By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/25/2007
TIME Magazine placed it No. 5 on its top 10 biggest religion stories of the year - The Slow-Motion Episcopal/Anglican Train Wreck. Time did not mince words.
The article said the Episcopal Bishops' meeting in New Orleans failed to stem either the ongoing defection of conservatives over the church's position on homosexuals, or the likelihood of a worldwide Anglican split over the same issue.
The story was voted 5th following Pope Benedict XVI lifting the ban requiring a bishop's permission to celebrate mass in old-school Latin, but ahead of a story about Green Evangelicals, a group concerned about global warming, along with poverty and torture, becoming hot issues to a maturing conservative Christian movement.
By any estimate, it was a bad year for The Episcopal Church (TEC). Growing talk of schism in the wider Anglican Communion only heightened the tensions that continued throughout the year.
There were more consecrations by overseas Anglican provinces, more fleeing Episcopal parishes, and increasing legal dogfights from coast to coast over property ownership with a million or more dollars being spent in 2007 on legal fees.
The year had an inauspicious start when the Diocese of Virginia announced they were issuing lawsuits against 11 of its 15 departing congregations, continuing the scorched earth policy begun in 2006 against dissident congregations. The eleven announced they were leaving TEC and joining the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary outpost of the Church of Nigeria.
Lawsuits continued throughout the year with Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee inhibiting 21 clergy from the seceding congregations after litigation was initiated against them in order to evict them from their places of worship.
By year's end, there was still no legal resolution and, with some $30 million dollars in real estate at stake ,emotions were running high. An answer from the judge is expected sometime in January 2008.
2007 saw the continued realignment of the Anglican Communion, now in full swing, and gathering momentum almost weekly. Before the year ended, the evangelical Archbishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Rev. Gregory Venables, had stepped up to the plate announcing he would offer a safe "haven" to any diocese or bishop who wanted to flee either the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church in Canada.
Two retired Canadian bishops immediately transferred their licenses to the Southern Cone Primate. A political uproar ensued in the Canadian Anglican Church with threats and more coming from both the new Archbishop of Canada Fred Hiltz and New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham. Undeterred, Bishop Donald Harvey, Network Moderator for Canada, and Bishop Malcolm Harding, retired Bishop of Brandon, announced that they would minister under Archbishop Gregory Venables.
Both were distressed by the seismic shift in the theology and practice of the Anglican Church of Canada. Five former American Episcopal priests were consecrated as bishops to African provinces this year including Canon David C. Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, and the Rev. Canon Roger Ames for CANA; The Rev. John Guernsey for Uganda and the Revs William Murdoch and Bill Atwood for Kenya.
The Rt. Rev. William Cox, former assisting bishop of Oklahoma and retired suffragan of Maryland, set sail for the Province of the Southern Cone, avoiding a possible trial for ordaining former TEC priests into another Anglican jurisdiction. Hell hath no fury like liberal bishops scorned.
In March, The Rt. Rev. Dr. David J. Bena, Suffragan Bishop of Albany retired and joined CANA to serve under CANA's aggressive Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns. CANA moved into high gear and began swallowing parishes left right and center, ending the year with more than 60 congregations under its wing.
The only missionary movement bigger was the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) which saw their flock of parishes increase to 132. The Rt. Rev. Andrew Fairfield, retired Bishop of North Dakota, joined the Church of Uganda.
The highlight event of the year, as far the Episcopal Church was concerned, which TIME magazine noted, was the meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans.
This occasion saw the Archbishop of Canterbury (and members of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council) make cameo appearances to listen to the US bishops express themselves on the pressing issue of conformity to the Windsor Report.
It was an indecisive occasion marked by a good deal of uncertainty over whether TEC had conformed to the Windsor Report, and, if not, would it be disciplined by the ABC for its refusal to adhere to the Dar es Salaam statement.
The inconclusive draft version of a proposed Anglican Covenant offered little for orthodox Anglicans to believe that the TEC would ever conform to Scripture over faith and morals.
It was an occasion that saw Bishop Gene Robinson publicly berate Archbishop Williams over the ABC's refusal to issue an open invitation to the homogenital prelate to next years' Lambeth conference.
By year's end, most provinces agreed that the Episcopal Church had not adequately addressed the Tanzanian accord of archbishops. Turmoil reined. There was no peace in the valley, at the cathedral, at 815 2nd Ave., or in Lambeth Palace.
Prior to his coming to New Orleans, Archbishop Williams sent out invitations to next years' Lambeth conference thus cutting off speculation as to who would or would not be invited.
Not invited were Robinson, (at least officially, though he will come to offer private lectures on the joys of sodomy) or Bishop Robinson Cavilcanti (Recife) and the offshore American-African bishops, prompting the Archbishop of Rwanda Emmanuel Kolini to declare that he would not come if his AMiA bishops were not invited. Ugandan Primate Henry Luke Orombi uttered a similar "nyet" with the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, making similar threats if his CANA bishops were not extended an invitation.
By years' end, it was clear Dr. Williams would not widen the circle of bishops. With the threat came word that an alternative Lambeth conference was in the air, setting the Communion's leaders teeth on edge with cries that that it would send a "negative message" to Anglicans worldwide.
A kairos moment did occur at the HOB meeting in New Orleans when the Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, announced he was resigning from TEC and going to Rome.
A few months later, he was followed by the Bishop of Southwest Florida, John B. Lipscomb, who retired and announced his intention to also go to Rome. In all, four bishops, including Bishop Dan Herzog and Clarence Pope, crossed the Tiber to enter the embrace of the Mother Church. (Meantime, the Traditional Anglican Communion, with its 400,000 members and Australian-based Archbishop John Hepworth, also reached out to Rome in the hope that it, too. would be accepted under Rome's umbrella, albeit with an Anglican Use Rite.)
With Bishop David Bena going to the super evangelical Province of Nigeria and four bishops going to Rome, the great Protestant divide begun by Martin Luther 500 years ago seemed as alive as ever, despite major attempts over the years to bridge the Great and Historic Christian Divide. "They all might be one" is seemingly a distant vision, fulfilled perhaps only at the Second Coming, but certainly not before.
What did emerge was the reality that in the boxing ring of the Anglican Communion, two Titans (Rowan Williams, the Affirming Catholic, and Peter Akinola, the evangelical) are set on 16 rounds, as the rest of the communion watches with baited breath to see who will still be standing at the end of the fight.
It was a year which saws dozens of evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes fleeing the Episcopal Church with the cry that TEC is no longer able to affirm the authority of Holy Scripture. There were cries that the church's innovations such as sodomy and same-sex unions were the offending causes and besetting issues.
Large cardinal parishes, mainly on the East and West coasts, led the way with notable departures including the pro-cathedral of St. Clement in El Paso, Texas; the historic Christ Church, Savannah where John Wesley once preached; and the majority of Grace and St. Stephens in Colorado Springs.
The Diocese of Western Michigan lost its cathedral of Christ the King, Portage, in a fire sale (it was sold for less than the cost of building it) to a non-denominational Evangelical mega church. The cathedral was the product of the massively ego-driven Bishop Charles E. Bennison Sr. whose two sons were later unceremoniously dumped by their respective dioceses for sexual crimes and diocesan mismanagement.
In the Diocese of Los Angeles, four congregations continued protracted litigation as the year drew to a close. Decisions about who owned church properties were continually being overturned by one court or another. A lower court ruled that church properties belonged to the congregations, but an appellate court later overturned that ruling saying the church properties belonged to the diocese.
In the end, the California Supreme Court will decide the ownership of these parish properties. Perhaps the most incisive comment on the departures came from the Rev. Canon Filmore Strunk, rector of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Waxhaw, NC, who took 50% of his parish out of TEC saying the church had abandoned the historic Christian faith, practiced unbiblical sex, and embraced Gnosticism. "The Episcopal Church is not going to repent. I knew I was going to have to leave this building I had worked in for so many years to build. I was in tremendous sorrow, but I was not prepared to trade a beautiful building against my eternal soul."
For the Episcopal Church, the discussion was never over "the faith once delivered to the saints". It was, and is, all about properties and who owns them for future generations that won't be there. (Half the congregations can barely muster 70 people. The average age is 66.)
At pre-trial hearings in Fairfax, Virginia, Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori disclosed that parishes could be sold to saloons and other Christian groups, but not to other Anglican churches who desire a foothold for Anglican orthodoxy on US soil.
Her attorney, David Booth Beers, confirmed that even if the National Church adopted a non-Christian faith and declared holy war on the United States, the Diocese did not have the authority to withdraw from the denomination.
Undaunted by a realignment that seemed to be going against orthodox Episcopalians, seven diocesan bishops and 43 other Anglican bishops met as Common Cause Partners to build, what in time will become a new North American Anglican Province for a new Anglican future. At their first meeting in September in Pittsburgh, they announced the creation of a new ecclesial structure "to build a federation of orthodox Anglicans in North America."
They met in Orlando in December to take the process to the next level. The Council unanimously elected Bishop Bob Duncan as Moderator, and Canon Charlie Masters of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary, making this a trans-provincial structure designed in part to force Rowan Williams to recognize them.
By the end of the year, he had made no such guarantees. In his Advent sermon he questioned the legitimacy of bishops in the AMiA, CANA, Kenya and Uganda USA and deemed them unworthy to sit with him at Lambeth in 2008. In one quote he said, "And while ... I understand and respect the good faith of those who have felt called to provide additional episcopal oversight in the USA, there can be no doubt that these ordinations have not been encouraged or legitimized by the Communion overall."
The end result of it all is that Williams steadfastly refuses to pin down The Episcopal Church or place on probation those who violated doctrine while accommodating those whose moral actions were deemed non-normative to structure and discipline.
Many now believe that Anglicanism, as it is now constructed, has failed. The cry of many is "do we need to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus?"
In his Advent Letter, there was no call for The Episcopal Church to repent, but to realize that we are, for better or worse, locked into TEC's pansexual agenda. A bad marriage for sure, but divorce will not be permitted.
Soon after the September Pittsburgh meeting, Mrs. Jefferts Schori announced that 12 bishops (were they modeled on the 12 Apostles?) had been nominated as "episcopal visitors". They will be made available to parishes and dioceses at odds with the innovations of the Episcopal Church.
Ironically, no such visits have been announced, largely because the orthodox are leaving in droves and believe that compromise of any sort is no longer on the table. Mrs. Jefferts Schori announced a new organizational plan for the staff at the Episcopal Church, relocating staff members to four regional offices in the U.S. including Los Angeles.
General Theological Seminary underwent a makeover incorporating a $27 million conference center dedicated to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, all part of an $88 million makeover. However, no change was announced concerning the seminary's theological direction which pushes inclusivity and diversity rather than the exclusive claims of our Lord. The former disgraced homosexual Governor of New Jersey announced, while divorcing his wife in a bitter struggle over child custody, that he wanted to be a candidate for Holy Orders and entered the seminary to begin his studies. (His male partner will continue to practice law.)
Trinity (Episcopal) School for Ministry in Ambridge PA., saw the resignation of the Very Rev. Paul Zahl who has taken the rectorship of All Saints parish in the revisionist Diocese of Washington, but he will be under the protection of the former Bishop of South Carolina, Ed Salmon. The Rev. Ian Markham became the dean and president of Virginia Theological seminary, but no change in the seminary's liberal direction is expected. He got Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee's imprimatur which speaks volumes. The Very Rev. Doug Travis became the dean and president of the Episcopal Theological seminary of the Southwest, replacing the temporary leadership of Dr. Philip Turner.
The Bishop of Pennsylvania, Charles E. Bennison, was inhibited (finally) by the Presiding Bishop after years of financial mismanagement, but the charges were "conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy". In this instance, it was for a sexual abuse case involving his brother, John Bennison, who was dumped from the priesthood after it was revealed he had sexual relations with a 14-year old girl in Charles' home, when Charles was a priest in California. Bennison has mounted a public relations offensive, but with a presentment by the Standing Committee still in the works and an ecclesiastical trial more than six months away, it is generally accepted that Bennison is history, as far as reclaiming his see is concerned.
The theological and moral breakdown in the church continued apace with a female Episcopal priest, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, on the staff of St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, Washington, announcing that she was now a practicing Muslim and saw no contradiction in remaining an Episcopal priest. The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, Bishop of Rhode Island, saw differently and promptly inhibited her for a year asking her to reflect on her faith, if any, that she might have.
