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Australian News Service     The Anglican Church of Australia faces a major change of direction in the wake of Archbishop Peter Carnley’s announcement this week to retire as Primate next year.     The church’s evangelical wing - based in the biggest diocese, Sydney - has its best chance in years to elevate a member to the top job.     At 59, Archbishop of Sydney Dr Peter Jensen is a relatively youthful bishop. The most senior contenders for the position, Archbishop of Adelaide Dr Ian George, and Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Watson, are set to retire in the next few years.     The church’s other senior bishop, Archbishop of Brisbane Dr Phillip Aspinall, has only been in the job for two years, but could be a compromise candidate.     In a strange twist, Dr Jensen is almost certainly guaranteed support from two wings of the church - the low church evangelicals and the high church Anglo-Catholics.     The two wings have come together on a number of issues in past years, most notably opposition to the ordination of women clergy and the leadership of homosexuals in the church.     In essence, the evangelicals see women clergy as being contrary to the Bible and the Anglo-Catholics see them as not in keeping with the long- standing, God-inspired traditions of the church.   Both have also been critical of liberal elements in the church accepting homosexual clergy and gay marriage.     The Primatial Election Board comprises all 23 diocesan bishops, as well as 12 clergy and 12 lay people elected by the General Synod to be held later this year.     At the last election in 2000, Dr Carnley won narrowly from former Archbishop of Sydney Harry Goodhew.     Then Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth was eliminated on the third of four ballots, and Dr Carnley defeated Archbishop Goodhew by 24 votes to 17 in the final ballot.     Archbishop Goodhew had received the most votes of all candidates in the first two ballots, but it was believed his imminent retirement influenced voters in the end.   With a number of key changes to the bishop’s frontbench in the past two years, the vote is likely to have shifted away from the moderate rump of the church.     Handing leadership of the Australian Anglican Church to Dr Jensen, who was elected Archbishop of Sydney in June 2001, could have far-reaching consequences.     A profile posted on his website quotes him as saying: Our fundamental aim should be to address the secular challenge by providing flourishing Bible-based, gospel-centred, people-nurturing churches in as many places as possible.     Moves to incorporate women into leadership, including women bishops, embrace changes in secular society and extend a friendlier welcome to homosexuals - all issues championed by Dr Carnley - are likely to flag.     But, given recent national church life statistics, which show strong growth in the so-called happy-clappy churches which feature strongly in Sydney, Dr Jensen could in fact lead the church to renewal.     As national leader, he could also be influential in the world-wide Anglican Communion, which is struggling to remain united in the face of difficult issues.     In the lead-up to the 2005 primatial elections, the church will need to consider what sort of future it wants and what sort of leadership it needs to thrive in that future.     ©AAP 2003

The parishioners are responding to support for an openly gay leader     BY ALBERTA LINDSEY TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER January 17, 2004     Some Virginia Episcopalians, angered by actions the denomination has taken in support of homosexuals, are showing their displeasure by cutting back on donations and pledges. Giving to the Diocese of Virginia, the largest in the Episcopal Church’s USA, is about $230,000 short of the dioceses $4 million-plus budget for 2003, said the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, the dioceses bishop. In addition, pledges for the 2004 year are running about 18 percent behind last year at this time, he said. The Rt. Rev. David C. Bane Jr., bishop of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, said church members pledges are coming in slower than usual. Churches pledge to the diocese based on what members pledge to their churches.     A great deal of our budget is being prepared with a pencil instead of a pen, Bane said. We have set priorities as best we can, but there probably will be a couple months before we will know what we have. We are continuing with our mission and ministry.     At the Episcopal Church's General convention last summer in Minneapolis, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest who had been living with another man for 13 years, was confirmed to be the bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Lee voted for Robinsons confirmation. Lee said at the time that Robinson was selected by the people of New Hampshire, who knew he was gay. Lee said he thought he should respect the Diocese of New Hampshire's decision. Bane, on the other hand, voted against Robinson’s confirmation. Lee and Bane lead dioceses that are largely traditional.     They do not bless same-sex unions and do not ordain noncelibate gay or lesbian priests. Still, they have received phone calls, e-mails and comments from parishioners angry over the general convention's confirmation of a gay bishop. William H. Goodwin Jr. denied a rumor circulating in some Episcopal Churches that he and his wife, Alice, are withdrawing a matching grant they gave the Virginia diocese in 2000 to start new churches.     The Goodwins are members of St. Stephens Episcopal Church’s in Richmond. Goodwin said yesterday that he and his wife pledged $5 million to the diocese to be paid over five years. We will honor our pledge.     We have always honored our pledges, he said. We indicated at the time that we might pledge another $5 million. We probably will not renew that. We don’t necessarily agree with the bishop on his vote to confirm Robinson.     Some churches are telling parishioners to write on their checks if they do not want their contributions to go to the diocese or to the Episcopal Church’s USA, said the Rev. John A.M. Guernsey, rector of All Saints Episcopal Churches in Woodbridge. Restricted money will be given to mission work, he said.     We will still give away 43 percent of our budget. We are not withholding  money from the diocese and spending it on ourselves, Guernsey said. This is not aimed at Bishop Lee personally. People just have strong feelings of grief and disappointment with the way he voted, Guernsey said. Lee said he hopes no churches split from the denomination.     The American Anglican Council, a conservative organization within the Episcopal Church’s, may provide an alternative for unhappy Episcopalians. It’s a network of   churches that will support one another, Lee said. If people don’t want their donations to go to a diocese, Lee hopes they will look at other ministries where they can continue to participate with conscience.     The council is a part of the Diocese of Virginia and the Episcopal Church’s, said the Rev. Jeffrey Fishwick, rector of Christ Episcopal Churches in Charlottesville and a council member. One thing the council is looking at, Fishwick said, is to have a church pick a different bishop if they don’t like the views of their current bishop. Christ Episcopal 2004 budget will stay the same as its 2003 budget, which is $725,000, Fishwick said. Staff is not getting a raise. We have done well in previous years.     There are good seasons and not-so-good seasons he said. St. James's Episcopal Church in Richmond also will keep a flat budget for 2004, said the Rev. Randy Hollerith, rector. Money pledged to last years $1.4 million budget is still coming in, he said. I’m hoping we will be no lower than that, Hollerith said. Fewer than 10 families have left St. Jamess because of the general convention’s actions, he said. But each has been very, very painful, Hollerith said.     St. Paul’s Episcopal Church’s in downtown Richmond is discontinuing its women’s prison ministry. The stock market rather than decreased contributions is to blame, said the Rev. Robert Hetherington, the rector. The church runs a halfway house for women who have been released from prison. Four women currently live there, Hetherington said.     The house, which is to close March 31, is being financed though St. Paul’s investment income and grants. The grants also are running out. Efforts to find someone to take over the program have failed, he said. Some churches are trying to put last summer’s general convention behind them and go on with the work of the church.     At Christ Church, we have decided we can’t be paralyzed by this one issue, Fishwick said of the Charlottesville church. It’s time to get on with the greater mission of the church. We are all fired up about our mission and the things God is doing here. END

