Manhattan Declaration & Signers

http://www.demossnews.com/manhattandeclaration/press_kit/manhattan_declaration_signers October 20, 2009 Preamble


Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

SCOTLAND: Kirk votes against trainee gay clergy

The Christian Institute
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/?p=18350
November 20th, 2009

Allowing a homosexual man to begin training for ministry in the Church of Scotland broke a two-year agreement to suspend appointing openly gay clergy, the Kirk has decided.

A church court voted 43 to 38 that Hamilton Presbytery, one of the largest in Scotland, broke the agreement by appointing Dimitri Ross to training.

The agreement was put in place after the appointment of an openly homosexual minister, Revd Scott Rennie, caused an uproar. The agreement will remain until a Special Commission publishes a report on the issue in 2011.

An Anglican Bridge Across the Tiber
A former Anglican vicar now a Catholic priests reflects on the Apostolic Constitution

by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Times Online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6923444.ece
November 19, 2009

Last Monday I was traveling to Tampa, Florida for a week long retreat with other Catholic priests who were once Anglican priests. In the airport I got an email with the news that the new Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus had been published. Suddenly the rest of the week's program was decided. My brother priests and I spent time studying the document and discussing its implications.

ROME: Archbishop tells Pope: there will be no turning back on women priests

by Ruth Gledhill and Richard Owen in Rome
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6923807.ece
November 20, 2009

The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday made his most outspoken challenge to the Roman Catholic Church since the Pope invited disaffected Anglicans to switch to Rome.

Speaking before he meets Benedict XVI tomorrow, Dr Rowan Williams told a conference in Rome that the Catholic Church's refusal to ordain women was a bar to Christian unity.

"For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women," he said.

The Anglican provinces that ordain women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism, he said.

Addressing an ecumenical conference at the Gregorian Pontifical University, the Archbishop said that the way Anglican leaders dealt with internal arguments offered lessons for senior Catholics.

NEW YORK: Episcopal Priest 'Very Sorry' for Using Church Funds for Plastic Surgery; Gets Probation

November 19, 2009

A New York priest accused of using church funds to pay for plastic surgery has been ordered to serve five years probation.

The Rev. William Blasingame also must pay back $84,537 to St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church on Staten Island.

Prosecutors say he paid for personal luxuries, including tens of thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery and Botox treatments, with money earmarked for the needy and the upkeep of church grounds.

Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam: What should Christians Do?

By Michael Nazir-Ali
November 20, 2009

The Qur'an is fierce in its condemnation of apostasy (ridda) and of the apostate (murtadd). Theirs, according to it, will be a dreadful penalty ('adhbun 'azmun). This sentiment, which occurs in Sura 16:106, is re-expressed in other ways in other suras (chapters of the Qur'an). The interesting point to note is that the various threats of judgement and of punishment seem to relate to the next world or to life after this earthly one, rather than to this world and to this life.

Against this, we have the unanimous position of the various schools of Islamic law (fiqh) that shari'a lays down the death penalty for adult male Muslims in possession of their faculties who apostatise. Some schools also prescribe a similar punishment for women, whilst others hold that a woman apostate should be imprisoned until she recants and returns to Islam. In addition to this, should an apostate somehow escape the ultimate penalty, his property becomes fai', i.e. it becomes the property of the Muslim community, which may hand it over to his heirs; his marriage is automatically dissolved and he is denied Muslim burial.

How then did such a major difference arise between the prima face teaching of the Qur'an and the provisions of shari'a as codified by the various schools of law? The answer is that the death penalty for apostasy is to be found in the hadith, the various collections of traditions about the Prophet of Islam's sayings and doings, and it is also found in the sunna of Muhammad and of his closest companions, the reports about their practice.

ARKANSAS: Episcopal Priest Praises Mohammed, Vishnu, Buddha, Confucius in Rogue All Saints Liturgy

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
November 20, 2009

When parishioners filed into St. John's Episcopal Church in Harrison, Arkansas, on All Saints Sunday, November 1, they were handed a bulletin that sent shivers down the spines of many of the congregants. It was a case of inclusion gone wild.

The "Litany of all the Saints of God" part of their Sunday liturgy read as follows:

Litany of all the Saints of God

CELEBRANT: Blessed are all you holy ones, the saints, you who have done the will of God, and now rejoice in the reward of Eternal joy.