The Executive Council of the National church met in three different locations of the U.S. and only succeeded in rejecting any notion of primatial oversight, a pastoral plan proposed by Anglican primates in Tanzania earlier in the year. Episcopal bishops consistently rejected any notion of primatial "interference" in TEC affairs including a commonly sought Constitutions and Canons, arguing that it violated their independence while, at the same time, strenuously demanding a place at the Anglican table on its terms. Few saw the contradiction.
A slew of liberal bishops were elected to various liberal and revisionist dioceses with little fanfare in 2007. The one notable exception was in the Diocese of South Carolina, where the orthodox Rev. Mark Lawrence finally got consents during a second round of balloting, adroitly fudging the language of "will I or will I not take the diocese out of TEC when I am elected."
He will succeed Bishop Ed Salmon in January 2008 when he is consecrated. Saying he will remain faithful to the Anglican Communion doesn't necessarily mean he will stay faithful to TEC. Lawrence has endorsed separating the Diocese of South Carolina from the Episcopal Church and has advocated that the authority of the General Convention be surrendered to the primates of the Anglican Communion. We will know more ere long.
One of the oddest elections to the episcopacy was the boy bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Sean Rowe. At 32, he is one of the youngest bishop ever appointed. (William Gordon of Alaska was 29 1/2 and had to wait 6 months to be ordained - Lyman Ogilby of the Philippines and later PA was about 31.) The resignation of the 44-year old bishop of Oregon, Johncy Itty, raised eyebrows after only 36 months on the job. The Diocese of Chicago narrowly avoided a constitutional crisis by not electing a lesbian, Tracey Lind, to replace the outgoing William Persell. The diocese elected the liberal Jeffrey Lee, Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina, Washington. Bishop Mark MacDonald resigned as the diocesan leader of Alaska to become National Indigenous Bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, while remaining Bishop of Navajoland with no one questioning the issue of boundary crossing except when it is done by overseas primates rescuing orthodox parishes from revisionist Episcopal bishops.
Eight retired bishops died, the most notable being the evangelical Stephen Jecko, former Bishop of Florida. He was assisting the Bishop of Dallas James Stanton when he went to be with our Lord.
Early in December, VOL revealed that the National Church spent close to $1 million in lawsuits in 2007, while the denomination continued its slow but steady decline in numbers throughout the year as tens of thousands of orthodox Episcopalians exit the church for safer spiritual climes under African primates and a Southern Cone archbishop.
The Office of Congregational Development revealed that membership in the church declined by more than a 1,000 a week, a total of 50,000 during 2006 with average Sunday attendance dropping by just under 22,000. Only a small handful of dioceses, mostly conservative, showed any growth in 2007.
At its annual convention in December, the Diocese of San Joaquin took an historic step and voted to disassociate from The Episcopal Church. The convention also accepted an invitation from Archbishop Gregory Venables and the bishops of the Province of the Southern Cone of South America to be welcomed into their membership.
According to San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield this was the first time in American Anglican history that a diocese had realigned with a like-minded province. He said the vote was a resounding affirmation by his clergy and laity to remain within the worldwide Anglican Communion with its heritage and universally accepted teaching based on the word of God.
Numerous African and Latin bishops made forays onto US soil and into liberal Episcopal dioceses in 2007 drawing down the wrath of liberal Episcopal bishops, but there was little they could do about it. There seemingly will be no let up in 2008.
The hemorrhaging of The Episcopal Church is expected to pick up dramatically in 2008 when other dioceses, including Pittsburgh, Ft. Worth and Quincy, and perhaps three or four more, are expected to vote to leave TEC.
The realignment in The Episcopal Church is now firmly underway. Schism, it would appear, is inevitable.
END
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Global Anglicans Face Test of Strength
From ChristianityToday.com:
December 26, 2007 9:26AM
December 26, 2007 9:26AM
Top conservatives plan "Anglican Future" event in Jerusalem six weeks before Lambeth.
Tim Morgan
This morning, Dec. 26, conservative Anglicans announced they will gather in Jerusalem (see press statement below) about 6 weeks before the historic Lambeth conference in the UK. Lambeth will start in mid-July and end in early August 2008.
Many conservative bishops will boycott Lambeth due to the fallout over The Episcopal Church's actions supportive of GLBT clergy and couples, TEC's rejection of global accountability, and its re-interpretation of core scriptural teachings.
TEC's ambiguous response to the Windsor Report and its refusals to follow the guidance of Anglican primates meeting in Tanzania in early 2007 to end gay ordinations, same-sex blessings, and property litigation against conservative parishes have undermined Anglican unity worldwide.
The 2003 consecration of a homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire has been the flashpoint.
In recent weeks, there has been speculation about whether Anglican conservatives will put together a rival Lambeth-like event. Many conservative Anglican bishops expect to opt out of the once-per-decade-event in Canterbury, but had hopes of gathering for a global consultation.
Conservative firebrand David Virtue of Virtue Online observed back in June 07:
The concept of a parallel Lambeth Conference was first raised by the Most Rev. Peter Akinola, Archbishop and Primate of Nigeria, as well as head of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA)....
In mid-December, Virtue noted:
Now the idea has again emerged with a news report out of London, by Jonathan Petre of the Telegraph, that Conservative Anglican leaders are secretly planning a meeting next summer for the hundreds of bishops expected to defy the Archbishop of Canterbury by boycotting the Lambeth Conference.
The unprecedented event will be widely seen as an "alternative Lambeth", further damaging Dr. Rowan Williams's hopes of averting a formal schism over homosexuals, wrote Petre.
Aides of the Archbishop said that any such gathering, which is due to be held just before the official conference, would be perceived as a symbol of division and would send out a "negative" message. Indeed, it would.
These events in June, July, and August pose a three-fold test as I see it:
1. It will test the strength and coherence of an emerging conservative majority within global Anglicanism.
2. It will test the resolve of the Anglican left-wing's agenda to steer the global church toward affirmation of homosexuality as normative human sexual expression.
3. It will test the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury in its ability to provide a viable way forward for a deeply divided church.
Here's the edited version of the press release:
GLOBAL ANGLICAN FUTURE CONFERENCE IN HOLY LAND
ANNOUNCED BY ORTHODOX PRIMATES
Orthodox Primates with other leading bishops from across the globe are to invite fellow Bishops, senior clergy and laity from every province of the Anglican Communion to a unique eight-day event, to be known as the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) 2008.
The event, which was agreed at a meeting of Primates in Nairobi last week, will be in the form of a pilgrimage back to the roots of the Church’s faith. The Holy Land is the planned venue. From 15-22 June 2008, Anglicans from both the Evangelical and Anglo-catholic wings of the church will make pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where Christ was born, ministered, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent his Holy Spirit, and where the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out, to strengthen them for what they believe will be difficult days ahead.
At the meeting were Archbishops Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Henry Orombi (Uganda), Emmanuel Kolini (Rwanda), Benjamin Nzimbi (Kenya), Donald Mtetemela (Tanzania), Peter Jensen (Sydney), Nicholas Okoh (Nigeria); Bishop Don Harvey (Canada), Bishop Bill Atwood (Kenya) representing Archbishop Greg Venables (Southern Cone) , Bishop Bob Duncan (Anglican Communion Network), Bishop
Martyn Minns (Convocation of Anglicans in North America ), Canon Dr Vinay Samuel (India and England) and Canon Dr Chris Sugden (England). Bishops Michael Nazir-Ali (Rochester, England), Bishop Wallace Benn (Lewes, England) were consulted by telephone. These leaders represent over 30 million of the 55 million active Anglicans in the world.
Southern Cone Primate Gregory Venables said: “While there are many calls for shared mission, it clearly must rise from common shared faith. Our pastoral responsibility to the people that we lead is now to provide the opportunity to come together around the central and unchanging tenets of the central and unchanging historic Anglican faith. Rather than being subject to the continued chaos and compromise that have dramatically impeded Anglican mission, GAFCON will seek to clarify God’s call at this time and build a network of cooperation for Global mission.”
The gathering set in motion a Global Anglican Future Conference: A Gospel of Power and Transformation. The vision, according to Archbishop Nzimbi is to inform and inspire invited leaders "to seek transformation in our own lives and help impact communities and societies through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Bishops and their wives, clergy and laity, including the next generation of young leaders will attend GAFCON.
The GAFCON website is www.gafcon.org.
Canon Chris Sugden added: "While this conference is not a specific challenge to the Lambeth Conference, it will provide opportunities for fellowship and care for those who have decided not to attend Lambeth. There was no other place to meet at this critical time for the future of the Church than in the Holy Land .”
Frequently asked Questions
1. Who is sponsoring the Conference?
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) is being called by those who took part in the Nairobi Consultation:
Archbishops Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Henry Orombi (Uganda), Emmanuel Kolini (Rwanda), Benjamin Nzimbi (Kenya), Donald Mtetemela (Tanzania), Archbishop Peter Jensen (Sydney) Archbishop Nicholas Okoh (Nigeria). Bishop Don Harvey (Canada) and Bishop Bill Atwood (Kenya) who also represented Archbishop Greg Venables (Southern Cone). Bishop Bob Duncan (Anglican Communion Network and Common Cause USA.), Bishop Martyn Minns (Convocation of Anglicans in North America), Canon Dr Vinay Samuel (India and England), Canon Dr Chris Sugden (England)
Bishop Michael Nazir Ali (Rochester, England) and Bishop Wallace Benn (Lewes, England) were consulted and also form part of the Leadership Team.
These bishops and their colleagues represent over 30 million Anglicans out of the 55 million active Anglicans. ( Nigeria 18m , Uganda 8m Kenya 2.5m Rwanda 1 m Tanzania 1.3 m plus Southern Cone, US, Sydney, England). The notional total of the Communion is 77m. The active membership is nearer 55 m, since of the 26m notional members in CofE 3.7m attend at Christmas Services)
2. Whom do you expect to come?
We will be inviting bishops and their wives, senior clergy, church planters, and lay people including the next generation of young leaders. We aim to make it a Global Anglican Conference with its eye on the future and future leadership.
3. Is this a Global South Initiative?
Not quite. Many of the Primates at the Nairobi Consultation are in the Global South, but it also included Anglican leaders from parts of the world beyond the geographic Global South.
4. Why a pilgrimage?
We are looking to the future of the Global Anglican Communion, which is itself a pilgrimage.
Those who want to hold on to the Biblical and Historical faith need to come together to renew their faith and develop a fresh vision for our common mission. The way we have chosen to do this is to undertake a pilgrimage to a land whose heritage we all share, the land where Jesus Christ was born, ministered, died, rose again, ascended into heaven and sent his Holy Spirit, and where the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out. We believe this will strengthen us for the difficult days ahead.
The conference will outline the mission imperatives for the next 25 years for orthodox Anglicans. It is important therefore to reconnect with our roots in the biblical story.
5. Is not Israel/Palestine a controversial venue?
Israel/Palestine has been a place of conflict for decades. That should not keep us from making pilgrimage to a land that is our common heritage. We want to bring fellowship and bear testimony to the Christian communities in Israel/Palestine. Those of us from Africa are no strangers to the pressure that Christian communities are put under from other religious groups and communities.
6. Why call it in June?
The pilgrimage is to strengthen bishops at a crucial time in the life of the Anglican Communion. Many bishops will not be able to accept the invitation to the Lambeth Conference as their consciences will not allow it. Some will attend both gatherings. The purpose of the consultation is to strengthen them all spiritually.
7. Is it not really an alternative to the Lambeth Conference?
No. It is not at the same time or in the same region as the Lambeth Conference. So there will be some who will attend both conferences and thus be able to consult with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others there.
As Archbishop Gregory Venables has said: “While there are many calls for shared mission, it clearly must rise from common shared faith. Our pastoral responsibility to the people we lead is now to provide the opportunity to come together around the central and unchanging tenets of the central and unchanging historic Anglican faith. Rather than being subject to the continued chaos and compromise that have dramatically impeded Anglican mission, GAFCON will seek to clarify God’s call at this time and build a network of cooperation for Global mission.”
GAFCON is a call to vision and action for mission based firmly on the “faith once delivered to the saints” and revealed in Scripture, to reform the church and transform persons, communities and societies through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. African Bishops had this focus at their Lagos 2004 conference. The Episcopal church’s agenda has recently overshadowed it. We now need to develop this gospel agenda for all like-minded in the communion.