By MARK I. PINSKY Orlando Sentinel 1/17/2004     Early in this presidential election year, the Republican Party faithful are already rolling up their sleeves - and passing the collection plate. In church social halls, they are raising money for voter registration, issue advertising and Christian scorecards, which rate candidates on their positions on key cultural issues such as abortion and homosexuality. By contrast, there is little activity at the other end of the ideological  spectrum. Left- wing religious efforts at political mobilization - where they exist - seem puny, aged and marginalized. After decades of riding popular social movements such as civil rights, the left splintered and now seems unable to regroup. Conversely, the GOP has co- opted the support of religious voters by focusing their attention on cultural and lifestyle issues - such as gay marriage.     On economic issues, another mainstay of the left, the outlook is no brighter. Unless they are directly affected, people in the pews seem unwilling to grapple with economic disparity and job losses, which defy simple solutions.   Despite the loss of 3 million jobs since 2001 and falling retirement and investment portfolios, they are more likely to object to teaching Darwin in the classroom than to struggling in an economy increasingly based on survival of the fittest.     The poll numbers are ominous for Democratic candidates, who seem to have written off voters with strong religious convictions. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. For those who say they seldom attend a house of worship, that figure is reversed:   Two-thirds vote Democratic. Though preachers don’t pick presidents in America, for at least 150 years they have helped set the political agenda.     Thundering from pulpits, mobilizing congregants, religious activists in the 19th and early 20th century helped end slavery; supported women’s suffrage; brought about Prohibition; and supported the rights of workers to organize into trade unions. More modern inheritors of this social gospel were also vigorous agents of change and resistance, propelling the civil-rights and anti- Vietnam War movements. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, left-wing religion was a force to be reckoned with. We had the feeling that we were getting somewhere, recalls the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain at Yale University and one of the patron saints of mainline religious activism.     We criticized American practice in the name of American ideals. But today liberal religion is seen as a spent force, says Mark Tooley, a researcher for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. The religious left comprised denominational leaders and tended to be elite, as opposed to grass roots, he says.     Today’s religious right is younger and more vigorous, drawing its support from growing charismatic and nondenominational churches. The religious left was mobilized and excited by the civil-rights movement and by the anti-Vietnam War movement, and has had difficulty finding equally passionate causes to replace those, he says. The religious right has abortion, homosexuality and church-state issues that have energized them over the past 25 years.     There’s no sign that any of these issues are going to go away anytime soon. Evangelicals who previously voted Democratic because of economic issues are trending Republican because of cultural issues, Tooley says. But at the same time, most of those people are still, by and large, not activists by nature. They are largely middle-class, suburban people who are not drawn to the same kind of economic wedge issues that would excite the religious left or liberal evangelicals. Nor are they willing to follow their spiritual leaders on other issues. For instance, opposition to the death penalty, globalization and the Iraq war by Roman Catholic bishops and mainline Protestant leaders has failed to generate grass-roots support.     There are a variety of explanations for the virtual collapse of the religious left in America. Some believe its members never recovered from the divisive period of the 1970s, when the movement split into identity politics. After working together to break down old barriers, the unified movement headed in diffuse directions: affirmative action, feminism, gay rights and multiculturalism.     Others think the left was simply outmaneuvered and outorganized by the right. Savvy religious conservatives decided it was a mistake to see political involvement as something unclean for so many years, conceding the field to liberals by default. And the perceived excesses of the 1960s galvanized conservative Christians into action. Experts say the eclipse of the religious left by the religious right also may reflect the decline of mainline denominations and the rise of evangelicals in the 1980s - both politically and theologically. For many old activists, this is the winter of their discontent.     Skeptics say the cold reality is that you can’t build a mass political movement on nostalgia. Americans today live in a high-stress, fiercely competitive work environment, which tends to reinforce a certain degree of self-centeredness. No Democratic candidate or liberal religious leader has offered a credible plan for reversing globalization or even ameliorating its impact. Much of the social safety net was eliminated during the boom years of the 1990s.     With no simple answers to big problems, there is a pervasive feeling of powerlessness - and frustration. In November, a group of liberal and moderate religious leaders from mainline denominations announced the formation of a new organization that is trying to fill the gap, calling itself the Clergy Leadership Network. The group's goal is to become what some called a Christian Coalition of the left. Founders include Coffin and the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches.     They are a Whos Who of veterans of the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. The Rev. Albert Pennybacker, a Disciples of Christ minister, heads the new organization. Backers say they want to offer an alternative to the partisan God embraced by the GOP, and to turn their loose-knit group into a coalition of conscience. The odds against the new group are long. I don’t think its going to go very far, says Tooley. Its leaders are largely retired, mainline Protestant leaders.     It would have better prospects if it had enlisted pastors of large black churches, or a few liberal evangelical pastors or more Catholic clergy and  bishops. It just doesn’t seem to have plugged into the more dynamic and growing parts of American religion. Still, there are faint signs of life - and youth - in  the religious left, according to Jim Wallis, of the Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners community.     Founded in 1971, the group is a Christian ministry whose mission is to  proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice. Wallis considers himself a theological conservative, pro-life evangelical - and a radical social activist. Unlike many evangelicals, he believes that religious concern for the poor and the powerless should be motivated by justice, not by charity.     Wallis says he has many requests from young evangelicals to join his community, which focuses on economic and social justice. When he and others like him, including Tony Campolo, another radical evangelical, carry their message to heartland churches, the response is positive, he says.     It may be the case that the baton of social justice has passed from liberal,  mainline Christianity to evangelicals. I agree that liberal religion is in decline, but I don’t agree that social justice is in decline in the church, says Wallis. The problem with most mainline denominations, he says, is more theological than ideological. If you don’t have a real Bible- based, Jesus-centered faith, then all you have is upper- middle-class, affluent Americans who are not going to be your primary constituency for social justice, he says.     In battles around the country for a living wage, mainline ministers make a political mistake when they frame the debate in secular terms, talking about fairness. A more effective strategy, Wallis says, is to rally evangelicals with verse from the Bible, especially prophets such as Isaiah, who spoke out forcefully for fair payment for those who labor. However, there is little evidence so far that even that strategy moves believers.     END

