing my sadness at their and their Bishops’ absence, strong though my sympathy was for the convictions which had led them to judge that they should stay away. I received a warm note, before the end of the Conference, from Archbishop Henry Orombi, affirming the contribution over the years of Winchester to the Church of Uganda, and his own and his bishops’ continuing commitment to our range of Partnerships. Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini had made the same clear commitment to me—and I to him—when we talked for 2 hours, at his invitation, in Sussex in mid-May.

Though the Conference was not, as I expressed my fears to the Diocesan Synod, “engulfed in, taken over by, the profound disagreements that exist among us around the legitimacy for Christians of same-sex sexual behaviour”, I found that these were never far below the surface, indeed that they were explicit, in every Bible Study and every meeting of the “indaba” of which I was a member – even while these settings enabled Bishops to express their disagreements courteously and respectfully to each other. There was no escaping, in my experience of the Conference, the demanding reality that not only in parts of the world distant from each other, but often within the same Province, Bishops hold radically—I should say, incompatibly—different convictions on the use of Scripture, on same-sex sexual relationships and on whether people in such relationships may be ordained.

Bishops who argue for the “revisionist” position see themselves and their churches as prophetic, and obedient to fresh disclosures of the Holy Spirit; and they see as both unreasonable and impossible, and profoundly detrimental to the credibility of their Christian witness in their context, the demands of the Primates in recent years that they should draw back from what is now a generation or more of thinking and behaving in these ways in their Dioceses – and the “tickets” on which they themselves were elected to their Sees.

To many other Bishops, especially but by no means only in the developing world, and by no means only to Evangelicals, this teaching and practice does not only disobey the clear teaching of Scripture and the unvaried practice of the Church until this generation; it threatens the reputation and credibility of their Churches, and exposes their Christians to mockery if not actually to violence. In the UK, too, today the “orthodox” often face mockery, and charges of “bigotry”, for their convictions (as I know well)! …

Right up until the final afternoon of the Conference and Archbishop Rowan’s third Presidential Address, everything seemed to be “managed” to ensure that these opposing and (in my judgement and experience) mutually incompatible views should be held in tension; and that this “both-and”, not Resolution 1.10 of Lambeth 1998, should effectively be the teaching of the Conference and the means of holding the Anglican Communion together.

I described this apparently likely outcome as “living down” to the concerns about “Lambeth 2008” that motivated the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in July, and that led more than 200 bishops to refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to the Conference. I expressed my concern that if this were to be the outcome of the Conference, more Provinces might well be drawn away from the See of Canterbury to the new structures that GAFCON had committed itself to bringing into being; and I suggested that the wisest future for the Communion could be some kind of negotiated “orderly separation” that would free both “sides” from more years of necessarily inconclusive debate and from the damage that each perceived itself receiving from the other.

But on the final afternoon Archbishop Rowan decisively tipped the balance for the first time in the Conference. Affirming the uniqueness of Christ as the Way, the Truth and the life, he re-affirmed Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference as the teaching of the Anglican Communion on sexual behaviour, and the Primates’ 2007 call for moratoria on blessings of same-sex relationships, on the consecration of any more priests in same-sex sexual relationships like Gene Robison, and on incursions by bishops into the dioceses of others; and he again backed work on the Anglican Communion Covenant as the most fruitful way for the Communion to manage its life together. “The onus of proof”, he said, “is on those who seek a new understanding.” And later: “The vision of a global Church of interdependent communities is not the vision of an ecclesiastical world empire - or even a colonial relic… The global horizon of the Church matters because churches without this are always in danger of slowly surrendering to the culture around them and losing sight of their calling to challenge that culture.” …

So what are my own provisional conclusions, as I complete this Report to the Diocese of Winchester nearly a week after the close of the Lambeth Conference of 2008?

Notwithstanding Archbishop Rowan’s magnificent final Address, I continue to see a negotiated “orderly separation” as the best and most fruitful way forward for the Anglican Communion. The experience of this Lambeth Conference, underlined by that final Address, has again convinced me that the Anglican Communion cannot hold in tension convictions and practices that are incompatible, and so not patent of “reconciliation”, without continuing seriously to damage the life and witness of Anglican Churches as much in “the Global South” as in North America and in other provinces that have followed the lead of TEC. The experience of this Conference cannot have encouraged any participant to imagine that the latter are about to turn their backs on a generation or more of development in directions foreign to the life and convictions of the vast majority of Anglicans, let alone of other Christians, across the world. I cannot see that the members of an “international family of Churches” can thrive and grow and offer a clear witness to Jesus Christ as Lord while offering contradictory teaching, on a matter as central as the character of the Holy Life, in different parts of a world knit together by instantaneous e-communications.

I am not imagining that such an “orderly separation” could prove either straightforward or painless. Archbishop Rowan said two years ago that if partings came, they would be as unmanageable, and as unpredictable in their effects, as the splintering of panes of glass; and I realise that there could be especially difficult implications for the Church of England, as there continue to be for the Churches of North America. But I recognise as quite fair the summary of my and others’ views offered by the Guardian newspaper’s Editorial on August 4th: they “feel that the avoidance of confrontation this past fortnight has merely set up a worse confrontation in the future”.

If this may be the future under God of the Anglican Communion—a large “orthodox” majority continuing to look to its historic roots (I pray and hope) in the See of Canterbury yet maintaining some defined relationship with a “separated” and more “liberal” Communion of Churches centred on TEC—much now depends on the GAFCON Primates and the rest of the “Global South” quickly mending the relationships between them that have been put at risk, and on all of them together reacting positively to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s stated intention to call a meeting of the Primates of the Communion early in 2009.

By then they, and the rest of us, may have a clear sense of how TEC and others are going to respond to Archbishop Rowan’s calls in his final Address on August 3rd; and the Archbishop may himself be in a position to judge whether there is a will for the Anglican Communion to go forward together in Our Lord’s service – or whether he faces the terrifyingly difficult decision between initiating negotiations that may make for “an orderly separation”, or watching a still more destructive separation take place around him.

His whole letter may be found here.

Where Once He Was Lost, Now He Is Found

2008-08-12T09:39:00.004-05:00

Here is the story of Olympic flag bearer Lopez Lomong, as told by Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post.

Four billion people around the world will see Lomong carrying our flag.Lopez Lomong, one of the Sudanese “Lost Boys” and a member of the anti-genocide group Team Darfur, has been chosen by his 595 U.S. Olympic teammates to carry our flag on Friday… Far more than that, untold millions of people, in the next few days, will hear Lomong’s life story, in his own words. In a half-hour monologue here on Friday, just 10 hours before he was to carry the flag, Lomong told a tale of grief, endurance, redemption and almost unimaginable hardship that captures in human terms every aspect of the Darfur tragedy…

During a Sunday morning Mass 17 years ago, the 6-year-old Lomong, along with about 100 other children, was taken at gunpoint from his parents, driven away blindfolded in a truck and dumped in a cramped, windowless, one-room prison full of boys. There, they were fed millet full of barely visible sand, which prevented proper digestion, and, within days, gradually led to the death of boy after boy.

“They would go to sleep and never stand up again. ‘Tomorrow will be my day,’” Lomong said. “But I had three angels.” They were slightly older boys who told him to eat just enough of the death gruel to stay alive, but not enough to kill himself. After three weeks, the older trio discovered a hole in a fence. At midnight, crawling while guards talked, stopping when they fell silent, then crawling until they were outside the compound, the four boys began to run. “That is where my race started,” Lomong said.

Despite one boy holding each of his hands as they fled, Lomong nonetheless battered his legs on so many trees and thorns “that’s why they still look like such a mess… We ran for three days and nights. They would hide me in a cave while two of them went to get water. They would fetch some back for me in a big leaf.”

When the four boys fell asleep at night, they made sure to keep their bodies pointed in the same direction that they had been running “so that we did not run back in the wrong direction toward the guards or run in circles,” Lomong said. Finally, they were arrested at the Kenyan border—penniless, unable to speak the local Swahili—and taken to a refugee camp. For the next 10 years.

There, thanks to the United Nations, a group of 10 boys were able to eat one meal a day. “You eat late at night so it will carry you until the next night,” Lomong said. “In the day, you play soccer or run to keep your mind off the hunger… Still, some Kenyans were not happy with us because we had more food than they did. I thought my family was dead, but in the camp I became happy again.” Twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, the 10 boys got one chicken. They mixed it with salt and water to make weak chicken soup and treasured every tiny morsel of actual chicken, their only meat of the year.

In 2001, word arrived that the United States wanted to take 3,500 of these refugee “Lost Boys” to the United States to place with foster families. “But you had to write your life story to see who would go,” Lomong said. “I just decided to say, ‘This is me.’ I put everything on a piece of paper.” After three weeks, “They said, ‘Congratulations.’”

The rest was an incomprehensible swirl. An airplane, a family (Robert and Barbara Rogers) in Upstate New York and the sight of unfathomable cars, roads and cities. “I had to learn everything, like how to shower. [Is it] hot or cold? No, put it in the middle.” Straight from the airport, the Rogers took Lomong to McDonald’s. Yeah, yeah, the Olympic sponsor. And what did he order? Chicken. When he had eaten all he could, there was chicken left. “Throw it away,” his new parents told him. “There’s more at home.” But he couldn’t. “I remembered when a little piece of chicken was ‘Merry Christmas to you’. So I took it home.” Given opportunities that American teenagers take for granted, he embraced his chance with his whole soul. School was a blessing but also breathtaking to a 16-year-old who had always learned his letters by writing in the dirt.

So, you ask, how on earth did Lomong get the idea of being an Olympian? Once in Kenya, he was given five shillings for watering cows. It was his only money but he never spent it, keeping it for the right moment. He heard others talking about the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and how, on the only TV set in the area, five miles away, they might watch it. So, Lomong and friends walked five miles to the black-and-white TV only to find out that, for each event you watched, you had to pay—five shillings. That day, Lopez Lomong saw sprinter Michael Johnson run and win, stand on the podium in a U.S. uniform and cry as his anthem was played. “I want to run as fast as that guy,” Lomong says he thought. “And I want to wear that same uniform. I was so determined. I knew I could run. Running is what we do all our lives. It is part of our transportation.’”