It is to outline the mission imperatives for the next 25 years and how to begin to respond to them.
It is a pilgrimage to the places of the Biblical story to renew our faith and commitment. It is to envision the Global Anglican Future.
The Lambeth Conference has a different agenda.
8. Is this all over a gay bishop?
No. GAFCON is about churches being grouped by what they have in common. We're for growth, we're for being passionate about the truth. We want to look to the future. That's what the conference is about - Global Anglican Future.
9. Aren't you splitting the church?
No. Communion depends on having something in common. Churches in the Global South are growing. They're passionate about the truth and their faith. We are building on this strength.
[also posted at Anglicanism in America]
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Books & Culture: RUMORS OF GLORY
The Conscience of an Anglican
A man under authority.
by Alan Jacobs | posted 12/24/07
For some time now, people have been asking me why I haven't written anything on the current—or, depending on your point of view, everlasting—crisis in the Anglican world. After all, I have been an Anglican for nearly twenty-five years, virtually all of my adult life; indeed, my experiences in other denominations, before I discovered Anglicanism, were so brief and tentative that I don't even know how to be a Christian except as an Anglican. Nor do I wish to be a Christian in any other way. Surely I have some opinions on the mess the Anglican Communion is now in, on how it got this way, and how it might get out again?
Well, yes, I do have such opinions. But they are worthless. All such opinions amount to little more than the assignation of blame for past events and predictions of the future—the latter usually involving punishments to come for those blamed for the past—and neither of those activities interests me. There was a time when they did, but I have long since learned how futile such pursuits are, and (more important) how powerfully they distract from the core practices of the Christian life. This is the primary reason why, after too long a season scanning the Anglican blogs daily, I now check just one of them, and once a week, at most. This abstinence has calmed my spirit and removed, I think permanently, my taste for such things.
Moreover, I remind myself that the churches of the Anglican world are governed by bishops, and I am not a bishop. One of the chief reasons I have held firm to Anglicanism over the years is that I believe that the threefold order of ministry—bishop, priest, and deacon—is the model taught by the apostles, the governance particularly approved by God. In this model I, as a layman—even though I am also a member of the priesthood of all believers—have a highly circumscribed role. If my pastor asks me to teach, I teach; otherwise I shut up. In the unlikely (and unwelcome) event of a bishop of the Church asking for my thoughts I would share them; otherwise I keep them to myself, at least in public. The decisions that will shape the future of the Anglican Communion will be made by bishops, not by laypeople, nor even by priests; if I care about that Communion—and I do—I had best be praying for those bishops, and not repeating the error of Job in darkening counsel by words without knowledge.
Like the Roman centurion, then, I am a man under authority, and also like him, I have some responsibilities of my own. Chief among them is to raise my son Wesley in the faith of the Gospel. Around four years ago now I left the Episcopal Church because—thanks to various changes in our parish's life that followed the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire—I knew that if we stayed my son would be taught doctrines which I do not hold, and, just as important, would not be taught doctrines which I hold and believe it important for all Christians to hold. People who encouraged me to stay reminded me that, as (relatively) theologically knowledgeable persons, my wife and I could correct any sins of omission or commission when we got home. But the idea that the family holds the full responsibility for forming children in the faith, with the church being nothing more than a place of worship, is one of the ideas that I don't want to teach my son. Another one is this: that bishops can ignore or repudiate significant portions of the doctrine and discipline of the Church—something the Bishop of Chicago did on a regular basis—and still be thought of as legitimate pastoral overseers for their people.
In leaving the Episcopal Church, then, I believe that I acted according to what Cardinal Newman long ago called "the supreme authority of Conscience … the aboriginal Vicar of Christ." For Newman, conscience is anything but "private judgment": it is, rather, the testing of one's own private judgments, and sometimes those of others, against Scripture and against the long testimony of the whole church of Christ. And if we test those judgments so, and invoke our consciences, we enter perilous territory: as Newman reminds us, the fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirmed that Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, ædificat ad gehennam—Whatever is done in opposition to conscience is conducive to damnation.
But there is no coercing the consciences of others, especially in what Rusty Reno has called "the ruins of the church." One acts according to conscience, but it takes a certain rashness to commend one's own precise course to others. My dear friend Charles Marsh published a book this year called Wayward Christian Soldiers, and while I disagree with much that he argues in it, one chapter of the book has has often come back to my mind in an especially powerful way. Its title is "Learning to be Quiet in a Noisy Nation (and in a Nation of Noisy Believers)." The historical moment Charles invokes, and encourages all Christians to consider, is that of the German church in the Nazi era. I am not, let me hasten to say, casting anyone in the role of Nazi or Nazi sympathizer; the point of comparison between Lutheranism in 1930s Germany and Anglicanism in North America today is simply that both churches are broken, ruined; both present their adherents (clergy and laypeople) with potent challenges to faithfulness. And in the midst of such challenges—so said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, consistently, from the time of the Nazi accession in 1933 to his execution in the spring of 1945—almost the first requirement of the Christian is, simply, silence. "The time of words is over," he said; sometimes words have to be forgone in order to save time and energy and focus for what is more essential than words: "prayer and righteous action."
Not because I am taking a general vow of silence, but for other reasons, I am now concluding this online column. Its title, as you can see, is "Rumors of Glory," from a Bruce Cockburn song I particularly admire. Those of us living in the ruins of Anglicanism might be especially inclined to say that we have nothing more to go on than rumors, a handful of slightly hopeful whispers fading into imperceptibility. This could be deeply worrisome for those, like me, who see in Anglicanism a beautiful and compelling vision, a church that draws together the Catholic and the Reformed strands of the Christian life and thereby brings both of them to their fullest realization. I do not enjoy the thought that the Anglican experiment may be over, since, as I have said, I don't know how to be a Christian any other way; but I do not believe that that experiment is over; in fact, I have hope—I hear certain rumors—that it may be only beginning.
But even if that experiment is drawing to a close, I am not worried—a little sad, maybe, but not worried. I could learn to be a Christian some other way, if I had to, because, after all, there is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. Plus, I'm thinking about Christmas, which, among other things, teaches us that all those rumors are true: the Lord of All came once, in meekness and humility, in the form of a servant. And he will come again—but next time in glory.
Alan Jacobs teaches English at Wheaton College in Illinois; his history of Original Sin will be published in Spring 2008 by HarperOne. His Tumblelog is here.
[also posted at Anglicanism in America]
A man under authority.
by Alan Jacobs | posted 12/24/07
For some time now, people have been asking me why I haven't written anything on the current—or, depending on your point of view, everlasting—crisis in the Anglican world. After all, I have been an Anglican for nearly twenty-five years, virtually all of my adult life; indeed, my experiences in other denominations, before I discovered Anglicanism, were so brief and tentative that I don't even know how to be a Christian except as an Anglican. Nor do I wish to be a Christian in any other way. Surely I have some opinions on the mess the Anglican Communion is now in, on how it got this way, and how it might get out again?
Well, yes, I do have such opinions. But they are worthless. All such opinions amount to little more than the assignation of blame for past events and predictions of the future—the latter usually involving punishments to come for those blamed for the past—and neither of those activities interests me. There was a time when they did, but I have long since learned how futile such pursuits are, and (more important) how powerfully they distract from the core practices of the Christian life. This is the primary reason why, after too long a season scanning the Anglican blogs daily, I now check just one of them, and once a week, at most. This abstinence has calmed my spirit and removed, I think permanently, my taste for such things.
Moreover, I remind myself that the churches of the Anglican world are governed by bishops, and I am not a bishop. One of the chief reasons I have held firm to Anglicanism over the years is that I believe that the threefold order of ministry—bishop, priest, and deacon—is the model taught by the apostles, the governance particularly approved by God. In this model I, as a layman—even though I am also a member of the priesthood of all believers—have a highly circumscribed role. If my pastor asks me to teach, I teach; otherwise I shut up. In the unlikely (and unwelcome) event of a bishop of the Church asking for my thoughts I would share them; otherwise I keep them to myself, at least in public. The decisions that will shape the future of the Anglican Communion will be made by bishops, not by laypeople, nor even by priests; if I care about that Communion—and I do—I had best be praying for those bishops, and not repeating the error of Job in darkening counsel by words without knowledge.
Like the Roman centurion, then, I am a man under authority, and also like him, I have some responsibilities of my own. Chief among them is to raise my son Wesley in the faith of the Gospel. Around four years ago now I left the Episcopal Church because—thanks to various changes in our parish's life that followed the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire—I knew that if we stayed my son would be taught doctrines which I do not hold, and, just as important, would not be taught doctrines which I hold and believe it important for all Christians to hold. People who encouraged me to stay reminded me that, as (relatively) theologically knowledgeable persons, my wife and I could correct any sins of omission or commission when we got home. But the idea that the family holds the full responsibility for forming children in the faith, with the church being nothing more than a place of worship, is one of the ideas that I don't want to teach my son. Another one is this: that bishops can ignore or repudiate significant portions of the doctrine and discipline of the Church—something the Bishop of Chicago did on a regular basis—and still be thought of as legitimate pastoral overseers for their people.
In leaving the Episcopal Church, then, I believe that I acted according to what Cardinal Newman long ago called "the supreme authority of Conscience … the aboriginal Vicar of Christ." For Newman, conscience is anything but "private judgment": it is, rather, the testing of one's own private judgments, and sometimes those of others, against Scripture and against the long testimony of the whole church of Christ. And if we test those judgments so, and invoke our consciences, we enter perilous territory: as Newman reminds us, the fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirmed that Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, ædificat ad gehennam—Whatever is done in opposition to conscience is conducive to damnation.
But there is no coercing the consciences of others, especially in what Rusty Reno has called "the ruins of the church." One acts according to conscience, but it takes a certain rashness to commend one's own precise course to others. My dear friend Charles Marsh published a book this year called Wayward Christian Soldiers, and while I disagree with much that he argues in it, one chapter of the book has has often come back to my mind in an especially powerful way. Its title is "Learning to be Quiet in a Noisy Nation (and in a Nation of Noisy Believers)." The historical moment Charles invokes, and encourages all Christians to consider, is that of the German church in the Nazi era. I am not, let me hasten to say, casting anyone in the role of Nazi or Nazi sympathizer; the point of comparison between Lutheranism in 1930s Germany and Anglicanism in North America today is simply that both churches are broken, ruined; both present their adherents (clergy and laypeople) with potent challenges to faithfulness. And in the midst of such challenges—so said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, consistently, from the time of the Nazi accession in 1933 to his execution in the spring of 1945—almost the first requirement of the Christian is, simply, silence. "The time of words is over," he said; sometimes words have to be forgone in order to save time and energy and focus for what is more essential than words: "prayer and righteous action."
Not because I am taking a general vow of silence, but for other reasons, I am now concluding this online column. Its title, as you can see, is "Rumors of Glory," from a Bruce Cockburn song I particularly admire. Those of us living in the ruins of Anglicanism might be especially inclined to say that we have nothing more to go on than rumors, a handful of slightly hopeful whispers fading into imperceptibility. This could be deeply worrisome for those, like me, who see in Anglicanism a beautiful and compelling vision, a church that draws together the Catholic and the Reformed strands of the Christian life and thereby brings both of them to their fullest realization. I do not enjoy the thought that the Anglican experiment may be over, since, as I have said, I don't know how to be a Christian any other way; but I do not believe that that experiment is over; in fact, I have hope—I hear certain rumors—that it may be only beginning.
But even if that experiment is drawing to a close, I am not worried—a little sad, maybe, but not worried. I could learn to be a Christian some other way, if I had to, because, after all, there is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. Plus, I'm thinking about Christmas, which, among other things, teaches us that all those rumors are true: the Lord of All came once, in meekness and humility, in the form of a servant. And he will come again—but next time in glory.
Alan Jacobs teaches English at Wheaton College in Illinois; his history of Original Sin will be published in Spring 2008 by HarperOne. His Tumblelog is here.