Church of England Newspaper     Since the start of the Millennium the Church of England has maintained an average loss of 54,000 once-a-week-churchgoers per year.     Average weekly attendance figures for 2000 fell by more than 100,000 to an average of 1,166,000 in 2002, according to the latest provisional attendance figures, announced on Monday. The Church tried to counter the news of decline by focusing on a rise in monthly attendance figures among young people, but it is getting harder to encourage clergy in the face of pew drains such as those in Dioceses such as Lichfield and Liverpool where average weekly attendance went down by 4,700 and 3,000 respectively.     Signs of growth were highlighted in a statement accompanying the latest figures, pointing out that although regular weekly attendance among children remained static on the whole, the Dioceses of Manchester, Peterborough, Ripon and Leeds, Southwark, Southwell and Winchester all reported increases in each of their Sunday, weekly and monthly attendance levels for children and young people.     Whether this trend could grow to fill the reported loss of 108,000 churchgoers over two years is yet to seen.     The new figures also show the result of new measures to gauge more accurately the role of the country’s churches. Parishes were asked to start recording the number of young people attending activities other than worship over a typical month. These non-worship statistics could widen the goalposts in the future as churches eager to push up these figures find new ways of getting involved in their communities.     During 2002 a total of 162,000 under-25s attended non-worship activities and 41,000 adults are working with young people aged 11 and over.     END

As events unfold in the life of the Episcopal Church’s USA, other Anglican and Episcopal jurisdictions are actively at work to establish new parishes where the orthodox faithful can find a home.  In recent weeks, two new Anglican churches have been established in Atlanta and Rome that are receiving Episcopal oversight from the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches.  The CEEC seeks to blend the liturgical, evangelical, and spirit-filled aspects of the Holy Church. All Saints Anglican Church in Rome, Georgia, is a mission’s outreach of the Archdiocese of the Holy Trinity, Province of Christ the Good Shepherd.  The Most Reverend Max Broussard, Archbishop, has appointed the Very Reverend Mark Camp as Vicar of the mission.  All Saints is now meeting at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Rome and has been warmly received there.  The website for All Saints is www.allsaintsac.org .     Church of the Trinity in Acworth, Georgia (Cobb County) was formed by a group of families who left the Episcopal Church’s USA over the recent issue of the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.  While the parish has not yet formally affiliated with any jurisdiction, it is also receiving Episcopal oversight from the Province of Christ the Good Shepherd.  Rev. Camp is now serving as Priest there as well.    The web site for Church of the Trinity is www.churchofthetrinity.net .     Both churches are growing as word spreads of our existence, said Rev. Camp.  We intend to be churches where the faithful can hear the Word of God expounded and taught in depth without compromise, where the ancient Creeds of the Church are adhered to, and where Anglican orthodoxy is maintained.  We have an emphasis on community and building one another up in the faith.  We hope to establish more parishes in the surrounding area.     The Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches is a member of the new Anglican Federation. Rev.  Camp is also the Abbot General of the Company of Jesus, a Franciscan and Benedictine third order religious community.  The COJ is an affiliate ministry of the American Anglican Council.     For more information, please contact Rev. Camp at 678-794-7826 or email him at frmark@companyofjesus.net .     END

By The Rev. Danny Janes Kalamazoo Gazette January 16, 2004     In response to the Rev. Cynthia Blacks Jan. 1 Viewpoint on Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson -- I’m sad that so many people gloating over this election still don’t get it.     While they celebrate Bishop Robinson as an icon of inclusion, their denomination continues to suffer the hemorrhage of members who are fed-up with their pandering to the gay community’s Wake up! How many years of loss and decline is the Episcopal Church’s going to overlook until they awake to the realization that they’re alienating the base of their constituency?     I speak from experience as a pastor. A few years ago, a lovely lady started visiting our church from a local Episcopal congregation. We had not visited, contacted or solicited her in any way. She sought us out because she was aware of the historic connection between the Anglican/Episcopalian Church and the Methodist Church. She knew that we were far less liturgical and more evangelical, but shared a common historical root through John Wesley.     Upon getting acquainted with her, I learned that she had been a devoted Episcopalian for many years. When I asked her why she had stopped  attending, she told me that she had struggled with the liberal drift of the denomination for a long time. The final straw was the appointment of an openly gay priest as pastor of her local parish. She said, I’m just too old, too tired and too fed-up to keep fighting the powers-that- be!     Please understand, I’m not out recruiting disgruntled members of other churches. There are enough people who don’t know Jesus Christ in the community to fill every church around here.     The question is: Do you just keep dismissing these people as intolerant and unenlightened malcontents, or do you ever admit how terribly out-of- step you are with the grassroots majority. You can produce all the polls you want to prove your support -- but how many of those polls are filling your pews?     I don’t celebrate Gene Robinsons appointment as bishop. I grieve for a denomination that would elevate a man living an immoral lifestyle to its highest office of leadership. Forget the issue of homosexuality for a moment.     If I were to leave my wife and children for another woman, and be living in an adulterous relationship, would I be qualified for leadership in the church? Not in the church I’m a part of! But apparently, it’s all right for Bishop Robinson to have a relationship with his live-in lover precisely because he’s gay. We don’t dare criticize the promiscuousness and immorality of gays without suffering the accusation of being homophobes. The last time I checked, the Bible  condemns sexual promiscuity for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike! (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)     Rev. Black proudly stated, The fact that a mainstream Christian denomination, guided by the Holy Spirit in a democratic process, can affirm the ministry of a man who happens to be gay and ordain him as a bishop, means that all who are marginalized are affirmed. I beg to differ.     In my opinion, the fact that a drastically declining denomination, guided by a liberal agenda in a politically correct pursuit, can excuse the lifestyle of a man who advertises that he is gay and ordain him as a bishop, means that all who disagree can take a hike.     My condolences to the faithful men and women of the Episcopal Church’s who still happen to believe that Biblical authority trumps bureaucratic tyranny.    The Rev. Danny J. Janes is senior pastor at Kalamazoo Wesleyan Church.