On July 6, 2007, Lomong became an U.S. citizen. On July 6, 2008, he made the U.S. Olympic team. “ is what we call, ‘Dream makes history,’” Lomong said. Once he gained citizenship, Lomong returned to his native land and was reunited with his parents who had, long ago, assumed he was dead, held a funeral and buried what remnants, like a child’s beads, that he had left behind. Last December, Lomong participated in a burial in reverse as his plot was unearthed and blessed. “They revive me back,” he said with a grin. “I am alive again.”

In his Sudanese village where war and genocide, disappearing families and starvation have seemed an unending fate, Lomong told everyone never to give up, that someone they believed dead “may be out there somewhere”. For his parents, he bought a TV and told them: “You can watch me in the ’08 Olympics. I didn’t know I would make the team.” Then his sheepish, gap-toothed expressing broke into a wide-eyed smile: “But I did.”

You can find the whole story, which also tells of China’s complicity in the Darfur tragedy, here.

Olympic decathlete Bryan Clay

2008-08-11T11:42:00.004-05:00

This is from an article on Bryan Clay in Muscle & Body magazine, where he appears on this month’s cover.

The hard thing about the Olympics is that once you get to that level, it’s anybody’s game. It comes down to who makes the least amount of mistakes, who’s going to be tough enough mentally to stay focused. And, believe me, there’s a lot of distractions. People don’t realize that the click of a camera can be a distraction that throws everything off.

My faith plays a huge role in who I am and what I’m all about. It really sets the foundation for me and my life—who I am, how I compete and why I compete. I feel like I have all those questions answered in my heart. I understand what’s really important in life, what’s a blessing and what can be taken away tomorrow.

My dream started when I was 8 years old. I was watching the 1988 Olympics and saw Carl Lewis win the 10-meter dash. I remember being awestruck by the fact that this guy is the fastest guy on the track. Then he grabbed the U.S. flag and draped it around himself and continued to jog around the track holding the flag, and everyone was cheering for him and screaming his name. I thought, Man, that is the coolest thing ever. I turned to my mom and dad and said, “That’s what I want to do when I grow up.” It was just a crazy little dream when I was only 8 years old, and it got set on the back burner for a few years. But I definitely came full circle, and now I’ve been able to accomplish that dream.

It was during the long jump, which is the second event of the decathlon, that I experienced my Olympic moment. Everything that happened after that Olympic moment, including the silver medal, was icing on the cake.

I already have been so blessed to be able to accomplish my dreams and aspirations. And I have more dreams and aspirations outside of track and field. That’s why I train as hard as I do. And that’s why I’m still trying to reach the gold medal, and hopefully take down a few records at the same time. I know that’s going to set me up in the future for even greater things.

There’s no way I would be where I am without the help of so many people in my life. I’ve got high school coaches and club team coaches; my parents and my grandparents; my wife; my coaches in college; youth pastors who would pick me up in the middle of the night when I was fighting with my parents to help me cool off and talk me through what was going on. All these people were there for me when I needed them. I want to make sure that I have the opportunity to do all that for someone else someday.

Elsewhere on Bryan’s website:

Bryan’s life as an adolescent wasn’t always one aimed on a successful path. He was a bit of a rebellious teen and was often finding himself in trouble. Bryan credits two things with getting his life back on track: His success in sports that led him to college, and his belief and acceptance of the Christian faith.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 10 August

2008-08-10T15:37:00.003-05:00

It’s back! Here is today’s London Times Sunday cryptic crossword. Just click on it to bring up the full-sized version.

Silver medalist in Athens runs for God and for gold

2008-08-08T14:15:00.003-05:00

Here’s an encouraging story about a Christian athlete competing in the Beijing games:

Allyson Felix has lived her life following people. First it was her older brother, Wes. “I’ve always looked up to Wes,” she says, “and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” Born and raised in central Los Angeles, she followed Wes into the sport of basketball, where her thin frame earned her the nickname “Chicken Legs.”

But something changed when she followed him into track and field. When the high-school coach first timed her on the track, he thought he’d measured the distance incorrectly. When Allyson’s time was consistently faster than the other girls, both she and the coach began to realize her unknown talent.

She soon began making her own footsteps, winning state championships in both the 100 and 200 meters. A few months after her high-school graduation, she ran the 200 in 22.11 seconds in the Banamex Grand Prix in Mexico City, the fastest in history for a high school girl, although the record couldn’t be ratified because there had been no drug testing at the event.

Allyson turned pro shortly after that, and at 18, she became the youngest member on the 2004 U.S. Olympic track and field team. She took the silver in the 200 meters at the 2004 Olympics, and the girl they used to call “chicken legs” has now leg-pressed 700 pounds. Suddenly, Allyson was no longer following her older brother, but she was following the fastest runners in the world.

“It is exciting to be compared to the great American sprinters,” she says. “I’ve looked up to them, studied their races, and followed their footsteps. It’s a big responsibility, but it’s a great thing to take it on.”

Allyson learned early on that unless she’s following Christ, her footsteps won’t matter. “I can’t imagine life without knowing Jesus,” she says. Her father is an ordained minister and a professor at The Master’s College Seminary, and the family attends church together every Sunday.

“My speed is a gift from God,” says Allyson. “My main purpose for running is that maybe someone can see something different in me, or maybe I can say something that will reach out to someone.”

Her agent, eight-time world-record holder Renaldo Nehemiah, agrees. “Allyson is humble, exemplifies tremendous character and sportsmanship,” he says. “And most importantly, her sport doesn’t define who she is as a person. Whether she wins or loses, she’s at peace with God’s will.”

Now, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, the 21-year-old is poised to be following once again. But this time she’s chasing down world records as she follows in the footsteps of greatness. After many runners have admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs, Allyson Felix stands out as a shining light for the sport’s future. “It’s time to let track go in a new direction,” she says. Allyson won gold at the world championships in 2005, and in 2007, became the second woman in history to win three gold medals at one world championship.

From Athletes in Action. Allyson’s own website may be found here.

Lambeth Conference: An Anglican Communion Institute Perspective

2008-08-07T12:20:00.003-05:00

We have followed closely the events at Lambeth. We have been pleased at the regular meetings of Communion Partner Bishops together with English Bishops and key Global South Primates. Much hard work and prayerful cooperation was in evidence and we thank God for that. In a telephone interview yesterday with the New York journal First Things, the topic was general accomplishments of the conference. Here are several things noted:

1. The presence of Global South Primates and their final statement, indicating support for the Windsor Continuation Group’s work. This is a crucial statement as it signals support for Communion processes. Their support of the Archbishop of Canterbury was also underscored. We are grateful for the leadership of Archbishop John Chew and Presiding Bishop Mouneer Anis, and their colleagues.

2. The call from the Archbishop of Canterbury for a Primates Meeting in 2009. This will determine where the wider communion is and how broadly support for the Instruments remains. We hope all Primates will be present and that the work of the Communion will continue in these challenging days. If there is to be a Faith and Order committee of some description, as suggested, the input of the Primates into this important initiative is critical.

3. The endorsement from the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Covenant Process, Lambeth 1.10, Communion Partners, and a Pastoral Forum. In several public statements he clarified considerably his own view on the teaching of the church in the area of human sexuality, and was clearer about the consequence of pressing forward with departures from that teaching. In our view, this indicates a realism about the probability of Bishops and Dioceses moving forward with same-sex blessings in a more concerted manner. Already we are seeing news reports to that effect.

4. We welcome the call for moratoria and the timing of these, as this places the matter firmly before the Communion as a totality. What individual Bishops and Dioceses now choose to do will be in the light of this wider Communion gathering. At issue, we surmise, will be the sense of a common mind within the House of Bishops of TEC itself, in view of the Lambeth Conference and anticipated efforts to move ahead against the direction set there.

5. The Indaba format, whatever its shortcomings, allowed Bishops from North America the daily experience of rubbing elbows and praying with a majority of Bishops from parts of the world with far more severe challenges, and to hear of the effect of decisions made in the US and Canada on them and their churches.

6. The call for the covenant to be something individual dioceses can signal support for. ACI raised this question in New York with Gregory Cameron in the Spring, following his enthusiastic account of its merits and why TEC should endorse the covenant. Obviously there are grave doubts about that, and whilst it is clear why the provinces are the point of contact, Canon Cameron allowed that if TEC should choose not to join the covenant, or put the decision off, the larger communion would indeed be concerned to allow individual dioceses inclusion. Communion Partner bishops reiterated that concern at Lambeth.

Many developments will of course determine the next phases of our Communion life, measured against what has been undertaken in Kent. If individual Bishops press ahead with same-sex blessings, or consecrations of the sort in New Hampshire are forthcoming, as many anticipate, this will serve as a proxy within the US and Canada. It is crucial to have Lambeth and especially the Archbishop’s own clear statements against which to view the next developments.

Finally, we are not clear what the concept of a “escrow” plan is and who it would be designed to support. It is also unclear what the Gafcon gathering and the call for a Council to consider a new province in the US actually entails. There was no discussion of this latter development at Lambeth. Perhaps this will be taken up at the next Primates Meeting, or in back channels leading up to that. Some associated with Gafcon describe it as a structure with its own integrity independent of the Instruments of Communion (hence, its own Council), whilst others speak of it as only a broad movement. It will be important to see these matters clarified.

This summary is undertaken in the context of other commitments and intends only to make some initial observations. ACI will make further comment in the days to come.

I look forward to the appearance of further observations from this group. The Anglican Communion Institute’s website is here.

The Feast of the Transfiguration

2008-08-06T09:43:00.004-05:00

Here are some thoughts on Jesus’ transfiguration by Fred Craddock:

We would very much like to penetrate the mystery of this experience, but we cannot. Matthew calls it a vision. One thing is clear: Jesus and his three disciples have an experience of God. Its meaning for Jesus and for them is different, but the only actor in the event is God. Jesus is not acting but is being acted upon. The God of Moses and Elijah affirms them in their unity with Jesus but asserts the finality of Jesus. The God who could rescue the Son from suffering confirms for Jesus the way of the cross. This God also tells the disciples, who will soon face conditions that seem to derail if not bring to an end their hope in Jesus, that those very painful conditions do not lie across the way but on the way to the completion of God’s purpose. This is a mountaintop experience but not the kind about which people write glowingly of sunrises, soft breezes, warm friends, music, and quiet time. On this mountain the subject is death, and the frightening presence of God reduces those present to silence. In due time, after the resurrection, they will remember, understand, and not feel heavy. In fact, they will tell it broadly as good news.