[also posted at Anglicanism in America]
Time Magazine Top Ten Religion Stories of 2007
#5 The Episcopal Church At Odds Over Gays
The U.S. Episcopal Church and its parent, the Anglican Communion, continue disintegrating over the issue of gay Christians. Beyond the human cost of this slow-motion implosion — sparked by the Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop in 2003 and to accept same-sex unions — the nasty split has already hatched custody battles over church property: Courts are generally being asked to determine whether the conservative parishes seceding from Episcopalianism over the gay issue can take their buildings with them — or whether they belong to the Episcopal diocese. On a global scale, the battle is among the 79 million members of the Communion, who, in a recent count, appear to be almost equally divided over whether to continue to accept U.S. Episcopalians into the international Communion. Equally divided, that is, if you're talking strictly about proportions of the Communion's 38 provinces. By another measure, a majority of believers are on the conservative side, and a majority of the money is on the liberal side. A mess.
[Also posted to Anglicanism in America]
The U.S. Episcopal Church and its parent, the Anglican Communion, continue disintegrating over the issue of gay Christians. Beyond the human cost of this slow-motion implosion — sparked by the Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop in 2003 and to accept same-sex unions — the nasty split has already hatched custody battles over church property: Courts are generally being asked to determine whether the conservative parishes seceding from Episcopalianism over the gay issue can take their buildings with them — or whether they belong to the Episcopal diocese. On a global scale, the battle is among the 79 million members of the Communion, who, in a recent count, appear to be almost equally divided over whether to continue to accept U.S. Episcopalians into the international Communion. Equally divided, that is, if you're talking strictly about proportions of the Communion's 38 provinces. By another measure, a majority of believers are on the conservative side, and a majority of the money is on the liberal side. A mess.
[Also posted to Anglicanism in America]
Saturday, December 22, 2007
What the Bishop of CNY Said Was Not Happening, Part Two
ORLANDO, FL: Common Cause Partnership Strengthens Orthodox Anglican Ties
No formal announcement of a new orthodox province at this time
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/19/2007
Common Cause partners, a federation of Anglican Christians in North America, met in Orlando this week to strengthen their common call to Christian education and mission with the Council unanimously electing Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan as Moderator. Delegates also elected Canon Charlie Masters of Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary.
Three delegates from each of the ten Common Cause partners gathered in Orlando which included Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, the recently retired primate of the Province of Southeast Asia, one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, representing the Anglican Coalition in Canada.
No formal announcement of a new orthodox Anglican province was made at this gathering, though sources told VOL that this was "only a matter of time."
Dr. Rowan Williams has given no indication that he will recognize any formal new body of orthodox Anglicans in North America as he still regards The Episcopal Church as the legitimate voice of American Anglicanism within the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
In a recent Advent letter, The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that tensions between The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Communion - an ongoing crisis for more than four years - have been sufficiently addressed by The Episcopal Church and "it would be unrealistic and ungrateful to expect more from TEC in terms of clarification."
Williams said he wanted "professionally facilitated conversations" between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, "to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding."
Common Cause Partners no longer believe that is possible. There is reason to believe that an alternative Lambeth conference is in the making before the formal Lambeth Conference meets in July 2008 in Canterbury.
The Leadership Council meeting in Orlando ratified a statement of theology, and formed the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of confederation adopted in September 2007.
A communique from this meeting called for the adoption of the Articles of Federation, now adopted by nine of the partners, that recognize the autonomy of the individual Jurisdictions and Ministries, and their constituent bodies, which could not be restricted or be superseded by membership. The Partners said they anticipated a growing number of joint mission initiatives that will strengthen their witness as united and faithful Anglicans in North America.
The Partners said they would also begin to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world.
"Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past. We stand committed to the "faith once delivered to the saints" as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel."
END
No formal announcement of a new orthodox province at this time
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/19/2007
Common Cause partners, a federation of Anglican Christians in North America, met in Orlando this week to strengthen their common call to Christian education and mission with the Council unanimously electing Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan as Moderator. Delegates also elected Canon Charlie Masters of Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary.
Three delegates from each of the ten Common Cause partners gathered in Orlando which included Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, the recently retired primate of the Province of Southeast Asia, one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, representing the Anglican Coalition in Canada.
No formal announcement of a new orthodox Anglican province was made at this gathering, though sources told VOL that this was "only a matter of time."
Dr. Rowan Williams has given no indication that he will recognize any formal new body of orthodox Anglicans in North America as he still regards The Episcopal Church as the legitimate voice of American Anglicanism within the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
In a recent Advent letter, The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that tensions between The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Communion - an ongoing crisis for more than four years - have been sufficiently addressed by The Episcopal Church and "it would be unrealistic and ungrateful to expect more from TEC in terms of clarification."
Williams said he wanted "professionally facilitated conversations" between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, "to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding."
Common Cause Partners no longer believe that is possible. There is reason to believe that an alternative Lambeth conference is in the making before the formal Lambeth Conference meets in July 2008 in Canterbury.
The Leadership Council meeting in Orlando ratified a statement of theology, and formed the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of confederation adopted in September 2007.
A communique from this meeting called for the adoption of the Articles of Federation, now adopted by nine of the partners, that recognize the autonomy of the individual Jurisdictions and Ministries, and their constituent bodies, which could not be restricted or be superseded by membership. The Partners said they anticipated a growing number of joint mission initiatives that will strengthen their witness as united and faithful Anglicans in North America.
The Partners said they would also begin to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world.
"Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past. We stand committed to the "faith once delivered to the saints" as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel."
END
ORLANDO, FL: Common Cause Partnership Strengthens Orthodox Anglican Ties
No formal announcement of a new orthodox province at this time
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/19/2007
Common Cause partners, a federation of Anglican Christians in North America, met in Orlando this week to strengthen their common call to Christian education and mission with the Council unanimously electing Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan as Moderator. Delegates also elected Canon Charlie Masters of Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary.
Three delegates from each of the ten Common Cause partners gathered in Orlando which included Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, the recently retired primate of the Province of Southeast Asia, one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, representing the Anglican Coalition in Canada.
No formal announcement of a new orthodox Anglican province was made at this gathering, though sources told VOL that this was "only a matter of time."
Dr. Rowan Williams has given no indication that he will recognize any formal new body of orthodox Anglicans in North America as he still regards The Episcopal Church as the legitimate voice of American Anglicanism within the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
In a recent Advent letter, The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that tensions between The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Communion - an ongoing crisis for more than four years - have been sufficiently addressed by The Episcopal Church and "it would be unrealistic and ungrateful to expect more from TEC in terms of clarification."
Williams said he wanted "professionally facilitated conversations" between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, "to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding."
Common Cause Partners no longer believe that is possible. There is reason to believe that an alternative Lambeth conference is in the making before the formal Lambeth Conference meets in July 2008 in Canterbury.
The Leadership Council meeting in Orlando ratified a statement of theology, and formed the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of confederation adopted in September 2007.
A communique from this meeting called for the adoption of the Articles of Federation, now adopted by nine of the partners, that recognize the autonomy of the individual Jurisdictions and Ministries, and their constituent bodies, which could not be restricted or be superseded by membership. The Partners said they anticipated a growing number of joint mission initiatives that will strengthen their witness as united and faithful Anglicans in North America.
The Partners said they would also begin to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world.
"Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past. We stand committed to the "faith once delivered to the saints" as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel."
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/19/2007
Common Cause partners, a federation of Anglican Christians in North America, met in Orlando this week to strengthen their common call to Christian education and mission with the Council unanimously electing Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan as Moderator. Delegates also elected Canon Charlie Masters of Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary.
Three delegates from each of the ten Common Cause partners gathered in Orlando which included Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, the recently retired primate of the Province of Southeast Asia, one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, representing the Anglican Coalition in Canada.
No formal announcement of a new orthodox Anglican province was made at this gathering, though sources told VOL that this was "only a matter of time."
Dr. Rowan Williams has given no indication that he will recognize any formal new body of orthodox Anglicans in North America as he still regards The Episcopal Church as the legitimate voice of American Anglicanism within the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
In a recent Advent letter, The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that tensions between The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Communion - an ongoing crisis for more than four years - have been sufficiently addressed by The Episcopal Church and "it would be unrealistic and ungrateful to expect more from TEC in terms of clarification."
Williams said he wanted "professionally facilitated conversations" between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, "to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding."
Common Cause Partners no longer believe that is possible. There is reason to believe that an alternative Lambeth conference is in the making before the formal Lambeth Conference meets in July 2008 in Canterbury.
The Leadership Council meeting in Orlando ratified a statement of theology, and formed the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of confederation adopted in September 2007.
A communique from this meeting called for the adoption of the Articles of Federation, now adopted by nine of the partners, that recognize the autonomy of the individual Jurisdictions and Ministries, and their constituent bodies, which could not be restricted or be superseded by membership. The Partners said they anticipated a growing number of joint mission initiatives that will strengthen their witness as united and faithful Anglicans in North America.
The Partners said they would also begin to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world.
"Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past. We stand committed to the "faith once delivered to the saints" as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel."
END
THE LIES OF LIBERAL ANGLICAN BISHOPS
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/21/2007
"The Anglican Church is passing through a time of controversy. There have been people praying outside the doors of our temples, people unable or unwilling to come in. Though we go in and out of our churches easily, offering quick assurances that all are welcome, these people fear they are not - aboriginal people wanting to tell us about their woundedness, gay and lesbian people asking for a blessing, young people seeking affirmation of their youthfulness, and many others." --- New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham
As the Anglican Communion slowly comes apart, the lies of the left grow exponentially.
Consider the above statement by the Bishop of New Westminster Michael Ingham. The truth is there has never been a time when orthodox Anglicans have turned away anyone from its churches. The church is, among other things, a hospital for the wounded and sinners, not a home for the righteous or self-righteous. I have never seen an orthodox priest stand at the door of a church quizzing people about their sexual practices. That is a lie and a myth.
Ingham goes on to say this: "We could have turned away from these people. We could have refused to listen, refused to apologize, refused to acknowledge, refused to bless and welcome. And because we have not done that, because we have opened the circle of our compassion a little wider, and changed the tradition that kept them out, we are paying a price in turmoil." He then goes on to say that his diocese "is facing up to changing understandings of human sexuality."
That the church has made mistakes is hardly new. The aboriginal debacle being a case in point. The church has apologized and shelled out millions to settle the case. When it comes to homosexuality, same-sex unions and the like, we are talking about the received teaching of the church and the way people behave, something the church has every right to do, or it is not fulfilling its mission.
What has happened in this debate is that the people who have been, and are, marginalized, people who have not been apologized to or made welcome, are men and women who have renounced the homosexual lifestyle in Canada in order to be obedient to God's law, traditional Christian teaching, and because they earnestly believe that such a lifestyle is spiritually harmful and eternally threatening should they persist in it.
Members of Zacchaeus Fellowship, Canadian Anglican ex-gays say that not all persons with same-sex attractions want these attractions affirmed. They are especially concerned for those whom they describe as "silent sufferers" in the pews. These are the many individuals who adhere to the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality and wish for the church neither to condemn them as persons nor to encourage them to act on those same-sex attractions.
What happens is this. When a homosexual or lesbian renounces the lifestyle they get accused of being "self-loathing" and "homophobic", much like the Bishop of San Joaquin, John-David Schofield who renounced the lifestyle many years ago. In other words Ingham doesn't want people to change, he wants them wallow in their sin and hopes and prays that God will either wink and nod or turn a blind eye to what they do. Then he hopes these same people will fill Anglican churches!
This is not happening. Even as Ingham offers up his thoughts on human sexuality and condemns anyone who opposes him as hate-filled and homophobic, his Diocesan editor Neale Adams announced this week that the diocese will see major closures in 2008!
Why then is the ratification of sexual sin not working? Why are people leaving the diocese in droves and why are orthodox parishes that have fled his iron grip flourishing in spite of his heavy revisionist fist. Mr. Adams even admitted that four more parishes could leave the Anglican Church in Canada including the largest single parish in Canada, St. John's Shaughnessy next year!
Ingham said that last year a bishop in the Anglican Church in Brazil told him his church is doing something important for the whole of Christianity. Really. Does he know that the Brazilian Anglican church was started as a plant by the American Episcopal Church; that it is totally revisionist; and that it is not growing? They treated one of their own bishops (the Rt. Rev. Robinson Cavilcanti of Recife) so badly he was forced to leave the Brazilian province and seek spiritual shelter under the Province of the Southern Cone and Archbishop Gregory Venables! Where's the inclusivity or diversity there? Who is ostracizing whom?
