VIRTUEONLINE Digest - 1 Jun 2007 to 8 Jun 2007 (#2007-27) Fri, 8 Jun 2007 There are 24 messages totalling 1652 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Table of Contents 2. VirtueOnline Viewpoints - June 08, 2007 3. WHY LAMBETH COULD FAIL 4. The Limits of Intolerance 5. AMiA: Bishop Rogers Says TEC Will Experience Lingering, Withering Death 6. College of Bishops Announces Scorched Earth Policy Against Orthodox Priests 7. LONDON: Saving Grace 8. CHICAGO: Anglican schism not inevitable says Williams 9. NEWARK: All Bishops could be invited to Lambeth, says Robinson 10. CALIFORNIA: God's plan. Episcopal pastor extends pursuit of bishophood 11. UK: Forward in Faith Submits Proposal for Separate Province 12. CONNECTICUT: Church Battle Shifts To Property. Diocese Could Evict Rebel Parish 13. CANADA: Church at same-sex crossroads 14. LONDON: Church to impose 'rule book' of beliefs 15. LONDON: Lord Carey Rebukes Claims He Set 'Precedent' to Lambeth Invitations 16. LONDON: Unmarried priest quits top job after becoming pregnant. Who's the father? 17. OXFORD: Bishop John Pritchard's installation sermon in Oxford 18. Where Do I Stand? (On the issue of Same-sex Blessings) 19. Lambeth Can Be What It Wants To Be - Ephraim Radner 20. AMBRIDGE, PA: Why We Stand: An Interview with Dr. Leslie Fairfield 21. Would Jesus have Condemned Evangelicals as Pharisees? - Simon Vibert 22. The Inherited Church. A timely Lesson for Episcopalians 23. One More Nail in the Lambeth Coffin - by Charles Raven 24. A VISION THAT RENEWS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:31:25 -0400 From: Robert Turner Subject: Table of Contents 1. VIEWPOINTS Violators of Lambeth Resolution Should be Nixed...Tolerance, Not...Diocesan News 2. WHY LAMBETH COULD FAIL 3. The Limits of Intolerance 4. AMiA: Bishop Rogers Says TEC Will Experience Lingering, Withering Death 5. College of Bishops Announces Scorched Earth Policy Against Orthodox Priests 6 LONDON: Saving Grace 7. CHICAGO: Anglican schism not inevitable says Williams 8 NEWARK: All Bishops could be invited to Lambeth, says Robinson 9 CALIFORNIA: God's plan. Episcopal pastor extends pursuit of bishophood 10 UK: Forward in Faith Submits Proposal for Separate Province 11. CONNECTICUT: Church Battle Shifts To Property. Diocese Could Evict Rebel Parish 12. CANADA: Church at same-sex crossroads 13. LONDON: Church to impose 'rule book' of beliefs 14. LONDON: Lord Carey Rebukes Claims He Set 'Precedent' to Lambeth Invitations 15. LONDON: Unmarried priest quits top job after becoming pregnant.Who's the father? 16 OXFORD: Bishop John Pritchard's installation sermon in Oxford 17. Where Do I Stand? (On the issue of Same-sex Blessings) 18 Lambeth Can Be What It Wants To Be - Ephraim Radner 19. AMBRIDGE, PA: Why We Stand: An Interview with Dr. Leslie Fairfield 20. Would Jesus have Condemned Evangelicals as Pharisees? - Simon Vibert 21. The Inherited Church. A timely Lesson for Episcopalians 22. One More Nail in the Lambeth Coffin - by Charles Raven 23. Devotional : A VISION THAT RENEWS ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:33:49 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: VirtueOnline Viewpoints - June 08, 2007 "We in CAPA want to say clearly and unequivocally to the rest of the Communion: the time has come for the North American churches to repent or depart. We in the Global South have always made repentance the starting point for any reconciliation and resumption of fellowship in the Communion. We shall not accept cleverly worded excuses but rather a clear acknowledgement by these churches that they have erred and "intend to lead a new life" in the Communion (2 Corinthians 4:2). Along with this open statement of repentance must come "fruits befitting repentance" (Luke 3:8). They must reverse their policies and prune their personnel." --- The Road to Lambeth, African Provinces Speak. "We can't wait any longer. I don't believe anything today that I didn't believe 40 years ago. Then I was smack-dab in the mainstream. Now I'm on the outside looking in." --- Fr. Bill Ilgenfritz, St. Mary's, Charleroi, PA Dear Brothers and Sisters, www.virtueonline.org 6/8/2007 There is no point, said a group of African Primates in February 2006, "in meeting and meeting and not resolving the fundamental crisis of Anglican identity. We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution are also invited as participants or observers." The Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, re-stated that 2006 decision recently, and said that it wasn't just the Episcopal Church that was at fault for consecrating V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual bishop, but also those who consecrated him. The African bishops demanded assurances from the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury that this crisis will be resolved before a Lambeth Conference is convened. That it would seem, is not going to happen. Dr. Williams dropped the invitation list on the Anglican Communion just before he headed out the door on a three month sabbatical. The list of non attendee bishops, which includes the extreme ends of the Anglican theological spectrum, can be counted on one hand. He has not addressed the issue raised by the CAPA bishops and reiterated by Archbishop Orombi - what about those bishops who consecrated Robinson? A few have retired, like Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, but a large number are still diocesan bishops who are just as guilty as Robinson and should be excluded. The CAPA bishops also said they are frankly disappointed that the announced plans of the Lambeth Design Team avoid any discussion of Communion order and discipline, which have been clearly strained to the breaking point. "We are disappointed that the central issue of an Anglican Communion Covenant is not front-and-centre on the agenda of the Conference. If any group should be expected to consult on these most important issues, it should be the assembled bishops of the Communion." As I wrote in an article on the agenda of Lambeth, it is all about amelioration of human suffering, not ignoble in and of itself, but it fails to address the very issues that are tearing the communion apart! The Africans have other legitimate complaints as well. They note the huge expense of such an event. "Our African churches are asked to divert funds from much needed work of evangelization and charity to a 3-week meeting which has no authority and which is blatantly ignored by '"autonomous'" member churches. In some cases, poorer provinces are "assisted" by donors from the West who have a deliberate agenda of buying silence from these churches. We conclude that if a regular all-bishops' conference is to continue in the Anglican Communion, it should be held in the Global South, where the costs are much less and the local economy can benefit; that it be shorter in duration; and that every church be required to pay its own way." The CAPA bishops added that they would take care of their own genuinely needy members. I have written an analytical piece on what will happen in September with deadlines for the HOB, a meeting of Common Cause leaders, and the inside news that Mrs. Schori and David Booth Beers have made it clear that they will cut no quarter for fleeing parishes or dioceses. They have the money to out spend any and all legal efforts arrayed against them. In effect they are mocking Millennium Development Goals and will spend more money on non-Millennium legal fees than on MDGs. You can read that here or in today's digest: http://tinyurl.com/2djoh TOLERANCE. Have you ever wondered what the limits of intolerance might be? For liberals and revisionists in TEC there are no limits for orthodox folk. If you believe the rhetoric of the Progressive Episcopalian movement, orthodox Episcopalians are "intolerant", "arrogant", "irrational", "abhorrent", "scapegoaters", "exclusionary", "narrow imperial ideologues", "Neo-Puritan", "fascist", "fundamentalist", "narrow-minded/totalitarian", "de-legitimizers", "extremists", "prevaricators", "bigots" and "un-Anglican". You can read my analysis of this outrage in today's digest or click here: http://tinyurl.com/yv6zwq It was announced this past week that the COLLEGE OF BISHOPS has formed a coaching program for new bishops. Of course what the old hands will tell the new hands will have nothing to do with the reality of The Episcopal Church. In keeping with the blindness of these bishops, I have written a satirical essay telling them what they can really expect, especially if they are the bishop of a liberal diocese with a handful of orthodox priests who may just want to flee their strangulating grip. You can read it here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/39ljge TRINITY SCHOOL FOR MINISTRY in Ambridge, PA has a new interim president, the Rev. Dr. John H. Rodgers. VOL interviewed the former Episcopal Dean and now AMiA bishop about the seminary and state of the Church and what he sees as the future of both. You can read that here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/3e4a2h THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK (ACN) launched three new ministry initiative websites this past week: anglican-church-planting.org, anglican-evangelism.org and anglican-missions.org The sites will inform Anglicans of upcoming events and conferences, connect leaders in each of these ministry areas to one another, and link to other related ministry tools and resources. These websites will also be a primary communications tool for the Network's Church Planting Initiative, Good News Initiative and Global Missions Initiative. "The work of the Network has grown so quickly that rather than people having to dig down through several layers of our main site, we thought that having separate sites would be more user-friendly," said the Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton, the Network's Chief Operating Officer. Already the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, one of the Network's first ministry initiatives, has its own website and can be found at www.anglicanaid.net. Another Network initiative, Children and Youth, is set to launch its new site in early summer. "In my ministry area, the Network Task Force on Church Planting is sponsoring church planting foundations seminars, sending new church planters to boot camp, doing assessments of new church planting candidates, and offering coaching workshops in different cities all across the country," said the Rev. Tom Herrick, ACN Director for Church Planting. "We hope that all Anglicans in the Common Cause movement interested in church planting will regularly check our site." The Good News Initiative is the newest of the ACN initiatives. Already eight "Sharing Our Faith" evangelism conferences are scheduled in cities across the nation. 200 people attended the first conference, held May 17–20 at St. Clements's in El Paso, TX. The next conference is June 8–10 at Christ Church in Moline, IL. (To register, go to anglican-evangelism.org). The Rev. Dr. Canon Michael Green is speaking at each of these events along with a team of other evangelists. "With the leadership of Dr. Green, we are working to re-focus the Anglican Church in this country on the need for effective evangelism," said Jenny Noyes, ACN's Coordinator for Evangelism. "By training the clergy and laity in how to share their faith with others and doing hands-on outreach, we hope to see revival in our churches. This new website will help us all keep track of dates, event registration and details as well as link people to other evangelism resources." THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF ST. CHARLES, Poulsbo, WA, celebrated a unique Trinity Sunday. The service was probably the only one in the nation in which the priests and deacon were vested in red instead of the traditional white. While St. Charles celebrated the Lessons for Trinity Sunday, there was another celebration that called for the red vestments. June 3rd is the feast day of the Uganda Martyrs. On this date in 1886, 45 martyred Christians were burned to death by the depraved pedophile King Mwanga, for their failure to renounce their Lord. There were 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics ultimately martyred within one year by the king including Anglican missionary, Bishop James Hannington. These events led directly to the great Ugandan revival and a country that is possibly the most truly Christianized country in the world. One third of the population is Anglican, one third is Roman Catholic and the other third includes Protestants, Muslims and pagans. One wonders why the Diocese of Olympia doesn't get the message. AN ANGLICAN USE RITE conference, focusing on the Pastoral Provision, says that it will shortly be opened to continuing church priests. A source told VOL that the Vatican is soon to promulgate a Personal Prelature for Anglicans who want to become Catholic. The former ECUSA Bishop of Albany, Daniel Herzog and his wife Carol, who have both reverted to the Catholicism of their youth, were at the Anglican Use conference. They were received with enthusiasm. A SAFE PLACE FOR SODOMY in Chicago. A VOL reader wrote to say that TEC's reputation as a "gay-friendly" place is clearly being taken seriously by homosexuals these days. "My wife was waiting for the school bus with our little girl, aged seven, on the corner of Dearborn and Schiller in Chicago. St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church is right across the street from our place, on Dearborn. Parked in front of the church that morning, according to my wife's eyewitness account, were two white males, in their early thirties, in an old model American car, cuddling and smoking cigarettes, at approximately 7 a.m. Their car seats were back, in the reclining position. Well, I guess they felt safe at the Episcopal Church, and are now parking there as their '"lover's lane.'" Somewhat fitting, he wrote, given TEC's policy agenda. THE SILENCE OF THE BISHOPS. When bishops (evidently) don't do anything when their clergy enter a same-sex civil union, does that qualify as a violation of the Windsor Report and the Primates' admonition to forswear support for further gay blessings (which would normally occur only in ecclesiastical settings)? The recent announcement that a NY and NJ priest entered into a civil union met with no reprimand from their respective bishops. One online observer commented that the bishops (Sisk and Councell) under whom they serve had apparently been invited to Lambeth '08, which amounts to a vitiation of the Windsor requirements! That is the main problem with what Williams did with the invitations. It ignores and completely undercuts the Windsor bishops's and primates' call for moratoria! THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IS ON THE HOT SEAT these days, but that did not stop Mrs. Schori from testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on her concerns about global warming. The Presiding Bishop, who in 1983 earned her doctorate in oceanography, approaches the issue of climate change from both scientific and theological perspectives. Her testimony to the Senate Committee noted the specific effects of climate change on those living in poverty. Jefferts Schori regularly emphasizes care for the environment as part of the Millennium Development Goals, affirmed within the Episcopal Church's current top mission priority. WHEN the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church meets in Parsippany, N.J. next week, high on the agenda of issues will be ways to get dioceses to boost their contributions to the national coffers. The Rev. Gay Jennings will present a report from the Diocesan Commitments Task Force saying that there is a $3.8 million budget deficit and that strategies are needed "for increasing participation and accountability by dioceses that are not fully meeting their commitment to the budget for The Episcopal Church." The culprits by and large are revisionist dioceses, like the Diocese of Newark that doesn't have enough income to support itself let alone the national church. Josephine Hicks, chair of the administration and finance committee and sponsor of the approved resolution, said the council is seeking ways of making formal contact with, not sanctions against, those dioceses that are not donating to the program budget of the General Convention at the recommended assessment formula rate. A number of orthodox dioceses are also withholding monies from the national church coffers but for very different reasons. What all this amounts to is a gentle arm-twisting, not a gun to the head. Yet. For the fourth year in a row Episcopalians from the DIOCESE OF ATLANTA will attend Atlanta's PRIDE FESTIVAL on June 22-24. Episcopalians will staff a booth in Piedmont Park, march in the parade on Peachtree Street, serve water and ring bells at St. Luke's, Atlanta. A VOL reader wrote to say that folks are wondering out loud if all this gayness in the Atlanta Episcopal churches is creating an unsafe and threatening environment for young children. Many are asking if parents who take their children into Atlanta's Episcopal churches are guilty of negligence, child endangerment and abuse. LAWSUITS MOVE FORWARD IN VIRGINIA. The Rev. John Yates wrote parishioners concerning the latest developments in the lawsuits filed in the Virginia courts by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and The Episcopal Church (TEC) against Falls Church and ten of its sister churches in the Anglican District of Virginia, as well as members of their vestries and other individuals. "On Monday, May 21, Judge Randy Bellows, the judge appointed to preside over the twenty lawsuits that have been consolidated in Fairfax County Circuit Court, held a Scheduling Conference with the lawyers for all of the parties. In the course of the three-hour conference, Judge Bellows developed a process to govern the resolution of the primary issues in the case. Among other things: 1. The court decided to address as the first issue on the merits the applicability of the Virginia '"Division Statute,",' Virginia Code §57-9. That law gives a congregation, in the event of a "division" in the larger church or relig ious society to which it is attached, the right to determine which branch of the church or society it wishes to belong. Judge Bellows has scheduled an evidentiary hearing beginning on November 19 to address the applicability of the Division Statute, with a pre-trial schedule that includes briefs and a hearing in mid-September on the question of the proper scope of the November 19 hearing. If the court rules in favor of our churches and finds that the Division Statute applies, the court will then turn to the claims of TEC and the Diocese that that the Division Statute violates the Constitution. If the court concludes that the Division Statute is unconstitutional, it will then turn to the common law claims that TEC and the Diocese assert in their complaints, claiming that they have trust and contract rights to our churches' property. "Over the summer, the court will receive briefs and have a hearing on our arguments that the common law claims brought by TEC and the Diocese against the churches' Vestry members, Rectors, and trustees as individuals should be dismissed for a number of reasons. Discovery on all issues in the case will proceed, but will initially focus mainly on the Division Statute. However, all parties agreed that there will be no discovery directly against the individually named defendants, such as Vestry members or trustees, nor with regard to the requests of TEC and the Diocese for an accounting of how the churches have been using their funds and other resources since their votes." A report from the Falls Church on how the lawsuits will proceed can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3a96qs From the DIOCESE OF OLYMPIA, comes this from a VOL reader on the situation at the cathedral where three staff were laid off. One priest, the Rev. Janet Campbell was fired just 13 months from retirement for lack of funds. The reader wrote to say that in the Diocese of Olympia, "homosexuals and lesbians have enormous power. In their own interests, they will destroy and otherwise sacrifice anybody and everybody who is not of their mind or not one of them. (And I speak from first hand experience.)" So of course, the Rev Campbell had to be sacrificed for the sodomite Dean, the Very Rev. Robert Campbell. "The Very Rev. Robert Taylor, dean of St. Luke's cathedral will now draw down a salary of $175,000 a year. You will note that while Taylor's salary was being raised to $175,000 plus benefits or a compensation package of almost $215,000 a year, the Rev Janet Campbell was laid off because of a lack of funds and will not earn a full pension." SOME EIGHTEEN EPISCOPAL BISHOPS FROM THE CARIBBEAN met for four days recently in Queens, Long Island under the umbrella of the Caribbean Anglican Consultation (CAC) that included the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Church in the Province of the West Indies. Themed "Hol' Strain: Redeeming the Time," the two groups gathered together to bond as a church among the fracturing Anglican-Episcopal communion as well as to hear the vision of the current Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori. "This is our eighth and largest attended consultation," said the Rev. Canon Kortright Davis of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and chair of the CAC in Episcopal Life Online. "The purpose of the consultation is to re-establish fellowship amongst clergy and laity who are African American, nurture them in terms of ministry on how to reinforce the vocation of mission and ministry and to make a more significant and meaningful contribution to the growth and development of the culture of the Episcopal Church." A coalition of Latin bishops later issued a statement calling for doctrinal latitude within the Anglican Communion, arguing that a respectful diversity of opinion could be an engine of renewal and growth for the Church. They released a letter distancing themselves from the hard line approach taken by the American Church and its allies amongst the "Global North" and the opposing "Global South" coalition of dioceses in Asia, Africa and the Americas. This growing "polarization" between the "non reconcilable" truth claims of the "Global North and Global South" has placed the "unity of the Communion at risk" noting, "in the midst of this painful controversy, we do not identify with either side, because they don't fully represent the spirit of our thoughts." In the DIOCESE OF CONNECTICUT a VOL reader, Michael Peabody, wrote to say that a recent Hartford Courant Article on the 1993 case of the Bridgeport parish left out some pertinent information. The parish in question merged with a parish in Fairfield. Years later they desired to leave the Diocese over the ordination of women. They sued and lost the battle for the building because the building they merged into was a post Revolutionary War building chartered under the Diocese of CT. The parish that had merged into it was a PRE-Revolutionary War parish that was justly compensated years earlier when the Federal Government seized their "property under 'Eminent Domain' for the construction of Interstate 95. The decision was rendered in such a way that made it clear that any parish chartered Pre-Revolutionary War, i.e. King of England/Church of England, COULD leave with their property. Unfortunately at least one of the remaining parishes was formed in the 1960's, that being St. Paul's of Darien, and was just a bit after the war. So if the HOB decides to vote to leave the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop should move, with court precedent on his side, to re-take the properties that were chartered under the King of England. Obviously not all of the parishes that were chartered under the King of England are of orthodox persuasion, but this could prompt a kind of swapping of charters for those churches formed after the Revolutionary War who wish to leave the Diocese, for the charters of King of England parishes who wish to remain in the 'renegade denomination'. Chances are good for the parish in Bristol, since it was chartered in 1754." TRURO VESTRY unanimously called the Rev. Tory Baucum, 47, as the new Rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, VA. This follows the unanimous recommendation of Tory by the Search Committee. "After a two-year intensive search that spanned the Anglican Communion worldwide we are grateful to God for the amazing way in which the Truro Vestry was so unified in its decision to call Tory to Truro," said Oakes. "I am delighted with this decision to call Tory as rector," said the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, Bishop of CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America) and current rector of Truro. "Tory is a gifted pastor and teacher with a demonstrated passion for evangelism. I am looking forward to seeing how God will use his gifts at Truro." Tory is currently Associate Professor of Preaching and Church Renewal at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY. He has a PhD in Intercultural Theology with expertise in the catechumenate, Christian revitalization movements and the history of preaching. DEATHS NOTED. With sadness we announce the death of the Rt. Rev. Steve Jecko this week. He was the former Bishop of Florida and Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Dallas and a solidly Evangelical brother. VOL received a note from the family saying that +Steve was admitted to the hospital where various tests were done including an MRI where a brain tumor was discovered near his ear. On Sunday night, +Steve fell while on the way to the bathroom. A precautionary bone scan was done. Cancer was found in his bones. He died Friday. His passing was peaceful. Steve was a wonderful supporter of VirtueOnline and will be sorely missed. He was a "deep throat" for background information and much more. His early retirement from the Diocese of Florida has resulted in that diocese plummeting in the numbers of parishes and parishioners under its new Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard. Funeral arrangements are pending. The Rev. Jim McCaslin, Dean, Southeastern Convocation, Anglican Communion Network and rector of All Souls Anglican Church wrote: "I am in tears. +Steve was my bishop here in Florida, a tireless worker for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and a valued friend. He will be sorely missed. I ask your prayers for his dear wife Joan and the family. A funeral service will be held Wednesday June 13 at Christ Church, Plano at 2pm, the Rt. Rev. James Stanton will officiate. Requiem im Pace, Steve." In the DIOCESE OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN The Rt. Rev. James Arthur Kelsey, 54, was killed while driving his sport utility vehicle on a state highway last Sunday. His vehicle crossed the centerline and slid into a pickup truck. Kelsey and the pickup driver, Michael Charles Wiita, 58, of Lake Linden, died at the scene, police said. Troopers said rainy weather might have caused the wreck. "The Episcopal Church has today lost one of its bright lights," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a statement issued by Episcopal News Service. The Diocese, which is divided into 4 districts, and has 28 parishes, has an average parish attendance of 30 per Sunday. Sunday attendance for the whole diocese is 853 people. AFRICAN ANGLICAN leaders are regularly accused of being politically naive and non-involved in justice issues, preferring to focus on the sexual sins of the Episcopal Church. Not true. This past week two African primates made front-page news in their respective countries. The Ecumenical News Service reported in Kenya that church leaders including Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi condemned violent acts by a traditional religious group known as Mungiki (Multitude), who have been blamed for a series of bizarre killings in the east African country. They have urged the government to take decisive action to root out what they say is a dangerous cult. "We condemn in the strongest terms, all the killings and the destabilization of civilians," Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi. "We all want to live in peace." The banned religious group is said to have strong backing from disaffected young people and has re-emerged in recent months. It has been accused of leaving behind a trail of killings in Nairobi suburbs and in parts of central Kenya. "We are happy to see something is being done, but we want the government to find the root cause of the sect and the people be hind it," said Nzimbi. In the PROVINCE OF NIGERIA Archbishop Peter Akinola Nigeria counseled former President Olusegun Obasanjo to dedicate his life to the service of his poor neighbors and to seek reconciliation with the people he had deliberately antagonized. Delivering a sermon at a thanksgiving service organized by the Egba Traditional Council for Chief Olusegun Obasanjo at the Cathedral of St. Peter, Ake Abeokuta, the Primate said that it was time for the former President to dedicate his life to the service of God. Explaining that Chief Obasanjo, having attained the age of 70 and achieved so much in life, the should shed all excesses in his life and humble himself so that his soul can be salvaged. To read the full story click here: http://allafrica.com/stories/200706040267.html THE ARCHBISHOP OF THE CHURCH OF UGANDA, the Rt. Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, urged students to study theology and join Church ministries but warned them against looking at education for purely financial gains, saying the spiritual aspect supercedes money. "Like the public service, the Church also has job slots. Education shouldn't be for money alone. God's rewards are more treasurable. It would bring joy to my heart if all students studied theology," he said on Wednesday during a pastoral visit to Mukono. Orombi urged students to desist from wickedness, be disciplined and practice Christianity. NOBEL LAUREATES CALL FOR FRESH ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA. The former Primate of Southern Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and 48 other Nobel laureates have called for new elections in Nigeria. Reports of corruption and fraud have marred the April 21 presidential elections, prompting opposition calls for a nationwide strike that observers fear may plunge the West African nation into anarchy. Their recent letter organized by Elie Wiesel and endorsed by Archbishop Tutu, the Dalai Lama, novelists JM Coetzee of South Africa and Wole Soyinka of Nigeria and other Nobel laureates said the elections "lack legitimacy" and could spark "violent conflict with serious consequences for Nigeria and the region." STATISTICS AH STATISTICS. Mainline denominations are clearly in trouble. The Episcopal Church claims to have 2.3 million but less than 800,000 turn up on a weekly basis. Active membership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continues to decline, decreasing by more than 46,000 in 2006. The number of people being baptized also continues to slide, according to statistics recently released. Membership went from 2,313,662 in 2005 to 2,267,118 in 2006, according to the annual statistics compiled by the Office of the General Assembly (OGA). The numbers also show that fewer adults, 946 fewer, and children, 234 fewer, were baptized in 2006. REDEEMED LIVES, a ministry of healing for people caught in sexual addiction has launched a new website www.redeemedlives.org. In it can be found "five DVD Pastoral Courses available for purchase or individual teachings available for download for $5 US. These teachings come with student outlines that help you follow the lecture by filling in blanks where key words and concepts are used. For people who seek help but cannot get to a support group you may now go through our Pastoral Courses at home then seek prayer from a trusted Christian minister. For Christians in the two-thirds world, free access to download individual teachings from our five Pastoral Courses may be obtained by emailing us at info@redeemedlives.org and applying for a Viewing Scholarship. The website includes an Articles tab with over fifty articles by the Rev. Mario Bergner and others, which can be republished for free. "It is our prayer the new Redeemed Lives website will be both an educational and ministry tool in the hands of faithful Christians seeking the healing and saving embrace of Jesus Christ." If you have ever wondered about the extent of JOHN STOTT MINISTRIES worldwide, consider this. 2007 was a year, which saw the publication of the Africa Bible Commentary, the first-ever commentary written by Africans, for Africans. Tens of thousands of copies have been distributed in Africa in the six months since publication. It was also a year that saw nearly 100 top leaders receive scholarships to complete their Ph.D.s through the JSM-Langham Scholars program. 175 leaders completed their Ph.D.s and returned to their home countries in positions of significant influence after graduating as JSM-Langham Scholars. 200,000 evangelical texts were sent to nearly 1,000 seminaries around the world. 30 national biblical preaching movements were developed, with opportunities to start movements in 50 additional countries. The number of JSM supporters has increased dramatically in the past two years through expansion of their Langham Partners, Church Partners, and Strategic Partners progr ams. Stott is a leading world Anglican preacher and teacher whose 50-year ministry expands the globe. WELCOME TO VIRTUEONLINE. We hope you will take a few moments to scan the list of stories today and check the website for even more stories that did not make the cut in today's digest. www.virtueonline.org Stories are added every few hours to the website. Please know that VOL depends entirely on its readers to maintain this ministry. In addition to myself there is a web master, part time office manager and others to pay. If you would like to support this ministry with a tax-deductible donation we would truly appreciate that. Please consider supporting this vital global ministry that goes out to millions of readers in more than 45 countries. You can send a check via snail mail to: VIRTUEONLINE 1236 Waterford Rd., West Chester, PA 19380 Or you can make a donation at the website through PAYPAL: www.virtueonline.org. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. All blessings, David W. Virtue DD ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:34:49 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: WHY LAMBETH COULD FAIL WHY LAMBETH COULD FAIL TEC Will Fight to the Bitter End for Properties News Analysis By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org 6/8/2007 "We in CAPA want to say clearly and unequivocally to the rest of the Communion: the time has come for the North American churches to repent or depart. We in the Global South have always made repentance the starting point for any reconciliation and resumption of fellowship in the Communion. We shall not accept cleverly worded excuses but rather a clear acknowledgement by these churches that they have erred and "intend to lead a new life" in the Communion (2 Corinthians 4:2). Along with this open statement of repentance must come "fruits befitting repentance" (Luke 3:8). They must reverse their policies and prune their personnel." ---The Road to Lambeth We are fast approaching the point in the Anglican Communion where a crisis can no longer be averted by acceptance of covenants, reports (Windsor), communiques and high flying talk of diversity, inclusivity, reconciliation and healing. It has become apparent that a parting of the ways is inevitable. The test will be how Archbishop Rowan Williams proposes to handle it. Truthfully he is in a no win situation. He is being cursed by American and British Anglican homosexuals for "betraying" them by caving into "homophobic" African bishops. At the same time, Western Anglican liberals and revisionist bishops have made it abundantly clear that compromise of any kind is not on the books, whether it is talk of primatial or alternative oversight for besieged dioceses and parishes or compromising on a range of sexuality issues. Conservatives, Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics who are far more civil in the culture wars are hoping and praying that Dr. Williams will do the right thing as the day of decision draws closer. VirtueOnline learned this week that the Presiding Bishop's attorney David Booth Beers and Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, are 100 percent committed to keeping all properties in TEC and will fight to the finish through the courts to keep them from fleeing the Episcopal Church. Orthodox priests and their parishioners will be spared no quarter in the church's efforts to keep them in the Episcopal fold. Therefore one should expect an ecclesiastical (and financial) blood bath in dioceses like San Joaquin and the Rio Grande where orthodox bishops are sympathetic to departing parishes as well as in dioceses like Virginia where the bishop is supported by the national church. The national church has made it clear that they will fight for those parishes, which depart and threaten the bishop even though the national church has no real power to keep a diocese from leaving. The Dennis Canon only applies to fleeing parishes, but presentments will be issued to orthodox bishops who do not ma ke every effort to keep those parishes from leaving the diocese and the national church. Mrs. Schori is proving to be tougher on property issues than her predecessor the Rt. Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold who kept Beers on a short leash. Mrs. Schori has unleashed Beers with a take no prisoners' policy. The dual message is that the national church has both the money and the determination to fight to the finish any parish or diocese who opposes them. The name of the game is power and money. The powers that be at 815, the denomination's national headquarters, believe they have the Dennis Canon securely on their side. They believe the canon gives them the sacred right to sue and take possession of any property they believe belongs to them. There will be absolutely no compromise. The issue of 'the faith once delivered to the saints' is a non-issue; it is all about property (even empty ones) and who owns them. It is for the next generation of Episcopalians to fill the pews, even if there aren't any to fill them, say the church's liberals. New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson hinted darkly in a letter to Newark Bishop Mark M. Beckwith that liberal bishops should refrain from blasting Williams for his failure to stand up to narrow-minded, neo-Puritan archbishops like Nigerian primate Peter Akinola. Robinson he is convinced that there is a lot of diplomacy going on between the Archbishop's office and the American Church, "which may - or may not, create a different ecclesiastical climate and result in invitations to all bishops in good standing in the church," including, presumably CANA Bishop Martyn Minns. Clearly Bishop Robinson doesn't understand the depth of feeling and seriousness Global South bishops take the authority of Holy Scripture and the mandate of the gospel call for repentance and amendment of life. They will not compromise under any circumstances. Neither apparently will Robinson. While more Lambeth invitations are likely (the Anglican bishops is not complete), it may not matter in the long run if the CAPA bishops as a bloc say they won't go. Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, an influential Global South leader, has said he and his contingent will attend. Ultra-Liberal Washington bishop John Chane said he will probably skip the conference out of loyalty to Robinson, but one doubts his staying power not to go if pressured by Mrs. Schori. Here is a statement from the CAPA bishops delivered in February 2006: "The current situation is a twofold crisis for the Anglican Communion: a crisis of doctrine and a crisis of leadership, in which the failure of the "Instruments" of the Communion to exercise discipline has called into question the viability of the Anglican Communion as a united Christian body under a common foundation of faith, as is supposed by the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Due to this breakdown of discipline, we are not sure that we can in good conscience continue to spend our time, our money and our prayers on behalf of a body that proclaims two Gospels, the Gospel of Christ and the Gospel of Sexuality." There is no point, said the group of African Primates "in meeting and meeting and not resolving the fundamental crisis of Anglican identity. We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution are also invited as participants or observers." Barely a week ago, The Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, re-stated that 2006 decision saying that it wasn't just the error of the Episcopal Church for consecrating V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual bishop but also of those who consecrated him. It is difficult to know how the CAPA bishops can attend Lambeth if this is what they truly believe and are prepared to stand byut it is the next step agreed upon by the Common Cause Roundtable," he stated. "While it is not the end of our journey, it does continue the trajectory of ever greater unity and ever closer cooperation between those of us who know Jesus as the only Lord". Williams wants everyone to downplay their more extreme philosophical impulses and work to preserve Anglicanism's unique assets. God, he says, intends that members of a church "have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust." Will it be enough to stop a split? Williams concedes he is not "absolutely confident" that the whole structure of Anglicanism can be kept together. But--by the help of God, no doubt--he's trying. As the realignment unfolds two things are clear - the Global South, by far the most significant and numerous block of Anglicans have made it clear they won't attend under the present circumstances. The liberal Episcopal Church bloc, for the moment, still says they will attend en mass, but after September 30 they could change their minds. The Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics within the TEC will receive no quarter from Mrs. Schori and her legal pit bull, David Booth Beers, if they should decide to leave and attempt to take their properties with them. Mrs. Schori has already sent that message to Bishop John-David Schofield (San Joaquin). It will be a martyrdom of a sort, for the losers, writes the Very Rev. Dr. Paul F.M. Zahl in his booklet "Re-Alignment and the Episcopal Church", with the winners showing no concession or mercy. Zahl observes that we may have to give it all away. "We have to be prepared to give away our love affair with things English, with Gothic stone churches (peaceful, tranquil), with needlepoint kneelers and cherry wood pews and alter pieces, with robed pomp and more." "Grace means exactly this: giving way for the victor's side and preparedness for self-offered death from the losers." END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:35:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: The Limits of Intolerance THE LIMITS OF INTOLERANCE News Analysis By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org 6/2/2007 If you believe the rhetoric of the Progressive Episcopalian movement, orthodox Episcopalians are "intolerant", "arrogant", "irrational", "abhorrent", "scapegoaters", "exclusionary", "narrow imperial ideologues", "Neo-Puritan", "fascist", "fundamentalist", "narrow-minded/totalitarian", "de-legitimizers", "extremists", "prevaricators", "bigots" and "un-Anglican". Those are the words of the Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, a priest in the Diocese of Olympia, and a deputy to General Convention Those are the words of the Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, a priest in the Diocese of Olympia, a deputy to General Convention and a leader of the so-called Episcopal Majority, a group dedicated to expunging orthodoxy from the Episcopal Church in the name of tolerance. In an article titled "The Limits of Tolerance", Mr. Hamilton accuses remnant orthodox Episcopalians, such as the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Communion Network, Forward in Faith North America, and, most recently, the "Convocation of Anglicans in North America" (Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola's extra-territorial "Nigerian" mission to the U.S.A.), of well-planned and organized attempts to bring about the replacement demise of the Episcopal Church as the U.S. embodiment of Anglicanism. He writes; "Until now we have not prepared well to face this assault. And so we have been blinded to this narrow totalitarian vision seeping into our nation's and our faith's - and even our Communion's - DNA. It is a vision that threatens to destroy our open North American society and emerging Christian identity." He then launches into a tirade about those who would uphold the faith against its cultured despisers, "The truth is beginning to dawn on us, however: toleration has its limits. Unlimited tolerance will lead to the end of tolerance, for the tolerant will be stamped out, leaving only the extremists. A tolerance that is unlimited in scope and boundary-less in expression represents a fundamental error of judgment on our part." "The canaries in the Anglican coal mine are our gay brothers and lesbian sisters and their supporters, attacked with increasing vehemence by the shrill voice of conservatism. Having spent the last 30 years berating and seeking to marginalize various ethnic minorities and women, conservative rhetoric condemning gays and lesbians has reached an Inquisitional pitch. If we are not alarmed by this trend, the liberating teachings of Christ will succumb to the religious fascism of our age." Mr. Hamilton berates progressive Episcopalians for their failure to believe that the "application of reason" to the current conflict will "prove effective in convincing our opponents of the correctness of our cause." He then says that this is not only false but that it is time to fight back. "These neo-Puritans are focusing intently on the destruction of tolerance's foundational values. Our demise would result in the success of their narrow and puritanical agenda within the broader Church, and herald a similar victory over the open society of our North American culture." Mr. Hamilton then outlines a six-point plan to save The Episcopal Church. * Keep the faith. We must continue on the pathway of diversity and inclusion begun with the ordination of women and the Book of Common Prayer 1979 in partnership with all of our members. * Be clear that we will abandon no one, and especially not those minorities who have, historically, been oppressed by the Church. * Be firm that, while we welcome everyone on this journey, we will not allow bigotry or threat to destroy this emerging vision of Christian faith in light of a God who makes all things new. * Be vigorous in preserving the institutional integrity of the Episcopal Church, including taking immediate legal action when any attempt is made to alienate the real property of our denomination, encouraging every bishop and Standing Committee to do the same. * Resist all attempts by some in our Communion to impose an un-Anglican institutional vision upon us and our fellow Anglicans worldwide, including opposing any Anglican "Covenant" or curial instruments, as threats to the faith on which our institutions are based. * End the prevaricating, and, instead, organize, network, communicate with each other, speak out, and act. What's wrong with this picture? A little history is in order. WOMEN'S ORDINATION. When the issue of women's ordination was brokered into the Episcopal Church it was done not on the basis of sound theological reflection, but on the back of the civil right's movement. It was done with the understanding that those bishops who disagreed would not be forced to comply and that their consciences would be respected. If you haven't kept up with the news then you should know that those days are long gone, and now it is MANDATORY for all bishops to ordain women or face possible presentment and expulsion from the HOB. Dioceses like Ft. Worth and Quincy had to cut deals with neighboring dioceses to allow Special arrangements for women were made with neighboring dioceses so that bishops could, to keep their consciences from being totally violated. The one notable exception in recent years was the election and consecration of the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Steenson, Bishop of the Rio Grande, who does not believe in women's ordination. He got the green light from then Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold on the understanding he would play ball with liberals in the HOB. Ironically, that may not work out as planned since Steenson is showing some testosterone in how he is dealing with orthodox parishes that want to flee his jurisdiction and the Episcopal Church. (His diocese recently passed motions demanding alternative oversight for parishes fleeing TEC). http://tinyurl.com/2hb88k Can one doubt that it is only a matter of time when the ordination of pansexual priests, now already accepted, will go from optional to mandatory by The Episcopal Church and any bishop who refuses to ordain such a person, (as it will be deemed a justice issue not a moral one), will be labeled a traitor to the HOB and find himself excluded or fail to receive consents? TOLERANCE. For more than 30 years the orthodox have been acquiescent to the point of nausea, tolerating the innovations of the Episcopal Church. So many lines in the sand have been drawn. One endless prevaricating language game after another has been played. Resolutions of one sort or another demanding that the faith be kept have been issued. The orthodox have been pushed to the very edge of the Episcopal Church. Just look at the effort, albeit vain, by Bishop Keith Ackerman (Quincy) to get the Episcopal Church to pass a simple resolution (B001) affirming the authority of Scripture and basic tenets of the Christian faith. Mr. Hamilton and his gang of "tolerant" priests would not vote for it, (too exclusionary). Hamilton is accusing the orthodox remnant of intolerance because he won't uphold what he swore to uphold when he became a priest. Was it tolerant to pass D039, which legitimized and ratified fornication at the 75th General Convention while bitterly opposing the passage of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 affirming the sacredness of sex within heterosexual marriage, or the passage of resolution B033, which called on bishops to "exercise restraint" by not consenting to the consecration of future gay bishops? Right after that we got V. Gene Robinson. Or what about the Windsor Report, which said that homosexuality, was "incompatible with Scripture" and disapproved of the blessing of same-sex unions? It is not just the orthodox within TEC that urges caution and restraint; the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide have called for the same restraint, time and time again. From one primatial meeting to the next, from Brazil to Dromantine, from London to Tanzania the message has been the same - don't go beyond what Holy Scripture will allow or you will jeopardize your place in the Anglican Communion and your very souls. Why in heavens name would African Archbishops, who had the gospel brought to them by Anglican missionary evangelists from England who told them very explicitly what salvation is and what it entails, forfeit it all by affirming sodomy - a behavior they believe, along with St. Paul, will jeopardize their place in the Kingdom of God. What fools would they be to play with loaded dice at a crap table when the odds of winning are zero? The slow incremental take over of The Episcopal Church has been well documented. Mr. Hamilton can scream all he wants, but he and Louie Crew, Jack Spong and now 90 percent of the House of Bishops are on board with the Episcopal Church's new religion - right down to electing a woman Presiding Bishop which is so in-your-face to the majority of Anglicans who don't believe in the ordination of women to the priesthood let alone a female Presiding Bishop. Mr. Hamilton has one objective: he wants to hammer into the ground a remnant of faithful priests and laity who have been steam rolled over by a bunch of fascist bishops. The most notable of these is Charles E. Bennison who cannot even stand the sight of orthodox priests like Fr. David Ousley and Fr. David L. Moyer, barely tolerates evangelicals like Fr. Greg Brewer, and who cannot affirm certain basic Christian doctrines while demanding complete fealty and obedience only medieval popes have sought to obtain. Look what history did to them! Mr. Hamilton wants us to keep the faith, not THE Faith, but his version of the faith, which includes "the pathway of inclusion and diversity". Really. For orthodox folk "inclusion" is a pathway to hell, so why should they jump on that bandwagon, pray tell? This is come as you are, stay as you are, repentance not necessary. True diversity is not about women or blacks in the church. Orthodox parishes have as good a sprinkling of both in my experience as do liberal parishes. Homosexuals and lesbians can be found in a large number of congregations including orthodox ones, but they are not breaking down the doors to get in despite Louie Crew and Bishop Robinson's belief that they would. With only 1.4 percent of the national population officially homosexual, Episcopal Church statistics reflect only slightly more than that. Despite Mr. Hamilton's cry, no orthodox Episcopal parish has "abandoned" or not welcomed anyone into their congregations. Homosexuals and lesbians are self-discriminating when it comes to parishes THEY choose to attend. Why go to a parish that preaches a gospel of repentance when you can go to one that affirms your aberrant sexual behavior! Mr. Hamilton says that we should "welcome everyone on this journey, we will not allow bigotry or threat to destroy this emerging vision of Christian faith in light of a God who makes all things new." Now that all depends on what journey or road you happen to be on. If it is the narrow way which leads to light, life, and salvation, that's one thing. If it is the broad road which leads to personal self-destruction, that is quite another. The truth is bigotry has become the domain of liberals and revisionists. This past week VOL faced a case of pure fear and intimidation by a revisionist bishop when this writer sought information from the Diocese of Missouri. Two remaining orthodox priests were approached and both refused to assist. One said, "I don't want to get involved" while the other party said, "We don't have any pertinent information to share with you." Those were the nicest words they said. Why? Because Bishop George Wayne Smith has let it be known that he monitors VirtueOnline and the Midwest Conservative Journal, a blog that exposes what is going on in the Episcopal Church. Watch out if your name appears on it. That's intimidation. DIVERSITY AND BIGOTRY. Revisionist bishops will not allow ordinands to attend Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry for fear of spiritual contamination, or take TESM's ordinands into their dioceses - young evangelical men and women filled with the Holy Spirit who will preach the life saving message of Jesus and fill churches. How does Mr. Hamilton explain liberal Episcopal parishes that are emptying while departing parishes fill borrowed halls, borrowed churches and the occasional synagogue? Can he explain why the average age of Episcopalians is in the mid 60s and the average size of a congregation is in the lows 70s!!! Is Mr. Hamilton blind to the fact that tens of thousands of Evangelical Episcopalians have left and continue to leave the Episcopal Church each week because Bishop Robinson's manner of life is being thrust down their throats as a "wholesome example" when they know in their guts it is not, and don't want their children exposed to his lifestyle! Mr. Hamilton wants liberal bishops to come down hard on priests and parishes that want to keep their properties. "Be vigorous in preserving the institutional integrity of the Episcopal Church, including taking immediate legal action when any attempt is made to alienate the real property of our denomination, encouraging every bishop and Standing Committee to do the same," he writes. Parishes that were built by the labor, sweat and dollars of parishioners should blithely turn them over to a bishop and national church that never built a single parish because of the Dennis Canon, according to Mr. Hamilton. He should have a word with the Rev. Don Armstrong about that kind of thinking. The National Church is a taker not a giver. It has never laid a single foundation stone of a parish and , expects a tithe to promote a mission conservatives don't believe in. Protesters are told to either take a hike, and face inhibition and deposition or stay and conform. Fellow liberals and revisionists are asked by Mr. Hamilton to assist in all attempts to impose an un-Anglican institutional vision upon us and our fellow worldwide Anglicans. He wants us to oppose any Anglican "Covenant" or curial instruments, which he says are threats to the faith upon which our institutions are based. Now what faith is that exactly? It is certainly not the faith of Thomas Cranmer or J.C. Ryle or N. T. Wright, or of John Keble, John Henry Newman or Edward Bouverie Pusey. Hamilton's "faith" is that of Spong and Countryman, Louie Crew and Steven Charleston and various other theological illuminati of the left who long ago abandoned any semblance of the "'faith once delivered to the saints."' Anything that smacks of orthodoxy like Resolution 1:10 or Covenants or Windsor Reports that proscribe homosexual activity must be expunged from the record and joyful pan sexuality must be free to reign like the great god Pan and Sufi the Rumi. End the prevaricating, and, instead, organize, network, communicate with each other, speak out, and act, says Hamilton. Oh Mr. Hamilton, you and they have been doing that for over 30 years. You have all but won the cultural wars. You have taken over the Episcopal Church's seminaries, most of its bishops have rolled over to your way of thinking, the pulpits are filled (even as the pews empty) with your people, the media levers (Episcopal Life and nearly all the Diocesan publications) are controlled by liberals, the purse strings have been in your grip since the reign of Edmund Browning, and you have driven all but a tiny and fearful minority out of The Episcopal Church. Only a handful of orthodox dioceses remain, and if my sources are correct, they won't be around much longer. Come Oct. 1, Mr. Hamilton will begin to see a slow but steady exodus from the Episcopal Church. The less than 800,000 remaining practicing Episcopalians, a mere speck on the backside of global Anglicanism compared to provinces like Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, will evaporate even further. The orthodox are fleeing even as we speak. Your prescription for total control will be a hollow victory. Your "tolerance" will have triumphed. You have made your own Procrustean bed of intolerance, Mr. Hamilton, and you will have to lie in it. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:36:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: AMiA: Bishop Rogers Says TEC Will Experience Lingering, Withering Death AMIA BISHOP SAYS TEC WILL EXPERIENCE LINGERING, WITHERING DEATH VirtueOnline interviews the new interim President of Trinity School for Ministry, the Rt. Rev. John D. Rodgers. By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org 6/6/2007 VOL: You are back at TSM your old stomping ground as interim president(for a year) following the resignation of Dr. Paul Zahl. Are you surprised at this move? RODGERS: We were all completely and utterly surprised. We were all saddened. Paul and Mary have been strong supporters of TSM from its inception. It would seem that Paul felt that he had made the contribution that he could make and wanted to move on to where he could make his next contribution to the sharing of the Gospel. We will greatly miss him. VOL: What do you hope to achieve during this period? RODGERS: Well, since I know the School somewhat, I hope to help the board, faculty and students provide continuity and a smooth transition to the next Dean/President. I hope that we will continue to increase in effective teaching and learning, and in practical caring as a school dedicated to scholarship, practical ministry, and desiring to model together what we are receiving by God's truth and grace. I also hope we will do a better job in relating to the alumni and in joining with them in recruiting new students and supporters. In the present situation in the Church it will take a team effort if we are to serve the Kingdom well. VOL: Will you be part of a group looking to find a permanent president for the seminary? RODGERS: No, I will not be on the search committee. I will feel free to suggest names to them, as I hope all of your readers will do as well. VOL: Can you clear up the name of the seminary? IS it Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (TESM) or TSM - Trinity School for Ministry? There is some confusion in my mind and those of my readers? I have heard and seen it read that it is now Trinity Anglican School for Ministry. Some clarification would be helpful. RODGERS: I am not as clear as I might be on this. "Trinity School for Ministry" is the public name and appears on the publications and stationery. This name makes it clear that Trinity is not funded by the Episcopal Church and is open to educate godly, biblical, qualified persons, male and female, for ministry, lay and ordained, from all Anglican groups, including those who sense a call to remain in TEC, as well as all ecumenical groups. "Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry" remains the legal name and will most probably be changed when the institutional scene in the Church comes to some settled state. It takes a good bit of work and expense to change all of the legal documents. Better to wait until the final name is certain and do it then. VOL: You have been in the forefront of the battle in the Episcopal Church for over 40 years; do you have a sense that we are reaching the end of the road here in the U.S.? RODGERS: I sense that we are approaching a decision point. What is now apparent is that the crisis is not only in TEC but in the Anglican Communion itself. The Western Provinces and the provinces that they have deeply influenced are as compromised as TEC. I suspect that the issue over attendance at Lambeth 2008 may be that point. However I have thought that we were about to face the facts in the past and been disappointed. Perhaps the fact that TEC is so clearly unrepentant and the continuing loss of members in Churches where the biblical Faith is truncated or contradicted may help both us and the Global South take the needed action. VOL: You, along with the Anglican Mission in America bishops have not been invited to Lambeth 2008. Are you disappointed? Was this expected? RODGERS: I never expected to be invited because I am somewhat retired so there was no personal disappointment. I did not expect CANA or AMIA or TEC to be invited. That all of the TEC bishops were invited, given their unrepentance, is amazing and makes the clear point that we can expect no discipline from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I actually think that this is an unintended helpful action, for it makes the need for bold action by the orthodox utterly clear. VOL: Lambeth 2008. Did you think you would be invited? RODGERS: No. VOL: Will you personally write to Dr. Williams and ask for an explanation? RODGERS: No. I am very happy with the AMIA response and the warnings of Nigeria, Uganda and I suspect I will be happy with the statement from the House of Bishops of Rwanda. VOL: Do you think that your Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini will go to bat for you and Bishop Murphy and the other AMIA bishops to get you that invite? RODGERS: I would prefer that all of the Global South Bishops not attend, inviting all of the orthodox Provinces to join them in another location at the same time. I would like to be invited to attend that gathering of Bishops, which would be taking counsel in the light of the Word of God written. VOL: It has just been announced that Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola will probably not attend Lambeth 2008 with his 122 bishops and archbishops because Bishop Martyn Minns did not get an invitation. Do you think Archbishop Kolini might take the same stance with AMIA bishops? RODGERS: The logic of Archbishop Akinola makes sense to me. I suspect that the Global South will act together. I hope so. By the same logic TEC should not attend since Bishop Robinson was not invited. I wonder if they will be that consistent or show that much "integrity". VOL: You recently authored the SPREAD document that accused Archbishop Rowan Williams of being complicit in the gay agenda for Years preceding his rise to the top post in the Anglican Communion. You also said he has basically not changed his views even as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Did you ever hear back from him with regard to those accusations? Did anyone in his office contact you about the charges? RODGERS: I have been part of a team working on all sorts of petitions and supplements as well as those coming from SPREAD and we have always triple checked our facts. Not once has anyone claimed that we have erred in our facts. In this particular case no one has responded to the document criticizing its facts or interpretations. VOL: Do you see an imminent collapse of the Episcopal Church? RODGERS: No, I see a lingering death. It will take some time. VOL: Will it wither and die rather than totally collapse like the Soviet Union did? RODGERS: I believe it will be withering rather than sudden collapse. VOL: Do you see the TEC being thrown out or ostracized by the wider Anglican Communion? RODGERS: I think a major division of the Anglican Communion is more likely. VOL: Do you see eventual schism in the whole Anglican Communion with evangelicals in Africa and the West simply saying 'we have had enough 'and going their own way, with TEC announcing that it has 15 countries lined up that will be their communion. RODGERS: Yes, that seems most likely to me in the not so long run. VOL: Do you see any good resolution to the property issues confronting orthodox rectors trying to get free of revisionist TEC bishops? RODGERS: Were the Anglican Communion to hold together and were the Communion to declare that TEC has violated its own Constitution and its standing in the Communion, then there might be a legal way that the orthodox might keep their buildings. But that does not seem likely. In those States where personal property principles are used, and not the ecclesiastical hierarchy principle, the orthodox have had some success. On the whole it looks dim for the orthodox to me. Better to have the blessing than the building, if one has to choose. VOL: Will you ever really retire? RODGERS: Yes, on one level. I told the Board I would serve as Interim Dean/President for 1 year. I meant that. On another level, I believe I have read somewhere we are all destined to "go from strength to strength in a life of perfect service" and that doesn't sound like just golf or tennis to me. There are the great feasts and worship services predicted so it must not be all work and no play. VOL: Thanks John. RODGERS: Thank you, David, for asking. ---The Rt. Rev. John D. Rodgers is Dean Emeritus of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, a former Episcopal priest, and now a bishop in the Anglican Mission in America. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:37:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: College of Bishops Announces Scorched Earth Policy Against Orthodox Priests College of Bishops Announces Scorched Earth Policy Against Orthodox Priests A Satirical Essay By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org 6/5/2007 NEWS ITEM: "The College for Bishops announced recently a formational coaching program developed for new bishops during the early years of their new ministry. The three-year program would provide resources, support and leadership development and is based on feedback from the recently concluded New Bishops Research Project. The New Bishops Research Project was designed to identify and develop the unique set of skills bishops need in order to transition into their new position, articulate their vision and effectively lead their dioceses," ---the Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews, bishop of the Office of Pastoral Development for the Episcopal Church. My name is Clayton Matthews, but you can call me Clay (no reference to my feet), and I want to welcome you all here today as you begin your program on how to be a bishop. Some of you I see are well into your fifties, but I see we have the new baby bishop of Northwestern PA, a mere 32, who's still learning how to use Occam's razor. Please be careful, Bishop Rowe, when you shave each morning. Make sure you're not entertaining thoughts about Bishop Bob Duncan as you shave, as you might do yourself harm. Also, make sure, all of you, that you are not reading Galatians Chapter 1 over breakfast; that little bit about "another gospel" might cause you to choke on your Wheaties. This is a glorious time to be an Episcopal bishop. Never have things looked rosier. Spring has sprung and the dioceses are in full bloom. Why, just the other day I was talking to Bishop Charles E. Bennison of Pennsylvania who faces civil charges for fraud as well as presentment charges for financially mishandling his diocese. He tells me things couldn't be better. While he told me they may have to turn the lights off temporarily and pay no salaries for a few months during the summer because only a handful of his priests give him money, he was full of smiles as he told me of plans to sell space around the cathedral for a high rise. The zillions he plans to make will allow him to spend millions of dollars on purchasing a church camp in Maryland, reprint his Visigoth Rite and send endless back issues of Episcopal Life to all in the diocese. Last year, he was forced to cancel subscriptions due to a shortage of funds. Oh the genius of this man! He even got the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, our fearless, much beloved feminist leader to get all the sex stuff about how he covered up his brothers' sexual abuse of a minor expunged from Wikipedia. Let me tell you class, you have to have a real knack and, dare I say, balls (much laughter) to do that. And let me tell you when our beloved, fearless leader dresses up in a Gucci suit some of us think she actually has them! (Laughter) Our first lesson today is how to deal with fleeing priests and parishes...that small minority of nasty, intolerant, arrogant, irrational, abhorrent, exclusionary, narrow-minded, Neo-Puritan, fascist, fundamentalist, totalitarian, extremist, bigots who are, without question, un-Anglican. I have invited a panel of bishops to join us. They are old hands at this kind of thing. Would you please welcome Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles, Bishop Andrew "Drew" Smith of Connecticut and Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard of Florida, and of course the prince of purge himself, Charles E. Bennison. (Much applause) Bishop Bruno, would you please start by telling us your experience in handling parishes and priests who want to leave our beloved inclusive church. Bishop Bruno: Thank you, Clay. In Los Angeles, the City of Angels, where the sun never sets, the beaches glimmer and the wine is so fine and Arnold Schwarzenegger reigns, it has been my privilege to learn from the master himself, Arnie "I'll be back" terminator. He taught me all I know about how to deal with these fundamentalist types. In a word, terminate them. Clay: Er, bishop you haven't been too successful so far, as you seem to be losing in the courts, the properties are still with their priests. Bruno: Short term thinking, Clay. We will sue them and sue them and sue them all the way to the Supreme Court if we have too until we win. We will make sure the Dennis Canon works here as it has worked everywhere else. It is still early in the battle. They don't call me the terminating bishop for nothing. I've got the cojones and not a day goes by when I don't think and pray to our beloved Lord about how I will get them back. I've even been talking to Tony Soprano and Al Pacino for some ideas. Ya get my drift? Clay: We sure do Jon. Now tell us, Bishop Smith, how have you been handling things in Connecticut? Smith: It's been a win-win for me in the courts, in the church (a presentment was thrown out) and with the one property we have taken back, St. John's Bristol, Clay. You gotta do it fast and in the dead of night. You send in a squad of goons.... I mean guards to surround the place, then break down the doors, rip out the computer, personal or otherwise, fire the priest, and send in a woman priest the next Sunday. Speed is the name of the game, Clay. Strike hard and fast. Clay: Isn't that a bit heavy-handed, Drew? Smith: Hell no, Clay, you gotta show them who's boss. There must be no sign of weakness, none. You gotta send a signal to anyone who thinks they can play fast and loose with church property. The name of the game is intimidation, Clay. I've got six other parishes waiting in the wings and I want them to see what happens when they disobey me and challenge my right to run the diocese the way I want. Ya noticed they haven't said much lately. They are laying low, no use pissing me off. I've got them just where I want them. Clay: But hasn't another parish just announced theyare leaving to go with those homophobic Nigerians? Smith: Yeah, just got word this week. Poor old Helmandollar over at Trinity in Bristol said he is leaving and taking his people and property with him. Poor sod he will now feel my wrath. I've renamed him "helman-shorta-dollar" (much laughter). He's toast. Watch me. Clay: Bishop Howard, you have been very successful in getting rid of priests but retaining properties. Could you tell us your story? Howard: Thanks, Clay. Let me say first to all you new bishops, remember you have the power and the Dennis Canon behind you. You are the boss, you are princes of the church and you can screw anybody over that you want. You also have tremendous resources and expertise in lawyers like David Booth Beers upon which to draw. The national church will cooperate with you all the way down the line. 815 loves you, they embrace you in your endeavors to rid yourselves of these horrible fundamentalist types. Their lawyers and my fellow bishops are here for you in your hour of need. The truth is I haven't really lost any parishes at all. Oh sure, I've lost a few priests and parishioners, but at the end of the day we have kept most if not all the properties, put in new vicars and priests and carried on. In time we will make up for the people we have lost by preaching our new gospel of inclusion and sodomy for all. Think long term; think about future generations of Episcopalians who will come beating down our doors after Sept 30., when we get our marching orders to leave the Anglican Communion. We'll all be singing "Free at last, Lord, free at last." We will then be able to build on new foundations being put into place by Jack Spong and Gene Robinson as we speak. It will be a whole new day, a whole new diocese a WHOLE NEW CHURCH... (Bishops' rise and cheer with prolonged applause). Clay: Would someone hand the bishop a box of Kleenex? Thank you. Now my friends, you have been hearing a lot lately about the decline of the Episcopal Church. Don't believe it. We are only experiencing what most major Protestant denominations are experiencing as they go through a sort of change of life, a mid life denominational crisis, if you will. It is temporary. We will soon see a new generation coming back to the church, mark my words, and with our new fangled doctrine of Inclusivity the possibilities for growth are endless. But there is one secret I want to share with you to keep the geriatric generation from leaving and it is this; build a columbarium and they will stay (and die). None of the over 70 crowd wants to die without the blessings of the church. They will even pay for it. If you need money, just call the national church. We will open up a trust fund or two to help you. Grant money is available. God bless you in your endeavors. In the name of the father, the son and Sufi the Rumi, let us all rise and do the Circle Dance of Dispossession taught to us by our former much beloved Presiding Bishop, Frank T. Griswold. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:38:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: LONDON: Saving Grace LONDON: Saving Grace By DAVID VAN BIEMA AND CATHERINE MAYER/LONDON TIME magazine http://tinyurl.com/2qa4y7 June 7, 2007 For his last official act before a three-month sabbatical, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams chose a joyous one. He ordained the Reverend Canon Humphrey Southern as a new bishop. The ceremony took place in London's St. Paul's Cathedral, and the crowd smiled to see Williams, the tousle-headed, professorial leader of the Church of England and titular head of its global offshoot, the Anglican Communion, reveling in his mellifluous baritone as he prayed, sang and performed the rite of ordination. "Will you strive for the visible unity of Christ's Church?" asked Williams. Answered Southern, "By the help of God, I will." Anglicanism in Crisis In an exclusive interview with TIME, his last before a three-month leave, the Archbishop Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, describes the Anglican Communion as "very fragile" -- and explains how he hopes to reconcile its bitter factions Keeping the Faith Rowan Williams on homosexuality, the risk of a schism and hope By the help of God, indeed. Almost from the day he took over in 2002, Williams, now 56, has been attempting to prevent a schism among the world's 79 million Anglicans. It has been a horrible task. Within months of his taking the job, a simmering debate on homosexuality exploded into a brutal battle, pitting some of the wealthiest and most liberal of the church's 38 provinces, notably those in North America, against a larger, more socially conservative group concentrated in Africa and Asia and known as the Global South. At the 1998 edition of the Communion's once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, the concluding language called homosexual practice "incompatible with Scripture." But in 2003 the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., made Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, bishop of New Hampshire. Unlike Roman Catholicism, the Communion lacks definitive doctrine to aid decisive solutions. Nor does it have a universal leader such as the Pope - the Archbishop makes no claims to infallibility and cannot dictate to his flock. The years since have featured a series of angry meetings, threats of secession, half-met demands and unmet deadlines. The next full-scale opportunity to negotiate - or fight on - will be at the Lambeth meeting in July 2008: that is, if Williams can keep all parties on board long enough to attend it. Anglicanism matters, and not just because it is one of the largest Protestant denominations. It matters because, like Roman Catholicism, it is global, uniting varied ethnicities, economic levels and social attitudes in an overarching understanding of faith. But Anglicans have foregone Catholicism's useful authoritarianism, staking their unity on a seemingly more attractive continual conversation, based on mutual respect. The sharp debate over homosexuality threatens that unity, and crystallizes a challenge facing everyone in an uneasy, newly wired world: can the North - rich and imbued with an ethos of individual rights - and the poorer South find a constructive interdependence? The Archbishop's office is arguably ill-equipped for that challenge. A job sometimes described as "first among equals" now looks more like lion-tamer-minus-whip. Some think Williams should step back and let the rift happen. "No one is up to this, however gifted they may be," says Chris Sugden, executive secretary of the group Anglican Mainstream. Then again, Mainstream is a very conservative group that might prefer an immediate split; and if the Communion disintegrates, it is not Sugden who could be known forever as its last Archbishop of Canterbury. Says Bishop Idris Jones, Primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church, "You could say is occupying the Christlike position. He is crucified between two extremes and they're pulling him apart." In the last few weeks, however, Williams has been intriguingly proactive, doling out penalties to a couple of notable thorns on either side of the debate, and possibly finessing a decent attendance for Lambeth 2008. Speaking to Time on a cool May morning, a fire burning in the hearth of his study in Lambeth Palace, his London seat, Williams admitted: "The Communion feels very vulnerable; very vulnerable and very fragile." But he insisted, "I don't think schism is inevitable." He said his task was to "try and maintain as long as possible the space in which people can have constructive disagreements, learn from each other, and try and hold that within an agreed framework of discipline and practice." Yet not everyone will be happy to follow his example. For in his pursuit of unity, Williams effectively banked down his own, rather liberal, views about homosexuality and the church. He may ask no less from the liberal provinces in the Communion. Back in 2002, Rowan Williams was something of a prodigy. At 52, he became the youngest Archbishop of Canterbury in 200 years. "And," wrote one observer, "perhaps the cleverest," a man who had quickly established himself as one of Anglicanism's most gifted preachers and probably its pre-eminent theologian. He was a self-professed "hairy lefty," a Christian socialist arrested in a 1985 protest at a U.S. air base in England, who now criticizes the Iraq war. And he once also had a controversial stance on the theology of sexuality. In 1989 he delivered a lecture to Britain's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in which he stated: "If we are looking for a sexual ethic that can be seriously informed by our Bible, there is a good deal to steer us away from assuming that reproductive sex is a norm." He continued: "The absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory." As Archbishop of Wales he admitted knowingly ordaining at least one noncelibate gay man. When he moved with his wife and two children to Lambeth Palace in 2002, the Herald newspaper of Glasgow enthused, "What will endear him to the people ... is that he has the courage of his convictions, however unpopular they may be." But his convictions turned out to be