We voted that belonging to the Anglican Communion matters to us and we are committed to the ongoing conversation. Next on the agenda was the St. Michael Report by the Primate's Theological Commission. Asked to give a theological opinion on whether the blessing of same-sex unions is a matter of doctrine, the answer was a clear "yes," but it is not a matter of core doctrine.
Read moreHer text was peppered with the familiar sophistries of an urbane clergy. For example, as she retold the familiar stories of Captain John Smith and Pocahantas, she made a point of telling the "real story" behind the familiar legends. Intellectuals have to keep reminding us that they know something the rest of us don't.
Read moreRedding's stated rationale is not the logic I'm thinking of. "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both." This sounds like the sort of subtlety that hides a profound truth. As St. Paul said, there is an element of paradox or "folly" whenever one preaches Christ. For that reason the preacher is forced to rely on the Spirit rather than on the eloquence of worldly wisdom.
Read moreIf we follow this counsel, we must ask ourselves when our Communion began exchanging the Gospel of repentance, salvation from sin and transformation in Jesus Christ for the false gospel of simply affirming people exactly where they are.
Read moreThe reason the bishops blocked the change was not mysterious. The vast majority of Anglicans now live in the Third World. Their African and Asian bishops have warned the American Episcopalian (i.e., Anglican) Church that it must either "repent" or face expulsion from the Anglican communion. This was their response to the decision of the Episcopalians to consecrate an openly homosexual bishop and to bless homosexual unions.
Read moreBut then the upcoming Lambeth Conference will hardly be conventional.
Read moreNow let us go back in American Anglican/Episcopal history just thirty years to see why the total Anglican situation is much more complex than the situation just described.
Read moreWilliams refers to the church as "a community we can trust." As he explains, "Just as we can trust God because God has no agenda that is not for our good, so we can trust the church because it is the sort of community it is, a community of active peacemaking and peacekeeping in which no one exists in isolation or grows up in isolation or suffers in isolation." So good, so far, but surely there must be more than this?
Read moreThe article said, "Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting."
Read moreA letter to members of Congress from 13 denominations and Religious Left groups complained, with no sense of irony, that U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba ""are unfair and inappropriate, restrain religious freedom and reflect undue governmental interference in the exercise of religion." For this crowd, religious liberty is only an important issue when it impinges on their own self-important activity.
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