Liberals are so bent on supporting any wacky liberal cause, including bad sexual practices that come along that in the end they isolate and marginalize the very folk who have the ability to make churches grow - namely evangelical priests and their parishes.
Ingham believes that by promoting the "new thing" that God is allegedly doing by including everyone (except the orthodox) that people will come flocking into his churches. It isn't happening. Any secular marketing person will tell you that once you deviate from your true mission you will, sooner or later, lose market share. If you switch or change mission statements mid stream sooner or later the horse you are on will drown. One has only to look at the attendance figures of dioceses like Newark, Pennsylvania, Rochester, NY, and Minnesota to see the slow decline and fall as people leave, the old die and the churches go on the chopping block and sold to saloons, trendy boutiques, and more often than not a start up independent evangelical church. But not, heaven forbid, to an Anglican group.
Another sad myth is that parishes are closing for demographic reasons. Bishops in Newark and Pennsylvania have made this argument. It is a lie. The Diocese of Pennsylvania is based in the growing Philadelphia area and mainline. The Diocese of Newark is within a stone's throw of New York City and the Diocese of New Westminster is in the thriving city of Vancouver and environs. There is no excuse for parishes not to be growing in any of these cities. The reason they are not growing is that the priests and bishop have no Good News to proclaim. By contrast the Bishop of Dallas, James Stanton continues to make his diocese grow even though they lost 3,500 members largely through the departure of Christ Church, Plano. His churches grow because he and his priests have a clear gospel to proclaim.
Without an "exclusive" gospel to announce that offers folk a way to walk from darkness into light, the darkness only continues and will consume its own and the house will fall. The "come as you are, stay as you are" "gospel" isn't working and liberal dioceses know it. That is what is happening in the Diocese of New Westminster. Adams believes the closures will somehow spark "new life" in the diocese, but not only is this a fiction there is not a scrap of empirical evidence that suggests it will. Adams is breathing a lot of non-aboriginal smoke right out his nostrils.
Ingham said a Roman Catholic priest he met commended him for his courage and said he believed that he and the diocese were acting out of the gospel, "and whenever the church acts out the gospel, he said, truth is released and so too is hatred."
This priest, whoever he is, is not repeating his church's teaching that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered" and people who practice it need pastoral help not affirmation. Ingham has shown a remarkable narrowness and hubris in finding one Roman Catholic priest to support his position. One doubts the Catholic archbishop of Vancouver would endorse that particular priests' views. And as far as "hatred" goes, no one has shown more hatred towards Global South Primates and to fleeing parishes in this diocese than Michael Ingham.
Said Ingham: "An African bishop told me what you are doing is remarkable - some day we in Africa will have to come to terms with these issues too, and then we may need your help." Really.
Clearly Ingham is not reading the missives being put out by the Anglican Primate of Nigeria and the vast majority of CAPA bishops who are saying the exact opposite of this nonsense. They are so incensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury's unwillingness to discipline the American Episcopal Church over sodomy, they are willing to hold a separate Lambeth Conference next year because they don't want to be seen with the likes of Ingham (and Gene Robinson) whose dioceses are slowly dying while African provinces are growing by leaps and bounds, with the Archbishop of Nigeria consecrating some 18 new archbishops alone in his province this year! By contrast New Westminster is closing down parishes.
The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) with its 132 fast growing parishes is already bigger than the Diocese of New Westminster. CANA with its 60 lively, growing parishes will soon find itself as big as any of the largest liberal Episcopal dioceses in the US within the next 12 months, VOL predicts. And the Diocese of New Westminster will continue to slowly wither and die.
Where's the win-win for sexual inclusivity? Where is the "new thing" we hear being touted and heralded as the new day dawns for a vigorous growing liberal church?
The truth is, it isn't happening. Liberal dioceses are slowly withering and dying. One has only to read books by Canadian authors Ed Hird and Marney Patterson to know that. No brain surgery required.
Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori was watching as four (and possibly more) of her bishops fled to Rome this year, while four and possibly more dioceses will flee TEC this coming year to the protection of the Southern Cone, taking tens of thousands of faithful Episcopalians with them. Her bishops meet in March and they will carry on as though nothing is going wrong with a business as usual attitude.
It is blindness upon blindness. Worse, it is the blind leading the blind.
How long will we wait to learn that the first TEC diocese declares bankruptcy or announces a quick merger with another diocese to save it the public embarrassment of everyone
knowing that it can't pay its bishop a living wage any more. The Bishop of the Diocese of North Dakota, a good man I am told, now works part time for the Diocese of Louisiana to help pay the bills. Only three of his parishes I am told can make a contribution to diocesan coffers!
Writes Ingham: "Births are always joyous events; they are also messy and painful. When God brings about something new, God does that through faithful and courageous people who are willing to be put to the test. The gospel is always breaking open in new ways, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through people who live at the margins, often those who live under a curse, a wound or a stigma, often those whose lives challenge accepted conventions."
This is nothing short of spiritual adultery. To say God is doing something "new" by brokering sodomy into the church "under the guidance of the Holy Spirit" is both to mock the work of the Holy Spirit and to blaspheme the very nature of Christ's salvific activity. We are all sinners in need of grace, demanding that we repent and practice amendment of life, homosexuals are no better or worse than the rest of us.
Ingham will have none of it, and at the end it is he who may well hear those words, "depart from me...I never knew you." Awesome and terrifying words indeed.
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/21/2007
"The Anglican Church is passing through a time of controversy. There have been people praying outside the doors of our temples, people unable or unwilling to come in. Though we go in and out of our churches easily, offering quick assurances that all are welcome, these people fear they are not - aboriginal people wanting to tell us about their woundedness, gay and lesbian people asking for a blessing, young people seeking affirmation of their youthfulness, and many others." --- New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham
As the Anglican Communion slowly comes apart, the lies of the left grow exponentially.
Consider the above statement by the Bishop of New Westminster Michael Ingham. The truth is there has never been a time when orthodox Anglicans have turned away anyone from its churches. The church is, among other things, a hospital for the wounded and sinners, not a home for the righteous or self-righteous. I have never seen an orthodox priest stand at the door of a church quizzing people about their sexual practices. That is a lie and a myth.
Ingham goes on to say this: "We could have turned away from these people. We could have refused to listen, refused to apologize, refused to acknowledge, refused to bless and welcome. And because we have not done that, because we have opened the circle of our compassion a little wider, and changed the tradition that kept them out, we are paying a price in turmoil." He then goes on to say that his diocese "is facing up to changing understandings of human sexuality."
That the church has made mistakes is hardly new. The aboriginal debacle being a case in point. The church has apologized and shelled out millions to settle the case. When it comes to homosexuality, same-sex unions and the like, we are talking about the received teaching of the church and the way people behave, something the church has every right to do, or it is not fulfilling its mission.
What has happened in this debate is that the people who have been, and are, marginalized, people who have not been apologized to or made welcome, are men and women who have renounced the homosexual lifestyle in Canada in order to be obedient to God's law, traditional Christian teaching, and because they earnestly believe that such a lifestyle is spiritually harmful and eternally threatening should they persist in it.
Members of Zacchaeus Fellowship, Canadian Anglican ex-gays say that not all persons with same-sex attractions want these attractions affirmed. They are especially concerned for those whom they describe as "silent sufferers" in the pews. These are the many individuals who adhere to the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality and wish for the church neither to condemn them as persons nor to encourage them to act on those same-sex attractions.
What happens is this. When a homosexual or lesbian renounces the lifestyle they get accused of being "self-loathing" and "homophobic", much like the Bishop of San Joaquin, John-David Schofield who renounced the lifestyle many years ago. In other words Ingham doesn't want people to change, he wants them wallow in their sin and hopes and prays that God will either wink and nod or turn a blind eye to what they do. Then he hopes these same people will fill Anglican churches!
This is not happening. Even as Ingham offers up his thoughts on human sexuality and condemns anyone who opposes him as hate-filled and homophobic, his Diocesan editor Neale Adams announced this week that the diocese will see major closures in 2008!
Why then is the ratification of sexual sin not working? Why are people leaving the diocese in droves and why are orthodox parishes that have fled his iron grip flourishing in spite of his heavy revisionist fist. Mr. Adams even admitted that four more parishes could leave the Anglican Church in Canada including the largest single parish in Canada, St. John's Shaughnessy next year!
Ingham said that last year a bishop in the Anglican Church in Brazil told him his church is doing something important for the whole of Christianity. Really. Does he know that the Brazilian Anglican church was started as a plant by the American Episcopal Church; that it is totally revisionist; and that it is not growing? They treated one of their own bishops (the Rt. Rev. Robinson Cavilcanti of Recife) so badly he was forced to leave the Brazilian province and seek spiritual shelter under the Province of the Southern Cone and Archbishop Gregory Venables! Where's the inclusivity or diversity there? Who is ostracizing whom?
Liberals are so bent on supporting any wacky liberal cause, including bad sexual practices that come along that in the end they isolate and marginalize the very folk who have the ability to make churches grow - namely evangelical priests and their parishes.
Ingham believes that by promoting the "new thing" that God is allegedly doing by including everyone (except the orthodox) that people will come flocking into his churches. It isn't happening. Any secular marketing person will tell you that once you deviate from your true mission you will, sooner or later, lose market share. If you switch or change mission statements mid stream sooner or later the horse you are on will drown. One has only to look at the attendance figures of dioceses like Newark, Pennsylvania, Rochester, NY, and Minnesota to see the slow decline and fall as people leave, the old die and the churches go on the chopping block and sold to saloons, trendy boutiques, and more often than not a start up independent evangelical church. But not, heaven forbid, to an Anglican group.
Another sad myth is that parishes are closing for demographic reasons. Bishops in Newark and Pennsylvania have made this argument. It is a lie. The Diocese of Pennsylvania is based in the growing Philadelphia area and mainline. The Diocese of Newark is within a stone's throw of New York City and the Diocese of New Westminster is in the thriving city of Vancouver and environs. There is no excuse for parishes not to be growing in any of these cities. The reason they are not growing is that the priests and bishop have no Good News to proclaim. By contrast the Bishop of Dallas, James Stanton continues to make his diocese grow even though they lost 3,500 members largely through the departure of Christ Church, Plano. His churches grow because he and his priests have a clear gospel to proclaim.
Without an "exclusive" gospel to announce that offers folk a way to walk from darkness into light, the darkness only continues and will consume its own and the house will fall. The "come as you are, stay as you are" "gospel" isn't working and liberal dioceses know it. That is what is happening in the Diocese of New Westminster. Adams believes the closures will somehow spark "new life" in the diocese, but not only is this a fiction there is not a scrap of empirical evidence that suggests it will. Adams is breathing a lot of non-aboriginal smoke right out his nostrils.
Ingham said a Roman Catholic priest he met commended him for his courage and said he believed that he and the diocese were acting out of the gospel, "and whenever the church acts out the gospel, he said, truth is released and so too is hatred."
This priest, whoever he is, is not repeating his church's teaching that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered" and people who practice it need pastoral help not affirmation. Ingham has shown a remarkable narrowness and hubris in finding one Roman Catholic priest to support his position. One doubts the Catholic archbishop of Vancouver would endorse that particular priests' views. And as far as "hatred" goes, no one has shown more hatred towards Global South Primates and to fleeing parishes in this diocese than Michael Ingham.
Said Ingham: "An African bishop told me what you are doing is remarkable - some day we in Africa will have to come to terms with these issues too, and then we may need your help." Really.
Clearly Ingham is not reading the missives being put out by the Anglican Primate of Nigeria and the vast majority of CAPA bishops who are saying the exact opposite of this nonsense. They are so incensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury's unwillingness to discipline the American Episcopal Church over sodomy, they are willing to hold a separate Lambeth Conference next year because they don't want to be seen with the likes of Ingham (and Gene Robinson) whose dioceses are slowly dying while African provinces are growing by leaps and bounds, with the Archbishop of Nigeria consecrating some 18 new archbishops alone in his province this year! By contrast New Westminster is closing down parishes.
The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) with its 132 fast growing parishes is already bigger than the Diocese of New Westminster. CANA with its 60 lively, growing parishes will soon find itself as big as any of the largest liberal Episcopal dioceses in the US within the next 12 months, VOL predicts. And the Diocese of New Westminster will continue to slowly wither and die.