Growing rebellion against liberal doctrines of U.S.     By Elizabeth Bryant, Chronicle Foreign Service San Francisco Chronicle January 14, 2004   Lagos, Nigeria -- Obarou Adjarhu carries a Bible under one arm, and he knows his scripture. It says, according to Adjarhus reading, that homosexuality is a sin. Today, tomorrow and, as far as the 32-year-old Nigerian businessman is concerned, forever.  Those are the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, he declared on the steps of this city’s Anglican cathedral, which is an island of calm amid the skittering traffic and jam-packed sidewalks of Africa’s largest city.   For a bishop to come out openly and say he is gay is a sin before God and man.   The bishop in question, Gene Robinson, was consecrated last year as an Episcopal bishop, over the objections of the mother Anglican church. Though Robinson lives in far-off New Hampshire, he is no stranger to this congregation or to Nigeria’s Anglican hierarchy, which is leading a growing international rebellion against accepting gays in the church.     The controversy exposes a fault line between the conservative Christianity flourishing in many developing countries and the more liberal doctrines preached elsewhere. It also underscores a long-standing intolerance of homosexuality in Africa, which carries important health-care implications.     In a continent that accounts for more than 70 percent of the 40 million people worldwide with HIV/AIDS, homophobia makes it more likely that gays will be denied the prevention and treatment programs available to others -- even as anti-AIDS drugs are becoming more accessible.     Gays are certainly not welcome in Nigeria’s 17 million-member Anglican church, whose primate, Archbishop Peter Akinola, condemned the consecration of Robinson as bishop, calling it a satanic attack on the church of God. He even issued a statement on behalf of the Primates of the Global South-- a group of 20 Anglican primates from Africa, the West Indies, South America, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia -- deploring the action and, along with Uganda and Kenya, formally severed relations with Robinsons New Hampshire diocese.     Akinola has emerged as the most vocal spokesman for conservative Anglicans who oppose the stance of the U.S. church -- which welcomes gays as parishioners and even, in some cases, as clergy -- and has warned that the issue may cause a schism in the Anglican church. If there is a break, many believe Akinola would be the driving force behind it.     The views of Anglicans in Africa are all-important to the church. The U.S. Episcopal Church’s, with 2.3 million members, is a small branch of the much larger Anglican church, with more than 77 million members worldwide. More than half of all Anglicans live in Africa, and many are vehemently anti-gay. Only South Africa, with its progressive gay rights legislative record, stands as an exception on the continent.     Homosexuality is a deviation from the scriptures, said Adebola Ademowo, archbishop of Lagos, which is home to the world’s largest Anglican province or congregation. And we are not alone in this belief. All the other denominations here are just enthused with our stance. They are praying with us.   There is little outward evidence of Nigeria’s gay community. A fledgling gay rights group, Alliance Rights Nigeria, advertises no office address and its president goes by a pseudonym, Erilou.     Though out of sight, the number of gays is widely considered to be growing.     I think homosexuality is becoming more rampant here, said Bisi Tugbobo, deputy country director of Pathfinder International in Lagos, a group working to combat HIV/AIDS. You hear about it. You read about it in the papers. But people don’t want to talk about it. Not in the churches. Not in the mosques.     As in many African countries, homosexuality is illegal in Nigeria, branded as a Western import or the work of black magic. Sodomy carries a sentence of up to 14 years, although jail terms are seldom meted out.     Homosexuality is a spiritual sickness, said Patince Fehintola, 62, another parishioner at the Lagos cathedral. It needs first of all repentance and soul cleansing. I’m disappointed in the American Anglican community.     Such condemnations are echoed widely among both Christians and Muslims in a country where religion permeates everyday life. Dilapidated trucks painted with slogans like Jesus is the Only Ways tumble down the nations pitted roads. Prayer grounds the size of football fields line the highway between Lagos and the southern city of Ibadan, packing in thousands who listen avidly to success tips from evangelical prosperity preachers.     In northern Nigeria, where a dozen states have adopted Islamic Shariah law, Shariah council head Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said accepting homosexuality will lead to a further erosion of our accepted principles of morality.   But Erilou, the president of Alliance Rights, says homosexuality has long been quietly tolerated in Nigeria. In a 2002 interview with Radio Netherlands, he noted that in northern Nigeria there are people called Dan Daudu, a name in the Hausa language that means men who are wives of men.     No accurate statistics on homosexuality exist in Africa. AIDS experts list it as a minor variable in a tangle of high-risk activities on the continent, starting with unprotected heterosexual sex.     But some AIDS activists fear that Nigeria’s entrenched homophobia and reluctance to address sex may undermine their battle against HIV. Nearly 6 percent of Nigerians, or 8 million people, are infected with the virus, according to government estimates. Health workers believe the real figures are far higher.     Not surprisingly, Nigerian religious leaders, who are beginning to preach HIV/AIDS awareness to their congregations, generally shy away from discussing homosexuality and instead stress celibacy.  Homosexuality is a very divisive issue for the churches, said Samuel Kobia, the new head of the World Council of Churches and an ordained Methodist minister in Kenya.     The government also turns its eyes away. Adenike Adeyemi, head of the federal government’s reproductive health unit, said she does not know of any awareness campaigns specifically focusing on Nigeria’s gay community.     Homosexuality is not a taboo subject, but we have so many problems to deal with, she said. Well get to it. Probably.     The need to recognize the country’s gay population, despite opposition from the religious community, may become more urgent as the country grapples with its growing AIDS epidemic. A 2002 report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council ranked Nigeria -- Africa’s most populous nation -- among five countries expected to drive the world’s rising number of HIV/AIDS cases in the coming years.     It’s the hidden face of the iceberg, said Dr. Elisabeth Szumilien, of the aid organization Doctors Without Borders, who works on HIV/AIDS issues in southern and eastern Africa. We can’t target homosexuals (for treatment) because we don’t see them.     END

News Analysis     By David W. Virtue     The dirty tricks at Watergate did not bring Richard Nixon down.  He did that himself by denying his association with the plot once The Washington Post brought it to light.  Any leader of AAC who wants to survive in a position of vital influence in TEC should leave the AAC and apologize for the harm the dirty tricks have done to all, not just to TEC and the communion, but to faithful people with genuine dissent. Louie Crew, The Episcopal Church's First Sodomite Louie Crew doth protest too much. For more than 35 years he and his pansexual pals have whined, pleaded, cajoled and subverted General Convention resolutions by using local option to press the homosexual agenda into the Episcopal Church’s, against all Episcopal history, the wisdom of the ages, 6,000 years of biblical history, the entire corpus of Holy Scripture, the Canons and Constitutions of The Episcopal Church’s, the Lambeth resolution and more.     Now he has the audacity to liken the American Anglican Councils recent public disclosures to Watergate.     Meanwhile his uberboss, Frank Griswold has lied and deceived his fellow Primates by signing a pastoral document he had no intention of following or keeping, then consecrating an openly gay bishop with Crews eminent delight and approval, and now he is watching while his lies and duplicities are slowly gutting the Episcopal Church’s, risking its ecumenical integrity with leading Christian denominations and emptying Episcopal pews.     The lies and hypocrisy of Frank Griswold would fill a book. Episcopalians who oppose the consecration of a gay bishop are said to be preparing to engage in widespread disobedience to church law in 2004, according to revelations revealed in a document written by the Rev. Geoffrey Chapman, an AAC board member that outlined its strategy in a confidential document.     