complex, and not everybody was endeared. Until July 2003, Williams seemed prepared to make Canon Jeffrey John, an openly gay man in a committed, celibate relationship, a bishop. But after a tremendous outcry on the right, Williams held a six-hour meeting with John, who withdrew his candidacy. Williams had already called an emergency meeting of the Anglican leadership over the U.S. Episcopal Church's election of Gene Robinson, also gay and in a committed relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire. The months that followed set a pattern. The Americans consecrated Robinson. Williams, facing conservative demands that they leave the Communion, endorsed milder requests such as a promise, for now, to make no more gay bishops and bless no more gay marriages. The Episcopalians made ambiguous gestures of compliance, but in 2006 elected as their presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who had supported Robinson's elevation. Today Williams calls Rob inson's election - absent any prior general decision allowing the ordination of people in same-sex relationships - "bizarre and puzzling." "His heart is where it's always been," says Welsh Archbishop Barry Morgan, a good friend. "His natural sympathies and theological understanding are on the side of those who are gay." And yet Williams insists that churches should not outpace the Communion's consensus. Many old allies, Williams admits, saw his shift on gays as a "betrayal." One British gay-rights activist snapped: "I hope he likes his newfound friends." But in fact, he has few on the right. "He's a very courteous man," says Morgan. "Sometimes the nuanced way in which he says things is lost on people." Certainly it is lost on archconservative Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has said that God regards homosexuality as the equivalent of humans having sex with various animals, and who has commented, "We don't have to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus." He also set up his own Anglican body in the U.S. - the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (cana) - flouting Communion rules about stealing other bishops' sheep. Last February, when top Anglican archbishops gathered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Akinola extracted major concessions despite initial deft handling by Williams. The gathering attached a strict deadline - Sept. 30 - to the usual cease-and-desist demands on the Americans, and added one more: that they arrange with the Communion for a "primatial vicar" to provide religious leadership for disgruntled conservatives, an idea the U.S. Episcopalians rejected almost instantly. Williams' reputation sank further. Last spring was a nadir. Williams was widely reported as feeling isolated and depressed. Just before Easter, retired bishop Richard Harries described a meeting of the Church of England's House of Bishops at which Williams "simply shared what was on his heart for more than an hour ... and one tough-minded bishop ... was reduced to tears." An unnamed former bishop earlier had offered the press an image of an endless via dolorosa: "He's just carrying the cross, hoping things will change." "I think it's a rather dramatic picture painted there," Williams told Time. "Making decisions that will lose you friends, compromise people's perception of your integrity - that's very hard. On the other hand, that is only part of the reality. First and foremost, I'm a priest and a bishop." Up close, Williams is yet more benignly rumpled than at a distance. White hair springs out in every direction; wild black eyebrows seem to try to unseat his spectacles. Sitting next to a reporter, he affects the solicitous slump of a tutor assisting a student. His answers, however, are precise and confident. And indeed, he has some reason to be satisfied. One of his few direct powers is to determine who gets invited to the Lambeth conference. Many expected him to wait until after the Episcopalians' September deadline, and then - if they proved noncompliant - disinvite the entire American contingent. Instead, he announced in May that, for now, he was excluding just two people: Robinson alone of the Episcopalians; and Martyn Minns, the bishop of Akinola's U.S. church. If either attended Lambeth, he said, the conference would risk being just about them. It was, of course, a gamble. Akinola threatened to pull his country's 90-some bishops out of Lambeth. Robinson said he hoped that the U.S. church as a whole (with its 111 dioceses) would "respond" to his exclusion. But the act of self-assertion seems to have energized Williams. As his hearth logs crackled, it became clear that he saw himself, the U.S. Episcopalians and Akinola as facing the same broad challenge: in the absence of bright guidelines, to subsume their more extreme philosophical impulses to the preservation of Anglicanism's unique assets. As for their real differences, Williams cited a theology he says springs from the Apostle Paul's reference to the church as the "body of Christ": God intends that people in one church "have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust. 'Here they are. In an ideal world, no doubt I'd have chosen differently, but it wasn't up to me.'" So although he says he's "not recanting" his old arguments about homosexuality, his new job demands that he express "where the consensus of our Church is," rather than press for change. Even though Williams himself doesn't see sexuality as of "first-order" theological importance, he believes so many Christians do that pro-gay measures must be preceded by a broad shift in consensus. He portrays the U.S. church as having failed at this - and Robinson's election as perhaps dangerously myopic. Williams reports complaints from Egyptian Christians that their churches are being denounced - or, he hints, threatened - by Muslim clergy because of same-sex relationships, even though the local Christians themselves have never accepted their validity. Williams would like to see a "covenant" or set of core Anglican principles. U.S. Episcopalians have criticized this as a move aimed at forcing liberal churches into Roman-style lockstep, and he acknowledged it could eventually isolate the American church's current stance on homosexuality. "I don't want to accelerate departure, God forbid," he says, adding that he hopes both the Episcopalians and others could benefit if their positions changed. The Archbishop is weary of being pushed around. The pusher-in-chief, of course, especially since the founding of cana, has been Akinola. "I've said to him privately and publicly I don't think that was an appropriate response," says Williams. He is also bothered by the unwavering support by Akinola's church of a proposed Nigerian law, now lapsed, that would have assigned a five-year jail term not only to open homosexuals, but to those who supported them. Williams says he is "very unhappy" about the situation, "and I've written to the Archbishop about it." The Anglican parties have talked fairly little, thus far, about the collateral damage if the Communion does dissolve - but it would be real. Valuable links between rich and poor nations would be broken, and people would suffer while northern cash is seeking new conduits to southern need. There will be expensive litigation. That is not to say that the principles of gay rights or biblical fidelity may not be worth the possible costs. But Williams cautions: "There are no clean breaks. It's not as if just snap apart like a dry biscuit." Two weeks after Williams' offsetting penalties on Robinson and Minns, it looks as though his gamble may have paid off. Although Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi said he would join Akinola's boycott of the Lambeth conference, Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, an influential Global South leader, told Time his contingent will attend. Liberal Washington bishop John Chane said that he will probably skip the conference out of loyalty to Robinson, but "I think the American church will be well represented ... I think it's important. I don't see a walkout." This should please the Archbishop, who is now engaged in a little light recreation, working on a book about Fyodor Dostoevsky at Georgetown University in Washington. He will emerge from his studies slightly before the Communion's next likely crisis: the Americans' September deadline on the Dar es Salaam "recommendations." Whatever happens then, Williams will probably keep plugging along. He is "hopeful," he told Time, but not "absolutely confident" that the whole structure of Anglicanism can be kept together. And if it should fall apart around his shoulders, leaving him standing in the rubble of his calling? Would he be able to sustain the blow? "Well, yes," Williams said, and then took a long pause. "Yes. Because I trust my God and I believe that whatever mistakes I make and whatever disasters may occur, there is always grace." with reporting by Michael Brunton/London and Jeff Israely/Rome ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:39:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: CHICAGO: Anglican schism not inevitable says Williams CHICAGO: Anglican schism not inevitable says Williams By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer June 7, 2007 CHICAGO (Reuters) - Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in an interview to be published on Friday, says he is not optimistic about the future of the Anglican Church but adds that a schism over gay issues is not inevitable. The state of the 77-million-member global church "feels very vulnerable. I can't, of course, deny that. It feels very vulnerable and very fragile, perhaps more so than it's been for a very long time," Williams told Time Magazine. But he also said: "I don't think schism is inevitable. The task I've got is to try and maintain as long as possible the space in which people can have constructive disagreements, learn from each other, and try and hold that within an agreed framework of discipline and practice." Asked if was optimistic, Williams said "I'm hopeful. Not optimistic," agreeing that "hopeful" was a "safer" word. The Worldwide Anglican Communion, as the church is known, has been shaken and divided since 2003 when the Episcopal Church, its 2.4 million-member U.S. branch, consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican church history. His elevation not only splintered the U.S. church but riled defenders of traditional Christianity in the church's "Global South" -- African, Asian and Latin American congregations that now account for half of the world's Anglican followers. Some U.S. Episcopalian congregations have already placed themselves under the jurisdiction of conservative bishops in Africa and elsewhere. NIGERIAN CHURCH The situation became even more strained recently when Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a leading orthodox figure, ignored a plea from Williams and came to Virginia to install Bishop Martyn Minns as head of a new Nigerian-based church branch designed as a refuge for orthodox American believers. Williams later announced that both Minns and Robinson would not be invited to the Lambeth Conference, a major church meeting held periodically since 1867 and scheduled again next year. In the Time interview Williams said he did that to avoid the two bishops becoming the focus of the 2008 meeting. "The mode of their appointment in the face of substantial protest simply means their bishoping is going to be under question in large parts of the Anglican world," he said "Regarding Robinson, one thing I've tried to make clear is that my worry about his election was that the Episcopal Church hadn't made a general principled decision about the blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of people in public same-sex partnerships," he said. "I would think it better had the church actually taken a view on that before moving to the individual case. As it is, someone living in a relationship not theologically officially approved by the church is elected to a bishop. I find that bizarre and puzzling," Williams said. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, Anglicans are organized as a federation of national churches without hierarchical lines of authority, though the Archbishop of Canterbury holds a first-among-equals leadership position. "It's impossible to get from Scripture anything straightforwardly positive about same-sex relationships," Williams said. "Those theologians who've defended same-sex relationships from the Christian point of view in recent decades have said you've got to look at whether a same-sex relationship is capable of something at the level of neutral self-giving that a marriage ought to exemplify. And then ask, is that what Scripture is talking about? That's the area of dispute," he said. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:40:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: NEWARK: All Bishops could be invited to Lambeth, says Robinson NEWARK: All Bishops could be invited to Lambeth, says Robinson Newark Bishop's Statement in Response to Lambeth Invitation http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/am/article_469.shtml June 1, 2007 For the past two weeks, I have been in regular phone and email conversation with several members of the House of Bishops. We began talking and writing because of our concern that the Archbishop of Canterbury has announced that our colleague and friend, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, will not be receiving an invitation to the Lambeth 2008 Conference, which gathers together all the bishops of the Anglican Communion every ten years. We drafted a letter expressing our disappointment and concern. In that letter we also articulated our hope - that this season of confusion and distress, which has "threatened the bonds of affection" in the Anglican Communion, might be resolved through thoughtful conversation and mutual respect. In a conference call this afternoon, we decided not to send out our letter. As Gene Robinson has told us, there is a lot of diplomacy going on between the Archbishop's office and the American Church, which may - or may not, create a different ecclesiastical climate and result in invitations to all bishops in good standing in the Church (which certainly includes Bishop Robinson, who was duly elected, consented and consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal church). We also acknowledged to one another that there is great confusion in the wider church about our polity. Unlike most of the rest of the Anglican Communion, which appoints their bishops - we elect ours. So we decided not to send out our letter - yet. Ours was a decision of strategy. We want to wait a bit to see if the diplomacy will lead to a different, and more satisfying resolution. But as we debated issues of strategy, I could feel my commitment to radical hospitality deepen, and I could hear it in my colleagues. Jesus had a passion for radical welcome - and a disdain for those who were unwilling, or unable, to embrace it. Jesus' invitation extends down through the centuries to include the rest of us. All of us. Welcome should beget welcome. We shouldn't settle for anything less. +Mark M. Beckwith Bishop Diocese of Newark ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:41:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: CALIFORNIA: God's plan. Episcopal pastor extends pursuit of bishophood God's plan. Episcopal pastor extends pursuit of bishophood BY LOUIS MEDINA Californian staff writer http://www.bakersfield.com/138/story/157909.html June 5 2007 A visiting minister opened his mouth to sing and instead brought a personal revelation from God to the Very Rev. Mark Lawrence. The Very Rev. Mark Lawrence, pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal parish, sitting in his office on May 22, 2007. "The journey begins. Pack your things. Give your children your blessing. You've been in one place long enough," recalled Lawrence. No one else heard this same message, as the minister was singing in tongues. Lawrence began to weep. "A sense of God's presence came over me," he said. Over the year that followed, the journey would take Lawrence -- and the entire U.S. Episcopal Church -- on an exhilarating yet disquieting, headline-making ride of faith and church politics. Lawrence, pastor of Bakersfield's St. Paul's Episcopal Parish would be elected bishop of South Carolina by that diocese's clergy and laity but the election would be rejected at the national level. The South Carolina Diocese now plans to reconvene Saturday in an effort to begin the election process again with Lawrence as the sole contender. Who is Mark Lawrence? Lawrence is a traditional Episcopal priest. He believes in the lordship of Jesus Christ. For him, God is a father. His interpretation of Scripture is more literal than some progressives within the Episcopal Church. His 800-member congregation is under the conservative San Joaquin Diocese, whose bishop, the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield, does not recognize the ordination of women priests. Although Lawrence himself says he would ordain women if he were bishop, he opposes the ordination of gays and says he could not take Communion from a gay priest. "A person can be my brother in Christ and be my sister in Christ and be in error," he said recently. Just how difficult fellowship among Episcopals has become was exemplified by conflict involving what Lawrence thought was to be the destination of his spiritual journey. Lawrence was elected bishop by the Diocese of South Carolina in September of last year, only to be rejected at the national level. Three consenting votes were ruled to have been cast improperly: electronically and unsigned. "While I can appreciate that it does seem like a technicality, these procedures have to be followed," said Canon Robert Williams, communication director for the Episcopal Church. "The canonical action is in no way a political statement on the election," he said. However, the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, pastor of the Episcopal Church of St. Paul in Chatham, N.J. -- and the president of the standing committee of the Diocese of Newark, which voted not to consent to Lawrence's election -- said the following in an e-mail: "The consent form is very, very clear. It asks that the members of the Standing Committee '... do, in the presence of Almighty God, testify that we know of NO IMPEDIMENT (emphasis, mine) on account of which the Reverend A.B. ought not to be ordained to that Holy Order.'. "The deep concern and, indeed, conviction (not fear) that Mark Lawrence, as bishop, would lead the Diocese of So. Carolina away from the Episcopal Church, was seen as sufficient impediment on account of which he ought not be ordained to that Holy Order," she said. Lawrence said he is not surprised to find himself in the center of the conflict and even finds a spiritual side to it. "You cannot walk this path of God's leading without being blessed by it, even if it includes controversy, misrepresentation, rejection," said Lawrence, referring to his rejected election bid. "The pathway of suffering is the main road in the Kingdom of God because our Lord walked that way." An influential woman The U.S. Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, declared the election null and void in March. "I am distressed by the recent failed election in the Diocese of South Carolina," Jefferts Schori wrote in an e-mail to the Charleston Post and Courier that was printed March 25. "The Rev. Mark Lawrence and his family continue in my prayers, especially at a time that is undoubtedly filled with grief and uncertainty," she said. "I grieve as well for the people for the diocese as they seek to continue their transition into a new chapter of leadership." Seemingly kind words from a leader whose authority Lawrence and others have questioned. In June 2006, Jefferts Schori was elected the first woman presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church. She approves of the ordination of gays and allowed the blessing of same-sex unions in Nevada, where she was bishop before, Lawrence said. Within three days of her election, the San Joaquin, South Carolina and other dioceses asked the spiritual leaders of the Anglican Communion, of which the U.S. Episcopal Church is a part, to be placed under the authority of someone other than Jefferts Schori. Lawrence said it wasn't her gender but her stance on same-sex unions and gays in the ministry that caused concerns. He said neither he nor any other Episcopal priest or bishop is accountable directly to Jefferts Schori. She is accountable to the leadership of the worldwide Anglican Communion in a spiritual but not in a jurisdictional level, he said. Lawrence's inspiration Despite Lawrence's differences with progressive leaders in the church, his conviction that God spoke to him is why he accepted the nomination for bishop of South Carolina from the Rt. Rev. Alden Hathaway, retired bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese, where Lawrence served for 13 years. (That diocese also asked to be placed under the leadership of someone other than Jefferts Schori.) That same conviction has sustained Lawrence through his election tribulations. First, Lawrence said, there was the grueling questioning by the bishops and the standing committee of the 111 dioceses in the Episcopal Church who voted to consent or not to the South Carolina election. Lawrence has called the process "abuse" and "harassment." "What would I do to keep the Diocese of South Carolina from leaving the Episcopal Church?" he said he was asked. "That diocese has made no statement regarding leaving the Episcopal Church," he said. "It's analogous to asking a man who is about to be married to his fiancee what he's going to do to keep her faithful to her vows," he said, "as if she's shown any signs of being unfaithful. It's insulting to him. It's insulting to her. "I answered that I will work at least as hard at keeping the Diocese of South Carolina in the Episcopal Church as my sister and brother bishops work at keeping the Episcopal Church in covenant relationship with the Anglican Communion." That was seen by some as evasive, Lawrence said, but what he was trying to highlight was the need for greater mutual accountability, cooperation and respect. "There's no question that South Carolina wanted him," said the Rev. Van McCalister, spokesman for the local San Joaquin Diocese. "He was elected overwhelmingly on a first ballot. He is an outstanding priest. I have not talked to anybody who doesn't think he is bishop material." A house divided A longtime friend of Lawrence's, the Rev. Kevin Higgins, pastor of Bakersfield's Quest Church, faced his own issues with the Episcopal Church. His 40-member congregation split from the church in January 2006. He said it was a decision preceded by an entire year of consideration, prayer and meetings with the local bishop. "I knew it would probably be interpreted by many as us leaving because of the issue of sexuality in the church," Higgins said, referring to the 2003 appointment of Rev. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of New Hampshire. "The issue has been the gradual slow move away from basic Christianity in the Episcopal Church," Higgins said. "We have an environment in which many of our bishops, who are supposed to be the defenders of the faith, question whether Jesus rose from the dead and whether he was completely divine. "Integrity would call that if you come to those views, that you would give up the collar. It'd be as if a member of Congress felt that the Constitution was not a valid document or obsolete." Higgins said he has kept a good relationship with others, like Lawrence, who have stayed in the Episcopal Church in spite of disagreeing with some of its progressive practices. Lawrence's journey The South Carolina Diocese's standing committee intends to present a resolution at its convention Saturday to "suspend the canons" so that a new search for a bishop does not have to start from scratch and Lawrence can be nominated. The resolution has to be approved by a two-thirds majority and the election has to be submitted for approval at the national level all over again. "My position is that it would be wrong for me to remove myself from a process that is a continuation of what began in September," Lawrence said. "(The South Carolina Diocese) believe the Holy Spirit spoke when I was elected," he said. "I'm enjoying the ministry at St. Paul's as much as I ever have," Lawrence said, but "God has knit my and my wife's hearts together with the people of South Carolina throughout these past eight months and I'm not going to withdraw or bail out on that." A timeline of recent event in the U.S. Episcopal Church June 2003 The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, who is divorced and openly gay, is elected bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. His election pits conservative against progressive within the Episcopal Church. Recently, the Very Rev. Mark Lawrence of St. Paul's Episcopal Parish in Bakersfield said electing a gay bishop was like electing a priest who was living with a woman out of wedlock. January 2006 Quest Church, a conservative congregation in Bakersfield, breaks away from the mainstream Episcopal Church. It places itself under the leadership of an overseas Anglican fellowship. March 2006 During a healing conference at St. Paul's, Lawrence receives what he believes is a personal revelation from God that he is to embark on a journey. May 2006 The Rt. Rev. Alden Hathaway, retired bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese where Lawrence served for 13 years, asks Lawrence about submitting his name as a candidate for bishop of the South Carolina Diocese. June 2006 The church's General Convention elects the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori as U.S. presiding bishop, making her the first woman primate (or archbishop) in the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the U.S. Episcopal Church is a part. Some dioceses, including the local San Joaquin Diocese, oppose the ordination of women priests. Spring and summer 2006 Lawrence is accepted as candidate for bishop and submits to a vote by diocesan clergy and lay delegates. September 2006 Lawrence is elected bishop of South Carolina over two other candidates. September 2006 to March 2007 Lawrence submits to the scrutiny of bishops and the standing committee of the 111 Episcopal dioceses, who must consent to his election. March 2007 Jefferts Schori declares Lawrence's election "null and void" because the consents from three dioceses were improperly submitted. Without these consents, Lawrence had only 54 votes - not enough for a majority. March 2007 to the present The South Carolina Diocese accepts the presiding bishop's decision. The diocese's retired bishop, the Rt. Rev. Edward L. Salmon Jr., continues to serve as acting bishop. Saturday The South Carolina Diocese plans to reconvene its diocesan convention. The diocese's standing committee plans to present a resolution so that a new search for nominees does not have to start from scratch and the well-liked Lawrence can be nominated as sole candidate for another election. August 2007 If the resolution is approved, the diocese will vote again. If Lawrence wins, the consent process at the national level will begin again END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:42:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: UK: Forward in Faith Submits Proposal for Separate Province June 1, 2007 http://www.forwardinfaith.com/artman/publish/article_363.shtml Forward in Faith has today published its Submission to the Legislative Drafting Group which was set up following the motion passed by the General Synod