A rational revelation. The Christian doctrine of revelation, far from making the human mind unnecessary, actually makes it indispensable and assigns to it its proper place. God has revealed himself in "words" to "minds". His revelation is a rational revelation to rational creatures. Our duty is to receive his message, to submit to it, to seek to understand it, and to relate it to the world in which we live. That God needs to take the initiative to reveal himself shows that our minds are finite and fallen; that he chooses to reveal himself to babies (Mt. 11:25) shows that we must humble ourselves to receive his Word; that he does so at all, and in words shows that our minds are capable of understanding it. One of the highest and noblest functions of man's mind is to listen to God's Word, and so to read his mind and think his thoughts after him, both in nature and in Scripture. --- John R.W. Stott

More than speech. The biblical understanding of God's Word is not just that he speaks it, but that he acts through it. His words are not merely speech; they are deeds as well. This is clear of creation, which was effected by God's words of command. 'God said ... and it was so'; 'He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth' (Gn. 1:6-7; Ps. 33:9). The same is true of salvation, which indeed is a new creation. For the same God who said 'Let light shine out of darkness' has shone in our hearts, revealing Christ to us (2 Cor. 4:6). His Word was creative; it brought to us both light and life. --- John R. W. Stott

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
June 14, 2013

The big news this week was the merger or juncturing, (The Episcopal Church calls it reunification) of the Diocese of Quincy with the Diocese of Chicago. It was a big win for Bishop Jeffrey Lee who suddenly saw his power base expand to include another whole diocese, indeed a whole state.

One can only imagine him strutting up and down his plush downtown Chicago office, chest puffed out saying, "bring on Eau Claire baby. Where is my Panzer division for Milwaukee?"

"Their commitment in that diocese - against many, many odds - to be in our church will be a great, great gift" to the reunified diocese, Lee said in front of a packed sanctuary at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in northwest suburban Park Ridge. Yup, all 340 parishioners from about seven parishes. Laughable when you think about it. You would never even notice that small a number in a single Nigerian congregation.

Never much of a population center, the Quincy diocese lost its bishop and the majority of its members when they broke with the Episcopal Church in 2008 over the church's stand on homosexuality and other theological matters. Quincy is the smallest of the more than 100 Episcopal dioceses, but it did well under Anglo-Catholic Bishop Keith Ackerman. After the split, the rump diocese had little hope of holding out for long. It ran up the surrender flag and merged with Chicago.

The Living Church reports that the Diocese of Quincy holds approximately $4 million in assets, approximately $3 million is owned by the diocese with the other $1 million held on behalf of individual congregations. These funds have been frozen and title to the property of the 22 departing congregations contested in litigation filed in March 2009. Hearings were held in April with a summary judgment expected soon. It is likely to be a while before any funds or property change hands, because whichever side loses is expected to appeal.

Lee might seriously be contemplating another juncture some time in his future as VOL has hinted earlier. This time it will be with the Diocese of Eau Claire under the liberal Bishop William Jay Lambert III, which has a baptized membership of 2,037 but an ASA of 790. Together, these two dioceses would give him the grand sum of 1130 new parishioners.

As Jeff Walton, a writer for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, noted, "This will be the first of several junctures in the coming decade. Open conversations have already taken place between Fond Du Lac/Eau Claire, Kansas/West Kansas, Northwest Pennsylvania/TEC Pittsburgh, even though juncture has been rejected in the immediate future for those. Most of us expect TEC San Joaquin to juncture with another California diocese, and TEC South Carolina will probably do the same with Upper South Carolina." Ah, the sorrows of heresy.

The irony should not be missed. While TEC continues to shrink in the Midwest, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) recently announced the formation of a new Diocese of the Upper Midwest. It should receive official approval and recognition by the ACNA House of Bishops when they meet June in Nashotah House, Wisconsin. Orthodox Anglicanism will ultimately prevail. Always does. God will not leave Himself without a witness.

Several months ago, parishes in Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa came together under the leadership of the Very Rev. Dr. Robert Munday, the former 18th Dean of Nashotah House Seminary, to explore the possibility of creating a new diocese. It's on its way.