From Luke (Interpretation Commentary)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: ‘Live Not By Lies’

2008-08-05T14:06:00.006-05:00

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. Below are the opening paragraphs of an essay published in the Wahington Post, written on 12 February 1974, the day he was arrested by the secret police.

At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read samizdat, and sometimes when we gather in the smoking room at the Science Institute we complain frankly to one another: What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us? Gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and destruction at home. Propping up remote, uncivilized regimes. Fanning up civil war. And we recklessly fostered Mao Tse-tung at our expense—and it will be we who are sent to war against him, and will have to go. Is there any way out? And they put on trial anybody they want, and they put sane people in asylums—always they, and we are powerless.

Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and consume us both and our children—but as before we still smile in a cowardly way and mumble without tongues tied. But what can we do to stop it? We haven't the strength.

We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today’s modest ration of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and all the efforts of our predecessors and all the opportunities for our descendants—but just don’t disturb our fragile existence. We lack staunchness, pride and enthusiasm. We don’t even fear universal nuclear death, and we don't fear a third world war. We have already taken refuge in the crevices. We just fear acts of civil courage.

We fear only to lag behind the herd and to take a step alone—and suddenly find ourselves without white bread, without heating gas and without a Moscow registration.

We have been indoctrinated in political courses, and in just the same way was fostered the idea to live comfortably, and all will be well for the rest of our lives: You can't escape your environment and social conditions. Everyday life defines consciousness. What does it have to do with us? We can't do anything about it.

But we can—everything. But we lie to ourselves for assurance. And it is not they who are to blame for everything—we ourselves, only we. One can object: But actually you can think anything you like. Gags have been stuffed into our mouths. Nobody wants to listen to us, and nobody asks us. How can we force them to listen? It is impossible to change their minds.

It would be natural to vote them out of office—but there are not elections in our country. In the West people know about strikes and protest demonstrations—but we are too oppressed, and it is a horrible prospect for us: How can one suddenly renounce a job and take to the streets? Yet the other fatal paths probed during the past century by our bitter Russian history are, nevertheless, not for us, and truly we don't need them.

Now that the axes have done their work, when everything which was sown has sprouted anew, we can see that the young and presumptuous people who thought they would make out country just and happy through terror, bloody rebellion and civil war were themselves misled. No thanks, fathers of education! Now we know that infamous methods breed infamous results. Let our hands be clean!

The circle—is it closed? And is there really no way out? And is there only one thing left for us to do, to wait without taking action? Maybe something will happen by itself? It will never happen as long as we daily acknowledge, extol, and strengthen—and do not sever ourselves from—the most perceptible of its aspects: Lies.

When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: “I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.” But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence. And violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.

And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, we will be obstinate in this smallest of matters: Let them embrace everything, but not with any help from me…

You can read the rest of this powerful essay here.

Confessions of a “Mainline Fundamentalist”

2008-08-05T13:32:00.006-05:00

I am grateful to my wife for finding this marvelous testimony to God’s redemptive power, and thought I’d pass it along. It is an encouraging complement to the article from First Things that I posted last week.

I came out of seminary believing what I had been taught, trained in the school of academic thought that says that anyone who thinks the Bible is without inner contradictions, that it was actually written by the people who the books themselves claim wrote them is a brainless dope. In short, I was a well-trained historical-critical, Neoliberal pastor. I was launched out of the halls of academia into the parish with shelves full of books that would refute any notion that the Bible was consistent, had a central, coherent message and had historical accuracy. I had all the arguments, all the pride, ready to correct all of the simpletons that I would meet in my ministry. Little did I know what God had in store for me, to make me precisely the kind of person that I had trained to correct. God does have a sense of humor!

In the parish I had a rigorous preaching schedule and I taught a regular Sunday morning Bible study before the worship service. Week after week several church members and I engaged the Scriptures and discussed their meaning. In that class I found myself with two people in particular who had been taught under the teaching ministry of R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. They loved me and I loved them, so week after week we engaged each other in the attempt to convince the other that they misunderstood the interpretation and purpose of Scripture. I found myself losing the argument, week after week.

Being prideful, I started to investigate these outrageous claims that I was unable to refute. These people anticipated my every argument, every counter-move and every point that my seminary training had taught me! It was extremely frustrating… Concurrently, I found that in this time my preaching had also started to suffer. I had run out of ideas. My faith slipped further into irrelevancy… So, I started reading. Not my seminary texts. They could not, had not helped. I started reading strange fellows, people that had never been even mentioned in either of my two mainline seminaries. Funny how that happens…

I started to read these wild and strange fellows that had been verboten in the seminary, they who must not named: I started reading J.I. Packer. I read Graeme Goldsworthy and D.A. Carson. I remember it so clearly–They were so rational and so clear! They were so confident and yet humble in their assuredness that the Bible really was without error and had a sweeping unity of narrative. The scales fell from my eyes. Now, I began to understand why these writers had been hidden from us! They had just as much academic training and credentials as the people the seminary adored, but these theologians and biblical scholars had come to the opposite conclusion after studying the same data! They were utterly convincing.

I began to see where I had gone wrong. I had always been taught that Scripture was a patchwork of human ideas about God that were mutually contradictory yet somehow inspired by God to teach us about the love of Christ. The basic notion had been that Jesus came to teach us what was wrong with Scripture itself. Isn’t that funny? That’s what I came out of seminary with, the idea that we could take some things from the Bible that worked for us in the modern world and discard the rest, as long as Jesus said it was ok.

Suddenly, I found Jesus in the Old Testament. Imagine that! I found the whole sweep of God’s redemptive history in the full and complete witness of the whole 66 chapters in the one book of the Bible. I saw it now–as an opening, a middle and a finale. One Author, many witnesses, one story. I realized that this is what Jesus had been trying to teach his disciples all along… There were no gaps, no messy contradictions, no muddy compromises. Just clarity and peace. Perfect peace…

I had jumped the shark, so to speak. As a mainline, PC(USA) pastor I had found myself the guy that I used to laugh about. That mocking derision to the simple-minded folk who actually claimed what I now claimed about the Bible was directed at me. You see, in the mainline church culture, it only works one way: conservatives and evangelicals can turn liberal. But never, never the reverse! A liberal turning fundamentalist is a violation of the contract. Oh well…

So here I am. A PC(USA) pastor, not going anywhere, who is now the person that I never expected to become. A minority of a dwindling minority. And I wouldn’t trade it for any treasure in all the world.

The complete version of the Rev. Toby Brown’s testimony may be found here.

“What the Lambeth Conference accomplished”

2008-08-04T16:58:00.004-05:00

What follows is a digest from three sources—

From The Guardian:

The Archbishop of Canterbury blamed liberal North American churches yesterday for causing turmoil in the Anglican communion by blessing same-sex unions and consecrating gay clergy as he attempted to chart a way out of the crisis that has been engulfing the church…

“If North American churches do not accept the need for a moratoria [on same sex blessings and the consecration of gay clergy] we are no further forward. We continue to be in grave peril,” he said…

From The Living Church:

On the other hand, the idea of moratorium was apparently not taken seriously by many bishops from The Episcopal Church. Bishops Jon Bruno of Los Angeles and Marc Andrus of California already have said they would not attempt to stop the blessing of gay relationships in their dioceses, and in the Diocese of Massachusetts on Aug. 2, two priests participated in civil same-sex marriages for two couples inside Episcopal churches.

“The current policy, well, I wouldn’t say policy of the American church, but some of the practices of dioceses, or certain dioceses, in the American church continues to put our relations as a Communion under strain and some problems won’t be resolved while those practices continue,” Archbishop Williams said. “I might just add, perhaps a note here. One complication in discussing all this is that assumption, readily made, that the blessing of a same-sex union and/or the ordination of someone in an active same-sex relationship is simply a matter of human rights … That’s an assumption I can’t accept because I think the issues about what conditions the church lays down for the blessing of unions has to be shaped by its own thinking, its own praying.”

Archbishop Williams was asked what was meant by the Windsor Continuation Group’s recommendation for a moratorium on public rites for same-sex blessings. Different parts of the world define public rites of blessing in different ways, adding to the confusion, according to Archbishop Williams. A primates’ communiqué following a meeting in Brazil in 2003 noted that in some places private prayers were said, but that was not intended to include public liturgies. “There are those in the U.S.A. who would say ‘pastoral response.’ Well, it’s a blessing and I’m not very happy about that,” he said…

From The Guardian (again):

Making his third and final presidential address Williams said the “pieces are on the board” to resolve the wrangling over homosexuality. He put forward the idea of a "covenanted future" involving a “global church of interdependent communities”. But even as he was speaking disaffected primates from developing countries expressed regrets about the conference. A statement signed by more than a quarter of the world’s Anglican archbishops said theological voices outside the west had been missing from some key sessions. “We are concerned with the continuing patronising attitude of the west towards the rest of the churches,” they said.

Williams also faced disenchantment at home, with some English bishops questioning the nature of the conference. Michael Scott-Joynt, the bishop of Winchester and the fifth most senior churchman in England, said: “The Lambeth Conference is required to do something rather than live down to the worst expectations of the bishops who stayed away.”

The bishop of Exeter, Michael Langrish, also said there was an "inexorable logic" that there should be one core communion with the more liberal churches at the margins. Conflicting views over homosexuality have pushed liberals and conservatives apart, with 230 boycotting Lambeth and realigning themselves with a breakaway movement, the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon).

Throughout the conference there have been pleas for churches in the US and Canada to refrain from progressive agendas… Williams announced that he would convene a meeting with all the Anglican primates, to take place early next year, and that the objectives and composition of the pastoral forum would be unveiled within three months. In addition, he said, the Gafcon bishops absent from Lambeth would be involved in policy shaping.

Jon Bruno, bishop of Los Angles, was clear that calls to stop blessing same-sex relationships would be received with “fear and trepidation” in his diocese. “I can only say that inclusion is a reality,” he said. “For people who think that this is going to lead us to disenfranchise any gay or lesbian person, they are sadly mistaken.” Susan Russell, president of the US campaign group Integrity, was angry with Williams’ remarks, which she called an “11th-hour sucker punch”. She said: "It sends the wrong message—that gays and lesbians are still strangers at the gate. It’s not going to change anything on the ground.”