on 10 July, 2006. The full text of the Submission can be found here. http://www.forwardinfaith.com/news/pages/submission-ldg.pdf Members and supporters of Forward in Faith are urged to continue to hold the Bishop of Manchester and the members of his Group in their prayers, as they continue their challenging work. In particular, we would ask that FiF priests around the world make the work of the Legislative Drafting Group the intention at their Masses on Monday, 2nd July and that they email us beforehand to say that they will be doing so. A SUBMISSION TO THE LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING GROUP Forward in Faith was founded in November, 1992, in the wake of the decision that month by the General Synod to proceed to the ordination of women to the priesthood. Our clear object from the outset was to 'seek a guaranteed ecclesial structure in which we can pass the Faith on to our children and grandchildren'. We affirmed in our Mission Statement that we understood that Faith to have been 'revealed in Scripture and Tradition' and proclaimed 'through the Creeds, the Sacraments and the apostolic ministry of bishops and priests of the Universal Church'. Our opposition to the ordination of women as priests or bishops remains as firmly and utterly rooted in theology today as it was in 1992, as we have set out in detail on numerous occasions and, in particular, in Part One of Consecrated Women? We have emphatically never sought - and do not seek now - division for its own sake. We would wish to echo the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, speaking in June last year: 'if . . . the consecration of a bishop becomes the cause of a schism or blocks the way to full unity, then what occurs is something intrinsically contradictory. It should then not take place, or should be postponed until a broader consensus can be reached.' However, in the event that the Church of England were resolved to embrace this development, we would recall the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, writing in July, 2003: ' . . . there is an obvious problem in the consecration of a bishop whose ministry will not be readily received by a significant proportion of Christians in England and elsewhere' and submit that we have a theologically, ecclesiologically and legally coherent proposal which would assist the Church of England in her resolution of this problem. Our proposals for a new province were designed to permit all in the Church of England to flourish, and represent the only solution thus far suggested which would enable women bishops to exercise their ministry without hindrance in their own dioceses, thus fulfilling the aspiration lying behind Canon Jane Sinclair's amendment to the motion passed by General Synod on 10 July, 2006. The proposals were, of course, set out in forensic detail in 2004 in Part Two of Consecrated Women?; we would respectfully submit to the Legislative Drafting Group that, two and a half years on, they would repay careful re-reading. In particular, we would ask the Group to note the following key features of the solution which we proposed: * a province which would be an integral part of the Church of England * a province which would provide a stable and secure solution to the problem * a province the bishops of which would have ordinary jurisdiction * a province the boundaries of which would be entirely permeable * a province in which only male priests and bishops would minister sacramentally * a province in which orders would derive from the historic episcopate as traditionally understood * a province which would thus provide the necessary sacramental assurance * a province which would enable renewal in mission and evangelism * a province which would bring peace to the Church of England We are conscious that the detail of our proposals has, in some places, been characterised as our 'final demands'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much of the detail is of course entirely negotiable. For example, at clause 14 of our draft Measure, we made provision for a Board of Education; it seemed to our Legal Working Party that the most efficacious means of maintaining the ethos of a voluntary-aided or controlled school intimately related to a parish in our proposed province was by means of such a provision. Clearly, if there was a better way of achieving the same object, we would wish to explore it. Or again: at clause 6 of the draft Measure, an arrangement was envisaged whereby a synod would govern the proposed province, having power 'to adopt by canon any Measure or other enactment passed by the General Synod' following the precedents for such legislation being modified for use in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Diocese in Europe. We have heard arguments that the General Synod would be the poorer if it contained no traditionalist Catholic voice and are grateful for such generosity. Alternative proposals for governance whereby, for example, the new province formed a discrete electoral entity within the General Synod would seem to us to be a possible way of addressing this dilemma. We are conscious too that in some minds the word 'province' is problematical. We would wish to remind members of the Group that, within Anglican ecclesiology, it bears a number of different definitions. There are provinces overseen by a member of the Primates' Meeting (the Church of England, The Episcopal Church, the Church of the Province of Central Africa); there are provinces within such provinces overseen by an archbishop (the Archbishop of York, the Archbishop of Sydney, the Archbishop of Athabasca); and there are similar provinces presided over by a president who may be lay or ordained (Provinces I - IX of The Episcopal Church). It is of course important that our proposal for a new province in the Church of England is not invested in people's minds with a status above and beyond that intended. For example, nowhere in our draft Measure did we suggest that it would be overseen by an archbishop. The very able team of lawyers comprising Forward in Faith's Legal Working Party began its work five years ago, in March 2002. Prior to the publication of Consecrated Women? in October, 2004, it met on eleven occasions, communicating between such meetings by email. It has continued to meet and correspond on a regular basis since 2004 and its members (whose names are set out on pp.211-12 of Consecrated Women?) aremore than ready to work with the officers of the General Synod and Archbishops' Council in order to assist in the resolution of this issue. We submit that provisions acceptable to those for whom they are intended should now be drafted; such provisions will of course have to form an integral part of the legislation which will permit the ordination of women as bishops and will need to incorporate each of the key features identified above. Such a course of action would naturally result (dependent of course upon the good will of the House of Bishops and of the General Synod) in the successful early passage of the legislation necessary to restore the peace of the Church. Resources currently devoted to this debate would thus be freed for the Church's primary tasks of mission and evangelism, the Church of England would set a prophetic example to the rest of the Anglican Communion and the lack of confidence which has so dogged the ministries of so many would be replaced throughout our Church with a new and exciting zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in the 21st century. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:43:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: CONNECTICUT: Church Battle Shifts To Property. Diocese Could Evict Rebel Parish CONNECTICUT: Church Battle Shifts To Property. Diocese Could Evict Rebel Parish In Bristol By ELIZABETH HAMILTON Courant Staff Writer http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-episcopal0603.artjun04,0,977475.story?coll=hc-headlines-home June 4 2007 When Fred Clark married his bride, Claudia, nearly 40 years ago, they stood before the deep blue and purple stained-glass windows that line the stone wall behind the altar at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol. Together they baptized three babies, mourned the death of one of those children - 6-year-old Allison - and celebrated the marriage of another daughter at that same altar. The church is far more than a place to worship for the Clarks, of course. It is like a second home. But the Clarks - along with the vast majority of the congregation - have decided to risk their long association with Trinity by voting to split from the Episcopal Church over differences of opinion about Scripture that have manifested themselves in public squabbles over the ordination of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions. With Trinity's decision, the split within the Connecticut Diocese begins to resemble the increasingly contentious struggles going on in other Episcopal dioceses around the United States. It is no longer simply a war of words over theology but a pitched battle over buildings, property and money. The split has united conservative congregations in the U.S., like Trinity, with like-minded African churches that believe the Episcopal Church's liberal position on homosexuality goes against the Anglican beliefs inherited from the Church of England. At least 45 parishes from around the United States have left the Episcopal Church over recent disputes about ordaining openly gay pastors and the blessing of same-sex unions, according to the denomination. Although that represents less than one half of 1 percent of the total number of Episcopal parishes in the United States, the number does not capture the full scope of the dispute. Ignited by the 2003 election of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, the dispute has at stake the potential exclusion of the 2.2 million-member U.S. church from the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Cost Of Leaving Also on the line in Connecticut, Virginia and elsewhere is the ownership of millions of dollars of church property. At Trinity, the congregation knows that by breaking away it has risked the loss of its church home, Clark said, but that didn't stop people when it came time for a secret ballot vote in January. According to Clark, only one person voted against leaving the Episcopal Church to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a self-described mission of the conservative Anglican Church of Nigeria. "It's a painful thought that we'd have to leave," said Clark, a senior warden at Trinity. "But the other side of that coin is that we've made a decision about what it is we've chosen to stand up for." They may end up making that stand on unfamiliar ground. Events in Virginia, as well as a 1993 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling, suggest that the Trinity congregation is in for a hard fight if it hopes to continue worshipping on its property. The 1993 ruling, which involved a similar property dispute between a Bridgeport church and the Episcopal Diocese, favored the diocese on the grounds that in a hierarchical church - which the Episcopal Church is - decisions are made based on the canons, or laws, of the church. The ruling noted that property titled in the name of individual parishes was historically held in trust for the Episcopal Church under what is known as the Dennis Canon. More recently, the Diocese of Virginia sued 11 churches over property rights after they defected to join the Convocation of Anglicans for reasons similar to Trinity's. The Episcopal Church of the United States joined that lawsuit against the churches in February. The Men In Charge Martyn Minns, the newly installed bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans and a former Episcopal pastor in Darien, said Thursday that Trinity is not walking into this blind. "This is a long journey that many of us have been on for a long time. They realize there is a price to be paid for this," said Minns, who also served as rector of Truro Church in Fairfax City, Va., which dates from 1732 and is one of the 11 churches being sued. Minns said that he hopes the Connecticut Diocese "will be gracious and find some way to have an amicable separation" from Trinity, but he is not necessarily optimistic this will happen. "It's a real battle," Minns said. "The problem is the Episcopal Church has really walked away from the rest of the Anglican community. The folks at Trinity are not actually leaving. They're simply trying to stay still where they belong." Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith said Friday that he is not yet prepared to speak publicly about what steps the diocese will take with regard to Trinity's property. "I learned about the decision of Trinity Bristol through the Internet and through the newspaper," Smith said. "So it frankly caught me by surprise." Smith said he first wanted to talk with Father Donald Helmandollar, the rector of the church, before making a statement about the decision. But he said he is deeply concerned about what is happening at Trinity. "One of the regrets I have is that before they made this decision we did not have a chance to talk," Smith said. "This decision has been presented as a theological litmus test, which is so foreign to our church." When asked if he agrees with Helmandollar's previous statement that he and other conservative Anglicans are at odds with the Episcopal Church because it believes that Scripture can be "revised" by human beings, Smith said Helmandollar is mischaracterizing the issue. "Everyone interprets Scripture, even those who say they accept it literally interpret Scripture," Smith said, adding, "We've always had these differences in our church. That's not new. "But to divide on that basis, that's new." Smith reserved his sharpest words for Minns, whom he accused of misstating facts when he portrayed the U.S. Episcopal Church at odds with the rest of the world's Anglican community. "He makes it sound as if we are alone in our understanding of Scripture, and that is just patently false. There are a number of people in many provinces who interpret Scripture the way we do," Smith said, adding that Anglican provinces in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Scotland, Japan and England are in agreement with the U.S. "His statement is simple and false." It is also true, however, that many Anglican world leaders are at odds with the American branch. At a February meeting in Tanzania, 38 regional leaders wrote a letter to the Episcopal Church demanding that it cease its practice of ordaining gay bishops and offering same-sex blessings by Sept. 30 or face removal from the broader Anglican Communion. What's In Store Whatever happens next, no one in this family feud appears to be winning much. Assuming that legal precedence guides Smith's decisions about Trinity, he stands to wade into a public relations quagmire if he forcibly ejects the 137 members of Trinity from their church home. But allowing them to stay - even if church law would permit him to do so - might be even riskier. Smith has been battling with a group of churches, known as the "Connecticut Six," for several years - mainly over his decision to support the ordination of Robinson, New Hampshire's bishop. The relationship between the six churches and Smith got so bad, in fact, that the diocese took over one of the churches in 2005, St. John's in Bristol, and ousted its pastor, the Rev. Mark Hansen. The rebel churches, which withheld money from the diocese and asked to be put under the authority of a different bishop, then sued Smith, citing civil rights violations, and lost. That case is now being appealed. The churches also accused Smith of violating church law, citing his actions surrounding St. John's Church and his determination that all of the Connecticut Six pastors were "out of communion" with him. Smith was cleared of the ecclesiastical charges by a panel of clergy and laypeople this year. St. John's, which has a new pastor, is now in "full communion" with the diocese, Smith said, and he has an improved relationship with two other churches from the Connecticut Six. But the remaining two churches - St. Paul's in Darien and Christ Church in Watertown - are still alienated from the diocese. Those two parishes, at least, will be watching closely to see what Smith does about Trinity. If the bishop allows the congregation to stay on its property, St. Paul's and Christ Church might have little incentive to stay in the Episcopal Church. Smith said he is aware of the stakes. "I'm very aware that whatever I do with respect to the canons sets precedence," he said. The Rev. Christopher Leighton, rector at St. Paul's in Darien, said his church is not planning to leave the Episcopal Church - at least not now. "I don't think that's the only option. You can remain within the Episcopal Church to bear faithful witness," Leighton said. "The relationship between St. Paul's and the diocese is strained, there's not denying it. I'm aware we're kind of like the skunk at the garden party, but St. Paul's remains to show the way and not be terribly negative and grouchy about it." When asked if Trinity will receive financial assistance from his organization, or the Nigerian Anglicans, should they find themselves without a church home, Minns said there is no money available. "We're in the same kind of pioneer mode as they are," Minns said, adding, "We're torn apart. It's an agonizing time for us. But in other ways it's an exciting time of new partnerships." Contact Elizabeth Hamilton at ehamilton@courant.com. Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:44:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: CANADA: Church at same-sex crossroads CANADA: Church at same-sex crossroads Uncertainty only sure thing for Anglican leaders as gay-marriage vote approaches by TAMARA KING Canadian Press http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=34302&sc=89 6/3/2007 Just weeks before Anglican leaders decide whether their church should bless gay and lesbian unions, one of the few things that appears to be unifying them is a feeling of uncertainty. The church, which represents about two million Canadians and is the country's third-largest religious denomination, has spent almost 30 years trying to figure out how same-sex relationships fit into the Christian faith. As they approach a vote on the issue later this month at the church's General Synod in Winnipeg, many members are wary of the outcome. "We simply don't know," said Archdeacon Paul Feheley, principal secretary to the church's national leader, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison. Even the head of a group that opposes same-sex blessings is taking nothing for granted, despite a May bishops' statement that essentially rejected same-sex blessings. "We don't know what's going to happen," said Rev. Canon Charlie Masters, national director of Anglican Essentials. "The Anglican Church of Canada is at a crossroads." Delegates will be voting on a motion that would leave it to each diocese to decide whether priests will bless same-sex couples. Of Canada's 30 dioceses, only the British Columbia diocese of New Westminster allows the practice. "Both sides have their teeth into the bone and they're not prepared to give it up," said Chris Ambidge, president of Integrity Canada, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian Anglicans. "As a gay man, I want a place in my own church and I don't want to be downgraded to second- or third-class Christianity." Even if the motion passes, Ambidge pointed out that individual priests couldn't be forced to comply. "Every clergyman, in the Anglican Church anyway, always has the option of saying 'no.' If you really, really don't like remarrying divorced people, and for that you can make a strong argument out of scripture, then Rev. Joe Blogs can say 'no,' " Ambidge said. "If this were to pass, it would never be the case of people being forced to marry people if they felt this were the wrong thing." Ambidge and Masters both agree that if Canada's Anglicans adopt same-sex blessings, they will face a threat of dissociation from their worldwide church. Some of the more conservative Anglican churches have threatened their U.S. counterparts, the Episcopalians, with expulsion from the international Anglican Communion. The Americans have been given a Sept. 30 deadline to ban the blessings of same-sex couples - approved by American bishops in April - and the ordination of gay bishops. In a visit to Toronto earlier this spring, the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, urged the Canadian church to consider the unity of the church internationally when deciding whether to bless same-sex marriage. Putting off the decision once more time won't help, said Masters, basing his thoughts on words from Hutchison. "He made it clear, to do nothing, (we) would still find ourselves to have walked apart from the Anglican Communion," Masters said. Along with the same-sex blessings vote, delegates will also elect a new primate to replace Hutchison, 69, who is retiring. The June 22 election will also be closely watched, because the Canadian church could elect a female leader for the first time. The candidates are: Bishop Fred Hiltz of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island; Bishop Victoria Matthews from the Diocese of Edmonton; Bishop George Bruce of the Diocese of Ontario, and Bishop Bruce Howe of the Diocese of Huron. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:45:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: LONDON: Church to impose 'rule book' of beliefs LONDON: Church to impose 'rule book' of beliefs By Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/03/nchurch03.xml 6/3/2007 Church of England bishops have drawn up plans for a "rule book" of beliefs that would expel liberals who refuse to abide by it. The proposals to introduce Papal-style laws come despite warnings that they could lead to a split in the Church. The confidential document from the House of Bishops, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, claims that a "narrower definition of Anglican belief" is crucial to prevent the Anglican Communion from becoming embroiled in future disputes over issues such as homosexual clergy. The paper reveals the determination at the highest levels of the Church to impose powers to quash dissenters, backing a covenant - or set of rules - that would block Anglican clergy from pursuing liberal and potentially divisive policies. There is no official policy that governs the clergy's behaviour, but instead each of the world's 38 Anglican provinces is autonomous. Members of the General Synod, which meets next month in York, will be asked to endorse the creation of this covenant, which would mark the most significant shift in the Anglican Church since it was created in the Reformation during the 16th century. The bishops' paper warns that in order to preserve the unity of the Church, those who do not conform to a more prescriptive statement of faith will be "forced out". The paper states: "It is possible to envisage the development of a form of covenant that was in effect a highly detailed code of international canon law... and to envisage such a code leading the Anglican Communion to becoming an increasingly rigid entity in which legitimate change and development became very difficult to effect." It has pre-empted criticism from liberals in the Church by saying that Anglicanism has always had limits. The Most Rev Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, first announced the concept of a covenant last year, but most liberals refused to believe the Church would back it. "A covenant should indicate those areas of faith (including morals) and order where unanimity of heart and mind belong to the nature of the faith itself and are essential for Eucharistic communion," says the Rt Rev John Hind, the bishop of Chichester, who is from the Church's traditional wing. He adds that establishing a set of rules risks creating "intolerable tensions within the Church of England" and among the bishops, but says that the lack of a "sufficient statement of what it means to be Anglican" has led to the present crisis. While any set of Anglican rules would need approval from the majority of the communion's provinces, if the Synod decides to reject the Archbishop's plan it would effectively leave the covenant dead in the water. It would also shatter any remaining chances of finding a solution to the crisis, which was initially sparked by the election of Gene Robinson, an open homosexual, as the bishop of New Hampshire in America's Anglican Church. Rowan Williams has just embarked on a three-month "study leave". He will return to work in September. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:46:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: LONDON: Lord Carey Rebukes Claims He Set 'Precedent' to Lambeth Invitations Lord Carey Rebukes Claims He Set 'Precedent' to Lambeth Invitations by Jennifer Gold Christian Today http://tinyurl.com/2hfo62 June 2, 2007 Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, has rebutted inferences that the decision last month not to invite certain bishops to the Lambeth Conference 2008 came about by a precedent he created in 2000. According to the Church of England newspaper, Lord Carey denied suggestions by the Rev Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary of the 2008 Conference, that the decision not to invite the AMiA and CANA bishops who have broken away from the Episcopal Church in America was linked to his stance in the year 2000. In his rebuttal, the former head of the Church of England points to that fact that in 2000 the practising homosexual bishop Gene Robinson had not been consecrated - an event which is now recognised as changing the face of Anglicanism forever. Lord Carey wrote in the Church of England newspaper: "It is not too much to say that everything has changed in the Anglican Communion as a result of the consecration of Gene Robinson. "The circumstances facing each Archbishop of Canterbury will vary according to the needs of the hour. For these reasons, I believe, that Dr Rowan Williams should not regard the advice he has evidently received that this matter is 'fixed' as necessarily binding on him in the very different circumstances of 2007." He added that Dr Williams and all his colleagues remained in his thoughts and prayers. The comments follow another torrid month for the worldwide Anglican Communion, where the Church's Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, warned that he may lead a boycott of the Lambeth Conference 2008, following the news that two bishops did not receive invitations from Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Akinola revealed he was greatly upset that Archbishop Dr Rowan Williams did not issue an invitation to Bishop Martyn Minns, missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an orthodox Anglican splinter group and offshoot of the Church of Nigeria. He now oversees some 34 orthodox Anglican congregations in CANA that are dissident from the US Episcopal Church. The first set of invitations for Lambeth 2008 - the Anglican Communion's global decennial gathering - were sent out by Archbishop Williams to more than 850 bishops last month. The Rt Rev Martyn Minns said: "While the immediate attention is focused on the invitation list, it should be remembered that this crisis in the Anglican Communion is not about a few individual bishops but about a worldwide Communion that is torn at its deepest level." Openly gay Bishop V Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was also not invited to Lambeth 2008. While reports indicate the non-invitation of the two bishops is likely to provoke debate, Dr Williams stated he has to reserve the right to withhold invitations from "bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion." He also recalled that invitations are issued on a personal basis by the Archbishop of Canterbury and in the invitation letter stated that the conference has "no 'constitution' or formal powers". The invitations went out four months before the US Episcopal Church is scheduled to respond to the requests of the Primates (Anglican leaders) to make an unequivocal pledge not to authorise same-sex blessings and confirm another openly gay bishop. Adding more pressure to Dr Williams, the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Rev Henry Luke Orombi, recently announced he would be rallying for a boycott of the Conference, because he said American bishops who backed gay Bishop, Gene Robinson's ordination - described as 'violators of the Lambeth Resolution' - have been invited. Rod Thomas, of the conservative evangelical group Reform, has expressed his belief that the invitations should have gone out after the American Episcopal Church had responded to the conditions of the Primates meeting in February. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:47:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: LONDON: Unmarried priest quits top job after becoming pregnant.Who's the father? LONDON: Unmarried priest quits top job after becoming pregnant. Who's the father? by STEVE DOUGHTY and BETH HALE The Daily Mail http://tinyurl.com/3ajn38 June 1, 2007 One of the Church of England's most senior women clerics has quit her job after becoming pregnant while unmarried. The Rev Dr Emma Loveridge stepped down as principal adviser to the Archbishop of York after only 13 months in the post. The 42-year-old cited "personal and family reasons" for leaving the staff of Dr John Sentamu, who ranks second in the Church's hierarchy. He is regarded as conservative in matters of sexual morality She is also understood to have resigned her licence to practise as a priest and to have effectively stepped down from the clergy. The baby is believed to be Dr Loveridge's first and her growing bump was obvious as she strolled near her home this week. Her pregnancy comes as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has spoken out strongly in favour of marriage and married families in recent months. Along with Dr Sentamu, he has been trying to deal with the worldwide Anglican split over sexual morality. On one side, they face US Anglican leaders who embrace gay rights and whose ranks include a gay bishop. But in the developing world, prelates reject any concession over traditional Biblical morality. Since Dr Loveridge left on March 31 after working her three-month notice, she has received support from a prominent and wealthy U.S. church. Friends at All Saints in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, have posted her name as among expectant parents to be remembered in their prayers. The church has an "inclusive" policy and is "dedicated to the spiritual and social growth of lesbians and gay men". As principal adviser to the archbishop, Dr Loveridge - the daughter of a former Conservative MP and educationalist - would have had power similar to that of a political adviser. She would have kept a finger on the pulse of day-to-day and wider issues faced by Dr Sentamu. Her responsibilities included managing a number of his other senior staff, including communications officers. Dr Loveridge trained at Cambridge and was ordained in 2000. She is associated with the 'open evangelical' wing of the Church of England. Open evangelicals broadly believe in the importance of Biblical teaching and the spread of the Gospel while rejecting conservative views of traditional morality. Until last year, she was an unpaid minister at St Mary's, Islington, North London, one of the country's best-known evangelical churches. She is also an academic, traveller and businesswoman who runs a travel company, Wind, Sand and Stars, which specialises in trips to the Sinai desert. In addition, Dr Loveridge organised a tsunami relief expedition to Sri Lanka in early 2005. Alongside her role on Dr Sentamu's staff, she prepared a report on administrative reform for the Archbishops' Council, the CofE's cabinet. No public announcement of her departure from the job was made. Yesterday, there was no answer at Dr Loveridge's £700,000 home in a well-heeled part of North London, which she kept on while working for the archbishop. She declined to speak to the Daily Mail. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:48:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: OXFORD: Bishop John Pritchard's installation sermon in Oxford OXFORD: Bishop John Pritchard's installation sermon in Oxford By Chris Sugden http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/?p=1768 June 8th 2007 In his installation address, the Bishop of Oxford, Bishop John Pritchard asked "What kind of church do we need to be" and in the light of that what kind of Bishop do we need? Is it an all action hero bishop, who identifies and fixes problems? Bishop as superman, a scourge of heresy? Heroes have a limited shelf-life. They do not last long. The church is not in the market for short term celebrity. We follow a crucified leader. We know that evil does not play by the rules. The church is in the business of the long term transformation of human lives. It witnesses to the unmanageable presence of God. It lives with and names the undertow of grace which many experience and do not know how to name. The church is a sign. Is the church to be a saint, of unvariegated goodness? A saint is a person who lived a long time ago and has never been adequately researched. The church may be a place where we can bump into a saint or two. We are all saints of course by virtue of belonging to Christ. But we often fail to be Christlike. Neither these images are accurate. The church is to be a servant. 400 clergy in the diocese have already been through a servant leadership development course. We do not proclaim ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord. We live in a narcissistic culture, where it is all to easy to be absorbed by our own image. In a world dominated by celebrity magazines, it is quite liberating when a large body of people point away from themselves and to another. Jesus Christ is the church's magnificent obsession. He is the one we long to emulate. To our friends here of other faiths, I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ. To you he is a prophet. To me he is saviour. And we proclaim ourselves as your servants. How can a church do that in today's contested public square. How can we be servants without being servile? There is a myth of a shop where a lady was taken and was told she could buy there anything she wanted. So she began to think through all she had ever wanted and started to name her list. The shopkeeper, who was an angel, stopped her. "Madam. We do give things away free here it is true. But they are only seeds." The servant church gives away seeds. It offers wonderful creative ideas, and beliefs and values. These are the seeds of a new world. There are the seeds of compassion and healing for the walking wounded. There are seeds of hope for those on the path of resistance to injustices like the present terms of trade for many countries and commodities. There are seeds of encouragement. And there is a seed store in every town and village in this diocese. The church is the original convenience store. But we do not go it alone. We want everyone in the diocese to discover their full story and live at full stretch. We face dangerous and complex problems. Matthew Parris wrote in the Times recently that the world is pretty well stuck. Woody Allen said that humanity is at a crossroads. One path leads to despair and hopelessness, the other to utter extinction. The western answers based on adversarial politics, progress through enlightened self-interest have not worked. But we are so far up the mountain that we cannot look down or set off down without starting an avalanche. We need every resource we can find to help us chart an ethical and sustainable future. The great religions of the world are like satellite navigation systems. Human societies do not do well when they try and fight poverty, and social evils. We need a deeper wisdom. We proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. Christ brings not certitude but wisdom. The world we live in is not safe. We speak in the name of the God who is not safe. In the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children are told that the lion Aslan was not safe, but he is good. Let go half gods go that God may arrive. Present ourselves as servants of a beautiful, damaged and much loved world. Its good to be here. This will be updated when the bishop's official text appears on the Diocesan Website. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:49:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: Where Do I Stand? (On the issue of Same-sex Blessings) Where Do I Stand? (On the issue of Same-sex Blessings) by Mark Larratt-Smith 1. Facing the Issue "Where do you stand on the issue of a same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church?" It's a question that is asked by many from an assumption that there is a simple choice. My problem is that I cannot give a simple twenty-five-words-or-less answer. I cannot simply respond to the issue of same-sex relationships as a social issue in the context of the secular society in which we live. I am a Christian, a life-long Anglican. If my Christian faith is real, I have to address the issue in the broadest possible context of that faith. The problem is that the question about a same-sex blessing is a symptom, not the issue itself. Before we can discuss the treatment of homosexuality in the Anglican Church, we have to be clear about the nature of reality from a Christian perspective. We need to address our understanding of ourselves and of all of our relationships - starting with our relationship with God and continuing - flowing - inevitably into our relationships with each other. For this reason, I strongly support the conclusion of the St. Michael Report that the issue is in fact a matter of doctrine not just of pastoral care. In order to answer the question about same-sex blessings, we first have to start with our understanding of the underlying theology. There are two theological implications that seem to me to be most relevant in the debate about same-sex relationships: the implications for the sovereignty of God and the nature of sin. 2. The Sovereignty of God A. Can We Know God? If a Creator exists, then He is the centre of the reality that is His creation. By definition as its Creator, God, not any human being or institution, is Sovereign. He sets the rules of creation. For every one of His creatures, our relationship with our Creator is the most important relationship we have. I need to try to know Him as best I can for who He really is not who I would like Him to be. If I am honest in this I can never be satisfied by the temptation to invent my own comfortable mental image of a god who will simply reflect and re-enforce my preferences and prejudices. This raises two fundamental questions. First: can I ever know God? Second: even if I can know Him, can I trust Him? Part of the reason why I am so sceptical of comfortable man-made gods is that it is so inconceivable that any image that I might create on my own could bear any relationship to the Creator of the universe. How can I, a creature bounded by space and time, ever reach out and touch the face of my Creator? I can empathise with those who decide that if God exists He must be completely unknowable. From a strictly human perspective their conclusion is inescapable, but that perspective is based on the assumption that a relationship between Creator and creature depends entirely on the initiative of the creature. What is impossible for the creature must be entirely possible for the Creator, since the rules of creation are His. He can reach out to us, even if we cannot reach out to Him. What is more, it seems to be a reasonable working assumption that if God is the Author of creation in all its marvelous and relational intricacy, He has a motive to wish to interact with it and to self disclose in some manner to those of His creatures who have the capacity to respond to His initiatives. This still doesn't fully answer the first question. How might we expect the Creator to reach out and reveal Himself unmistakably to His creation? How can we hear Him and know that we are not just creating our own comfortable idol? The Christian answer is that God has reached out to humankind consistently throughout history and that the record of His intervention is primarily contained in the collection of writings we call the Bible. The Bible is an amazingly diverse collection of human writing, written in many literary and cultural forms over many hundreds of years, by a multitude of individuals each with their own personal perspectives and limitations. I am a historian by training, taught to assess fragmentary and conflicting pieces of evidence from the past. There are inconsistencies in the Bible, as in any human record of historic events compiled from different perspectives, but it is remarkably complete and coherent when you compare it to any other similar body of evidence that stretches over so many centuries - if indeed you could find a comparison in the first place. Taken together, the Bible provides a compelling record of the Lord God Almighty disclosing Himself to His chosen people, Israel, through their history and the voices of the prophets and then enlarging and completing that disclosure in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the face of this record, those who challenge the motivation of faith or who question inconsistencies of detail in an effort to discredit or selectively edit the record must also submit to scrutiny as to their own motives. Trusting that the God I worship is not just the creature of my own imagination, but the Lord God Almighty - my Creator - isn't just a matter of evaluating the consistency of the historic record. At the deepest level, it is a matter of a personal relationship. How can any creature have a relationship with God even if the initiative in that relationship is entirely on God's side? The Christian answer is that Jesus as the Son of God, as God made visible, is God in relationship with each one of us. In his last appearance to his apostles, as recorded by St. Matthew, he promised: "... surely I am with you always to the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:20b). The reality is that the mainstream Christian Church, of which Anglicanism is a part, has for over two millennia accepted this claim: "...very God, of very God...who ... was made man ... was crucified ... he rose again ... and sitteth on the right hand of the Father" (Nicene Creed). Over the course of my life as I have not just rea d scripture, participated in public worship, and engaged in personal prayer, I have encountered the Living God in the person of Jesus Christ. I am not a good disciple, but I am His disciple, not because I have reached out to Him, but because He has reached out to me. B. Can We Trust God? The second basic question that is raised by accepting the existence of a Creator God, is whether we can trust Him. For all of its beautiful intricacy, this world is not a happy place. We may live in comfort for a time and have experiences of great beauty and delight, but the daily news is filled with stories of human depravity and natural disaster. Whatever our individual experiences of life, at times we all suffer deeply from pain and in the end we all die. From the natural perspective, every human life is a tragedy. How can we trust the Creator of such a world? The advantage of a home-made god is that expectations are low. We don't really expect a human created god to solve the problems of the world. But then, if we are foolish enough to create such a god, we are likely foolish enough, against all the evidence of history, to insist that we can solve all those problems ourselves. If we do believe in a Creator God, we cannot let Him off so easily. If He is almighty and also the author of a deeply flawed and damaged creation, how can we trust Him? If we cannot trust Him, we have no alternative but despair. We may mask it with stoicism or with efforts to live individual moral lives, but despair, like death is always lurking in the shadows. It is not surprising that a creature cannot fully comprehend the mind of his Creator. The really difficult question is why He gave humanity sufficient moral awareness to enable us to see just how bad the world can be. It doesn't make sense for a Creator God to give His creatures even the delusion of having a higher standard of morality than His own. That would make reality not just tragic, but a horribly twisted, cruel joke. It makes far more sense to believe that the infinite Creator God who invented love and beauty has good purposes for His creation that are simply beyond the comprehension of his creatures. An intellectual belief in a loving God isn't much help to us when we face tragedy, or injustice, or death. But, the experience of Christians over the centuries, is that the real issue is not whether we can comprehend God's purposes, but whether we are able to trust Him when we cannot understand. How can we trust the author of a flawed creation? Here again, I find the Christian gospel to be the only avenue of hope. Even after many years as a believer, I find it startling, even overwhelming, to encounter God's radical solution to this issue. It is right there in the words we use weekly in the (BCP) communion service: "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). What remarkably comforting words those are," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12: 29-31) I have argued that the implications of changing the Church's traditional views about same-sex relationships strikes at the heart of the Christian faith because it substitutes our own tame god for the reality of the self-revealing Lord God Almighty and because it denies the reality of sin. Even where there is an attempt to minimize the effect of these changes, they constitute a slippery slope for the Anglican Church. Like the proverbial limpet, once it has lost its grip on the rock of reality, it becomes just a piece of flotsam awash in the tide. But what about Christian compassion? What about the Christian belief in a God who is the Author of love and its chief Practitioner - to the point of death on a cross? Christian love is often regarded as incompatible with God's judgement. There is a contemporary view that Christian believers face a choice between worshipping an angry judgmental Old Testament God who punishes sinners and a gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who turns the other cheek. Such a caricature is entirely at variance with the record of biblical self-disclosure of both Yahweh, the Lord God Almighty of Israel and Jesus Christ His Son, the Redeemer of humankind in the New Testament. It is also incompatible with the faith of the Church from the earliest times. God's justice and His mercy are inseparable and, we His people, are called to act in the same manner. As the prophet Micah said: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humb ly with your God" (Micah 6:8) But how does one act justly and love mercy at the same time while walking humbly with God? It is not by ignoring the law or by pretending that sin is not a reality. It is by accepting that reality and acting in love and mercy toward our fellow humans. I still remember vividly a sermon that I heard in the mid-1970s. The preacher argued that there can be no compromise on matters of God's justice (the Old Covenant). To include mercy, justice must be completed and transcended by sacrifice (the New Covenant). How might we apply Micah's words and their implication of sacrifice to the same-sex issue? From the perspective of our homosexual brothers and sisters, their call to sacrifice is demonstrated by their commitment to continue to grapple with issues of conduct and faithfulness within a faith that defines acting upon their deep desires as sinful. But, if that sermon on Micah is correct, the rest of us are also called into sacrificial living. If we are to love mercy we must do so with a humility that grows out being aware we are sinners attempting to lead a sacrificial life. It is not just that each of us must face our own unruly sexual desires, or even that we need to address the reality that contemptuously dismissing another person amounts to murder (Matthew 5:22)--whether the reason for that dismissal is related to sexual orientation or to some other issue entirely. At the deepest level, we must be committed to changing ourselves--not our doctrines. It is not an easy path and it is certainly not one that will appeal to those who would subordinate the Christian faith to the values of the world. We can only become credible–as Jesus Himself demonstrated–at our own cost through sacrifice. It means genuinely welcoming into our Church all sinners including homosexuals, wherever they are on their personal journey. In our commitment to our Lord, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. All of us need to recognize that our status as redeemed members of the family of God comes from Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf not from our own merits or by the denial of our sin. We cannot solve our estrangement from God by offering band-aids of personal affirmation when the radical healing of forgiveness is what we all need. In the end denying this need cuts us off from the only real hope that is available to us. However painful the process, we must also as a Church begin to face the reality of living as followers of Jesus Christ in a self-absorbed post-Christian society where the gospel that we profess is radically at variance with the values of the culture in which we live. It has been said that pride is the worst of all sins--even that it is the one unforgivable sin--because it alone cannot admit to any need for forgiveness. If I create my own tin god, if I deny the reality of sin and of salvation through the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, I have turned my back on the gospel that I have received from God through the Church. If I walk away from God, I have lost all hope. If the Anglican Church turns its back on its Creator and Founder by denying its history and its faith, it is no longer part of the Church, the Bride of Christ, on whom the faithful can alone depend. --- Mark Larratt-Smith is a lifelong Anglican. He was born in Montreal and studied at Yale, Columbia and the University of Toronto. For nearly 30 years, he attended Little Trinity Church in downtown Toronto. For the last decade, he has been a member of a small rural parish in Eastern Ontario. END ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:50:50 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: Lambeth Can Be What It Wants To Be - Ephraim Radner Lambeth Can Be What It Wants To Be by Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner June 5, 2007 Summary Why the wrangling over Lambeth? If nothing else, the present debate over invitations to and attendance at the upcoming Lambeth Conference offers an important opportunity to reflect on the character of the Church as a body that gathers, takes common counsel, and makes representative decisions. Specifically, some of the public statements over these matters being offered by various parties within the Anglican Communion expose some deep misunderstandings as well as some marvelous opportunities. One of the main expressions of misunderstanding lies in the stated desire - first declared by certain American liberals, and now taken up from their own side by some American and some African conservatives - to leave the Lambeth Conference behind as a gathering unworthy of their attendance. Writing as a conservative myself, I must address the latter group most explicitly. It is true that we find that it is hard and perhaps impossible any longer to "recognize" our church within the liberal hegemony dominating TEC. And it is natural that we would feel, as a result, a certain anger driven by sadness, disappointment, and alarm. It is even natural that such feelings would motivate us to seek separation from that which seems alien and heretical to us, and to attempt to forge links with a form of Christian belief and practice that coheres with our own self-recognition. But all of this need not and should not drive us to refuse to meet within the larger church in a Christian spirit and confront our differences and their effects. Such refusal, it seems, runs counter both to Christian charity and to the way in which Christians have sought to settle differences over the ages (see below): namely, by gathering in council to deal face to face with matters that divide. The Lambeth conference is not a "council" in one common sense of the term, insofar as it has no "formal juridical" authority. In the context of a divided church, however, it is not clear exactly what "juridical" means in a truly Christian sense. What gathering of Christians can truly claim today such apostolic authority as to "decide" the truth in a controverted case where there are always other parties, with their own "juridically" qualified gatherings ready to contradict such decisions? In any case, I will argue that conciliar gatherings are not primarily defined in terms of their juridical functions anyway, but in terms of their charismatic authority, lodged in the lives of (some/the majority of) their own members. At the very least, then, the Lambeth Conference is like a council in that its purpose from the beginning has been to confront divisive issues with both truth and charity, engaged through the work of the Holy Spirit, and so nourishing and preserving unity in the midst of division. Thus, to insist that agreement be present before meeting - and despite previous meetings! -- is simply to void the purpose of the meeting in the first place. Further, to separate precipitously from a body that no longer resembles Christian truth and practice as one understands them, or that seems incapable to upholding them, is to foreclose on the pneumatic promises of providence that call us into council in the first place. The above points do not entail the conclusion that discipline cannot or should not be imposed on those who persist in an alien way or who scandalize by their behavior. I, like many others, believe such discipline is in fact required. Still, such alien and scandalous life should be confronted rather than avoided by absenting oneself from an encounter in the Lord and refusing the obligation to hold to account in the power of the Lord. The primary point behind all this is that Christians have been given a divine narrative and vocation that insists upon engaged suffering as a means of witness, rather than upon departure and beginning anew as a means of protest and self-protection. Thus, the prophets (e.g. Jeremiah) and Christ suffer among their people. They do not leave them to form another people. The Conciliar Life of the Church in Anglican terms I am a strong believer in the "conciliar" nature of the Church - that is, in the Church as making her decisions in common "council". I have argued for this in various places, and believe that Anglicanism, perhaps more than most other Christian traditions of the present, is divinely gifted to live out this common Christian vocation. Because I am an Anglican, however, I understand the conciliar character of the Church in a particular way. First, I believe that the Church's councils are ordered specifically around her bishops, as representatives of her