Holy men and women who worshipped the All Holy One as Rama, Vishnu or the Lord Krishna, forest hermits, ascetics and wise ones whose lives were incarnations of the holy books the Vedas, Upanishads and Gita -

The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth:Parishes file Plea in Intervention

November, 19, 2009

Forty seven parishes and missions of the diocese have filed a Plea in Intervention in the lawsuit against the diocese that is currently before the 141st District Court. Collectively, the 47 churches are termed the "Intervening Congregations."

The plea asks the court to acknowledge through a declaratory judgment that, "in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, the title to the real property being occupied and subject to the control of Intervening Congregations is held by the Corporation of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth in trust for the use and benefit of each Intervening Congregation" and that this trust relationship is superior to any other claims.

Rowan Williams urges Rome to rethink position on female bishops

By Riazat Butt and John Hooper in Rome
guardian.co.uk
November 19, 2009

The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them.

Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Sunday's meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican's surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism.

In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences.

The communion has teetered on the edge of schism for nearly a decade over the issue of gay clergy but has retained a sliver of fellowship. Williams urged Roman Catholics to continue their 35-year dialogue with Anglicans in spite of theological and ideological divisions.

NEW BRIGHTON, MN: New Lutheran body to form after gay pastor vote

By PATRICK CONDON
http://www.thestate.com/166/story/1034068.html
November 18, 2009

The split over gay clergy within the country's largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August.

ROME: Archbishop Williams address at a Willebrands Symposium in Rome

November 19, 2009

The Archbishop of Canterbury is today giving an address in Rome, as the guest of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The address is part of a symposium being held at the Gregorian University, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Cardinal Willebrands, the first president of the Council.

The Archbishop says in his introduction:

"Since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church has been involved in a number of dialogues with other churches - including with the Anglican Communion - which have produced a very considerable number of agreed statements. This legacy has been brought together in a recent publication by the Vatican department to promote Christian Unity, whose first President during and after Vatican II, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, is justly and happily celebrated in today's centenary conference.

Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Marriage

By Mike McManus
November 18, 2009

This week America's Catholic Bishops issued a major Pastoral Letter, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan." It is the first such comprehensive declaration of support for marriage by any denomination I have witnessed in nearly three decades of writing this column.

The Letter was prompted by the bishops' concern about several disturbing trends.

First, while young people "esteem marriage," many are "reluctant to make the actual commitment necessary to enter and sustain it." Instead, many are choosing "to live in cohabiting relationships that may or may not lead to marriage and can be detrimental to the well-being of their children and themselves."

Archbishop of Canterbury must show muscular Christianity

Commentary

by Ruth Gledhill
From The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6922397.ece
November 19, 2009


The Archbishop of Canterbury has displayed a munificent turning of the other cheek in response to what many see as a move by the Pope to annex part of his Church.

No one doubts his Christian holiness. But a bit more muscular Christianity would not go amiss. In Rome this week he might do better to ask himself not "What would Jesus do?" but "What would Thomas Cromwell do?"

Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, a fictionalised memoir of Henry VIII's Reformation enforcer, has important lessons for Dr Rowan Williams.

ENGLAND: Churches head for a showdown in Rome

by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Times Online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6922455.ece?print=yes&randnum=1258608022877#
November 19, 2009

Priests returning to the Anglican Church have warned clergy against leaving to become Catholics

The Archbishop of Westminster has blamed Church of England bishops for keeping their leader in the dark about the Pope's attempts to entice Anglicans to Rome.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury prepared to visit Pope Benedict XVI for the first time since plans to admit Anglican opponents of women priests into the Catholic faith were published, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, deepened the row.

TRY TO IMAGINE

By Dr. Peter Moore
Special to Virtueonline
November 19, 2009

It's 10:30 AM. Early morning classes are over. There's a break in the day. Students at this relatively small Midwestern college can bask in the unusual mid November sunshine, hit one of the coffee shops in the adjacent village, or - they can go to voluntary chapel and hear a woman speaker from a seminary somewhere in Minnesota.

Hope is located in Holland, Michigan - a small city settled very largely by Dutch immigrants of a few generations back. It has a noted tulip festival in the spring, and sports architecture reminiscent of Amsterdam. Nearby Grand Rapids is known as the hometown of Gerald Ford, Amway, and a lot of office furniture makers. It's also the location of Zondervan, Baker, and Eerdmans - large and influential Christian publishing houses that produce many excellent books
Hope College is not a fiercely Christian college, although it was founded by worthy members of the Dutch Reformed Church, now known as the RCA - Reformed Church in America. Like many other colleges with a denominational background, it now draws students from all branches of the Christian church, and none. It's faculty, while largely Christian in name, includes atheists as well as believers.