Where's the win-win for sexual inclusivity? Where is the "new thing" we hear being touted and heralded as the new day dawns for a vigorous growing liberal church?
The truth is, it isn't happening. Liberal dioceses are slowly withering and dying. One has only to read books by Canadian authors Ed Hird and Marney Patterson to know that. No brain surgery required.
Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori was watching as four (and possibly more) of her bishops fled to Rome this year, while four and possibly more dioceses will flee TEC this coming year to the protection of the Southern Cone, taking tens of thousands of faithful Episcopalians with them. Her bishops meet in March and they will carry on as though nothing is going wrong with a business as usual attitude.
It is blindness upon blindness. Worse, it is the blind leading the blind.
How long will we wait to learn that the first TEC diocese declares bankruptcy or announces a quick merger with another diocese to save it the public embarrassment of everyone
knowing that it can't pay its bishop a living wage any more. The Bishop of the Diocese of North Dakota, a good man I am told, now works part time for the Diocese of Louisiana to help pay the bills. Only three of his parishes I am told can make a contribution to diocesan coffers!
Writes Ingham: "Births are always joyous events; they are also messy and painful. When God brings about something new, God does that through faithful and courageous people who are willing to be put to the test. The gospel is always breaking open in new ways, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through people who live at the margins, often those who live under a curse, a wound or a stigma, often those whose lives challenge accepted conventions."
This is nothing short of spiritual adultery. To say God is doing something "new" by brokering sodomy into the church "under the guidance of the Holy Spirit" is both to mock the work of the Holy Spirit and to blaspheme the very nature of Christ's salvific activity. We are all sinners in need of grace, demanding that we repent and practice amendment of life, homosexuals are no better or worse than the rest of us.
Ingham will have none of it, and at the end it is he who may well hear those words, "depart from me...I never knew you." Awesome and terrifying words indeed.
END
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Fish Rots from the Head
Archbishop of Canterbury Dismisses Nativity Scene as Nothing but 'Legend'
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Ruth Gledhill
The Times of London
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men yesterday as nothing but "legend."
There was scant evidence for the Magi, and none at all that there were three of them, or that they were kings, he said. All the evidence that existed was in Matthew’s Gospel. The Archbishop said: "Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told." Anything else was legend. "It works quite well as legend," the Archbishop said.
Further, there was no evidence that there were any oxen or asses in the stable. The chances of any snow falling around the stable in Bethlehem were "very unlikely." And as for the star rising and then standing still: the Archbishop pointed out that stars just don’t behave like that.
Although he believed in it himself, he advised that new Christians need not fear that they had to leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the Virgin Birth before they could be "signed up." For good measure, he added, Jesus was probably not born in December at all. “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”
He said the Christmas cards that show the Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus, with the shepherds on one side and the Three Wise Men on the other, were guilty of "conflation."
But in spite of his scepticism about aspects of the Christmas story, as told in infant nativity plays up and down the land, he denied that believing in God was equivalent to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
"The thing is, belief in Santa does not generate a moral code, it does not generate art, it does not generate imagination. Belief in God is a bit bigger than that," the Archbishop said.
Williams was speaking live on BBC Radio Five to the presenter Simon Mayo when Ricky Gervais, star of The Office and a fellow guest, challenged him about the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith.
He said he was committed to belief in the Virgin Birth "as part of what I have inherited." But belief in the Virgin Birth should not be a "hurdle" over which new Christians had to jump before they were accepted.
He hinted that decades ago he was not "too fussed" with the literal truth of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. But as time went on, he developed a "deeper sense" of what the Virgin Birth was all about. And he went on to do a literary-critical analysis of the traditional Christmas card that features, as often as not, a Virgin Mary cradling a baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds on one side, the Three Wise Men on the other and oxen and asses all around. Sometimes the stable is depicted with snow falling all around, and often with a bright star rising in the East.
Most of it, the Archbishop said, could not have happened like that.
One of the few things that almost everyone agreed on was that Jesus’s mother’s name was Mary. That is in all the four Gospels. It was also pretty clear that Jesus’s father was called Joseph.
Williams was not saying anything that is not taught as a matter of course in even the most conservative theological colleges. His supporters would argue that it is a sign of a true man of faith that he can hold on to an orthodox faith while permitting honest intellectual scrutiny of fundamental biblical texts.
The Archbishop admitted that the Church’s present difficulties, with the dispute over sexuality taking the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, were off-putting to outsiders. "They don’t want to know about the inside politics of the Church, they want to know if God’s real, if they can be forgiven, what sort of lifestyles matter more and they want to know, I suppose, if their prayers are heard."
Williams’s views are strictly in line with orthodox Christian teaching. The Archbishop is sticking to what the Bible actually says.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Ruth Gledhill
The Times of London
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men yesterday as nothing but "legend."
There was scant evidence for the Magi, and none at all that there were three of them, or that they were kings, he said. All the evidence that existed was in Matthew’s Gospel. The Archbishop said: "Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told." Anything else was legend. "It works quite well as legend," the Archbishop said.
Further, there was no evidence that there were any oxen or asses in the stable. The chances of any snow falling around the stable in Bethlehem were "very unlikely." And as for the star rising and then standing still: the Archbishop pointed out that stars just don’t behave like that.
Although he believed in it himself, he advised that new Christians need not fear that they had to leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the Virgin Birth before they could be "signed up." For good measure, he added, Jesus was probably not born in December at all. “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”
He said the Christmas cards that show the Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus, with the shepherds on one side and the Three Wise Men on the other, were guilty of "conflation."
But in spite of his scepticism about aspects of the Christmas story, as told in infant nativity plays up and down the land, he denied that believing in God was equivalent to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
"The thing is, belief in Santa does not generate a moral code, it does not generate art, it does not generate imagination. Belief in God is a bit bigger than that," the Archbishop said.
Williams was speaking live on BBC Radio Five to the presenter Simon Mayo when Ricky Gervais, star of The Office and a fellow guest, challenged him about the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith.
He said he was committed to belief in the Virgin Birth "as part of what I have inherited." But belief in the Virgin Birth should not be a "hurdle" over which new Christians had to jump before they were accepted.
He hinted that decades ago he was not "too fussed" with the literal truth of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. But as time went on, he developed a "deeper sense" of what the Virgin Birth was all about. And he went on to do a literary-critical analysis of the traditional Christmas card that features, as often as not, a Virgin Mary cradling a baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds on one side, the Three Wise Men on the other and oxen and asses all around. Sometimes the stable is depicted with snow falling all around, and often with a bright star rising in the East.
Most of it, the Archbishop said, could not have happened like that.
One of the few things that almost everyone agreed on was that Jesus’s mother’s name was Mary. That is in all the four Gospels. It was also pretty clear that Jesus’s father was called Joseph.
Williams was not saying anything that is not taught as a matter of course in even the most conservative theological colleges. His supporters would argue that it is a sign of a true man of faith that he can hold on to an orthodox faith while permitting honest intellectual scrutiny of fundamental biblical texts.
The Archbishop admitted that the Church’s present difficulties, with the dispute over sexuality taking the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, were off-putting to outsiders. "They don’t want to know about the inside politics of the Church, they want to know if God’s real, if they can be forgiven, what sort of lifestyles matter more and they want to know, I suppose, if their prayers are heard."
Williams’s views are strictly in line with orthodox Christian teaching. The Archbishop is sticking to what the Bible actually says.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
PECUSA's Future
One of the interesting things about the Episcopal Church, and it prides itself far too much in my view in this, is, you know, we're the leader, we're in the vanguard. Well, it's an interesting matter of debate as to just how much we are the leader. There are only two churches in all of North American in mainline Christianity that have gone over the edge and decided to ordain non-celibate people in same sex unions. One is the United Church of Canada; the other is the United Church of Christ. The United Church of Christ did it first; the United Church of Canada which since it's in Canada almost no Americans know it even exists, was the second, and the Episcopal Church in 2003 is the third. It's a wide open question as to what will happen from here forward. You may know that the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, among others, are all in hugely significant discussion about this issue. But one of the things that might happen is that the Episcopal Church might go down the same road as the United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada. And guess what that road is? Cataclysmic, systemic, institutional decline. If you think things in the Episcopal Church are bad take a moment and look at the United Church of Canada. I lived in Canada for two years. It is one of the saddest stories I know in North American Christendom. And the reality is if you go based on the facts on the ground so far, the two churches that have gone this route have lost an even greater sense of their Christian identity, lost an even greater amount of their membership, and gone even farther into maintenance and survival mode than they were before. Now that may be the route that we go. On the other hand it may be the case that us being the third, we may be the tipping point and after us may come the Lutherans and the Presbyterians, in which case, in my view, we'd be leading them over the cliff.
... In fact in the Methodist debate one of the things that are regularly said is, "I don't want to end up like those Episcopalians. That was terrible the way that they went about it." We're such a great negative example that we're actually slowing the chances of some of the other denominations, particularly the Methodists.
So what if, for example, God simply takes the Episcopal Church and we slowly go the route of the two denominations that have gone this route, and people look at us and say this is what happens to a church that capitulates to culture. Do you know great Dean W. R. Inge, St. Paul's, London, beginning of the 20th century, do you know his great statement: "He who becomes married to the spirit of this age becomes its widower in the next?" This was a profound (in my view), prophetic statement at the time, and one of the indictments of Anglicanism, historically. Maybe one of the things that's happening is the Episcopal Church may have to die like the United Church of Christ is dying and the United Church of Canada is dying in order for some of the other people to look at it and say, "This is what a church fully under judgment that God will not bless looks like." Now look, I don't want that for the Episcopal Church but part of what I had to realize is if that's what God wants to do in history because He's God and I'm not, it's His prerogative and its okay because He's working out His purpose in history. I must nevertheless still live faithfully in the midst of God working that out in history.
By Kendall Harmon - from "Self-Criticism & a Crisis of Leadership"
... In fact in the Methodist debate one of the things that are regularly said is, "I don't want to end up like those Episcopalians. That was terrible the way that they went about it." We're such a great negative example that we're actually slowing the chances of some of the other denominations, particularly the Methodists.
So what if, for example, God simply takes the Episcopal Church and we slowly go the route of the two denominations that have gone this route, and people look at us and say this is what happens to a church that capitulates to culture. Do you know great Dean W. R. Inge, St. Paul's, London, beginning of the 20th century, do you know his great statement: "He who becomes married to the spirit of this age becomes its widower in the next?" This was a profound (in my view), prophetic statement at the time, and one of the indictments of Anglicanism, historically. Maybe one of the things that's happening is the Episcopal Church may have to die like the United Church of Christ is dying and the United Church of Canada is dying in order for some of the other people to look at it and say, "This is what a church fully under judgment that God will not bless looks like." Now look, I don't want that for the Episcopal Church but part of what I had to realize is if that's what God wants to do in history because He's God and I'm not, it's His prerogative and its okay because He's working out His purpose in history. I must nevertheless still live faithfully in the midst of God working that out in history.
By Kendall Harmon - from "Self-Criticism & a Crisis of Leadership"
What the Bishop of CNY Said Was Not Happening
Common Cause Partners build for new Anglican future
The first meeting of the Common Cause Leadership Council created the structure necessary for building a federation of orthodox Anglicans in North America. Three delegates from each of the ten Common Cause partners gathered in Orlando, Florida December 17-18. The Council unanimously elected Bishop Bob Duncan as Moderator. Delegates also elected Canon Charlie Masters of Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) as General Secretary and Mrs. Patience Oruh of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) as Treasurer. The Leadership Council recognized the ratification of a statement of theology and formed the committees called for by the Common Cause articles of confederation adopted in September 2007. A communiqué from the Common Cause Leadership Council can be found below.
Communiqué
We, the gathered bishops, priests and lay representatives of the Anglican bodies federated in Common Cause held the first annual meeting as the newly formed Common Cause Leadership Council of the Common Cause Partnership on December 18th, 2007, in Orlando, Florida.
We created the structure called for in the Articles of Federation now adopted by nine of our partners. We elected officers of the Federation and formed an executive committee, as well as other committees and task forces. We have also begun work to harmonize and strengthen our common call to Christian education and mission. We expect these committees and task forces to begin work early in the New Year. We are beginning to explore the expanding possibilities for ecumenical contact with fellow Christians in North America and around the world.