The document, which was leaked to the Washington Post, makes clear that traditionalist ECUSA leaders intend to severely challenge the authority of Episcopal bishops, and expect that both civil lawsuits and ecclesiastical charges against dissenting priests will result.     However, the AACs media director, Bruce Mason, said Chapman is not a policy spokesman and the council does not intend to supplant the current structure of the Episcopal Church’s. He did say it is the conservative forces who are remaining faithful to the Anglican Communion while the Episcopal Church’s is not.     Now let us go back in time. When the Episcopal Church was orthodox, who challenged the authority of the church when women’s ordination was illegally brokered into the church as a civil right when the church had not only not approved, it had not even entered into theological discussion over its validity?     Or homosexual misbehavior. What General Convention has ever passed a resolution approving the ordination of active homosexual priests to the priesthood? Its never happened. But its been going on for years. Furthermore, priests and laity have entered into committed same-sex relationships in parish after parish with many a revisionist bishops approving blessings(under the altar) and Walter Righter walked away declared not guilty for ordaining an openly homosexual to the priesthood because the church said it had no canons against it.     Long before rites were approved at the last General Convention, they were going on in revisionist parishes with a wink and a nod from revisionist bishops. Whenever anybody said a word or raised an alarm, screams of homophobia echoed across the Internet and in diocesan publications. Thou shalt only feel pain, thou shalt not criticize. If you do, it is off to the Gulag you shall go for reparative therapy in sodomite acceptance. If you need help throw in some gay porno movies, Sewanee seminary will help you make the selection, (and we still want your checks to keep coming in.)     ECUSA theologian Dr. Ephraim Radner put it well when he wrote, The outrage over this leaked memo of the AAC is either a sign of disingenuousness or of numbed consciousness. The basic outline of this strategy has been public for some months, largely because it represents the Proposal of the Primates of the Global South for disciplining ECUSA (and New Westminster) that was presented at the October Lambeth meeting (this proposal is available at anglicancommunioninstitute.org ).       And the Rev. Don Armstrong a biblically orthodox priest in the Diocese of Colorado said the leak was much ado about nothing. It is the revisionists who have misbehaved, those of us associated with the AAC and the Anglican Communion Institute are simply and obediently maintaining the historical faith and order of the Anglican Communion--something I consider a creedal necessity. There was nothing particularly startling in the AAC memo--the revisionists broke communion by disobedience to the expressed position of the Church’s instruments of unity, which then caused ECUSA to be in violation to its own constitution and canons. This has resulted in more than half of the Anglican Communion severing ties with our province.      Louie Crew wants the leaders of the American Anglican Council to repent of their actions as though viable dissent has a prayer of working in the ECUSA. It doesn't now and hasn’t had in more than 25 years.     Orthodox Episcopalians have drawn so many lines in the sand their backsides have developed permanent rashes as they have moved further away from ECUSAs apostasy and repeated accomodationism.     Faithful people with genuine dissent as Crew calls them, have been trampled on, ridiculed, spat at, reviled, yelled at for being homophobic, uninclusive and lacking pluriformity, as to make their dissent a total mockery.   No. It is not the orthodox who need to repent, it is Crew and his sodomite pals and Frank Griswold who needs to repent of his actions that numerous Primates have asked him to do for consecrating V. Gene Robinson.     The folk at AAC have no intention of leaving ECUSA, they are fighting to take the church back from 40 years of theological and moral disorder, and because their plans were exposed, it changes nothing.     As far as dirty tricks goes, one only has to look at what clandestine Episcopal website revisionist priests and laity are up to in trying to destroy orthodox bishops like Bishop Peter Beckwith. Better still ask the priest in the Diocese of the Rio Grande who belongs to something called via media who tried to subvert the process for electing a new bishop to replace Terence Kelshaw by using mailing lists he had no business using to push for a new pro-sodomite bishop.     Or the sleazy way the selection committee in the Diocese of North Dakota tried to slip five pro-gay candidates into the process to select a new bishop and got found out when a sixth candidate was offered who said he was against same-sex rites.     The disorder in ECUSA didn’t start with the AAC, it began with Pike, Spong, Crew and his crowd, and before they try to take out and demand the leadership of the AAC repent they should remove the beam from their own eyes before trying to remove the splinter in the AACs.       END

14th January 2004   The Most Revd. Datuk Yong Ping Chung Archbishop & Primate - Anglican Church in South East Asia The Fourth AMIA Winter Conference Destin, Florida     Opening Address     Theme: Rediscovering the ancient/future Faith:  Setting My People Free   Readings: Genesis 3:1-19,  Romans 5:6-11,  St. Johns 1:1-14   Praise God, from whom all blessings flow Praise Him, all creatures here below Praise Him above ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.   We gather in Destin, Florida tonight at this opening service of the 4th. AMIA Winter Conference to worship God. We join the heavenly hosts and all the saints in every generation to sing the songs of ever-lasting praises and thanksgiving as recorded in Revelation chapter 5:   Holy Holy  Holy Lord God Almighty Who was and is and is to come You are worthy, O Lord To receive glory and honour and power For you created all things and by your will They exist and were created, You are worth to take the scroll And to open its seals For you were slain, And have redeemed us to God by your blood. Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, You have made us kings and priests to our God And we shall reign on the earth.   We gather to proclaim to the whole world. Blessing and honour and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne And to the lamb for ever and ever.     We gather here tonight to testify to the great and mighty works that God has done in our lives as individuals and as a Mission. Indeed we testify that there have been renewal and revival taking place over and over again among our churches in AMIA. We want to praise and thank God for His loving kindness and wonderful grace.     We gather as a community of faith, redeemed through, and set free by, His precious blood, to wait upon the Lord for His words. With eager and sure expectation, in the context of vibrant worship, warm and intimate fellowship we want to explore the theme of this conference: Rediscovering the Ancient /Future Faith: Setting My People free     Our theme for this Conference was prayerfully chosen to draw our attention, to provoke our thoughts and to challenge our spirits.  It is a timely theme, especially in a time like ours. When the whole of Christianity is being challenged undermined and attacked, the people of God need to rediscover once again the essence of our faith, the truth about God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the reality about ourselves and the world we live.     John in the Island of Patmos was bewildered by what was going on around him. He asked what would happen to the church, God took him back to where it all started - the Throne Room in Heaven - Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this. (Revelation 4:1) But before that at the end of chapter 3 of the same book He says - He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Church     The Spirit is the Holy Spirit, which Jesus promised His disciples and all of us who are His followers. He said in John 14:26- the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I have said to you, We, the people of God must be reminded that our beliefs and actions must be judged solely by the Word and the Spirit. We must never trust in ourselves alone neither should we allow our interpretations to rule our lives and our church.  Jesus Christ and His Word are the ultimate authority for us and for His Church. What has happened to our Churches is that the absolute authority of the Bible the centrality and the uniqueness of Jesus have been so camouflaged by many man made elements through the history of the church.   