*****

The orthodox Albany Episcopal Diocese is poised to change the way it elects its bishop in a move that is opposed by liberals.

How the bishop is chosen has become a debate about democracy locally in a mainline denomination known for making its decisions nationally and in accord with General Convention.

A proposed rule change would eliminate a special Profile and Search Committee that seeks candidates in the diocese and from the national church and conducts a vetting process. Instead, the diocese's Standing Committee, which advises the bishop, would administer the process relying on nominations from within the diocese.

What this diocese is naturally concerned about is that a liberal or revisionist would one day follow in the footsteps of Bishop Bill Love, when he retires, and turn the diocese towards the national church's pansexual agenda, a move that could split the mostly theologically conservative diocese. Hopefully Love is not about to retire any time soon. This action preempts any attempts to turn the diocese around, a diocese which, incidentally is seeing growth in the most secular state in the country.

The Diocese of Albany is among half a dozen or so remaining orthodox dioceses that have not bowed the knee to the Baal goddess at 815 2nd avenue in New York and the apostasies of The Episcopal Church.

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In Charleston, SC the Diocese of South Carolina won a reprieve from a lawsuit by the rump Diocese of SC which sought to have property issues decided in Federal Court. This week U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck remanded the case to the South Carolina Circuit Court.

In informing the parties, Judge Houck said, "If this Court determined that a case may be removed based on federal question jurisdiction whenever a defendant attributed a federal constitutional issue not alleged or advanced in a well-pleaded complaint, federal question jurisdiction could potentially be expanded to all cases containing tacit First Amendment issues." You can read the full story in today's digest.

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Episcopal bishops attending and participating in gay pride parade days is not new. Bishops like Gene Robinson, (New Hampshire), Mark Andrus (California), and Catherine S. Roskam (New York), have been regular Episcopal flag wavers and standard bearers at such events, thus adding a little episcopal spice to the doctrine of inclusion and public displays of immorality now as prevalent as HIV in some quarters.

This past week a new first was realized when the Very. Rev. Gary Hall of the Washington National Cathedral showed up at the Washington D.C. gay pride parade day with a contingent from the cathedral.

Hall's pressed blue dress shirt and white clerical collar wasn't the most head-turning look in a crowd that featured a lot of drag queens with towering bouffants, but his presence in Saturday's gay pride parade through Washington was still a stunner for some. Hall led the first ever official contingent from Washington National Cathedral in the annual celebration of gay life in the District.

"If my being seen in the parade is a visible sign that God loves and accepts people across the full spectrum of human sexuality, it will have achieved its purpose."

Hall's attendance is only the latest public embrace of gay equality by mainstream Protestant denominations, and by the National Cathedral in particular. Under Hall's leadership - he was named dean less than a year ago - the church has launched an LGBT ministry group and announced that it would begin hosting same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Gothic edifice famous for society weddings and presidential funerals.

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From the Anglican Church in Canada comes this. There appears to be an epidemic of resigning bishops. First, Michael Ingham of New Westminster announced his retirement, then James Cowan of British Columbia announced his retirement, and now Sue Moxley, Bishop of the diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island has announced she is handing in her papers.

These three bishops have all presided over the instigation of same-sex blessings in their respective dioceses. Now, having accomplished their mission and set the cat among the pigeons, they are bidding us adieu and leaving their successors to cope with the fallout.

"Sue" Moxley, who was known to many Anglicans in Canada and overseas for her passion for social justice and church renewal, says she will step down in March 2014. The question is: What church renewal? Her diocese went nowhere under her feminist command.

In 2007, Moxley, then 61, made history by becoming the first female bishop elected in her diocese and the second female bishop to lead a diocese across the Canadian Anglican church.

*****

Pope Francis is reported to have acknowledged the existence of a "gay lobby" inside the Vatican. He is said to have made the remarks during a private meeting with a group of Latin American Catholic clerics. He also said there was a "stream of corruption", according to reports in Catholic media. The clerics wrote up a report of the conversation that appeared on the Chilean website "Reflection and Liberation".