Our actions today dramatically reversed the fragmentation and separation of the past. We stand committed to the "faith once delivered to the saints" as expressed in our now ratified theological statement. The Common Cause Partnership is united in faith with the vast majority of members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. We are especially grateful for the support and recognition given to us by the provinces of the Global South that have encouraged us to come together in common cause for the Gospel. We are particularly thankful for the presence with us of Archbishop Yong Ping Chung, the recently retired primate of the Province of Southeast Asia and one of the earliest supporters of the rebirth of orthodox Anglicanism in North America, representing the Anglican Coalition in Canada.
Each Common Cause Partner will continue to live out its unique role, maintaining its distinctive ministry and character, noting the provision of the Articles of Federation that "the autonomy of the individual Jurisdictions and Ministries, and their constituent bodies, is in no way restricted or superseded by membership." In the months and years ahead we anticipate a growing number of joint mission initiatives that will strengthen our witness as united and faithful Anglicans in North America. "So in Christ, we who are many, form one body..." (Rom. 12:5). To God be the Glory.
The Episcopalians bridal buggery
by Les Kinsolving for WorldNetDaily
Posted: December 18, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
From the dearth of any news reports to the contrary, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, the Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori, apparently had no comment on the latest bizarre news from the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Episcopal Bishop Vickie Gene Robinson (yes, that is actually his name)
announced: "I've always wanted to be a June bride!" This memorable revelation of next June's civilly unionizing of himself with his homosexual lover begs the question as to why Bishop Vickie Gene designated himself as the bride rather than his male lover? Was it because this lover asked the bishop to marry him as their version of what is traditionally known as The Big Question?
Or did this have something to do with the physical aspects of their
relationship? Within days of this male bishop's announcement of his forthcoming June bridehood, the first entire diocese in the Episcopal Church voted
overwhelmingly to get out, leave, secede and depart from this U.S.
denomination of tolerated bridal buggery.
In Fresno, Calif., the 47-church Diocese of San Joaquin voted overwhelmingly
to leave the Episcopal Church and affiliate with other Anglicans overseas.
This did not result in no comment from Presiding Bishop Schori, as did
the New Hampshire male-bride announcement.
Schori announced that she received this news "with sadness" and she went
on to say: "We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the
historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness."
This ecclesiastical sweet talk of regret, when translated, really means
that this most Reverend Lady has in mind the following:
"We'll see you in court! We are a legal establishment of religion, a
Corporation. If your conscience leads you to reject any new rules and
beliefs we enact in General Convention, you are free to exercise your
right to worship. But if you do so, we will seize all of your church property!"
Will all secular courts tolerate this bizarre manifestation of Christian
charity which could be described as a Real Estate Inquisition?
How in the name of the First Amendment can any civil court in the United
States allow the guaranteed exercise of religious freedom to be penalized by
property confiscation?
This especially applies in the case of two of the 11 Episcopal churches,
Truro and Falls Church, that have seceded from the Diocese of Virginia,
which is presently suing them in civil court.
Truro and Falls Church were both founded before the Episcopal Church or
the United States existed.
Why should any court allow their property to be seized by either the Episcopal Church or by the Church of England, from which they also rebelled during the American Revolution?
Presiding Bishop Schori also threatened more seceding dioceses. But the
Diocese of Pittsburgh's Bishop Duncan replied that he would not compromise
the faith of the Apostles. And when Schori similarly threatened Bishop Iker
of Forth Worth, he rebuked what he described as her "aggressive, dictatorial
posturing" and warned that her threats "do not frighten us."
Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio
commentaries are syndicated nationally. He is White House correspondent
for WorldNetDaily. His show can be heard on the Internet 9-11 p.m. Eastern
each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper
reporter and columnist - twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his
commentary.
Posted: December 18, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
From the dearth of any news reports to the contrary, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, the Most Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori, apparently had no comment on the latest bizarre news from the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Episcopal Bishop Vickie Gene Robinson (yes, that is actually his name)
announced: "I've always wanted to be a June bride!" This memorable revelation of next June's civilly unionizing of himself with his homosexual lover begs the question as to why Bishop Vickie Gene designated himself as the bride rather than his male lover? Was it because this lover asked the bishop to marry him as their version of what is traditionally known as The Big Question?
Or did this have something to do with the physical aspects of their
relationship? Within days of this male bishop's announcement of his forthcoming June bridehood, the first entire diocese in the Episcopal Church voted
overwhelmingly to get out, leave, secede and depart from this U.S.
denomination of tolerated bridal buggery.
In Fresno, Calif., the 47-church Diocese of San Joaquin voted overwhelmingly
to leave the Episcopal Church and affiliate with other Anglicans overseas.
This did not result in no comment from Presiding Bishop Schori, as did
the New Hampshire male-bride announcement.
Schori announced that she received this news "with sadness" and she went
on to say: "We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the
historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness."
This ecclesiastical sweet talk of regret, when translated, really means
that this most Reverend Lady has in mind the following:
"We'll see you in court! We are a legal establishment of religion, a
Corporation. If your conscience leads you to reject any new rules and
beliefs we enact in General Convention, you are free to exercise your
right to worship. But if you do so, we will seize all of your church property!"
Will all secular courts tolerate this bizarre manifestation of Christian
charity which could be described as a Real Estate Inquisition?
How in the name of the First Amendment can any civil court in the United
States allow the guaranteed exercise of religious freedom to be penalized by
property confiscation?
This especially applies in the case of two of the 11 Episcopal churches,
Truro and Falls Church, that have seceded from the Diocese of Virginia,
which is presently suing them in civil court.
Truro and Falls Church were both founded before the Episcopal Church or
the United States existed.
Why should any court allow their property to be seized by either the Episcopal Church or by the Church of England, from which they also rebelled during the American Revolution?
Presiding Bishop Schori also threatened more seceding dioceses. But the
Diocese of Pittsburgh's Bishop Duncan replied that he would not compromise
the faith of the Apostles. And when Schori similarly threatened Bishop Iker
of Forth Worth, he rebuked what he described as her "aggressive, dictatorial
posturing" and warned that her threats "do not frighten us."
Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio
commentaries are syndicated nationally. He is White House correspondent
for WorldNetDaily. His show can be heard on the Internet 9-11 p.m. Eastern
each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper
reporter and columnist - twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his
commentary.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Bollinger Lawyer Honored
David M. Gouldin, one of the attorneys that assisted Fr. David Bollinger in his defense against the charges leveled at him by the diocese has been named to the "Top 50" list by New York Super Lawyers. He is also listed in the magazine's General Personal Injury Defense section.
What does this have to do with the DCNY? At an emergency clergy meeting a few years ago Bp. Adams described David Gouldin as an ambulence chaser.
On a related issue, can any reader let us know whether the Shaffer Report has been released? This was the piece of evidence that the diocese withheld in its case against Fr. Bollinger that resulted in the dismissal of the case by the diocesan ecclesiastical court.
What does this have to do with the DCNY? At an emergency clergy meeting a few years ago Bp. Adams described David Gouldin as an ambulence chaser.
On a related issue, can any reader let us know whether the Shaffer Report has been released? This was the piece of evidence that the diocese withheld in its case against Fr. Bollinger that resulted in the dismissal of the case by the diocesan ecclesiastical court.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Church Growth in the Diocese of Central NY
Closing Service and Celebration of Ministry for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, January 6 at 4:30 in the afternoon
Celebrant: The Rt. Rev. Gladstone B. Adams III
A Reception will be held immediately following the Service.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
401 Morador Rd.
Vestal, NY 13850
Editor's Note: It has been suggested that this might indeed be an attempt at church growth. Some believe that it might be a last ditch effort by the diocese to form a congregation for the Mirador (correct spelling) Road facilities. It is a strange day for a church closing. One would think that a bishop would have better liturgical sense than close a church on the Feast of the Epiphany, so maybe there is something to the speculation.
Secondly, I was told that a Ukrainian pastor called the diocese to ask about purchasing 401 Mirador and was told that they aren't selling at this point. To this point the diocese has not been able to identify sufficient leadership for a congregation at this site.
Sunday, January 6 at 4:30 in the afternoon
Celebrant: The Rt. Rev. Gladstone B. Adams III
A Reception will be held immediately following the Service.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
401 Morador Rd.
Vestal, NY 13850
Editor's Note: It has been suggested that this might indeed be an attempt at church growth. Some believe that it might be a last ditch effort by the diocese to form a congregation for the Mirador (correct spelling) Road facilities. It is a strange day for a church closing. One would think that a bishop would have better liturgical sense than close a church on the Feast of the Epiphany, so maybe there is something to the speculation.
Secondly, I was told that a Ukrainian pastor called the diocese to ask about purchasing 401 Mirador and was told that they aren't selling at this point. To this point the diocese has not been able to identify sufficient leadership for a congregation at this site.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Two Weeks out of Egypt
St. Andrew's Anglican Church has celebrated two Sundays now in our new meeting place. We are currently meeting at Memorial Park Baptist Church at 1013 Front Street in Vestal. The sense of relief that we are completely out of the Diocese of Central NY and pecusa was palpable. Our worship was energized by a new sense of freedom for proclaiming the Gospel. We are thankful for the welcome that we have received from the MPBC folks and the sense of common mission that we feel between their folks and ours.
In this second week out of Egypt, four from St. Andrew's participated in the inaugural council of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. As a layperson, deacon and priest I have attended 17 diocesan conventions. Those conventions were held in five different dioceses. This year I attended no diocesan council; the CANA Council in Herndon, VA was an inspiring substitute. What a breath of fresh air!
In a time frame of Thursday morning to Saturday lunch, the business component of the meeting took less than two hours. The worship part was five hours, the teaching portion was twelve hours, and the fellowship and meals part was nearly ten hours. How different than the usual diocesan convention with hours upon hours of business.
Another difference was the focus on the Gospel. Not on Millenial Development Goals, mind you, which could never be more than a part of Gospel work. Hearing from bishops of rapidly expanding dioceses in Nigeria, church planters from different parts of the United States, and CANA bishops Minns and Bena was absolutely energizing. What a contrast to pecusa diocesan conventions.
The parish of St. Andrew's Anglican in Vestal has made a good start. For further information on the progress of the realignment, see the posts at Anglicanism in America.
In this second week out of Egypt, four from St. Andrew's participated in the inaugural council of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. As a layperson, deacon and priest I have attended 17 diocesan conventions. Those conventions were held in five different dioceses. This year I attended no diocesan council; the CANA Council in Herndon, VA was an inspiring substitute. What a breath of fresh air!
In a time frame of Thursday morning to Saturday lunch, the business component of the meeting took less than two hours. The worship part was five hours, the teaching portion was twelve hours, and the fellowship and meals part was nearly ten hours. How different than the usual diocesan convention with hours upon hours of business.
Another difference was the focus on the Gospel. Not on Millenial Development Goals, mind you, which could never be more than a part of Gospel work. Hearing from bishops of rapidly expanding dioceses in Nigeria, church planters from different parts of the United States, and CANA bishops Minns and Bena was absolutely energizing. What a contrast to pecusa diocesan conventions.
The parish of St. Andrew's Anglican in Vestal has made a good start. For further information on the progress of the realignment, see the posts at Anglicanism in America.
Common Cause Partnership News
Dear Network,
The next major milestone in the development of Common Cause is next week, when the Common Cause Leadership Council gathers in Orlando, Florida on December 18 for its inaugural meeting. The Council comprises the head bishop, a clergy representative, and a lay representative from each Partner. This body represents Common Cause in all its fullness, and has the authority to do the work of the Partnership.
This is the organizing meeting of Common Cause, at which the assembly will elect its first officers and establish its initial committees and task forces. As such, December 18, 2007 will mark the formal beginning of a "separate ecclesiastical structure" in North America. Following this meeting, Common Cause will be in a place to seek official recognition from the Primates of our Communion.
We at the Network are pleased to have been given the Kingdom assignment of building unity among the Common Cause Partners. Thank you for sharing with us in this task, and please pray for our work next week.
Yours in Christ,
The Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton
Chief Operating Officer
Anglican Communion Network
[Also posted to Anglicanism in America]
The next major milestone in the development of Common Cause is next week, when the Common Cause Leadership Council gathers in Orlando, Florida on December 18 for its inaugural meeting. The Council comprises the head bishop, a clergy representative, and a lay representative from each Partner. This body represents Common Cause in all its fullness, and has the authority to do the work of the Partnership.