And from The Times:

Organise as many meetings, commissions and reports, the logic goes, and everyone will be too engaged or simply too tired to walk away. At Lambeth, Dr Williams has set up not just one, but four of these things. There are probably even more, hidden away between the small print of the 37-page “reflections” document that has come out of two weeks of African-style conflict resolution in “indaba” groups. The documents, meetings and commissions all have the same end in mind, to avoid a decision, ever, and thereby avoid schism…

The four key initiatives discussed at Lambeth are the Pastoral Forum, the Covenant, the Canon Law blueprint and the Faith and Order Commission. They are all designed basically to do the same thing: to keep everyone around a table, talking, until they are all just so grateful to get back to their dioceses that schism is the last thing on their minds. The strategy has worked and from the perspective of avoiding schism, Lambeth has been a success. If it falls apart in the end, it will most likely be under Dr Williams’ successor.

But not all Anglicans like success. Their gospel is the Christ-like one of victory through defeat, preferably crucifixion. In response to his failure to have a good public row and bring about schism, Dr Williams is facing rebellion within the ranks, although all done with the nicest of English smiles, a handshake or two and the Christian “sign of the peace”.

There is plenty more out there on the blogosphere about the Lambeth Conference, and no doubt plenty more than that remains to be written. Much of it will have to be written off in the end as speculation. Only time can tell what the real impact of the conference will have been. But for the moment I think these give as good a general picture (from my far-off perspective) as any.

GAFCON is Heir Apparent

2008-08-04T14:59:00.003-05:00

From the Living Church:

The Global Anglican Fellowship Conference (GAFCON) is the heir apparent to assume leadership of the Anglican Communion, said three bishops during an informal media briefing this afternoon at the Lambeth Conference. Bishops Mark Lawrence of South Carolina and Keith Ackerman of Quincy were joined by Bishop Hector Zavala of Chile from the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone on the campus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, shortly before Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was scheduled to deliver his final presidential address of the conference.

Bishop Lawrence criticized the existing Instruments of Communion of being too slow to adapt. “I witnessed a new birth last month [at GAFCON],” Bishop Lawrence said. “The Global South has come to its place of maturity. I don’t know how the two structures will work together in the future. Those who adapt the quickest will be the ones who win the day.”

Bishop Zavala challenged Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to state clearly to the rest of the Communion the intentions of The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. “I don’t want to put words in her mouth,” he said. Bishop Zavala said the current crisis is rooted in The Episcopal Church’s decision to disregard Resolution 1.10 from the 1998 Lambeth Conference and consecrate a partnered homosexual person as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire. “If there is no moratorium then the Communion will split,” he said.

Bishop Ackerman encouraged the assembled media to pay careful attention to the words chosen in the final reflections document. He said he is concerned that people on both sides will be unwilling to wait 10 years for the approval of a proposed covenant and that individual bishops will attempt creative interpretations of the language used in the final reflections document. “Pay careful attention to the words must, should and do for an indication of how strong the moratorium will be,” he said.

Minutes after the conclusion of the bishops' media briefing, the final reflections document was released. The language on the moratorium remains unchanged from the fourth draft which stated there was “widespread support for moratoria across the Communion,” but did not come to any decision.

Bishop Mark Lawrence has written in his diary:

I am glad I came here for this Lambeth and worshipped one last time in the Cathedral home of Augustine and Dunstan, Anselm and Becket, Cranmer and Laud, Temple and Ramsay. I had come to speak a word of hope and perhaps to intervene on behalf of our beloved, but in the last resolve the family refused the long needed measures. So he just slipped away, our noble prince, one dreary morning in Canterbury with hardly even a death rattle.

The new prince was born last month in Jerusalem. I was there—arriving late, departing early. I was never quite sure what I was witnessing. It was an awkward and messy birth. He hardly struck me as I gazed upon him there in the bassinet as quite ready to be heir to the throne. I even wondered at times if there might be some illegitimacy to his bloodlines. But that I fear was my over-weddedness to a white and European world. May he live long, and may his tribe increase—and may he remember with mercy all those who merely mildly neglected his birth.

As for me my role for now is clear, to hold together as much as I can for as long as I can that when he comes to his rightful place on St. Augustine’s throne in Canterbury Cathedral he will have a faithful and richly textured kingdom.

You can read his whole letter to his diocese (South Carolina) here.

The Bishop of Nelson [New Zealand] Writes His Diocese About the Lambeth Conference

2008-08-04T14:40:00.002-05:00

This letter from Bishop Richard Ellena to his diocese appeared at StandFirm over the weekend:

We are now in the last couple of days of Lambeth and I am feeling deeply sad.

I don’t know why at the moment–everything I came here hoping for looks set to be agreed to: It is very likely that the Windsor continuation report will be approved–which means that a moratoria on gay bishops will continue etc… And it seems likely that a covenant process will be endorsed and a draft agreed to.

All this seems good to me and yet I can’t help this overwhelming sadness. Because I am more convinced than ever that none of this will help us. Those who have stayed away will not agree to it and will continue their ministry in the States. And TEC will continue to bleat that they won’t follow the moratoria while these Africans continue to ignore it.

I believe (at this stage–and there are still two days to go) that this has been the most expensive exercise in futility that I have every been to. The Indaba groups have been a joke. I can’t believe that no zulu has stood up and taken us to account for our abuse of this process. ‘Indaba’ is supposed to be very similar to the process our Maori use when they go onto a marae to achieve a consensus. We, on the other hand, arrived in our indaba groups only to be divided off into even smaller groups with little tasks to do–little questions to answer. It feels as though this is a process to divide and conquer

The Bible study groups have been very good in relationship building–I have met some very special people from within TEC and I hope to keep in touch with some of them. But I’m tired of every study being reduced to the buzz-word around here–‘What does it say in your context. Every second sentence you hear seems to start with that phrase–well, in my context. This is an abuse of the hermeneutical process.

The draft statement that will be released is so full of generalizations it says absolutely nothing. I am deeply dismayed at the spinelessness of the communion.

So what is good? I have appreciated networking with some pretty amazing people. I am so full of respect for Bishops Bill Love and Mark Lawrence (from within TEC) who are not afraid to stand up and call sin, sin! I have the deepest admiration from the Bishops from the Sudan who came to let their voice be heard and have been treated with the most disgusting abuse from a woman Bishop from New York who labeled them ‘wife-beaters!’

I am ready to come home–with little energy for pursuing the covenant–but will do so because this is my church!!! But I will be actively building relationships with the Global South which looks as if it will expand and grow beyond this Lambeth to include evangelical Bishops from all around the world.

I applaud the bishop’s candor.

A Word from the Bishops of the Diocese of Egypt, North Africa and the Horn of Africa

2008-08-02T20:49:00.003-05:00

This public statement appeared today:

WE, the bishops of the Diocese of Egypt, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, wish to express our appreciation and thankfulness for the Lambeth Conference now ended. It has been a great joy to experience the fellowship, mutual support and counsel of fellow bishops from around the world. This conference has been a most valuable opportunity to express our thoughts and concerns and to listen to the concerns of others…

It is with great sadness however that we remember those who for the sake of conscience are unable to be with us. We think of those from Provinces and Dioceses who felt it would not be appropriate to be present on account of the unilateral actions taken by the Episcopal Church in America in breach of the Resolution 1.10 of the last Lambeth Conference now again reaffirmed as still expressing the mind of the church as a whole. We share their sense of pain that such unilateralism has so strained the bonds of our unity as to leave them now still impaired.

We must all pray for a spirit of mutual submission to prevail and for unity to be restored and we join with our African brothers and sisters in the Conference of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) in unity with the wider Global South movement in support of the Windsor continuation process, the Covenant and the three (retroactive) moratoria comprising
a cessation of

• The blessing of same-sex unions
• Ordinations to Holy Orders of those living in same-sex relationships
• Episcopal interventions across diocesan and Provincial borders

We do note, however, that the first two listed pertain to central moral teaching while the last is a matter simply of administration and good order. We are mindful that it is a break with the mind of the church in matters pertaining to sexuality that has occasioned the crossing of borders. We do commend the rapid establishment of the proposed Pastoral Forum with the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury and in consultation with the Presiding Bishop of the United States as there is an urgent need for truly effective provision of such extended pastoral care as is acceptable to those who feel the need for it.

You can read all of it here.

The Death of Protestant America

2008-08-02T20:03:00.006-05:00

I am grateful to another parishioner for passing this article to me, from the August/September issue of First Things. What follows is just a small segment of what I think are some very insightful observations on the demise of the mainline (now often called “old-line”) churches in the USA, by Joseph Bottom:

The Episcopal Church used to be “larger percentagewise,” the current presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, admitted to the New York Times at the end of 2006. “But Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.” Episcopalians, she said, aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children—indeed, “it’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.” Applauding her parents’ decision to leave the Catholic Church and become Episcopalians when she was nine, Bishop Schori added, “I think my parents were looking for a place where wrestling with questions was encouraged rather than discouraged.”

Schori is by no means a radical, as such things are counted these days in the Episcopal Church—the home, after all, of V. Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual bishop of New Hampshire, and John Shelby Spong, the retired bishop of Newark, who has denied even the possibility of meaningful prayer. She seems, rather, a fairly typical liberal Protestant: a rentier, really, living off the income from the property her predecessors purchased, strolling at sunset along the strand as the great tide of the Mainline ebbs further out to sea.

To be saved, we need only to realize that God already loves us, just the way we are, Schori wrote in her 2006 book, A Wing and a Prayer. She’s not exactly wrong about God’s love, but, in Schori’s happy soteriology, such love demands from us no personal reformation, no individual guilt, no particular penance, and no precise dogma. All we have to do, to prove the redemption we already have, is support the political causes she approves. The mission of the church is to show forth God’s love by demanding inclusion and social justice. She often points to the United Nations as an example of God’s work in the world, and when she talks about the mission of the Episcopal Church, she typically identifies it with the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.

Her Yahweh, in other words, is a blend of Norman Vincent Peale and Dag Hammarskjöld. And through it all you can hear the notes of Bishop Pike—not the lyrics, perhaps, but always the melody. There’s the same cringe-making assumption of social superiority: “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates” than the lower classes of Catholics and Mormons. For that matter, there’s the same unselfconscious declaration of superiority even to faith: We’re theologically more advanced precisely because we don’t have a theology—we have “a place where wrestling with questions” is “encouraged rather than discouraged.”

The Mainline, however, shifted to a surprising degree in the fifty years between Bishop Pike in 1958 and Bishop Schori in 2008. Pike was newsworthy precisely because he seemed contrary to type: a chaplain to the establishment who campaigned against that establishment. Schori seems instead a solid, unexceptionable instance of her type: a representative of the moods and politics of the establishment Episcopalians who elected her their presiding bishop.

