How many CHURCHGOING Anglicans does Lambeth represent?
A lot of things have been said over the last few months about just who represents whom in the Anglican world. GAFCON, for example, is pilloried by the media and the leadership at Lambeth as a “breakaway” movement. But, is this right?
Already some journalists are beginning to realise that while the Lambeth Conference might have a large number of bishops in attendance, those bishops actually represent a SMALL MINORITY of the world’s Anglicans. …
– Bishop David Chislett, of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, looks at the numbers.
(Bishop Chislett served as a Rector in the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane until 2005.)
Archbishop Mouneer’s view from Lambeth
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your prayers. God hears our prayers and in His time, answers them. The Lambeth Conference has been a time of great fellowship and strength; it has also been a time of disunity and conflict. Everything is going fairly well, but I do not believe that there is hope of a solution from this Lambeth conference.
However I hope that we would be able to come up with a road map for a final solution of the current crisis. There have been many benefits to the Lambeth Conference. One of the great strengths of the Lambeth Conference has been the statement from Archbishop Deng of Sudan calling for The Episcopal Church in the USA to repent and have Gene Robinson, the active homosexual bishop, resign for the sake of the Communion. This statement has shaken the foundation of Lambeth Conference. …
– Archbishop of Egypt, Dr Mouneer H. Anis, writes home from Lambeth. (Photo: ENS)
The Natural: You just can’t teach that in seminary
After the [Lambeth] press conference some reporters persuaded Bishop Beetge to stay and converse a bit. There were a variety of questions. The most telling came toward the end of the session when a reporter who said he was shooting a documentary for “American television” tried to nail the bishop down on the question of homosexual behaviour. …
– We missed this earlier post from Stand Firm – thanks to Anglican Essentials Canada.
(Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld. Photo: Diocese of Monmouth.)
All but unmentioned
The Lambeth Conference 1998 famously adopted a resolution on human sexuality, resolution I.10. The failure of the American and Canadian churches to honour that resolution are at the centre of the conflict which overshadows Lambeth 2008.
The Lambeth Conference 1998 also adopted a resolution, numbered III.2 calling on Provinces “to make such provision, including appropriate episcopal ministry”, as will enable those who dissent from and those who assent to the ordination of women to live “in the highest degree of Communion possible”.
The patent failure of the American and Canadian churches to honour this resolution has gone all but unmentioned at Lambeth 2008. …
– Warren Tanghe writes from an Anglo-Catholic perspective at the Forward in Faith website.
At Lambeth we need your prayers
The Rev. Todd Wetzel, of Anglicans United and Latimer Press reports from Canterbury –
To inform your prayers, here are four things we believe need serious prayer:
- Spiritual warfare is real and it is intense. Please pray for spiritual protection over Canterbury, Kent University and especially over the orthodox bishops, that they might be bold and courageous in spite of mounting opposition.
- The drain on one’s emotions is real. We are in an intense environment and it sucks the life out of you. Even when not much appears to be happening, you feel tired.
- The intellect is on overload. This is a rich environment of thought and an environment beset by controversy. So far, no matter how hard the wheels spin, no solutions have been found. The sense of frustration at least at the leadership level, is very real. Patience is wearing thin.
- Physically, at least for those from the west, we’ve all done more walking than ever required to do at home. While this is healthy, it does wear on the body. The cobblestone streets, though charming, make walking semi-perilous.
– from Anglicans United.
A rival Global South movement?
“A rival Global South movement is being set up here in Canterbury in an attempt to divide and conquer the Global South movement. A Lambeth compliant ‘Communion Partners’ movement is being encouraged in an effort to isolate mainstream evangelical and Anglo-Catholics who number 40 million of the 55 million church-going Anglicans throughout the world. …”
– David Virtue wonders where this might lead.
Lambeth Saturday press conference
Matt Kennedy from Stand Firm live blogs from today’s Lambeth press conference and shows there is some confusion about the definition of being in the Anglican Communion …
– at Stand Firm.
Who’s a traditionalist?
I am sick of being placed in the category of “traditionalist”.
Here are some examples, all from the same news article:
“persecuting clergy who wanted to stick to a traditionalist line”;
“distorting traditional Anglican beliefs”;
“how much influence a powerful traditionalist lobby could have inside the Communion”.
Tradition has nothing to do with it; the word has become the latest euphemism for “Christian”.
– Our friends at the Anglican Essentials Canada blog have articulated what others have been thinking.
Faith healer Todd Bentley called a fraud, false teacher
A new faith healer is making headlines for his claims of supernatural powers, but conservative evangelical leaders warn that Todd Bentley is a fraud and a false teacher.
Bentley, leader of a revival that began in Lakeland, Fla., this spring, is known for his multiple body piercings and tattoos, his violent healing techniques, his claims of angelic visions and “holy” laughter and “holy” vibrating shakes. He even claims to have raised dozens of people from the dead. …
– A helpful report from Baptist Press.