Sort of ironic, really. The Pope admits there is a gay lobby in the Vatican and will root it out. TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori embraces homosexuality - gay and lesbian priests and bishops -- because it is the inclusive thing to do, while Archbishop Justin Welby straddles the fence saying gay marriage is wrong but embraces civil partnerships.

*****

A French Catholic campaigner has urged Church leaders not to give up opposition to same-sex marriage, despite the spread of laws allowing the practice across Europe.

Antoine Renard, president of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe, stated, "The message from France is the campaign isn't over - these laws rely on a big lie, and no lie can survive.

"Our own government has succeeded in its goal of dividing opinion in the Catholic Church, so the Church's authorities need to be prudent. But there's a lot of teaching to be done, and I hope our pastors will provide it," he told the American Catholic News Service.

On May 18, French President Francois Holland signed France's same-sex marriage law, which allows gay and lesbian couples to marry and adopt children.

Renard said Catholic groups would step up their campaign against the law before municipal and European Parliament elections in early 2014 and would try to block the government's "gender-based reforms" in education and family life.

*****

THE WEEK reports what is happening in Syria. Some of the world's oldest churches are in Syria. Until recently, there were about 2.5 million Christians. For all its political repression, the country's Baathist dictatorship did at least guarantee freedom of worship, so when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began two years ago, most Christians sided with the regime or remained neutral. Now that Islamist extremists are joining the rebels in what has become a civil war, some 300,000 Syrian Christians have fled the country. More will likely follow. "Everyone is afraid of these extremists," said George Nashawati, head of an Orthodox charity in Damascus. "Look what happened in Iraq. It could happen here."

*****

Christians flee Mali. According to THE WEEK, Mali had no Arab Spring uprising, but it has seen a fierce Islamist insurgency. In 2012, Salafist extremists linked to al Qaida took over in the north, where they destroyed churches along with Muslim shrines. Islamist rebels singled out the small Christian minority for torture and summary executions, and as many as 200,000 Christians from Mali fled to refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania. These people have lived side by side with us for centuries, said the mayor of Timbuktu.

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Bishop Gene Robinson, TEC's "diplomat" for Episcopal Homosexual Affairs (EHA), is running around Australia appearing on radio and TV telling anybody who will listen to him that his views represent the Episcopal Church and the church at large. It's a lie, of course, but if you repeat it often enough (and he does), then it becomes the "truth". One Australian listener said his compromised views came across as representing those of the Church at large. Do they? No, of course not. Robinson also claimed that the NT is silent on homosexuality citing the male company which Jesus chose as compatible. The listener said that no voice was raised in dissent. "This makes me ashamed of being Anglican," he added.

*****

Frank M. Limehouse III announced this week that he was stepping down as Dean of Advent cathedral in Birmingham, Alabama. He is turning 70 next year and is looking for new spiritual pastures, although he said he is not ready to retire from ministry. He says he hopes the cathedral will still continue to be a bastion of faithful, classical evangelical Anglican teaching and preaching and has been assured of this by the liberal Bishop of Alabama John McKee Sloan that Advent will "be the Advent" and do ministry "unshackled". "The best way forward, at this point, is to bring in a new dean who shares the Advent's vision, but with fresh ideas and renewed energy," he said. Advent is one of a handful of orthodox bastions of the faith still in TEC. It would be a shame if it got into the hands of liberals who would destroy it in no time at all.

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More than 2000 people in the three archdeaconries of Tonj east area in Wau diocese of South Sudan were confirmed by the bishop during his recent trip around the diocese, according to the Anglican Communion News Service.

The Rt. Rev. Moses Deng Bol told ACNS that the confirmations were done over eight days during a tour of his diocese that covers two out of the 10 states of South Sudan and measures more than 13,000 square kilometers (8078 square miles).

"These are very serious Christians and most of them are adults who have become Christians for the first time in their lives," he said. "So they're not just children of Christian parents."

The bishop disagreed with some religious educators who believe that by withholding confirmation until later in life, young people are kept involved in the life of the church for a longer period of time.