We have allowed the contemporary cultures, the secular human desires, the worldly philosophies, together with the Canons and constitutions and whatever, to blind us of the Faith that was once for all entrusted to the Saints. Today we are here to rediscover the truth and the essence of our faith. We want to pray that this Winter Conference 2004 will help us to rediscover our ancient /future faith. We pray the TRUTH will set all our people free to declare that:     Our God is greater than any of these. Our God is Sovereign.  He is GOD.   Let me illustrate from the culture I know best, i.e. the Chinese culture.   In the Chinese culture the dragon is a very prominent feature.  The Chinese dragon holds a very important position in the hearts and minds of the Chinese. Consequently it has great influence in the arts, literature, music architecture, etc.  Basically, in the Chinese mind the dragon represents what is powerful, prosperous, glorious, strong and authoritative.   The Emperor was considered the direct descendant of the dragon and therefore he was responsible to heaven for the harmony on earth.  If you look at the aintings of the dragon in each Dynasty you will see the gradual evolution of the dragon.  Bit by bit as the years went on you see different elements added on to the dragon.  Today, you will find that most dragons would have the claws of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, the ears of an ox, the head of a camel, the neck of a snake, the horns of a deer, the scales of a large fish and it even has the eyes of the devil. You can almost see the Chinese imagination and the Chinese superstition joining forces to create a vivid symbol that was to be worshipped and adored. What men desired and longed for they added onto their object of worship. What they themselves have invented and created was used to fulfill their own desire and longing.     Eventually they cannot separate the real from the imaginary. They are enslaved by their own understanding and followed their own desires of the flesh and they lived according to it and gave their lives for it.  If you start stripping off all the added features of the dragon, interestingly there remains a tiny little seemingly harmless snake. Unfortunately for them, the symbol of their hope and aspiration was so camouflaged that many could not see the evil they were building on and the hopelessness of what they worshipped.  As they get deeper and deeper into it they get more and more trapped in it.  There seems no way out.     Isn’t this exactly what the world has done to Christianity?   They have camouflaged our faith so much that they are not able to see the truth that belies them all. Through out the centuries, people have added their own opinions of what they thought Christianity should be. Again and again the invasion of contemporary cultures and the eagerness of the church to accommodate the cultures slowly alters the essence of our faith. Hence elements are added according to what they thought Christianity needed. They have set out formats and rituals that were once used to enhance the worship of God and made them the main focus of worship. They have distorted the Scriptures.  Some, like those picked up in the Book of Jude, have: changed the grace of our God into a license for immorality and denied Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.     While others have added rules and regulations that bind the churches to certain earthly establishments and they have allowed that to be the authority of the church.  We need to go back to our roots - the ancient faith.  We need to strip off all the added parts of man-made Christianity and rediscover once again the essence of our faith.  We need to once again see God as He is, in all His splendor and His glory.  We need to go up to the heavenly throne room, as John did, to fill our eyes with the awesomeness of His holiness and to surrender totally to His perfect sovereignty and to experience personally His wonderful, compassionate and unconditional love for us.     We need to go back to the beginning.  Even before the world was created, God was already there. Our faith begins with God.  Right from the first chapter, the first verse of our Scriptures it says, In the beginning GOD. Everything that God created was good.  He was pleased with what he made. He made man and woman in His own image and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life.  He loved them and wanted them to respond to His love.  He gave them the gift of Free Will so that they can make choices and to respond to His love freely and to enjoy the creation in which He has put under their care. All these God did because He loved us.  Man responded to Gods love. But man also took advantage of Gods love and misused the gift of Free Will.  He deliberately turned away from God and desired his own glory and followed the desires of his own flesh. In another word man rebelled and sinned against God.  We saw how it all started in our first reading of Genesis 3 tonight.  It is still here today.  We need to strip off the fluffs of the worldly euphemism and acknowledge the Doctrine of Sin. The Bible is very specific and clear. It calls SIN by its true name.     For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Roman 3:23)   In Romans 6:23 it also says the wages of sin is death. Indeed Sin separates us far from God and traps us into eternal damnation and death.     Let’s face it; we need help! We cannot set ourselves free. We need a Saviour to deliver us out of our bondage and set as free.  God, in His marvelous plans, has already provided us that help.     For God so loved the world that he gave  s one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)     God sent His only Son Jesus into the world so that the world can have hope again.  Jesus quoted the Scriptures and declared His mission on earth.  He said in Luke 4:18-19:-     The Spirit of the Lord is on me, Because he has anointed me To preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim Freedom for the prisoners And recovery of sight for the blind, To release the oppressed to proclaim the year of  the Lords favour.     Jesus did this by dying on the cross for our sins. In him we have redemption through his blood,  the forgiveness of sins.  (Ephesians 1:7)     But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)     Once again through the blood of Jesus our relationship with God is restored and once again we can call God Abba, Father.     Jesus said: I am  the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  (John 14:6)   He is the only way because salvation can be found in no one else.  He is the truth, and the truth shall set us free.  He is the life, for He has the key to eternal life. This is Good News.  And His command to us is: go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of  the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:18-19)     Yes, the World needs Jesus. The Anglican Communion needs Jesus AMIA needs Jesus, your church needs Jesus, you and I needs Jesus. We all needs to be set free from the bondage of sin. And Jesus is the only answer.     Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are here precisely for this.  The Mission of AMIA is to go and tell the world about our wonderful Saviour. Go and tell everybody that there is hope.  Plant new churches for the love of Christ Let us strip off all the fluffs of the man-made Christianity and let us rediscover our ancient Faith together for the future for our children and children’s children. I pray that each one of us while we are here will experience the awesomeness of the presence of God among us.  We truly be so inspired by the Spirit of God that we want to fall on our knees and join the heavenly host and sing, Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty Who was, and is, and is to come,..     I pray that we will experience the love of God so intimately that His love will compel us to live our lives in responds to His love.  And His love will give us boldness to witness for him and truly be the light and the salt of the world.  I pray that we will be filled with His compassion for the lost that our desire in life is to share with others the Good News of Jesus and to see others come into the Kingdom of God. I pray that we will faithfully proclaim Jesus Christ and faithfully pass on the faith to the next generation.     Through the rediscovery of our ancient faith God wants us to be set free to move forward for the future. This is His promise for us when we take the step of faith:   Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland to give drink to My people, My chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim My praise. (Isaiah 43:18-21)     Let us pray:     Thank you our Father in heaven for this wonderful promise Thank you Lord Jesus for setting us free from all the bondages of sin and the hindrances of our time.     Thank you Holy Spirit for reviving us, renewing us and empowering us. Almighty God Father, Son and Holy Spirit send us out from this AMiA Winter Conference2004 to win this nation and all the nations of the world for you .In Jesus precious and mighty name we pray. Amen.