This is the organizing meeting of Common Cause, at which the assembly will elect its first officers and establish its initial committees and task forces. As such, December 18, 2007 will mark the formal beginning of a "separate ecclesiastical structure" in North America. Following this meeting, Common Cause will be in a place to seek official recognition from the Primates of our Communion.
We at the Network are pleased to have been given the Kingdom assignment of building unity among the Common Cause Partners. Thank you for sharing with us in this task, and please pray for our work next week.
Yours in Christ,
The Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton
Chief Operating Officer
Anglican Communion Network
[Also posted to Anglicanism in America]
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Current myths in the Anglican Communion
Bishop Bill Atwood, General Secretary, Ekklesia
GlobalView
1. Everything is fine.
Hard as it is to believe, there are still people who are clinging to this fantasy. It is utterly false, but surprisingly widely held. It’s sort of like people on the Titanic complimenting the band.
2. Closely linked with #1 is myth #2: It is the responsibility of The Episcopal Church to fix things in the US. One of the “moderate” primates said this to me recently. I asked him, “Given that the General Convention, the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop, and the House of Bishops have all indicated that they have no intention of changing course, why on earth would you hold out hope that the Episcopal Church is really going to change course and come in line with Biblical faith?” He replied, “Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Now entering “Unthinkable.”
3. Tradition can be appealed to at will and ignored at will, depending on expedience.
E. Stanley Jones wrote a book called “Unshakable Kingdom, Unchangeable Person.” He predicted the fall of Communism in the 1960’s pointing out that anything that is not born of the Spirit of God cannot last. It is even worse than that. A Pentecostal preacher once told me, “I am past the point where I want to do anything in the flesh. I just don’t have the energy to maintain those things in my own strength.” The Canadian House of Bishops (and Primate) are appealing to the tradition of the church in complaining about refuge being given to conservative Christians by the Southern Cone. That is sort of like the old story of the boy who killed his parents asking the judge for leniency because he was an orphan.
4. This crisis is easy to fix.
Well, it’s not easy to fix. It is simple to fix, but it’s costly. Part of our interior life needs to be preparing to pay the price necessary to faithfully represent the Lord and the Gospel. We have passed the time when it is chic to see our vocational path as being a trial. In Viet Nam, the pastors say, “In the West, you have three years of development you call seminary. In Vietnam, we have prison. Most pastors expect to spend three to five years in prison. Anytime you hear someone say, “All that needs to happen is…” you can be pretty sure that it isn’t all that needs to happen. We are embroiled in a cultural war and a huge postmodern paradigm shift away from Biblical values. I believe that the season has passed when being identified as a Christian opens doors. It will come again, but for now, it is probably going to harder and more costly to be a faithful Christian.
5. Things never change.
A recent poll showed that only 16% of young people in the US under 18 view Christianity as a positive force in the world. Never mind that 90% of the universities and most of the hospitals and social service agencies were started by evangelical Christians. Hint: It wasn’t the Baptists that killed all those people in Egypt and Iraq.
6. The communion is almost equally divided concerning issues of Biblical authority and sexuality. Overwhelmingly, the Communion is conservative, evangelical, and charismatic. Some parts are also Anglo- catholic, but even those tend to be evangelical/charismatic. The truth is that The Episcopal Church has gone on a financial charm offensive to recruit support with an open check book. Some of the provinces that support the TEC agenda have ample financial reason to do so. Only here, we’re not talking chicken dinners, but millions of dollars. Keep in mind that some of the “provinces” that support the TEC liberal agenda are tiny and anemic. I know of a cathedral youth group that has more people than one of the liberal provinces.
7. There is gloom and doom in our future.
That’s only true for those who face the future without a relationship with Jesus. In Him, all things are possible.
___
Diocese will leave Episcopal Church
From the Modesto Bee:
San Joaquin 1st in nation to make dramatic move
San Joaquin 1st in nation to make dramatic move
The Diocese of San Joaquin on Saturday voted overwhelmingly to change its constitution to leave the Episcopal Church USA and align with the Southern Cone of the worldwide Anglican Communion because of long-simmering theological issues.
It is the first diocese in the country to take such action.
The constitutional vote was 70-12 (85 percent) by clergy and 103-10 (91 percent) by laity at the diocese's annual convention in Fresno. A 75 percent vote was required in each group. A subsequent vote to accept the Southern Cone's oversight was passed by similar margins.
"It's important to remember that we've separated from our brothers and sisters, but we're also joining our brothers and sisters in the Southern Cone (South America)," said the Rev. Tom Foster, who served at St. Paul's in Modesto and Christ the King in Riverbank before retiring. He now conducts Sunday services at St. Andrew's in Mariposa.
"I feel like the Israelites when they came out of Egypt with Moses -- I've been set free," Foster said in a phone interview from Fresno. "There is great rejoicing by most people here. We're full of joy for what has taken place. It's a very strong feeling."
Strong feelings are what has led to this action. Most Protestant denominations -- Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and others -- split years ago over theological issues. The Episcopal Church has remained united except during the Civil War.
But in recent decades, disagreements over the interpretation of Scripture on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, the ordination of women and whether the Bible is the inerrant word of God has led to division in the church, culminating in 2003 when V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, was ordained as a bishop in New Hampshire and in 2006 when Katharine Jefferts Schori, a liberal theologian, was elected to lead the national church.
Saturday was a huge victory for Bishop John-David Schofield, a staunch conservative who has been trading barbs with the ECUSA since 2003, when he stopped sending it financial support.
"The (Episcopal) church will inevitably leave the Bible behind," he told clergy members Friday.
After the vote, Jefferts Schori released a statement, restating her intention to replace Schofield:
"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness. We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey. The Episcopal Church will continue in the Diocese of San Joaquin, albeit with new leadership."
But whether she can do so under the church's abandonment clause is doubtful, said Van McCalister, public relations officer for the diocese.
"The abandonment clause was put in (to canon law) in case a priest turned back to the Catholic faith or decided to leave the Christian faith," he said. "I don't think it was ever envisioned that the abandonment clause would be used the way it has been recently. And I don't know how they can charge (Schofield) with abandonment since he's transferred to the Anglican Communion; he hasn't left the faith."
Something 'to get used to'
There was little talk of abandonment at the convention this weekend, said Jan Wysong, a member of St. Paul's in Modesto.
"There was a very good discussion," he said. "A lot of people had questions and needed clarification on some things, and they got it. I think it's something we're going to have to get used to -- let the dust settle and see where we are."
Some people are less satisfied. A group called Remain Episcopal, reportedly with about 125 members in the diocese, met after the convention to discuss the future.
One member from Turlock, when reached by phone, said she was too sad to comment.
Schofield has said any parish that wants to leave and be assigned to a different Episcopal diocese may do so if it is not in debt to the San Joaquin Diocese. After the vote, one Fresno parish gave Schofield an application to do that.
But others, such as the Rev. Wolfgang Krismanits of St. James in Sonora, are "ecstatic" with the outcome. He said he plans to tell his congregants this morning what happened at the convention.
"We're just going to praise the Lord and thank him," he said. "The outcome was better than I hoped for. It's still somewhat hard to believe, but as I said to someone when we were making our votes, making our stands, God is with us. I think it's going to be a shot heard round the world from this little diocese."
Monday, December 03, 2007
The DCNY Blog
I created the DCNY blog in 2005 in order to counteract some of the lies that have emanated from diocesan officials. One particular recipient of diocesan lies was Fr. David Bollinger. The bishop was speaking untruths about the Bollinger case even after it was decided in Fr. Bollinger's favor by the ecclesiatical court!
The direction of the DCNY blog has changed over the past two years. I have included articles and commentary about the realignment of North American Anglicanism. Today, I have started a new blog: Anglicanism in America. That America is North America and the first post is about the realignment in Canada. My new blog will be posting more articles and commentary about the realignment and the DCNY blog will focus more exclusively on the Diocese of Central NY.
This refocus means that there will be fewer posts here. The truth is that with the completion of negotiations between the diocese and two of the St. Andrew's parishes (Syracuse and Vestal), there is less to report. Good Shepherd will be departing the diocese shortly, and the DCNY will follow the developments leading toward their departure.
The DCNY blog will also monitor any developments of the call for the release of the Shaffer Report. This is the piece of evidence that the diocese withheld from Fr. Bollinger's defense team and led to the ecclesiatical court deciding for Fr. Bollinger.
The public statements of Bishop Adams, Canon Lewis and other diocesan officials will also be scrutinized. As we have seen over the past four years, diocesan officials cannot be trusted to tell the truth. So, the DCNY blog is not signing off, but posts will likely be less frequent.
The direction of the DCNY blog has changed over the past two years. I have included articles and commentary about the realignment of North American Anglicanism. Today, I have started a new blog: Anglicanism in America. That America is North America and the first post is about the realignment in Canada. My new blog will be posting more articles and commentary about the realignment and the DCNY blog will focus more exclusively on the Diocese of Central NY.
This refocus means that there will be fewer posts here. The truth is that with the completion of negotiations between the diocese and two of the St. Andrew's parishes (Syracuse and Vestal), there is less to report. Good Shepherd will be departing the diocese shortly, and the DCNY will follow the developments leading toward their departure.
The DCNY blog will also monitor any developments of the call for the release of the Shaffer Report. This is the piece of evidence that the diocese withheld from Fr. Bollinger's defense team and led to the ecclesiatical court deciding for Fr. Bollinger.
The public statements of Bishop Adams, Canon Lewis and other diocesan officials will also be scrutinized. As we have seen over the past four years, diocesan officials cannot be trusted to tell the truth. So, the DCNY blog is not signing off, but posts will likely be less frequent.
A Report from Diocesan Convention
The report that I have received on the DCNY annual convention was pretty bleak. Mix one part apostasy with another part idolatry and what do you get? pecusa
First, there's the new priest in the diocese who stood to declare to the convention, "Our mission is not to win people to Christ!" Yes, how silly of Jesus to issue a great commission. How silly of the apostles to go against this new gospel proclaimed at the DCNY convention and win thousands of people to Jesus. Does anyone wonder why pecusa is declining? Wonder no more. And how was the bishop with this declaration? "Skip said nothing. Just smiled. "
And how about taking the convention to a deeper place (Episcopalians used to call this place hell). I quote: "Then there was some lady leading "prayers". We all had to be meditative and listen to spooky music. She purred, "See God in us. God is in us. We are all God," or something similar. Later, she had a "movement" prayer accompanied by some Spanish song with a beat. Everybody had to "move." Most folks swayed and clapped. She started some conga line through the whole room that many sensible folks tried to stay away from. Now I'm fine with conga lines--at a party, not as a prayer. Especially when the prayer is Hindu. It was all "incarnation" (the idea, not the event) and such."
On a personal note, I will be going to the CANA Council meeting in Virginia this week. I can assure any concerned Episcopalians that no Anglican at the CANA meeting will be declaring that our mission is not to win people to Jesus. Second, no one will be saying, "We are all God." There will be no Hindu prayers. It is so good to be out of the heresy and apostasy of pecusa.
First, there's the new priest in the diocese who stood to declare to the convention, "Our mission is not to win people to Christ!" Yes, how silly of Jesus to issue a great commission. How silly of the apostles to go against this new gospel proclaimed at the DCNY convention and win thousands of people to Jesus. Does anyone wonder why pecusa is declining? Wonder no more. And how was the bishop with this declaration? "Skip said nothing. Just smiled. "
And how about taking the convention to a deeper place (Episcopalians used to call this place hell). I quote: "Then there was some lady leading "prayers". We all had to be meditative and listen to spooky music. She purred, "See God in us. God is in us. We are all God," or something similar. Later, she had a "movement" prayer accompanied by some Spanish song with a beat. Everybody had to "move." Most folks swayed and clapped. She started some conga line through the whole room that many sensible folks tried to stay away from. Now I'm fine with conga lines--at a party, not as a prayer. Especially when the prayer is Hindu. It was all "incarnation" (the idea, not the event) and such."
On a personal note, I will be going to the CANA Council meeting in Virginia this week. I can assure any concerned Episcopalians that no Anglican at the CANA meeting will be declaring that our mission is not to win people to Jesus. Second, no one will be saying, "We are all God." There will be no Hindu prayers. It is so good to be out of the heresy and apostasy of pecusa.
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