He equated such teaching to holding young people captive in order for them to receive grace from God. "How do we justify this? This attitude surely has a negative impact on young people and their experience of God and church," he said. "Is this the God we want them to know? One who withholds grace until we've jumped through all the hoops that our church tells us we have to jump through?"

Deng said that children cannot be expected to have a positive memory or experience of the church or God later in their lives "if we keep dangling the sacrament over their heads like a carrot."

Deng said it was crucial for the newly confirmed to have "a very intensive discipleship to really understand what being a follower of Christ means in their daily lives."

*****

Australian Roman Catholic Monsignor Ian Dempsey was cleared of all charges relating to accusations of homosexual assault made by the former Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) John Hepworth.

"I think my case rests that I have been unjustly and maliciously falsely accused by John Hepworth of acts that were never committed," he wrote in an e-mail to VOL.

The Monsignor said the Director of Public Prosecutions, Adam Kimber SC, issued a statement: "Today this Office has advised both Bishop Hepworth and Monsignor Dempsey's solicitor that no charge/s will be laid with respect to the matter. The Director does not propose to make any further comment about the matter". The full story can be read in today's digest.

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According to the Arizona Republic, the George Soros funded National Immigration Forum, which advocates virtual open borders, is paying for a $250,000 national radio ad campaign with prominent Evangelicals urging legislation to legalize about 11 million illegal immigrants. The ads are timed to influence the debate starting this week in the U.S. Senate that would first legalize first and then seek greater enforcement measures in the future.

The executive director of the National Immigration Forum confirmed funding for the ads, but asserted Soros grants aren't directly funding them. In recent years, millions of dollars of Soros' funds, through Open Society Foundations, have been about half the Forum's income.

Not a legal entity itself, the Evangelical Immigration Table, which hosts the ads and other immigration advocacy, is a project of the Soros funded Forum. [Source IRD]

*****

For those living in or near Georgia, registration has begun for the 2013 Georgia Anglican/Episcopal Men's Conference to be hosted by St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Blue Ridge. This year's conference, set for Sept. 6-8, is entitled "Living the Christian Life: Challenges Men Face Today". Presenters will include:

-- The Rev. Dr. Peter Walker, Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA. Dr. Walker holds both a PhD in New Testament studies from Cambridge University and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. He formerly served as Tutor of Biblical Studies at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, and is the author of a number of books, including In the Steps of Jesus and In the Steps of St. Paul.

--The Rt. Rev. Dr. Foley Beach, Rector, Holy Cross Anglican Church, Loganville, GA, and Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the South. He is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the School of Theology at The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, and Georgia State University. He is a former youth minister at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta and currently hosts a radio broadcast entitled "A Word from the Lord".

-- The Rev. Dr. Simon Vibert, Acting Principal and Director of School of Preaching, Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, England. He was educated at Oak Hill Theological College in London, Glasgow University, and the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and Orlando,FL. He serves as a trustee of the Latimer Trust and is a member of the Church of England Evangelical Council. He has written extensively in the area of preaching and contemporary culture.

The cost of the conference is $65 if received before Aug. 15 ($70 thereafter).

The event is opened to men of all denominations and communions. Registration forms may be printed from St. Luke's website: www.stlukesblueridge.org.

St. Luke's Church, the Parish Church of the Mountains, is located at 7 Ewing St., Blue Ridge, across from the Blue Ridge Kiwanis Club Fairgrounds and Community Centre. For more information, call (706) 632-8245.

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If you are looking for a good cup of coffee and would like to support small Anglican run businesses in Rwanda, buy your coffee here. In 2005, Jonathan Golden, founder of Land of a Thousand Hills, recognized a simple and tangible opportunity to make a difference in the reconciliation of the Rwandan people. This realization led Golden to start a coffee company that pays a fair wage to the farmers of Rwanda, helps them with their basic needs, and brings a quality product to coffee lovers. Drink coffee, do good. Click here http://landofathousandhills.com/

*****

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Warmly in Christ,

David

BREAKING NEWS: The Judge in Tulare County ruled against TEC's Motion for Summary Judgement in the suit against St. Paul's Church in Visalia, CA. That means the suit is headed for trial. "We live to fight another day," said Deacon Francie.