Early in 1953, Pike refused an honorary degree from the Episcopalians’ seminary in Sewanee, Tennessee, because of the school’s segregation. “The Church has never regarded the civil law as the final norm for the Christian conscience,” he wrote in the noble peroration of his letter of rejection. (Although, in characteristic Pike fashion, he sent the letter to the New York Times before he sent it to Sewanee.) As it happens, the man was not far out of step with his church; even in the South, Episcopalians were moving quickly toward support for integration, and, just a few months later, the school began admitting black students. Still, it seemed—and was widely reported as—a new thing when the dean of St. John’s Cathedral denounced one of his own church’s seminaries. To create a parallel instance of ap parent class betrayal, Bishop Schori would have to do something like take to the pages of Human Life Review to attack her congregants’ support of legalized abortion.

She’s not likely to do that, perhaps mostly because abortion offers a key measure of the changes in the social class of liberal Protestants over the past fifty years. The role of abortion, and of feminism generally, deserves its own chapter in any telling of the Mainline story. But here’s a small case study: After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I was at the Episcopalians’ National Cathedral in Washington, on a panel to discuss violence and religion. The evening began with a prayer from Jane Dixon, the cathedral’s temporary bishop, and her invocation was as revealing as any short speech could be of the concerns of the contemporary Episcopal Church.

While asking the divine gifts of wisdom for the speakers and understanding for the listeners, Bishop Dixon was vague—not merely failing to name the name of Jesus but straining to phrase all her requests in a passive voice to avoid even naming God: “May we be given . . . may it be granted to us . . .” When her prayer unexpectedly swerved toward abortion, however, her language suddenly snapped into hard specificity as she reminded God that “America at its best stands for the spread of rights around the world, especially the right of women to choose.” The discussion that evening, she prayed, would not turn vindictive, for we could not condemn the destruction of the World Trade Center until we remembered that “even in the United States, people have bombed abortion clinics.”

The important thing to understand here is the social shape of these issues and their uniform acceptance by a certain class. Bishop Dixon was speaking the language of Bishop Pike, and yet, at the same time, she was not shocking her listeners. She was, rather, confirming them in their settled views. Sometime after the 1960s, everyone in the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church became Bishop Pike—with the perverse effect that Pike’s ostensible rebellion turned, at last, into the norm. Formed in the victory of civil-rights activism, a new version of the social-gospel movement became the default theology of church bureaucrats in the Mainline. The churches “increasingly turned their attention to the drafting of social statements on a variety of contemporary problems,” as the religious historian Peter J. Thuesen has noted, and their statements “revealed a shared opinion among Mainline executives that the churches’ primary public role was social advocacy.”

The result is an ethical consensus unfailingly consistent with the political views and cultural mores of a particular social class—in fact, the class of professional women in the United States since the 1970s. Certainly on the question of abortion, and probably on the question of homosexuality, such bishops as Jane Dixon and Katharine Jefferts Schori face no serious opposition among the elite of their denomination in the United States. The Episcopal Church remains the chaplaincy of an establishment, but it is an establishment much diminished—in class, numbers, and influence—for only Pike’s heirs have stayed in the church bureaucracy, and they have no one to speak to except themselves.

H.L. Mencken is usually credited with dubbing the Episcopal Church of the 1920s “the Republican Party at prayer.” The Episcopal Church today seems hardly distinguishable from the small portion of America that is the National Organization for Women at prayer.

I highly recommend reading the whole article. You can find it here.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 27 July

2008-08-02T19:57:00.002-05:00

This is my proposed solution to last Sunday’s London Times cryptic crossword. I regret I won’t be able to post tomorrow’s puzzle. Back on 10 August!

An Open Door – Pittsburgh Laity Discuss Realignment

2008-08-01T19:33:00.004-05:00

One of my parishioners alerted me to this 10-minute video produced in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and I thought it well worth posting. It clearly and cogently sets forth the issues facing the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Mouneer Anis shares his views on the Lambeth Conference

2008-08-01T19:08:00.003-05:00

As published in the London Times:

I found the presidential address of Archbishop Rowan very clear. He clearly described what is happening and the thinking of people on both sides. I found his address helpful and very honest in expressing both sides of the conflict. While some very positive things are happening at the conference, some unresolved issues are still dividing the Communion. Those issues are still very much unresolved and untackled. I wonder if during the next few days we will do something about these unresolved issues. I have some doubts. The positives are that we are sitting down together, we are studying the Bible together, we are talking to each other and we are listening to each other.

Yet I see that a big wall still divides us. It is big because it involves the essentials, the foundation of our faith. We are not divided by mere trivialities, or issues on the periphery of faith. We are finding it very hard to come together in the essentials. This diversity of opinion is about the heart of our faith, the faith which we received from the saints. I speak the mind of many of my colleagues in the Global South, especially in the Diocese of Eygpt. I am aware that not all of us in the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East have the same mind. I respect and love them.

I find that many of our North American friends blame us and criticise us for bringing in the issues of sexuality and homosexuality but in fact they are the ones who are bringing these issues in. Here at Lambeth, you come across many advertisements for events organised by gay and Lesbian activists which are sponsored by the North American Church. If you visit the marketplace at the conference, you will notice that almost half the events promoted on the noticeboard promote homosexuality and are sponsored by the North Americans. And in the end, we, the people who remain loyal to the original teaching of the Anglican Communion, which we received from the Apostles, are blamed. They say that we talk a lot about sexuality and that we need to talk more about poverty, about AIDs, and injustice. They are the ones who are bringing sexuality into this conference. It’s not us. We want to talk about the heart of the issues which divide us, not only sexuality. That is just a symptom of a deeper problem.

They talk about the slavery and say that 200 years ago Christians were opposed to the freedom of slaves and they compare us to those Christians for our attitude to gay and lesbian practises. To be honest, I think this is inviting us to another kind of slavery, slavery of the flesh, to go and do whatever our lusts dictate. Sometimes, I think that maybe because of the pressure in Western culture to push the practise of homosexuality, our friends in the West are pushing these issues. But, on the other hand, I see many who live in the West and still want to preserve the faith and the tradition of the Church. Should we allow culture to pressure the Church or should the Church be distinctive, light and salt to the world? Cardinal Ivan Dias said that we didn’t bring the Gospel to the culture we could end up suffering from spiritual Alzheimers.

Mouneer Anis is the bishop of Egypt and president bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. For the perspectives of other bishops, also reported in the Times, go here.

Female Anglican Bishop at Lambeth Conference Accuses Fellow Bishops of Wife Beating

2008-08-01T11:52:00.003-05:00

George Conger of Religious Intelligence reports from the Lambeth Conference:

Charges that wife beaters were at work amongst the bishops attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference have raised concerns that the bishops discussions of rape and domestic violence will be diverted by partisan wrangling over political correctness. In a statement published in the Lambeth Witness, a newssheet distributed at the 2008 Lambeth Conference by the pressure group the Inclusive Church Network, the suffragan bishop of New York, the Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam wrote, “We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do.” She added that “the most devout Christians beat their wives many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes conversation difficult.”

Bishop Roskam’s remarks were released to coincide with a joint plenary session of bishops and their spouses at the Lambeth Conference entitled “Equal in God’s Sight: When Power is Abused.” Men and women were seated on separate sides of the room and the presentation opened with a play on the theme of women’s empowerment by a theatre company, followed by a dramatic reading of the rape of Tamar taken from 2 Samuel 13. Bishops and spouses then broke into same-sex groups and using a study guide prepared by Dr. Gerald West, author of the conference Bible study materials, and gave periodic reports via closed circuit television cameras to the plenary. The study groups were asked to discuss the incidence of rape in their communities and develop action plans to address the issues in their home communities, prompting emotional responses from some participants.

In the press conference following the presentation, Jane Williams, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury said the presentation was a great success. She stated church had a duty to address issues of domestic violence, both in society and within the church for “even disciples fall into patterns of behavior that are not Christ-like”. However, the way the issue of domestic abuse was raised, and the implications that there were wife-beaters amongst the bishops at Lambeth, rankled many. Approximately 100 bishops left the plenary, while others expressed concern that while outside pressure groups had been briefed about the joint session while the bishops were not.

“It was quite clear we were being guided to a foregone conclusion,” the Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe said. He reported that one of the women present asked, “‘Why have you separated us; if we cannot discuss such things in a safe place like this, where can we discuss them?’ The answer was, ‘Because, for some of the women present, this isn’t as safe a place as you might think.’ Evidently this had been determined before the meeting began,” Bishop Howe noted.

Bishop Peter Beckwith of Springfield said he was “so offended” by Bishop Roskam’s remarks, and had been “embarrassed by her quote.” The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu told The Times he was offended by the remarks. “I have never beaten my wife, although I can't talk about other people."

The Bishop of Ho (Ghana), the Rt. Rev. Matthias Mededues-Badohu said he was distressed by the implications of the bishop’s remark that Africans were less culturally and morally advanced than Americans, and were prone to beating their wives. Of the twenty bishops questioned by the CEN, none admitted to beating their wives, though many said they were distressed that the topic of domestic violence had been sidetracked by Bishop Roskam’s comments. In a press conference on July 31, the Rev. Jackie Cray, wife of the Bishop of Maidstone, said she had “heard nothing” about wife beating bishops in the plenary session, but noted her husband, the Bishop of Maidstone, did not beat her.

I was going to add another label to this post: “stupidity”.

The Church cannot heal this crisis of betrayal

2008-07-31T22:00:00.005-05:00

A statement from Archbishop Henry Orombi, published today in the London Times:

I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I love the Anglican Communion. So, why did the bishops of the Church of Uganda and I decide not to attend the present Lambeth Conference? Because we love the Lord Jesus Christ and because we love the Anglican Communion…

The crisis in the Communion is serious; our commitment to biblical and historic faith and mission are serious; and we want to be taken seriously. In 2003 the Episcopal Church in America consecrated as bishop a man living in an active homosexual relationship. This unilateral and unbiblical action was directly contrary to a resolution of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.

I participated in that conference and we overwhelmingly resolved that “homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture” and the conference “cannot advise the legitimising of same-sex unions”. As a result, the 2003 action of the American Church plunged the Anglican Communion into a crisis that, as the primates of the Anglican Communion said in 2003, “tore the very fabric of our communion at its deepest level”. The crisis is about authority—biblical authority and ecclesiastical authority.