by: Ephraim Radner     One of the most egregious failures of the ECUSA’s recent General Convention, and of the many of the leaders and bishops engaged in its decisions, has been their demonstrated rejection of Christian accountability as an essential virtue defining the life of the institutional church.   The actions of General Convention itself, in consenting to a non-celibate gay man’s election as a bishop and in affirming the legitimacy of local same-sex blessings around the church, and subsequent actions by the Presiding Bishop and other bishops and dioceses in affirming these decisions, have all deliberately repudiated the constraining power of the common mind, pleas, admonitions, and moral persuasions of both the Episcopal Church’s past commitments, her traditions and historic foundations, and her brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion around the world.     The world stands and wonders, as do many Episcopalians, what then are you accountable to, if not to the authorities of your common life? The rejection of Christian accountability -- mutual, charitable, ordered, and founded in the demands of Christ’s own Body -- represents one of the great assaults upon the promises of God in our age.  The press to ecclesial anarchy characterizes a common rebellion, in which we are all complicit. The current unraveling of the Anglican Communion, and the disintegration of the ECUSA itself stands as a judgment upon our shared desire to dispense with being held accountable and calling others to a reciprocal posture of responsibility.     In view of this spreading failure, it is important at least to note that a faithful response to its evangelical ravages cannot be to embrace some alternative autonomy and to add to the overturning of structures that hold us answerable to each other as a communion, however tottering they may now seem.  The case of the AMiA (The Anglican Mission in America) represents an exemplar of succumbing to autonomy’s encouragement and to communal accountability’s subversion, all in the genuine desire to protest autonomy’s attack upon the Christian faith.     Having rightly identified the spiritual dangers of a disintegrated evangelical witness within ECUSA, and of the weakening of the historic faith and order that ought to be binding American Anglicanism’s life with the larger Communion, the AMiA chose to move unilaterally to set up alternative parish and episcopal structures, only tenuously tied to and approved by a tiny minority of leaders of the larger Anglican Communion and positively rejected by most orthodox Primates, and to call this a form of testimony against the failures of the Episcopal Church.     The clear problem in this response was that it set out to address ECUSAs rejection of Christian accountability through a process that itself refused to be held accountable to anyone else.  The fruit of this project has, predictably, been to hasten the demise of the historic faith and orderof Anglicanism in the United States altogether, a process whose ill effects are seeping into the international community itself.     To take but a local example, let us consider what took place in Colorado. In this moderately conservative diocese, already struggling three years ago to maintain some center of evangelical witness, the AMiA recruited and encouraged the defection of at least 15 clergy from ECUSA, and ended by splitting 9 congregations (closing one altogether).   All of these clergy and congregations were in fact conservative in their commitments and life. Whether deliberately or not, the process involved in these splits proved divisive amongst friends and colleagues, led to mutual accusations and recriminations, and fostered a deep sense of mutual mistrust and even betrayal among former allies in the faith.    In the midst of these discussions and arguments, meetings and counter-meetings, to what authority could one appeal?   Not to the local bishop, of course, whose theological leadership was in dispute;  not to existing bishops within the AMiA, because initially they had none in America, and were acting under the self-appointed direction of concerned priests ;  not to the common mind of the Anglican Communion, whose body of Primates, among the conservative as much as anyone, refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the AMiAs self-ordering.  And when the AMiA next chose to consecrate their own bishops, the question of self-justification was embodied in a process by definition of  ecclesial and episcopal self-invention.     The fall-out in Colorado was predictable and, in many instances, devastating.  The voting ranks of conservative clergy were depleted, conservative congregations were debilitated, and in several cases their clergy replaced with non-orthodox priests.  Further, the image of the conservative witness was, in the eyes of moderates and other conservatives, deeply tarnished by what many regarded, rightly or wrongly, as deceit, manipulation, and the self-promoting tactics of AMiA leaders. In the space of 2 years, Colorado went from being a mildly conservative diocese, to being one with an effective liberal majority in terms of leadership and direction.   There is no question but that the current ability of conservative clergy and laity to stand as a force of orthodox confession in the diocese is not only severely weakened, but considered fruitless by most, in large part because of the wreckage left by the AMiAs pursuit of the autonomous in order to punish autonomy.   It is not clear what the force of the AMiAs own evangelistic witness is within the state, but it is not certainly visible as an alternative example of clarion success.     On a wider scale, the AMiAs effect on the dynamics of Communion decision-making are no more constructive.  The AMiAs episcopal consecrations flew in the face of agreements made between Global South Primates and leaders earlier at Kampala, and there was felt by many around the world who were sympathetic with the doctrinal concerns of the group a deep sense of betrayal and division.  What was viewed therefore as a refusal by the AMiA leadership and supporters to abide by the common mind of the Communions sympathetic leadership - that is, a refusal to be held accountable - ended by rupturing trust among many Global-South Primates, and ruined the image of conservative/orthodox witness within the Communion in the eyes of more moderate leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose advisors have explicitly described the AMiA as a retreat into the impossibly autonomous.  This remains the case, and stands as one of the great obstacles to a forceful response to ECUSAs current rebellion.  There is a (mistaken) fear among some Primatial leaders, looking at what has happened with the AMiA, that decisive and courageous action now is equivalent to prideful self-assertion.    And all this for the same reasons as in the local compass of a diocese:  the experience of a rejected call to mutual and responsible accountability -- with all of the interior resentments involved in such an experience --  has made many people around the Communion abandon confidence in the integrity and effectiveness of conservative witness as a persuasive direction for others to follow.  In the name of maintaining Anglican unity in the truth, the AMiA has embodied practices of autonomous self-promotion to the detriment of communion, and thereby rendered suspect the very vision of a common faith and discipline that many have tried so hard to further.     Not all AMiA clergy or leaders, or certainly laity, can rightly be touched by this general evaluation - surely most are people of integrity of faith and vision, who made difficult choices, often sacrificial ones, for the sake of what they saw to be the substance of their vows before God.  But the general evaluation still holds because of the overall direction of leadership that has refused  to place its decisions within an arena of common accountability within the Communion, all of which encouraged and even upheld the many instances of perceived moral failure that mar the internal debates of Anglican conservatives now more than ever.  In all this, the AMiA represents, therefore, one aspect of ECUSAs and the Communions internal malaise.  It is a symptom of spiritual disease, not an instrument of healing.     This is a parable of warning.  Warning even against the paths we have already set down to follow.   Whatever happens to the Anglican Communion, or to Anglicanism within North America, or to individual Episcopalians who desperately seek some renewed clarity of witness to the Gospel that they can be sure is held in common with their church, the decisions and choices we make must be in favor of mutual accountability in Christ, and not against it.  This will not be easy, simply because the choices we make in testimony of the historic faith and order of the Christian Church will be opposed by some, perhaps by a local majority; and the temptation will be to press our testimony into a realm of individual freedom, cut loose from the constraints of blasphemy and persecution we so acutely feel around us.  The danger, however, is that we will soon find ourselves floating in a sea of competing testimonies and freedoms, and mutually assaulting claims.  And the faith and order we set out to defend will be lost amid in the debris.     The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner is rector, Church of the Ascension, Pueblo, Colorado      END