apostolic ordering in communion. This does not mean that only bishops can take authoritative counsel for the Church, but rather that this is where such counsel finds its regularized articulation. There are good Scriptural and historical reasons for holding this position. Second, because the Church herself is imbued with the corrupted character of her members, her people and her leaders (including bishops!) are not infallible, and therefore her councils "may err", even in "matters of faith", or in things pertaining to the "Word of God" (Articles 19 and 21), the last of which stands as our ultimate authority in all aspects of our life, including counsel. These two points taken together have a number of important implications. Among them is the fact that Christian councils themselves can never be sufficient on their own - either as some single and "super" council, or as specific local ones, whether of bishops or of clergy and laity. Rather, the Church's councils work as an interlocking and integrated series of mutually informing and eventually reinforcing gatherings of discernment and decision, only whose breadth and extent provide the perceived "authority" of her teaching and discipline, as they finally find voice in the common teaching of the Church's bishops. Local and wider councils or "synods" - a word that simply means a "common path" or "walking together" - that include the variety of representative decision-making in our churches, must find their place and finally be shaped by and submitted to the full range of conciliar decision-making that happens over time. The Eastern Orthodox refer to this in terms of "reception", the historical process by which the Holy Spirit demonstrates decisions to be conformable or not to the Word of God and the truth of Christ. Indeed, another important implication of an Anglican view of the Church's conciliar character is that decision-making is a fundamentally historical process in its Christian integrity, and not something that just happens at one go. Conciliarity is both embodied only over time, and it is perceived in its authority only over time. This happens as conciliar discernment and decision on a particular matter is apprehended as being coherent and congruent with the Church's vocation as the Scripturally-bound vessel of the Lord Jesus' life. A further implication, then, of an Anglican notion of the Church's conciliar character, is that the interlocking and integrated series of her gatherings of discernment be ordered, so as to provide the accountable means for their mutual influence and shaping in and through the vicissitudes of time. It is precisely because of the corrupted and fallible nature of the Church's councils as historical entities that they take place in a fashion that follows a regular, organizationally predictable, and thereby responsible shape, one that is capable therefore of being steadily judged within a context of historical movement. Disordered and irregular counsel is the enemy of the Church's authority. The charismatic character of conciliar authority In light of all this, I would emphasize that the real basis for the authoritative nature of the Church's conciliar vocation is not, therefore, the entity of a "council" in itself. Councils are not Scripture. Councils themselves are not the Holy Spirit. Councils guarantee nothing. Just because one has a council - local or wider - does not mean that what it decides has any authority in Christian terms. Rather, the basis for the authoritative nature of the Church's conciliar vocation lies in the faithful perseverance of its members in common over time, that is, in their willingness to live the Christian life together "for the Lord" and "in the Lord". Since the authority of councils derive from their place in a historical series, it is grasped only retrospectively, and it is possible to do this only because one has carried through with the conciliar life together long enough and through a perseverant life of faithfulness on such a path that the truth is apprehended together. A s ynod may indeed come to a decision that is "true" in the sense of conforming to and displaying the truth of Scripture, but that council may never gain "authority" in the Church because it never took place within the extended conciliar life of the Church in such a way that its truth was apprehended. The place where the Holy Spirit "authorizes" a council, therefore, is not first in the abstract nature of its decisions nor even in the juridically-defined and defining shape of a given gathering. It is in the ongoing Christian life of those making decisions and receiving them. Councils are authoritative when they are perceived, that is, as being "holy", enacted by holy people and received by holy people, conformed to the Scriptural shape of God's will. True councils are "charismatic", in the qualification used by Orthodox theologians. Councils are authoritative, not only when they speak the "truth" (this is not a sufficient condition for conciliar authority), but when they are filled with and give rise to the gifts and fruit of the Spirit - faith, generosity, and so on, and "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Rom. 12:6ff.; Gal. 5:22f.). This should not be a surprise, Scripturally speaking: for it is the "gathering in my N ame (cf. Mt. 18:20), in its rich and profound sense of the Spirit's common life, that is promised the presence of Jesus. The Church "over time", and hence as a truly conciliar reality, exists as Christ's Body only as she embodies the Holy Spirit's gifts and fruit in this sense that allows her to gather at all (1 Cor. 12). The necessary and essential link between council and Holy Spirit, understood in the sense above, underscores a paradoxical reality: the Church's councils need not be wholly "pure" in their make-up to be valid and authoritative. Rather they require only that some of their members be holy and, more importantly, that such holiness persist in the midst of the Church's errors and sin. For the Spirit is "sent"; the Spirit does not constitute. The Spirit inhabits; the Spirit does not embody. This is the model of the apostolic church of Jesus, at the Last Supper and Passion: the holiness of the Church - and her councils - is given in the means by which her saints demonstrate the Spirit's fruit within the Church's fallenness, by the exercise of truthful witness, mercy and charity with and among her corrupted members, as Jesus did not only towards his persecutors, but towards his own followers who would and who did eventually abandon Him. In light of this discussion, we can answer a number of questions currently being raised about attendance at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. We can do so by observing the character of the Church's first great councils - e.g. Nicea and Constantinople - and seeing how in fact they conform to the outline of conciliar life suggested above, and how they clarify current concerns. Although these two councils represent something "new", from the perspective of history, they were not in fact "primordial". They emerged from and took their place within an existing and long line of previous councils, some of considerable significance and weight. As "councils", they are "general", not de novo. Does one sit in council with those with whom one is out of communion? Nicea answered this question affirmatively: present were not only the Novationist schismatic bishop Acesius, but also Arians (including Arius himself!) who had previously and formally broken with bishops of the (finally decided) "orthodox" party. One does not need to share the Eucharist with another Christian in order for the counsel of the Holy Spirit to be authoritatively pursued among them. In the midst of disputes within the Church, including ones that cut deeply and that burden us today, this reality (more fully demonstrated below) cuts in all kinds of directions. Does one sit in council with heretics? Invited to Nicea, as we know, were Arius and his friends and supporters (e.g. Eusebius of Nicomedia, who ended up causing so much trouble for the orthodox after Nicea, despite signing on to the final agreement). The first Council of Constantinople, over 50 years after Nicea, had to revisit with much anguish and conflict the very matters already decided at Nicea. This means that the later council, by definition, was one engaged with known "heretics", established as such by a previous council. Yet that did not prevent the council's gathering and its engagement of orthodox and heretic together. Does one sit in council with the excommunicated? As the previous question and response show, "heresy" can already be conciliarly defined and still be engaged subsequently on a personal level at another council. Hence, Arius, along with at least two African bishops, Secondus and Theonus, had been formally condemned and excommunicated by a formal Alexandrian synod, some time before Nicea convened. Yet Bp. Alexander (and Athanasius, his then-secretary) met with them at Nicea. Both Nicea and Constantinople gathered bishops who had, at various times, been excommunicated and even exiled by opposing parties. One of the questions to be asked in the context of the above is, "does not counsel with heretics and the excommunicated threaten the corruption of the council itself and of the church subsequently?". This question has been posed within the Anglican Communion currently in terms of TEC being a liberal "heresy" similar to a "gangrene" or "cancer" whose presence cannot be tolerated in council for fear of contamination. Clearly this was not the view of those participating in the first councils of the Church, including the first two Ecumenical Councils. It was not so because the nature of Christian conciliarity, as we have explained, is founded on the power of the Holy Spirit within the lives of those taking council, not uniformly, but simply really - just as Jesus' authority in the Church is based on His own pneumatic life, not on His members' uniformly. Certainly, there are a variety of responses given in the New Testament church to heresy or immorality within the Christian community. In all cases where possible, discipline is exercised. But discipline within the New Testament is not uniform - as Paul's experience with the "false apostles" at Corinth makes clear - and is often set aside in favor of the "power" of the Spirit's "demonstration" in the lives of the Church's saints, regardless of the failures of others around them. Indeed, the one text in the New Testament regarding "gangrene" (2 Tim. 2:17) is not about complete disengagement with heretics, but about the proper kind of engagement, based not on drawn out controversy but on a particular kind of charismatic posture and example as a teacher (2 Tim. 2:24ff.) that leads the erring person to "repentance". The point here is that a council may choose to invite or not, on the basis of discipline or not - none of this validates or invalidates a council. These are prudential decisions, not matters of faith (see below). Does one sit at council with those who have betrayed previous councils? Following Nicea, an entire array of Arians and related "heretics" continued to agitate and in fact often "triumph" ecclesially through episcopal establishement and numerous new councils, both local and wider. Many, although not all, of these subsequent councils were attended by "orthodox", who knowingly came to gatherings in which they were outnumbered, deceived, and mistreated. Their attendance, where possible, was based on the courage, calm, and faith granted them by the Holy Spirit, not on juridical realities. Such councils were often later judged to be invalid; but not because of their initial gathering, but rather because of their fruit. I personally believe it to be the case that, at certain point, if one can no longer trust the word of certain members of the Church, their presence at the Church's councils do indeed become problematic. But again, to what degree is a prudential decision, not one based on principle. Does non-invitation of potentially worthy attendees invalidate a council? The Bishop of Rome was never invited to (nor did he or his formal representative attend) the Council of Constantinople (and he was, at the time, out of communion with the Council's president, Melitius, as well as with others present). Yet, in time - and not a long time either - the Council of Constantinople was recognized by the Pope as a valid "ecumenical" council, despite not even having a formal papal representative present. The conclusion here, to restate a point made before and well-grounded in conciliar theology, is that councils are authoritative in their historical reception, not in their immediate form. The form, however, points to the character of the council in an initial way, and eventually reveals that inner character over time: one comes to council, and God does His work. Is the Lambeth Conference a council? Councils are determined retrospectively by their fruit. There have been "rules" formulated for determining a council's legitimacy (especially in Western churches, though less so in the East), but these are not in themselves sufficient or even necessary, certainly not always clear (cf. Constantinople I, and various other disputed councils). The Lambeth Conference was not, as we know, initially understood to be a "synod" of juridical authority; nor is it yet so considered in any clear way. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently wrote that the Conference "is not a formal Synod or Council of the bishops of the Communion, which would require us to be absolutely clear about the standing of all the participants". This statement is technically true, but it is perhaps misleading. What in fact does "formal" mean in a conciliar church where the work of the Holy Spirit itself in the lives of a council's participants grants a council authority? Does it apply simply to the "regular" aspect of a council - in which case, however, Lambeth is surely such a gathering. And, as we saw, an authoritative and regularized council may invite all kinds of attendees, without necessarily being "absolutely clear about the standing of all the participants". It is the Spirit that lets us "stand" or "fall" (cf. Rom. 14:4) - we should not worry about others. Finally, the Lambeth Conferences have in fact been in the process of being received in more and more clearly "conciliar" ways, wherein "moral authority" (already recognized by many) has assumed an embodied disciplinary authority, if not yet one that has been well defined. What does seem clear is that the Lambeth Conference already functions as part of the interlocking reality of the Anglican Communion's discerning and decision-making life in a way that is essential and effective. If this is so, we need to understand what exactly is happening when the Archbishop of Canterbury makes decisions and statements regarding a given Lambeth Conference. First and foremost, he is not ruling on the authority of Lambeth as a council of the Communion. That is not his role nor his purview. Only the Holy Spirit rules on a council! And the Lambeth Conference has been the subject of this pneumatic ruling already now for some years. Thus, while the Archbishop of Canterbury has the authority "to invite", he does not have the authority to declare a gathering a true council or not. Not even the Lambeth Conference! But what of the "invitations" themselves? The Archbishop of Canterbury may, and he should, exercise his authority to invite in as prudentially acute a way as possible, given all the various needs and pressures at work in the Communion especially in our day. The "regular" and "ordered" character of the Anglican Communion's life has given him this role. This has happened not only through both the providence and accidents of time, but conciliarly, through the "received" acceptance of his role from the first Lambeth Conference until now, and this follows the pattern whereby most councils are convened through particular ordered means and persons. And until this particular pattern within the Communion is altered in a regularized fashion, the role is his to fulfill in as faithful a way as possible. This we pray he will do. It is possible that this role will one day be altered; but it cannot be simply altered by individual fiat from some quarter of the Communion, apart from the conci liar life of the Communion itself. For instance, the Archbishop appears to have specific disciplinary and pastoral reasons why he will not invite Gene Robinson to Lambeth, or Martyn Minns, or several other bishops from around the Communion - e.g. their presence is egregiously scandalous or confusing or preemptive of certain decisions yet to be made. The point isn't that there is a grid by which to measure exactly levels of scandal or confusion as attached to specific individuals: is Robinson more "scandalous" than Arius? There is no such template. Rather, the Archbishop must simply do the best he can to weigh the practical realities of attendance and non-attendance, given the goal of conciliar gathering itself. He also may well have such reasons in the future for withdrawing or further limiting or expanding his invitations. We may agree or disagree with the Archbishop's assumed or explicit reasoning, but the invitations themselves are appropriately offered within the context of such prudential and disciplinary reasoning, and the conciliar value of Lambeth simply does not hang on the particulars of the invitations themselves. Whoever is invited is being called through the formal and ordered means of the church's conciliar life; and the calling should be heeded. At the same time, the Archbishop can and should integrate, as far as possible and in as prudent a way possible, his decisions about all this with the other representative councils of the Communion. Our current Archbishop has made it clear that he views his role as an "instrument" and "focus" of unity to be properly exercised within the college of Primates especially. Should the prudential concerns of his invitations demand it, he should rightly submit his invitations to the common counsel of his colleagues. And they indeed demand it, as I see it, in light of the very concrete concerns articulated by the Primates in their last meeting, concerns about TEC and the Communion that impinge directly on the Lambeth Conference's ability to strengthen our common life and witness. My own view (and that of others) has long been that TEC's behavior has been so brazenly destructive of the Communion's conciliar life on a number of levels, that the entire American church's college of bishops should not be invited to Lambeth at all. Without some major, formal, and agreed recommitment to the character of conciliar life, TEC's participation in the Communion's gathering threatens to be subversive, not edifying, inevitably confusing, not clarifying. The Anglican Communion is not "the Catholic Church" tout court, by a long shot, and requires a kind of conserving energy that goes beyond whole-sale pneumatic openness-within-order. Individual TEC bishops might, if they so chose, petition Canterbury and the Primates for a seat at Lambeth on the basis of affirming a commitment to the principles the Primates themselves laid out in their recent Communique (the "Camp Allen Principles") - this may already be implied in Canterbury's current invitation, although this is not wholly clear -- or at least a commitment to previous Lambeth resolutions, whose imposing legitimacy has now been clearly affirmed by the interlocking agreement of other Anglican Communion synods. Perhaps something like this is still possible in the post –September 30th Anglican world, when TEC's House of Bishops will have given their common response to the Primates. Many of us hope for this and urge this, of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates themselves. But my opinion is only that - an opinion among many. I have no role in inviting, and I can only advise, from the farthest distance, on the character of prudence demanded by the current situation. The Lambeth Conference should go on with (preferably) or without imposed criteria. Even the most pessimistic "conservative" must agree that the numbers are there for traditionalist bishops to do whatever they discern as fitting, if they indeed show up and pursue it. That is the nature of a council: if "what they pursue" is right, it will stick. But quite apart from Canterbury or this or that party's hopes or judgments, Lambeth can be, in terms of the Holy Spirit's leading, whatever it wants to be. Neither Canterbury, nor the Design Committee, nor those who do not attend can make or unmake the conciliar character of Lambeth. And those who do attend may well, should they choose to exercise the tools of the Spirit they are given (to the degree that any of us have such a "choice"), transform through the Spirit's work whatever the Lambeth Conference may initially appear to be into a true and authoritative council of the Communion and even of the Church at large. The Holy Spirit controls the course of a gathering of saints; and the saints are eager to work with God. The Church of Christ eagerly seeks counsel together, even when its "formal councils" are obscured. And why would anyone wish to be otherwise than eager in this regard? There are clearly those who want to declare the Lambeth Conference conciliarly ineffective, and to depose it from (or deny it) any conciliar role, even before it convenes. A question to be asked of these people is whether they want to declare themselves, before the fact, as letting go of the charismatic calling of the Church. For, in the context of the Christian faith and the Church's life, they need not do so. "Talking down" the Conference or deliberately absenting oneself from it may or may not undermine the authority of Lambeth (indeed, depending on how it is done, it may in fact enhance it!). But if it so undermines it, it also may well undermine the authority of those who deliberately reject the Conference itself. For such preemptive rejection will cloud the eagerness, trouble the faith, dampen the fire, quench the Spirit. Let archbishops and their episcopal colleges come and "fight the good fight", sus tained - as surely they will be - by the Holy Spirit of God. These are good people, whose deepest hopes the Lord would shape and honor. Let those who pray, come together and pray; let those who serve, come together and serve; let those who teach, come together and teach; let those who heal, come together and heal. Let the Holy Spirit list where He will within the Church as she gathers in the name of Jesus. --The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner wrote this for the Anglican Communion Institute. He is a priest in the Diocese of Colorado. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:51:51 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: AMBRIDGE, PA: Why We Stand: An Interview with Dr. Leslie Fairfield AMBRIDGE, PA: Why We Stand: An Interview with Dr. Leslie Fairfield The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield, professor emeritus of church history at Trinity seminary in Ambridge, recently agreed to share his thoughts on the roots of the current conflicts in the Episcopal Church. "Just how did the Episcopal Church become divided into opposing camps?" Dr. Fairfield: In the 1870s a new religion began to work its way into Episcopal Church. Its origins lay in Germany, in the universities of the early 19th century. As it crossed the Atlantic to the United States, it went by different names. Some called it "Liberalism," (though, of course, it is quite possible to be a socially "liberal" Christian without being a part of this movement) some referred to it as "The New Theology," others named it the "Broad Church," and some referred to it as "Modernism." Since the latter was the title that its advocates preferred in the 1920s, I'll call it "Modernism." Modernism appealed to an increasing number of Episcopal clergymen who viewed classical Christianity as outmoded. The infiltration of Modernist theology came to a head in the 1920s. A movement amongst Episcopal clergy tried to delete the 39 Articles from the new 1928 Prayer Book. But a coalition of laypeople forced General Convention to back down. The onset of the Depression and World War II also deflated Modernism's optimistic view of human nature and it went underground in the Episcopal Church for a generation. In the 1960s Modernism came storming back. The English Bishop John A.T. Robinson sounded the charge with his ironically-titled best seller Honest to God in 1963. The American Bishop James Pike denied the Trinity in 1966 and the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops let him keep his purple shirt. Except for Trinity in Pittsburgh, and (since its wonderful renaissance in the last few years) Nashotah House in Wisconsin, the other nine Episcopal seminaries have been teaching Modernist theology for more than a generation. The current leadership of the national Church have been deeply influenced by the Modernist tradition since their first day at seminary. Pittsburgh diocese on the other hand stands for classic Biblical and Anglican theology, which is a very different faith from the one that Modernism promotes. "What do these different faiths believe about God?" Dr. Fairfield: Classic Biblical and Anglican theology believes in a God who exists as a community of three Persons, who are nevertheless one God. We believe that these Persons exist beyond the universe, "other" than time and space. And we believe that God created the universe out of nothing. Likewise we trust that God loves the universe and intervenes constantly to preserve it, and to heal it from the toxins that evil has mysteriously spread throughout it. We believe that Jesus was and is the Second Person of the Trinity. He existed and exists outside of all time and space. Nevertheless in His love he entered history in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago, to be with us, and to rescue us. We believe that Jesus died on the Cross to pay for our sins, thus to satisfy the norms of justice that He, the Father and the Spirit forever uphold. And we believe that Jesus rose from the dead as a matter of historical fact - not as the resuscitation of a corpse, however, but as the first instance of a wholly new life that He wants to share with us for all eternity. Finally we believe that Jesus personally affirmed the authority of the Old Testament Scriptures, and personally commissioned and sanctioned the teaching that the Church later acknowledged to be the New Testament. These Scriptures represent God's official message to the human race. And while its interpretation requires the utmost of care, scholarship and grace, its central message is non-negotiable. Modernism, taken to its logical conclusions, rejects all of these classic Biblical and Anglican affirmations. For Modernism, the word "god" refers to an impersonal force that is wholly within the universe. There is no dimension of this "force" that is not fully invested in the cosmos. This "force" neither speaks nor acts. But we know it exists because we encounter it in the depths of our psyches, in moments of transformed experience that the 19th century German thinkers like Friedrich Schleiermacher called "god-consciousness." Modernists attribute these moments of transformed consciousness to an undefined "Spirit." Modernism therefore rejects Jesus as the pre-existent Second Person of the Trinity. For Modernism, Jesus was simply a Palestinian sage, who was the first human being in evolutionary history to experience "god-consciousness" fully and perfectly. Otherwise he was purely human. He did not rise from the dead. Rather, His followers experienced a "Christ event" in which their dead teacher seemed to be still present and alive to them. Therefore the prospect of an actual life after death is both iffy and unimportant for Modernism. Finally Modernism views the Bible as it does all the holy books amongst the world religions, namely as a human artifact. The Bible represents one ancient people's attempt to talk about "god-consciousness" and to pass on that experience to new converts. But Modernists believe that the Bible was completely conditioned by its ancient environment, and has considerable historical interest but no authority for Christians today. As one Episcopal bishop recently put it, "The Church wrote the Bible, so the Church can re-write the Bible." To sum it up, Modernism uses all the old familiar Christian words, but changes all the meanings. And it neglects to tell the laity. "Why does any of this matter anyway?" Dr. Fairfield: As you can see, these two belief systems are mutually exclusive. Either you believe in a God who is both beyond time and space and within it, or you believe in a "god" who is merely an impersonal force completely inside the cosmos. There is no half-way point, no via media between these two opposing religions (the classic Anglican via media meant something entirely different). There are dozens of consequences that follow from our choice between Biblical Anglican Christianity and Modernism. Let me just mention two. If you opt for Modernism, you give up hope. The "god" of Modernism is simply the "force" that's spinning a sick system. Even a nine-second appraisal of human behavior immediately reminds us that we're in big trouble. And even in American suburbia (gasp) there are intractable problems that don't go away when you throw money at them or go serve at the soup kitchen. Drugs, teen suicide...you fill in the blanks. The Modernist "god" offers absolutely no hope, no intervention from outside, no autonomous burst of healing energy. Because the Modernist "god" is finally simply our experience - in other words, Us. If you opt for Modernism, likewise, you give up reason. Let me say that again...if you opt for Modernism, you give up any hope of rationality or accurate knowledge. If "mind" is not a gift from God - a possibility that Modernism categorically excludes - then "mind" is simply a random product of genetic inheritance plus accidental environmental stimuli. Therefore a thought in my head is as likely to have been caused by some ancestral experience on the African savannah as it has of portraying the tree I'm looking at right now. All of which is to say that Biblical Anglican theology is Christianity, and Modernism isn't. Why do we stand? That's why. ---The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield is professor emeritus of church history at Trinity seminary. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:52:51 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: Would Jesus have Condemned Evangelicals as Pharisees? - Simon Vibert Would Jesus have Condemned Evangelicals as Pharisees? by Simon Vibert D.Minn Recent criticisms of Evangelicalism have included an accusation that modern evangelicals would have been on the receiving end of Jesus' rebuke in the same way and for the same reasons that the Pharisees were in His own day. Is such a charge justified? Does modern evangelicalism display the worst of Pharisaism? Yes? 1) Evangelicals are always in danger of overvaluing received tradition This is thought to be especially the case when you put the adjective "conservative" in front of Evangelical. The Pharisees loved their long flowing robes, their ostentatious prayers, their pomp and ceremony. But they were condemned by Jesus for letting go of the commandments of God and holding onto the traditions of men (Mark 7). Evangelicals today are castigated, not as those who hold to pompous tradition in terms of clothing, liturgy or ceremony, but rather as those who hold to apparently outdated views on the role of women and practising homosexuals in the life of the church community. In other words, the charge is not against their religious ceremony but rather over their adherence to traditional views of Church order and sexual ethics. Indeed evangelical churches tend to have little time for fussy liturgy, vestments or ostentation. However they do believe that tradition and reason are subservient to Scripture and that the Bible is still normative for Christian life. 2) Evangelicals view Scripture as utterly reliable and infallible so there is always a danger of legalism. The Pharisees were condemned by Jesus for washing the outside of the dish but failing to clean the inside; for tithing their herbs but neglecting justice, mercy and faithfulness. And thus they are castigated as being "blind guides" (Matthew 23). Surely a more enlightened approach would be to sit a little looser to the teaching of Scripture? However, was it not Jesus who spoke about every jot and tittle being fulfilled? Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees was not over their desire to keep the law, but rather their expectation that by narrowing it down to external matters of conduct and ceremony they could think that they had fulfilled it. Hence, Jesus points out the full responsibility of keeping and teaching the law - going to issues of the heart as well as of conduct (Matthew 7:27-48). As Article VI states, Evangelicals believe that whatsoever is not written in Holy Scripture is not required of anyone. 3) Evangelicals are seen as joy-killers and finicky rather than celebrating the richness of the life God has given. Rather than bringing liberty to their followers, the Pharisees were accused of "tying heavy loads on men's shoulders" and not lifting a finger to relieve their burden. The joy of the good news of Jesus is not freedom from obligation or worship. Rather the joy offered in the Gospel is that of being in tune with the living, creating, redeeming God. This is at the heart of evangelical faith. 4) Evangelicals demand moral purity but don't keep it themselves nor realise the complexity of living in the real world and thus are subject to the charge of hypocrisy Jesus warned the crowds to do what the Pharisees tell them to do, but not to hold up as models to follow, for they do not practice what they preach (Matthew 23:3). They are hypocrites. Evangelicals have had their fair share of scandal associated with the movement. However, in Evangelical churches corporate and individual sin is most likely to be confessed. Personal holiness flows from a self-awareness about the state of the human heart, which is more likely to help avoid hypocrisy. As the Church sign wisely says: "You're not so bad you have to stay out; you're not so good you can't afford to come in". No? 1) Evangelical faith has the worship of Jesus is at its heart. One of the features of many Evangelical Churches I have been in is a desire to worship Jesus. I find the reality of living faith which is focussed, not on rules and regulations, but on a heartfelt engagement with God. Surely this is one of the reasons why Evangelical churches are growing? People are hungry to meet God, and they find Him in many of our evangelical congregations. Relationship with him matters more than tradition. 2) Evangelical faith is fully inclusive. To be inclusive does not mean that all people get to heaven irrespective of their genuine repentance and personal faith in Christ. To believe that would make them, not Evangelicals, but Universalists. To be truly inclusive means to say to a sinful person, such as the women Jesus encountered in John 8, "Neither do I condemn you" plus "go and sin no more". This is the inclusive love that is found in the Gospel. It involves acceptance by Christ but also with a mandate to live, under God, a reformed life. The Gospel demands telling people of their danger outside of Christ, but their full acceptance in Christ. 3) Evangelical faith has been at the forefront of social reform. We recall that members of the so-called Clapham Sect were not only key players in social movements such as the abolition of slavery but they were genuine pietists who saw national reformation as the overflow of a godly life. The statue in St Paul's Cathedral speaks of William Wilberforce as one who exuded the "abiding eloquence of a Christian life". Christ's lordship over all demands celebration of all that is good in his world. 4) Evangelical faith is realistic about the pervasiveness of human sin affecting body, mind and soul, but at the same time takes seriously the Bible's call to live a blameless life. Personal holiness is at the heart of Evangelical faith, and like those notorious Corinthians evangelicals know for themselves "such were some of you". Evangelical faith recognises both: that we are more sinful than we ever previously believed and we are more loved than ever we could have imagined. Christian communities are made up of notorious sinners who have been "washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Conclusion Of course, it is wrong to assume that Jesus was uniformly critical of the Pharisees, and much of their "separatism" was motivated by a desire to live pure lives in an impure world. However, Jesus did say that our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees if we are to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 5:19-20). Surely this means that the Pharisees were wrong to reduce the obedience which God requires of us to mere external, manageable amounts? True righteousness goes much further. And there is a warning to all that the breaking of God's commandments, and worse, teaching others to do so, earns the attribute of "least in the kingdom of God". The Sadducees likewise are in error because they do not know the Scriptures or the power of God (Matthew 22:19). Commitment to the Evangel is a commitment to God, for the true custodians of the faith are those who cherish the God who we meet in Jesus in the pages of His word. Pharisaism is not far from every heart when it presumes to sit over God's word rather than under it; when it fails to worship Jesus and is not passionate about sharing His message to a lost and needy world. It is a loving thing to warn the world of the reality of their eternal plight and how to prepare for it! For that reason I am happy to be called an evangelical, and suspect that Jesus is rather pleased too! ---Revd Dr Simon Vibert is Vicar of St Luke's Wimbledon Park, London. His website can be found here: www.wimbledonchurch.co.uk. This story will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Church of England newspaper. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:53:51 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: The Inherited Church. A timely Lesson for Episcopalians The Inherited Church. A timely Lesson for Episcopalians By Randall Adams http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=25558 May 1, 2007 OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (BP)--Each year Forbes Magazine publishes a list of the richest people in the world. It is interesting to note the variety in this year's list, from the variety in the types of businesses to the variety of nations in which the wealthy live. But the matter that stands out most is this: The wealthiest among us are self-made billionaires. Their wealth may have come from computer software or insurance investments, manufacturing or entertainment. They may live in America, Mexico or India, but most of the super-rich are entrepreneurs who grew their financial assets from comparatively little wealth. A corollary to this observation is that the children of the super-rich of previous generations are either no longer on Forbes's list, or they are much further down the list. Inherited wealth tends to dissipate rather than grow. The Rockefellers and Carnegies and Morgans are no longer on the list, which is now dominated by names unknown just 30 years ago. The five richest people in the world are William Gates III, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim Helu, Ingvar Kamprad, and Lakshmi Mittal, the top four being self-made billionaires. This got me to thinking about the church. "The church?" you say. Yes, the church, specifically, the "inherited church." It has long been observed that most of the fastest growing and most effective evangelistic churches in America are new churches. New Baptist churches (less than three years old) in Oklahoma, where I serve, averaged nearly 10 baptisms last year, while our older churches averaged about 8.5. And the largest church in Oklahoma (not a Baptist church) is only 10 years old. When you look at church life in America, most of the churches leading our nation in reaching the lost sheep are less than 30 years old. Certainly, we need to continue starting new churches. But the majority of our churches are "inherited churches," churches founded and built by previous generations. We "inherited" these churches in that the buildings were largely built by previous generations, as were much of the ministries, organizations, and guidelines governing church polity. Even the framework for the budget may have been developed decades ago. And in many cases the lay leadership of the church hasn't changed significantly in 40 years. Let me quickly say, I love these churches. I have served as the pastor of three churches that were each about 100 years old. It has been my joy to see these churches experience renewed effectiveness in reaching the lost. But in the process I have learned a few things about the "inherited church." First, like inherited wealth, the inherited church can live in the afterglow and off the resources accumulated from previous generations. In both cases, with wealth and church, the tendency is for these accumulated resources to dissipate, dwindle and decline. These resources include not only tangible things such as buildings, but also the congregation of believers itself, and the intellectual and spiritual energies that were expended in growing the church. Thus, the challenge for the inherited church is to rekindle the urgency and spiritual energy that is always present in a growing church that effectively reaches lost people. The pioneering spirit present in the beginning of a church must be recaptured for that church to resume growth. Second, for the inherited church to reach the lost and grow in ministry effectiveness, she must give birth to new ideas, new ministries and new small groups. The churches in which I have served have had Sunday School classes in which the class roll was nearly the same as it was 50 years ago, and I'm not exaggerating. These good people grew up together and stayed together in the same church, and they love each other. However, what I observed was that if we wanted to reach others in that same age group, we had to start new classes. It was just too difficult for new people to enter those classes. This is not a criticism of those classes. It's an observation that corresponds with what we know about human nature and group dynamics. By the way, this holds true with people in their 20s and 30s as well. Once a class has been together for a few years it becomes much harder to reach new people through that class. You must continually birth new classes in order to reach new people. There are other corollaries that we could make between inherited wealth and inherited churches, but I will leave those for your contemplation. The challenge of the inherited church is to once again take the risks to reach people that the founders of the church were willing to take. Do not settle for maintaining what you have inherited, but take these inherited resources and use them to God's glory to reach people for Christ. Older, inherited churches must become young, pioneering churches once again in order to grow in evangelistic effectiveness. ---Randall Adams is team leader of the Church Outreach Team for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:54:51 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: One More Nail in the Lambeth Coffin - by Charles Raven One More Nail in the Lambeth Coffin By Charles Raven Special to VirtueOnline www.virtueonline.org June 1, 2007 Further evidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury has already made up his mind that ECUSA/TEC bishops will be invited to Lambeth 2008 irrespective of their response to the 30th September deadline agreed at Dar es Salaam comes from England in the May edition of the Worcester Diocesan News. In July next year, a 'Diocesan Assembly' is to be held and will be "about celebrating and deepening our identity as the Anglican Church in Worcestershire". Celebrating Anglican identity on the eve of the Lambeth Conference is a bold step to take. In fact, no-one could accuse the organisers of a lack of ambition, having secured the services of the Archbishop of York, Ugandan born Dr John Sentamu, despite the fact that he will be sharing a platform with another key speaker, the Bishop of Rhode Island, Geralyn Wolf, who was among the 62 ECUSA/TEC bishops who consented to the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. So if the second most senior figure in the Church of England is prepared to affirm a form of Anglican identity at such a sensitive moment with a bishop who has consented to an action which has given the clearest possible signal of her church's intention to depart from the historic faith of the Scriptures, what should we conclude? Given the timing, it seems highly improbable that the Archbishop of York would not have consulted with others at the highest level and so the obvious conclusion to be drawn would be that the Church of England hierarchy has already decided which way it will jump. This can be nothing other than a very clear indicator that the Church of England will continue in communion with TEC irrespective of the Global South Primates' calls for repentance on the part of those who have violated the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and the clear warning of the 'Road to Lambeth' statement that they will not attend a Lambeth Conference to which such bishops are invited. Perhaps the explanation for this approach is that the English Archbishops have privately given up on trying to hold the Communion together and are instead focusing on the survival of the Church of England. After all, if the Archbishop of York can teach alongside an ECUSA revisionist, is not the message that here in England we can somehow be more measured and hold everything together? But at what price? The Church of England's preference for studied ambiguity and for process rather than principle only serves to deepen spiritual and moral confusion at home and alienate the Global South. It is precisely this avoidance of the underlying issues in the past which has led to the tragic fragmentation of the Anglican Communion today. Despite Dr Sentamu's Ugandan origins and his evangelical/charismatic background, the Global South leaders are right to be wary of him. It seems that he is no less susceptible to domestication by the liberal establishment than many other evangelicals in the English House of Bishops. In a confused picture, this much seems clear - there is no longer any point in looking to the Lambeth Conference or the mother church of the Anglican Communion for a lasting resolution of this deepening crisis. ---The Rev. Charles Raven is Senior Minister of Christ Church Wyre Forest which is an independent Anglican congregation but located within Worcester Diocese. By way of response to this article the Archbishop of York wrote VOL to say that it is a gross presumption without factual merit that the Archbishop will be "sharing a platform" with Geralyn Wolf as the article suggests. The Archbishop has been invited to speak on one day of a four day conference as has Geralyn Wolf. This is not so much sharing a platform as breathing the same air a couple of days apart. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:55:51 -0400 From: David Virtue Subject: A VISION THAT RENEWS A VISION THAT RENEWS by Ted Schroder June 3, 2007 There are two ways of living: one way is to get up every day and do what is on the agenda for that day; and the other way is to look ahead beyond the immediate and ask, "Why am I doing this? Where am I going? What do I want to achieve?" The former approach allows the immediate to dictate how our time is used, and the latter approach prefers to set priorities according to their answers to those questions. I prefer the latter approach. I like to set long term goals which influence how I manage my time and priorities. Goal-setting requires having some sort of vision for your life. Where do we find that vision? How often do we need to renew our vision? I find that I need to do it fairly frequently in order to stay fresh, and to check whether my priorities are what they should be. The days and years can roll along without change for some time and then there is the need for a renewed vision. There is a tendency for our energy to run down and our batteries need to be recharged. A crisis can occur which gets us reaching out for help with a new urgency. There are new demands upon us to which we have to respond. New situations arise in which we don't have all the answers. The former responses don't satisfy and we get discouraged. We need a shot in the arm - something to get us going again in the right direction, with renewed vigor. Such was the case with a young nobleman named Isaiah. His beloved king had died, and he was in mourning. He went to his church (the Temple) and there experienced a life-changing vision. (Isaiah 6:1-8) What can we learn from his experience to renew our own vision? 1. Seek a renewed vision through prayer and worship. While he was praying in the Temple, Isaiah saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted. Above the Lord were the seraphs, heavenly creatures who guarded the throne and led the worship by singing of the transcendent holiness and universal presence of God's glory. The vision was one of sovereignty, power, authority, purity, and omnipresence: "the whole earth is full of his glory." We gain perspective on our lives when we are reminded of the transcendent: God in his heavenly court: the supernatural, celestial world, angels and archangels. The book of Revelation reminds us that behind and beyond this world with all its clamor and historical crises there is another eternal, heavenly world. When we get hold of that reality our lives take on a different meaning from the merely temporal and material. When we pray for guidance and wisdom we are connecting with a spiritual world that is powerfully connected to us. God delights to hear our prayers. Worship is meant to help us focus on the Presence of God. God is present in worship. God is present in all creation. The whole earth is full of his glory. That is our belief. Our vision is renewed when we know that. We know where we are going in Christ, and we know God wants to help us to get there. 2. Be aware of your own need, and the needs of others. As a result of seeing the Lord and the heavenly court Isaiah was convicted of his own unworthiness and the problems of those among whom he lived. "For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." His vision of the presence of God had awakened him to his own impurity, inadequacy, and failure, and the plight of others like him in his community. Efforts to keep ourselves away from God by denying his existence and presence are defensive attempts to maintain the illusion of our own independence and goodness. When we experience the presence of the inexplicable, the reality of God, we get a clearer glimpse of our own problems. Self-examination under the bright light of God's gaze can be devastating. There is no way we can hide, excuse, or cover up our shortcomings. But accurate diagnosis or evaluation is necessary before a cure can be applied. We look around us and see that others are afflicted with the sa me problems. We all stand in the same fallen, fallible, and frustrated human condition. The daily news confirms this diagnosis. 3. Welcome the burning love of God. The seraph touched Isaiah's mouth with a live coal from the altar: "See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." A sacrifice on the altar had been offered in his place to atone for his sins. God in his compassion and mercy had acted to cleanse him of guilt, to pay the penalty, and to restore him to fellowship. The love of God came down to us in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, so that we might be made new, given a new start, and totally purified. The fire of God's Spirit brings the presence of God into our hearts to dwell there with us. When we appreciate all that God has done for us in Christ and by the gift of his Spirit we can never be complacent or complaining. "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior." (Titus 3:5,6) If we are so renewed then we must seek to be continually renewed by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Ask and you shall re ceive. 4. Hear and Respond to God's Call. God advertises for volunteers to represent him in the world: "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" The Holy Trinity seeks willing individuals to commission as ambassadors for the Gospel. The world has fallen away from God, it exists against his will, and he wishes to have it back. Isaiah finds his vocation as prophet when he responds to the call: "Here am I. Send me!" In order to get this world back again, and in his compassion, God wants the Gospel proclaimed. God is continually calling his people to reach out to others with the Good News of his love. Just as the live coal from the altar touched Isaiah's lips and he became a prophet, God seeks to touch us to become his messengers. We are his lips, his voice to the community. Who are the people to whom God is calling us to go? 1. The Sceptics: those who do not believe in God, or heaven, or visions, or accountability, or salvation. They are alienated and angry, and need love and acceptance. 2. The Ignostics: those with no Christian background and no experience or memory to relate to Christianity. They need to hear the story of Jesus. 3. The Notional Christians: those who have some memory or notion of what Christianity is, but it is not impacting their lives. They need to experience the reality of the Spirit. 4. The Nominal Christians: those who claim to be Christians but are not active in any church. They need to belong to a loving community. What are the characteristics of the unchurched? They may not be in a church, but they believe in God. They have legitimate questions about spiritual matters. They want to experience God, not just know something about him. They may be morally adrift but they want an anchor. They are looking for a practical application of faith. They are not loyal to a denomination but want to find a community where their needs are met. What can you do? 1. Make sure that your vision of God is fresh - experiential and not just intellectual. Seek that vision in your Sunday worship and your daily prayers. 2. Get in touch with your own needs and the needs of others by transparent evaluation. Pray that the Spirit would reveal to you what you need to know about yourself and others. 3. Let God love you with his forgiveness and cleansing. Thank Christ for his sacrifice on the Cross to heal you. Deepen your appreciation of the Cross and the gift of the Spirit. Seek daily to be filled to overflowing with the Spirit of the love of God. 4. Listen to what God is calling you to do for others. Reach out to the people God is putting in your path. Get to know them. Ask them questions about their lives. Earn the right to share with them your faith. Invite them to join you for worship so that they too might experience a vision of God that will renew them. END ------------------------------ End of VIRTUEONLINE Digest - 1 Jun 2007 to 8 Jun 2007 (#2007-27) ****************************************************************