The American decision disregarded biblical authority by violating clear biblical teaching against homosexual behaviour. For this reason, the Church of Uganda and other Anglican provinces broke communion with the Episcopal Church in America in 2003, and we continue in that state of broken communion today…

If a whole province, such as the Episcopal Church, acts contrary to God’s word and the consensus of the communion, who in the Anglican Communion has the authority to discipline that erring province?

We in the Global South believed the Primates’ Meeting had this authority—the 1988 Lambeth Conference urged the Primates’ Meeting to “exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters” and the 1998 Lambeth Conference reaffirmed this. So, it was appropriate, after the American decision in 2003, that the Archbishop of Canterbury convened an emergency meeting of the primates to address the biblical and ecclesiastical crisis into which the Americans had plunged the Anglican Communion. The primates, including the American primate, unanimously advised that the consecration should not proceed. Nonetheless, two weeks later, the primate in America presided at the consecration as bishop of a man living in a same-sex relationship. This was a deep betrayal.

Since that meeting there have been numerous other “betrayals” to the extent that it is now hard to believe that the leadership in the American Church means what it says. They say that they are not authorising blessings of same-sex unions, yet we read newspaper reports of them. Two American bishops have even presided at such services of blessings. Bishops have written diocesan policies on the blessings of same-sex unions. It is simply untrue to say they have not been authorised.

That such blessings continue and seem to be increasing hardly demonstrates “regret”, let alone repentance, on the part of the American Church. So, when the Archbishop of Canterbury invited these American bishops to participate in the Lambeth Conference, against the recommendations of the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Meeting, and in the face of the unrelenting commitment of the American Church to bless sinful behaviour, we were stunned. Further betrayal. It was clear to me and to our House of Bishops that the Instruments of Communion had utterly failed us.

Anglicans may say there are four “Instruments of Communion,” (the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lambeth Conference; the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting). But de facto, there is only one—the Archbishop of Canterbury. The peculiar thing is that this one man, who is at the centre of the communion’s structures, is not even elected by his peers. Even the Pope is elected by his peers, but what Anglicans have is a man appointed by a secular government. Over the past five years, we have come to see this as a remnant of British colonialism, and it is not serving us well. The spiritual leadership of a global communion of independent and autonomous provinces should not be reduced to one man appointed by a secular government.

It is important that our decision not to attend this Lambeth Conference is not misunderstood as withdrawing from the Anglican Communion. On the contrary, our decision reflects the depth of our concern and the sober realisation that the present structures are not capable of addressing the crisis. How can we go to Holy Communion, sit in Bible study groups, and share meals together, pretending that everything is OK?, that we are still in fellowship with the persistent violators of biblical teaching and of Lambeth resolutions?

The Bible says: “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?” The Archbishop of Canterbury has asked us to “wait for each other”. But how is it possible when we are not travelling in the same direction? The Church of Uganda takes its Anglican identity and the future hope of the global Anglican Communion very seriously. We love the Lord Jesus Christ, and we love the Anglican Communion. Lord, have mercy upon us.

The entire statement from Archbishop Orombi may be found here.

Anglicans likely to sidestep decision on gays

2008-07-31T11:24:00.004-05:00

From the Toronto Globe & Mail:

Although today is billed as global Anglicanism’s high-noon shootout over homosexuality, the issue likely will get sidestepped again, exasperating both conservative and liberal Canadians who belong to the world’s third-largest Christian church and are fed up with the dispute…

But they are to pass no resolutions, make no declarations. Rather they are to be limited to “reflections” on a proposal from the church’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, to create a “pastoral forum” for the 77-million-member church, the mandate of which would be to keep the homosexual debate frozen in place and prohibited from going anywhere.

The document handed out to bishops outlining the forum’s creation also proposed that the Anglican Communion’s 38 autonomous national and regional churches (called provinces) observe three moratoriums—on blessing same-sex unions, consecrating gay clergy in partnered relationships and poaching clergy and congregations across provincial boundaries who become disaffected from their bishops. The proposals would be decided upon, or more likely once again be creatively deferred, at next May’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, a sort of executive body of the world church.

The document was immediately dismissed by opposing factions in the Canadian church—with two million census adherents—as pointless, useless and retrograde. Michael Ingham, bishop of the greater Vancouver diocese of New Westminster, said he came to the Lambeth Conference hoping to take back something of value. “Unfortunately, the document handed out today is a non-starter where I live,” he said.

Along with the U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) Church which five years ago consecrated a bishop living in a homosexual relationship, Bishop Ingham has attracted heated criticism, largely from Anglicanism global South, since his decision to authorize the blessing in churches of same-sex unions. Conservative Anglicans say homosexuality is prohibited by the Bible. About a third of the communion’s bishops say they are boycotting Lambeth because of the presence of some Canadian and U.S. bishops.

Bishop Ingham called the document punitive and antithetical to the notion of communal inclusiveness. “If this becomes the position of the Communion, it will put the Anglican Church of Canada in the position of having to support and defend irrational prejudice and bigotry in the eyes of our nation.”

Rev. Ed Hird, an Anglican priest who left the Diocese of New Westminster and the Anglican Church of Canada along with most of his congregation over same-sex blessings and joined the orthodox Anglican Coalition in Canada, said the proposals put before the Lambeth Conference would resolve nothing. “The provisions aren’t enforceable,” he said. “The problems will just continue on. It would be a lot more helpful to have clarity.” Both sides are morally committed to their position, and to avoid acknowledging that only makes matters worse, he said.

The whole article is here.

Lambeth: Tuesday afternoon 7-29-08

2008-07-29T15:35:00.005-05:00

Reflections on the Lambeth Conference, 29 July, by Todd Wetzel of Anglicans United:

There are a number of serious and deeply held misconceptions operative throughout the conference.

One, stated by the Windsor Continuation Group, “the proliferation of ad hoc Episcopal and archiespiscopal ministries cannot be maintained within a global Communion.” Translation: Communion leadership is angry with Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, the Southern Cone et al., for consecrating bishops and charging them with the development of their missionary outreach in the States and Canada.

No one adds to this condemnation a simple statement of fact that these actions were taken because the Communion stood by and did nothing substantive while abusive actions against believing clergy and parishes (now whole dioceses) on the American shores continued. In the light of the Episcopal Church’s escalating abuse, they choose not to simply stand by in the face of Canterbury’s weak (no matter how well intended) response. Their intervention has put lifeboats in the turbulent waters at no small cost to themselves. And, Christians under siege in the Episcopal Church, are heading for those lifeboats in ever increasing numbers.

I am reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan. Good upstanding representatives of the Communion passed by the one beset by thieves and robbers. They were in a hurry to carry on carrying on. Perhaps they would form a committee to investigate later. Fortunately, others in the Communion, willing to risk becoming outcast themselves, stopped by and sought to give aid.

Two, the word “inclusive” has completely replaced an older and historically more familiar word “comprehensive” which, frankly, is the familiar word one used to describe a far healthier Anglicanism. The two words are not synonymous. The latter word, “comprehensive” is associated with a saying attributed to Augustine: “Unity in essentials, freedom in non-essentials and charity in all things.” This springs from a clear sense of what constituted the essentials—a clear statement of essentials in the 39 Articles and a transparent identity.

“Inclusivity”, on the other hand springs from the opposite: the lack of a clearly understood center and a fluid identity. We Americans defined the meaning of the word when, in the late ’90s, the Episcopal Church, fully present at the Righter trial, found that it had no “core” doctrine. It is this ethos of “inclusivity” to which the Episcopal Church is now so aggressively seeking to convert the Communion. It argues against discipline. Leadership mitigates against statements of doctrine. While that same leadership seldom hesitates to use the power of money to work its will. Curiously, that same “inclusivity” is being used to drive out the opposition.

There is an old story about an emperor and a town. Americans considering themselves proper Anglicans in their dress and demeanor parade about. Other members of the Communion fawn upon them and cheer them on. But there is a still small voice being uttered in this the Lambeth Conference: “They have no clothes!” Take away the money and the political power and there is no longer anything there!

Three, the Global Anglican South Conference, is spoken of with disdain. Attempts are afoot to redefine the “Global South” thereby excluding GAFCON’s leadership. True, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said that he is pained by their absence as do other bishops but it seems only to echo an earlier statement from the Episcopal House of Bishops who, when asked to repent of their actions said, “We’re sorry you’re upset.” No real regret there (let alone repentance). And, in the case of Rowan Williams his pain could have only evolved as a consequence of his own actions (or non actions).

The Global South, fearing that Lambeth would speak much and yet remain unwilling to discipline a stubbornly willful and recalcitrant Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada, fearing yet a further diminishment of the Christian Witness of the Communion, decided to stop wringing its hands and crying unfair. In short, in the face of constant jawboning, and leadership failure, the Global South, representing the rapidly growing Anglican areas of witness in Africa, Asia, the Global South and the mission efforts in America stopped reacting and seized the initiative. GAFCON affirmed Anglican orthodoxy in its “Declaration,” communicating clearly a way forward in its statement.

Even with the absence of over two hundred bishops of strongly Christian persuasion, there are still a good many orthodox and evangelical bishops here. Though by and large of more moderate persuasion than those of the Global South, they may graciously find the resolve to take leadership in this Lambeth Conference. What a wonder it would be to see something like the clarity of GAFCON’s “Jerusalem Statement” coming from Canterbury. Sadly I’m not sure if even this would be enough to hold the Communion together.

My guess would be that if anything positive comes out of this Lambeth Conference it will largely be because the Global South stopped reacting and clearly stated, “Here we stand, we can do no other!”

Anglicans to halt gay bishop consecrations and same-sex blessings

2008-07-29T11:32:00.003-05:00

Ruth Gledhill of the London Times reports from the Lambeth Conference:

A new pastoral forum is to be set up to bring rebel provinces into line in the Anglican Communion. The 650 bishops meeting at the Lambeth Conference in Kent debated proposals yesterday for a body headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that would prevent any more consecrations of gay bishops or same-sex blessings. The forum will also clamp down on “cross-border interventions” such as those where conservative bishops from Africa have consecrated bishops to pastor congregations in the United States.

The document says the forum is needed because repeated requests for moratoria on gay consecrations, same-sex blessings and cross-border interventions have not been heeded. It says: “The failure to respond presents us with a situation where, if the three moratoria are not observed, the [Anglican] Communion is likely to fracture.” The document proposes the forum as a “key mechanism to achieve reconciliation”.

