Bishop speaks of ‘Interfaith relations’ with members of the TEC House of Bishops
Bishop Peter Beckwith of Springfield spoke of his own Christian faith and responded to questions from the media during a 45-minute session at the Lambeth Conference on July 30.
It was one of the few unscripted moments that the media have been able to observe to date at this event, and Bishop Beckwith drew a large group that delayed the start of an official Episcopal News Service media briefing…
[Speaking of some of his TEC episcopal colleagues, he said –]
“It’s not just that we’re not on the same page,” he said. “We are not in the same book. We are in different libraries. I am dealing with interfaith relations within The Episcopal Church.” …
– Report from The Living Church. (Photo: Diocese of Springfield.)
… it’s knowing they’re foreign that makes them so mad
I was reminded of this line from the Flanders and Swann piece of gentle self-mockery, A Song of Patriotic Prejudice, when I discovered that in a cross post to my little article on Thirty-two years of women’s ordination in the American context someone on the Stand Firm website had listed a whole string of similar words and actions which we in England might find bizarre, but which are quite common, it would seem in TEC. …
– from John Richardson at the Ugley Vicar.
Why we need an ACL
– That’s not the title of the Rev. Todd Wetzel’s report from Canterbury, but the American experience shows what can happen when committees and synods take on a life of their own, not representing the local churches.
In 2000, I called the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson the most dangerous man in the Episcopal Church.
Before you jump to conclusions, let me say that I was very clear that it was not because I considered him a “bad” person. Quite the contrary, he was (and is) very articulate, a capable and well liked priest, intelligent, reasonably good looking, a skilled consultant who was (and is), by his own admission, non-celibate and a person of homosexual orientation. As a member of the diocesan staff, he was well known locally. I called him ‘dangerous’ because he was elect-able. And, if elected, and consecrated, chaos would emerge within the Episcopal Church and the Communion. …
Read his full post at Anglicans United. (See also the ACL’s Policy Objectives.)
The Pointy Hat Club
Once upon a time in a far away place called Dar Es Salaam there was a party attended by boys and girls who liked to wear pointy hats, including one girl who liked to wear a pointy hat, but who sometimes wore a rainbow-colored oven mitt on her head instead. The other boys and girls were very polite and never used the words “oven mitt” in front of the one girl because they knew it would make her very cross. …
– Robert S. Munday, Dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin, has written this little story. You might enjoy it – but it has a serious side.
(Photo: Episcopal Life Online / Richard Schori.)
Archbishop Mouneer Anis spells it out
“I find that many of our North American friends blame us and criticise us for bringing in the issues of sexuality and homosexuality but in fact they are the ones who are bringing these issues in. Here at Lambeth, you come across many advertisements for events organised by gay and Lesbian activists which are sponsored by the North American Church.
If you visit the marketplace at the conference, you will notice that almost half the events promoted on the noticeboard promote homosexuality and are sponsored by the North Americans. And in the end, we, the people who remain loyal to the original teaching of the Anglican Communion, which we received from the Apostles, are blamed. They say that we talk a lot about sexuality and that we need to talk more about poverty, about AIDS, and injustice. They are the ones who are bringing sexuality into this conference. It’s not us. We want to talk about the heart of the issues which divide us, not only sexuality. That is just a symptom of a deeper problem. …”
– Archbishop of Egypt, Dr Mouneer H. Anis in “Lambeth Voices: a panel of Anglican bishops share their views with Faith Online” at TimesOnline. (Photo: ENS.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…