The Presiding Bishop sees the denominations current path as the only way--because its truthful.   Interview by Deborah Caldwell - Beliefnet.com   Since last summer, Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has been in the vortex of his denominations controversy over its election of an openly gay bishop. Yet during the church’s August convention and into the fall, Griswold has remained out of the limelight.     In the last few weeks, dissident members of the church--those opposed to the church’s liberal stance on homosexuality--are increasingly threatening to circumvent the bishops authority in order to replace the Episcopal Church with conservative leadership. This week Griswold sat down to talk with Beliefnet. During an interview in his New York office, Griswold said he receives frequent private letters of support from bishops around the country and the world--including those who--publicly--strongly oppose the church’s actions. He said secrecy is the devils playground, suggesting that those who want to accommodate homosexuality behind the scenes while publicly condemning it are the ones encouraging sexual aberrance. He disputed the claim by conservatives that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams supports their actions and suggested that conservatives are fighting Griswolds proposal--to be discussed by the denominations bishops at a March meeting--to accommodate their needs because, paradoxically, it is workable. He believes conservatives want to keep the fight going NOTE: The full text of the story can be found at the following link. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=26

DATE:          January 16, 2004   TO:               The Members of All Saints Parish, Waccamaw   FROM:           Bishop Salmon       Dear Friends in Christ,     The opening chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians provides the greeting to you for this letter. I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ (I Cor.4). in the same chapter St. Paul appeals to the Corinthians for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ to make up the differences between you (I Cor. 1:10). In that spirit I write you all this letter. In all the recent events around All Saints Parish and the Diocese of South Carolina, a number of Public statements have been made about our relationship. It is my intention in this letter to present the position that I have taken and offer documentation to support that position. Having heard both sides, you may then draw conclusions, as you are so led, which conclusions will I pray move us closer together rather than apart.     When Bishop Murphy was consecrated in Singapore in an irregular consecration in 2000, I was not in favor of the consecration because I believed that it would be divisive to orthodox unity. I believe it has. I could not change the fact that it had taken place.  Since Bishop Murphy was no longer under our Canons, I had no control over the exercise of his ministry. The hope and expectation was that  All Saints Parish would remain a faithful part of the Diocese of South Carolina.     When the Vestry in Moorehead City, N.C. voted to leave the Diocese of East Carolina they first transferred title to the church property to another group, and then informed the bishop that they were leaving the Diocese of East Carolina. Because of this the Chancellor advised me to record in the Georgetown County Courthouse, the Canons of the Diocese reflecting the requirement regarding property under which all congregations operate. In the North Carolina suit AmiA claimed that because the Diocese of East Carolina had not done so, the Diocese had no claim on the property. In the suit filed against the Diocese, the claim has been made that because the Diocese of South Carolina recorded the applicable canon, we had placed a cloud on the title. Bishop Murphy has stated that it was similar to building a swimming pool over a property line. It must be removed by legal action.     The facts are the opposite. If permission of the Bishop and Standing Committee are not given the title is clouded. Ross M. Lindsey, Parish Chancellor, admitted in his deposition, that in a transaction in 1986 the bank itself asked that such permission be sought. I am enclosing a letter written by Bishop Murphy, when he was a member of the Standing Committee, asking permission for All Saints to borrow money from the bank in 1988. The canons require such permission and not to seek permission clouds the transaction. I am also enclosing a sample page from the Standing Committee records showing similar permission requested by St. Peters by-the-Sea and the Church of the Holy Communion in 1965 as standard operating procedure for the Standing Committee. This has been a part of our common life for well over a hundred years.     When All Saints Waccamaw sued the Diocese ( we are the defendants) over the recording of the applicable property canon, they claimed, in a deposition, that they were not under the canons, and kept them as a matter of courtesy. The Chancellor ruled that a church could not be not under the canons and in union with the Diocese at the same time. The convention, hoping for some reconciliation, voted to give All Saints Parish seat, voice, not a vote.     In the meantime, Bishop Murphy has continued to live in the rectory, meet with the Vestry when he is in town, appoint a vicar to represent him, and generally to be in charge. Tim Surratt who, until now, has been the only clergyman canonically resident in the diocese, has been the supposed interim rector. He has, as of January 12, asked to be transferred to Rwanda. I plan to do so.     Because of the legal action, I have not met with the Vestry or made a visitation. Bishop Skilton has been to All Saints, for a visitation once. I discovered, by happenstance, that the All Saints vestry had voted to amend the 1902 Charter which the then serving Chancellor had assisted the parish in securing. By way of background, the granting of the 1902 Charter by the Secretary of State was followed by the Trustees of the Dioceses conveying the title to the church property to All Saints Church Parish by quit claim deed dated 1903. Because of the actions of the vestry, I immediately informed the Chancellor and notified the then Wardens and Vestry that they had in fact voted to leave the Church and could not longer be considered the vestry because by leaving they were no longer communicants in good standing, and thereby did not qualify to be vestry members. I did not excommunicate them as has been said. They are free to receive communion whenever and wherever they choose. They cannot vote to leave the church and at the same time be the vestry. I am enclosing copies of the letter and documents sent to them.     I called a meeting of the Standing Committee and informed them of my actions. After considerable discussion, the members of the Standing Committee decided to talk directly with the vestry. I gave my full support to such discussions. I am enclosing the report of their meeting written by the president of the Standing Committee. I told the Standing Committee that I was more than willing to consider and implement their suggestions, but that I was not willing to drop the appeal because (1) it had already been heard (September 10) and we were simply waiting for a ruling. I reminded them that (2) because of the original ruling no one now owned the property and this issued needed to be settled.     The basic issues on the table are those of lawlessness and the stability of the Diocese itself. We have no theological issues with All Saints. If any parish in the Diocese can unilaterally decide to not be under the Canons, appoint vicars, do what they want to when they want to, our strength as a Diocese is soon destroyed. There is no authority, only individual choice. That is exactly why the Episcopal Church is in the mess it is in. Bishops have individually acted without accountability, believe or not believe as they choose. That is lawlessness. It is my duty to oppose it.     I have met with members of All Saints who are loyal to the Diocese. It was my decision to treat the loyal membership as a parish rather than a mission. We have organized and elected wardens. We plan to meet again as All Saints Parish Waccamaw under the Canons of the Diocese. We have notified the Secretary of State that there is a new vestry representing All Saints Parish, and Articles of Correction will be filed with the Secretary of State giving notice that the original charter of All Saints, Waccamaw remains unchanged.     It is my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will give us all a way to Godly solution to this situation, which is painful for all concerned. You are in my prayers. I cherish yours.     May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all(II Cor. 13:13)     Yours Faithfully in Christ,   Edward L. Salmon, Jr. Bishop of South Carolina, XIII   END