The plan was drawn up by a group of bishops at the conference, who say in the document: “We believe that the pastoral forum should be empowered to act in the Anglican Communion in a rapid manner to emerging threats to its life.” It warns that a “proliferation” of ad hoc episcopal ministries such as those put in place by conservatives cannot be maintained. It calls for all existing ministries already set up to be placed “in trust” in order to be reconciled back into their original provinces.

The document says the moratoria asked for on a number of previous occasions are to be understood as “retrospective”. The strong implication of this is that the openly-gay Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, must resign if the Anglican church is to survive as one body. However, this is not stated explicitly and conservatives criticised the document as lacking teeth.

You can read her full report here.

London Times Cryptic Crossword for 27 July

2008-07-27T14:54:00.001-05:00

Here is the latest cryptic crossword from the London Sunday Times. Just click on it to come up with the full-sized version.

Stephen Colbert on the Lambeth Conference

2008-07-26T21:47:00.004-05:00

Stephen asks New York Times journalist Laurie Goodstein why Anglicans can't just ordain gay priests and then not talk about it—like the Catholics.

It’s actually not a bad interview. I love the part about “internicene conflict” towards the beginning.

Churches retool mission trips

2008-07-26T16:47:00.005-05:00

This is part of a much longer (constructive) critique of short-term mission trips, which appeared in the Washington Post earlier this month (and in one of our local papers this morning!):

To make missionary work more meaningful, some churches are taking a different approach. In response to the criticism, a growing number of churches and agencies that put together short-term trips are revamping their programs and establishing new standards. For the past four years, for example, the Fairfax Presbyterian youths have stayed closer to home, in places such as Welch, West Va.; Lansing, Mich., and Philadelphia. Last week, a team of 44 were in St. Petersburg, Fla., to clean and paint low-income homes, assist the homeless and volunteer at a free health clinic.

Senior Pastor Henry G. Brinton said the church realized that the teens could do just as much good working close by as far away. “It became too hard to justify the expense of flying the kids overseas,” Brinton said. “If you’re going to paint a church, you can do that in Florida as easily as you can in Mexico.”

Fairfax Community Church is repositioning its mission trips “to get away from the vacation-with-a-purpose, large groups going somewhere to build something” focus, said Alan MacDonald, the church’s pastor of global engagement. The church is sending out smaller teams of experts to work on projects with partner churches. For example, it is sending information technology professionals who are fluent in Spanish to a church in the Dominican Republic to train members in computer skills so they can get better jobs, MacDonald said.

McLean Bible Church, which sends about 35 short-term mission teams out each year, is training its team leaders to approach short-term missions with a “learner’s mentality”, to be respectful of the culture or group the team will be serving, said Kailea Hunt, director of global impact for the church.

Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine, is adopting much the same approach in a curriculum for short-term missionaries and their host organizations. Andy Crouch, an editor who is working on the project, said it came about as the result of complaints he heard from churches and nonprofit groups in foreign countries that host American short-term missionaries. “We hope that when they land on the ground, they will be more prepared to listen well to their hosts and learn from their hosts what is really helpful to be doing,” Crouch said. The curriculum, for example, warns missionaries to think about their attire in conservative countries and what kind of message they're sending when they bring expensive cameras and other electronics to poverty-stricken villages.

Despite the concerns with trips abroad, their popularity is soaring. Some groups go as far away as China, Thailand and Russia. From a few hundred in the 1960s, the trips have proliferated in recent years. A Princeton University study found that 1.6 million people took short-term mission trips—an average of eight days—in 2005. Estimates of the money spent on these trips is upward of $2.4 billion a year. Vacation destinations are especially popular: Recent research has found that the Bahamas receives one short-term missionary for every 15 residents.

At the same time, the number of long-term American missionaries, who go abroad from several years to a lifetime, has fallen, according to a Wheaton College study done last year. The short-term mission trip is a “huge phenomenon that seems to be gaining in momentum rather than waning,” said David Livermore, executive director of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, who studies the trend.

Participants care for orphans, hold Bible classes, evangelize, paint homes and churches, and help AIDS patients, among other tasks. But research has found that the trips tend to have few long-term effects on the local people or on the mission travelers. Some projects take away work from local people, are unnecessary and sometimes dangerous.

If you want to read it all, go here.

Cryptic Crossword Solution for 20 July

2008-07-26T16:43:00.002-05:00

Here is my proposal for last Sunday’s cryptic:

Homosexual bishops face Anglican Church ban

2008-07-26T16:35:00.004-05:00

Here is a report from the London Telegraph of some of the most recent developments at the Lambeth Conference.

Homosexual clergy will be barred from becoming bishops in the Anglican communion under controversial new plans backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Liberals will be warned that they face being expelled from the heart of Anglicanism unless they respect the ban, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The American church caused deep divisions between conservatives and liberals when it consecrated Gene Robinson as the first openly homosexual Anglican bishop in 2003. There have been reports that it is prepared to consecrate more gay bishops while the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, told this newspaper that he would be willing to do the same.

The proposal to ban future consecrations is the most significant move yet over the issue. The paper, which was commissioned by Dr Rowan Williams, will be debated by 650 bishops tomorrow at the Lambeth conference in Canterbury… It is set to start the first real clash of the conference, with liberal bishops expected to fight any attempt to restrict their autonomy. However, Dr Williams is determined to impose tighter governance of the Anglican Communion to try and hold it together.

The paper, “How do we get from here to there?”, stresses that it is vital that an Anglican Covenant be agreed so that churches around the world are mutually accountable and united by a common set of beliefs. This must happen as soon as possible, it says, to prevent further haemorrhaging of the Anglican Communion over the issue of homosexual clergy.

Until a consensus is reached, the American and Canadian churches must refrain from consecrating more homosexual bishops and carrying out blessing services for same-sex couples, the paper says. If they do not, they will face being pushed to the margins of the communion and find themselves excluded from the councils that are central to the governance of the Church.

The African churches, which oppose having practising homosexuals in the clergy, will be told that they must stop intervening in the affairs of other churches as their actions are deepening the rift. Nigerian and Ugandan archbishops have taken control of dozens of parishes in America and Canada opposed to a liberal agenda.

The paper from the Windsor Continuation Group is central to the stance that Dr Williams would like the conference to take. If the conference agrees to the recommendations, it will give him a mandate to exclude rebel churches. As well as the covenant, Dr Williams has argued for new canon laws, which would govern how bishops and clergy acted. “We need ways of knowing who is supposed to do this or that and who is entitled to do this or that, so that we can act economically and purposefully, instead of being frustrated by a chaotic variety of expectations and recriminations,” says the archbishop.

Bishops have already called for the establishment of an Anglican faith and order commission to give “guidance” on issues such as same-sex blessings and homosexual ordinations. The introduction of a covenant and canon law would be further steps on the path to a more concrete notion of Anglican identity and limits on what is acceptable behaviour, following the more centralised model of the Catholic Church.

The whole article is here.

Common Cause Partnership seeks provincial recognition

2008-07-25T22:09:00.002-05:00

The Anglican Communion Network published this statement yesterday:

We, as the Bishops and elected leaders of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) are deeply grateful for the Jerusalem Declaration. It describes a hopeful, global Anglican future, rooted in scripture and the authentic Anglican way of faith and practice. We joyfully welcome the words of the GAFCON statement that it is now time ‘for the federation currently known as the Common Cause Partnership to be recognized by the Primates Council.’

The intention of the CCP Executive Committee is to petition the Primates Council for recognition of the CCP as the North American Province of GAFCON on the basis of the Common Cause Partnership Articles, Theological Statement, and Covenant Declaration, and to ask that the CCP Moderator be seated in the Primates Council.

We accept the call to build the Common Cause Partnership into a truly unified body of Anglicans. We are committed to that call. Over the past months, we have worked together, increasing the number of partners and authorizing committees and task groups for Mission, Education, Governance, Prayer Book & Liturgy, the Episcopate, and Ecumenical Relations. The Executive Committee is meeting regularly to carry forward the particulars of this call. The CCP Council will meet December 1–3, 2008.

The full media release is here.

Archbishop: Communion Faith and Order Commission Gains Momentum

2008-07-25T21:51:00.003-05:00

From the Living Church news service:

If the Anglican Communion is to survive, another Instrument of Unity may need to be created, according to a paper prepared by the Windsor Continuation Group.

“We commend the suggestion for the setting up of an Anglican Communion Faith and Order Commission that could give guidance on the ecclesiological issues raised by our current ‘crisis’,” the group wrote in a working paper distributed on July 25.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams established the six-member group earlier this year to help implement some of the longer-term recommendations made in the Windsor Report. Archbishop Williams said the plan was a very preliminary one, but that it seemed to have broad support among bishops during a Lambeth Conference media briefing this afternoon.

“There is a strong feeling that we need another kind of structure in the Communion that will be a ‘clearinghouse,’ as I want to put it, for some of these issues, and I think there is quite a head of steam behind that,” he said. “I’m actually quite enthusiastic about that.

“It’s not as if we can just coexist without any impact on one another as Anglican churches,” Archbishop Williams continued. “There have to be protocols and conventions by which we recognize one another as churches. The difficulties that we currently face have a lot to do with that recognition.”

Archbishop Clive Handford, former primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, is the chair of the group. During a July 22 Lambeth Conference media briefing, Archbishop Handford described a three-stage role that the Windsor Continuation Group is expected to play during the Lambeth Conference, which ends Aug. 3.

“It is rightly said that we are an inclusive Communion,” he said. “‘All are welcome’ is not the same as ‘anything goes’.”

After the conclusion of the bishop’s retreat, the Windsor Continuation Group distributed a four-page paper, which was described to the press as a background “reflection” on the state of the Communion. The paper was meant to spark a discussion, which occurred on Wednesday afternoon. More than 20 bishops spoke, including Bishop John Chane of Washington.

During a July 23 media briefing, Bishop Chane said he cautioned other conference participants “not to throw the baby out with the bathwater” and raised concerns about the way that the primates’ meeting had functioned recently. He also said the number of Episcopalians uncomfortable with The Episcopal Church’s to perform same-sex marriages and consecrate a partnered homosexual as bishop was a very small but vocal minority.

The paper proposing the Faith and Order Commission arose out of the July 23 hearing. In addition to proposing a new instrument of unity, the provisional paper released today also questioned the usefulness of the Anglican Consultative Council as it is currently configured.

“There are questions about whether a body meeting every three years, with a rapidly changing membership, not necessarily located within the central structures of their own provinces, can fulfill adequately the tasks presently given to it,” the paper stated. “Not all believe that a representative body is the best way to express the contribution of the whole people of God at a worldwide level. There are many ways in which the voice of the whole body can be heard: diocesan and provincial synods, networks, dialogues and commissions.”

The concluding work of the Windsor Continuation Group will involve trying to come to some consensus about where the bishops as the Lambeth Conference think the Anglican Communion should be headed. Archbishop Handford cautioned against expecting an immediate solution by the end of this conference. “This isn’t a quick fix,” he said. “Dialogue is [the] key.”

Archbishop confirms church’s anti-gay sex stance

2008-07-23T09:41:00.006-05:00

Lambeth Conference news from Ruth Gledhill of the London Times:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has continued his quest for Anglican unity with a strong statement against living in sin and gay sex. Dr Williams said: “I do not believe that sex outside marriage is as God purposes it.” And he said he remained “committed” to the Church’s official stance against gay sex, which aims to preserve Biblical norms…

Asked what his message was to those who had chosen not to attend the conference, Dr Williams said he was “sorry” they were not present. “I think that the great pity is that to have those voices in the discussions as we have conceived it, would have been, I think, for everybody, a healing and helpful thing, but also a difficult one. “Are we heading for schism? Well let’s see. If it is the end of the Anglican Communion I do not think anyone has told most of the people here.”

He was speaking as the Church of England’s Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement distributed copies at the Lambeth Conference of his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace at the conference, in which he adopted a liberal stance towards homosexual love, arguing that the Bible did not necessarily legislate only for “reproductive sex”…

The Archbishop’s move from a liberal to conservative stance will be reinforced tomorrow when bishops are given the “observations document” of an internal church group set up to resolve the crisis. The Windsor Continuation Group was formed at the start of this year to take forward the proposals of an earlier report, which called on the US church to roll back its liberal agenda. The report also urged conservative provinces of Africa and Asia to desist from boundary crossing.

A source said the follow-up document, which will be finished and published in full at the end of the year, contained a “sober realism” about the crisis threatening to split the Anglican Church. The new document is expected to be equally critical of conservative primates who are “poaching” evangelical congregations from the US church by illicitly consecrating of bishops to serve them.

Liberals in The Episcopal Church, which prompted the crisis with the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, are determined to engineer a backtracking on its commitment not to consecrate any more gay bishops when the next General Convention meets in the summer of 2009. But tomorrow’s document will spell out in clear terms the disastrous consequences should The Episcopal Church take that direction.

Already, the 230 bishops boycotting the conference have organised their own rival meeting held in Jerusalem last month and set up their alternative Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Bishops in the centre fear that any failure to stem the liberal agenda could result in a permanent schism, with the new fellowship providing a home for conservative rebels.

Conference organisers are appealing for funds from around the Communion to rescue them from a financial black hole. The bishops’ conference has cost £4.4 million to organise and the spouses' conference £1.2 million, and the figures do not even include travel costs, being paid for by individual dioceses and provinces. Organisers are still £1 million short.

You can read her full report here.

Fourth-century vellum Bible’s dispersed sections together online

2008-07-23T09:15:00.007-05:00

News from the National Post (Canada):

One of the world’s oldest Bibles, discovered in Egypt in the 19th century, can be read online this week. The Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century, is one of the two most ancient copies of the entire Bible in Greek (the other is the Codex Vaticanus). The manuscript was uncovered by a German scholar in St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai desert. Much of it, written on 350 pages of vellum, ended up in St. Petersburg. In the 1930s, most of this treasure trove was sold by Stalin to the British Museum in London, although 40 pages were bought by Leipzig University. Yet more pages were found in the 1970s in a walled-up room in the monastery. More than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Museum, will be available at codex-sinaiticus.net.

The web site is scheduled to go live tomorrow, 24 July. Wikipedia has an interesting article about Codex Sinaiticus here.

Tuesday news from the Lambeth Conference

2008-07-23T09:09:00.002-05:00

Here is a summary of some of yesterday’s Lambeth Conference events, from Anglican Mainstream.

There was a gathering on Tuesday afternoon of 150 – 200 orthodox bishops at which among others Bishop Michael Scott-Joynt of Winchester, Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, and Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh spoke. It should not be forgotten that on September 20 the House of Bishops of TEC will be voting on whether to depose him. It must feel odd for him and his wife Nara to be on campus for three weeks with those seeking to remove him.

The press are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Told that they could not have an interview in the press schedule with the Archbishop of Sudan, they went ahead and organised their own press conference in which everyone got to ask the questions they wanted to.

The Sudanese statement has taken the conference by surprise: first the TEC rushed a spokesperson into the press room after the Archbishop had spoken. After all TEC bishops were with the Sudanese bishops at Salisbury for the pre-Lambeth conference. Second, the Archbishop was asked directly by one man (not on the press corps) if a particular American bishop on campus had written the statement for them. He was given a flat no. The Archbishop does have an earned Ph.D by the way. Third the Archbishop of the Sudan was very direct: Gene Robinson should resign and his consecrators should confess their wrongdoing to the conference. That for him is the way to save the Anglican Communion.

The Windsor Continuation Group has produced its first set of observations and is due to bring another set on “Where should we be?” on Wednesday. On Monday they will present “How do we get from here to there?” The final Indaba on Saturday August 2nd will focus on this issue, and written summaries of the responses from the Indaba will be given to the WCG who will meet in late 2008. They will report to the Archbishop of Canterbury as planning takes place for the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica in 2009. Who are missing from this scenario? The Primates’ Meeting…

There was more to applaud in the presentation on Tuesday night from Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Rome who for ten years was Archbishop of Bombay. He began his presentation on Mission, Social Justice and Evangelisation by saying that “The theme of evangelisation must be considered in the wider context of spiritual combat. If this context is ignored in favour of a myopic world-vision, Christ’s salvation will be conveniently dismissed as irrelevant” He traced the themes of combat in scripture through Ephesians 6 and saw it present today in the “hideous anti-God monster or secularism, spiritual indifference, and relativism. He affirmed the uniqueness of Christ and the universality of his salvation quoting Acts 4:12 and Philippians 2 10-11.

The complete report is here. For the full text of Cardian Dias’ presentation, go here.

The Archbishop of Sudan speaks out

2008-07-22T14:42:00.005-05:00

Cherie Wetzel of Anglican Mainstream reports from the Lambeth Conference:

We have just had a briefing with the Archbishop of the Sudan, the Most Reverend Dr. Daniel Deng Bul. He informed the press room this morning that he would come and speak with us, since the Anglican Communion News Bureau running this conference, would not schedule a time for him to address the press…

“Gene Robinson should resign for the sake of the Church and the entire Anglican Communion. We are pleading with them (the others at this conference) for the Anglican World, to not throw that away. We do not want to throw any people away, either. But we are here to determine how to remain united. That begins with forgiving one another for errors made. Gene Robinson is an error. The American church has not admitted they are wrong and we cannot forgive them until they do.

“I do not see a way out of these problems with the Indaba groups. The main issues have not been touched. 300 bishops are not here because of Gene Robinson. Can he not resign to allow them to come? Why has he not done that? … Let the Anglican world be united and be a normal, respected Christian body. We have not punished the American church yet. We are asking them to repent. I am talking about the institutional church in America, no specific bishops. I am here to speak within the House. I cannot be silent on this issue…” When asked what would happen to the Communion if Robinson did not resign, the archbishop continued, “I cannot predict what will happen if he will not resign.”

Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London asked the archbishop who would pay for this conference, reportedly 2.6 million pounds in debt at this minute, and not able to pay for this by the parishes in the Church of England, if the American church was not invited. He replied very gently, “Issues of faith cannot be mixed with materialism.” …

“The culture does not change the Bible; the Bible changes the culture. Cultures that do not approve of the Bible are left out of the Church’s life; people who do not believe in the Bible are left out of our churches. The American church is saying that God made a mistake. He made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam.

“We will not talk to Gene Robinson or listen to him or his testimony. He has to confess, receive forgiveness and leave. Then we will talk. You cannot bring the listening to gay people to our Communion. People who do not believe in the Bible are left out of our churches, not invited in to tell us why they don’t believe.

“I have just come from a meeting of the African and Global South bishops who are here. There were almost 200 bishops there. They support the statement my Church made yesterday. That’s 17 provinces. The Authority of the Bible is always the same. You cannot pull a line out or add a line to it. That brings you a curse. We are saying no. You are wrong.”

Cherie concludes her report, “We are not alone!” Praise God that that is so—and pray that more orthodox bishops will speak publicly, and work to move the conference in a godly direction. Her full report is here—and you can read Ruth Gledhill’s similar story here.

Bishop John Howe writes from Lambeth

2008-07-22T14:18:00.003-05:00

Kendall Harmon is publishing Bishop John Howe’s reports from Lambeth on his TitusOneNine website. Here are some excerpts from his most recent letter:

After the second day of “Indaba” groups, there seems to be an incipient revolt stirring among us. Many of the Africans are saying, “This isn’t ‘Indaba’ at all! First of all, we are not a village, and we don’t know each other. And secondly, we are not attempting to solve a problem; we are talking in small groups about minor issues of little consequence.”

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu (himself an African, I believe from Uganda) is reported to have said, “If Indaba is such a great idea, why is Africa in such a mess?” There seems to be the beginning of some rumbling that we need to get to a decision-making moment in the life of the Conference…

I also had a brief conversation with the Russian Orthodox Bishop who is in my Bible Study (and Indaba Group). I asked him two questions. First, how have things changed for the Church, and for you, since the dismantling of the Soviet Union? “Drastically! Before there were 6,000 parishes in my area, today over 30,000. Before there were 18 monasteries, today over 750. Today I am free to teach religion in the public schools.” Secondly, we in the West were often told that the Soviet government used to place its own people in positions of authority in the Orthodox Church. Was that true? “Yes, but we always knew who those persons were. Usually they were placed there so that, after a time, they could publicly renounce the Faith and embrace atheism.”

I think that if God isn’t finished with the Russian Orthodox, he may not be finished with the Anglican Communion, either!

Let us hope and pray that that is so. Nevertheless it should be noted that the attack on the Russian Church was from a hostile government from the outside, under which circumstances the church often finds itself being strengthened. The attack on the Anglican Communion is from within. His whole email is posted here.