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.
Tense times behind the scenes at Lambeth
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s efforts to steer the Anglican Communion away from the theological and political shoals appears to have been for naught, as the 14th Lambeth Conference began to founder on its second business day.
While the three day retreat led by Dr. Williams was universally applauded by bishops from across the geographic and theological spectrum, once the bishops were loosed upon each other the tensions that have plagued the Communion stepped back into center stage. …
– George Conger writes for the Church of England Newspaper.
Lambeth: David’s Diary Day 7
The Anglican Communion is hanging by a thread. We are into the 7th day of Lambeth, but only the 4th day in terms of real Indaba talk. Already there are signs of fragmentation everywhere one turns.
Gene Robinson is roaming the campus with a body guard and press officer, the darling of the liberal media, offering his thoughts on exclusion and his personal pain at not being admitted to the Lambeth conference. …
A real dust up occurred at a press conference, yesterday, when Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, the bishop’s press officer was challenged about why a list of all the bishops could not be handed out to the press. …
– David Virtue reports at VirtueOnline.
Thursday: Buckingham Palace
Today is the London Day for the Lambeth Conference. The bishops and their wives are leaving the campus at 7 a.m. after a week on site to march along Whitehall in support of the Millennium Development Goals, to have lunch at Lambeth Palace and tea at Buckingham Palace. …
The March of Witness will be attended by the Anglican Mainstream team, largely on the grounds that there has been very little opportunity to meet with bishops at all. No one knows where any of the bishops are living, not even the bishops. There is no access to any of the meetings, except the occasional plenary. So we will not be at tea at the Palace, unlike 1988 when the press were invited. How times have changed. …
– Today’s report from Anglican Mainstream.
A visit to Hillsong
Over at The Sola Panel, Gavin Perkins describes a recent visit to Hillsong (the church, not the music label).
At the end of the night, following the calls from the mosh pit for encores and some good old early-90s-style crowd surfing (I’m serious), one of the song leaders declared that “This was the best weekend we’ve ever had at Hillsong”.
So, how good was it? Read Gavin’s notes at the Sola Panel.
(It’s also worth noting that Joel and Victoria Osteen will be speaking at the 2009 Hillsong Conference. See this broadcast from The White Horse Inn.)
Photo: Brian Houston at Hillsong.
Gene Robinson on University of Kent campus ‘dawn to dusk’
Here are some extracts from today’s report by Cherie Wetzel for Anglicans United and Latimer Press —
I heard several different people report from the American provincial meeting held on Monday afternoon, that our bishops are finding it difficult to encounter so many disagreeable attitudes towards them. In short, they are wondering why they are disliked (some said ‘hated’) so strongly by so many bishops from other provinces.
And folks, they “don’t get it.” …
Their efforts to tell the others that there is nothing wrong with the American church and that we are not in turmoil and/or crisis is falling on deaf ears. …
Yesterday at the ad hoc press conference with Archbishop Deng Bul of the Sudan, the Episcopal News Service correspondent here asked if he had spoken with Gene Robinson. When he replied “No”, she asked if he would like to.
That’s when the archbishop replied, “We will not talk to Gene Robinson or listen to him or his testimony. He has to confess, receive forgiveness and leave. Then we will talk. You cannot bring the listening to gay people to our Communion. People who do not believe in the Bible are left out of our churches, not invited in to tell us why they don’t believe.”
The gay press people and gay advocates are here en masse. Gene Robinson is on the campus of this Conference from dawn to dusk, with events planned every evening – last evening he spoke at the Law School – and many of these sessions are by invitation only. There is no secret that they are here to inform and convert. Their daily newspaper is found in every building on the campus. The American bishops talked about moving the location of their next provincial meeting so Gene can come, which means a non-restricted area on the campus, such as a cafeteria or green space, outside the watchful eyes of Kent Campus Security.
And so, the schizophrenia continues. …
– Read the whole report here.
(Photo of Gene Robinson at a ‘Changing Attitude / Integrity Eucharist’ in Canterbury: Episcopal News Service/Mike Collins)
US bishops furious over Robinson exclusion
There is a growing concerted effort by American bishops to find a way to bring Gene Robinson, the homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire, into the Big Tent. America’s liberal bishops are furious by the exclusion of Robinson from the Lambeth Conference and on the first full day of the Lambeth Conference spent most of their time trying to figure out how to get Robinson in the door. …
– Today’s Lambeth report from VirtueOnline.
Sudanese demand Robinson resign
The openly gay bishop of New Hampshire must resign if the Anglican church is to be saved from schism, a senior Archbishop said today. The Archbishop of Sudan, Dr Daniel Deng, who has the backing of more than 150 bishops and archbishops from 17 provinces in the Global South, said that if Bishop Gene Robinson was to be true to his Christian faith he had no alternative but to step down. …
– Ruth Gledhill at Times Online reports from Lambeth.
– See also this report by Cherie Wetzel at Anglican United and Latimer Press –
“We have just had a briefing with the Archbishop of the Sudan, the Most Reverend Dr. Daniel Deng Bul. He informed the press room this morning that he would come and speak with us, since the Anglican Communion News Bureau running this conference, would not schedule a time for him to address the press.”
Earlier, the Sudanese Bishops released this Statement to the Lambeth Conference –
In view of the present tensions and divisions within the Anglican Communion, and out of deep concern for the unity of the Church, we consider it important to express clearly the position of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) concerning human sexuality. …
(Photo: Episcopal News Service.)
John Wycliffe and the English Bible
The Church Society has made available a helpful article on John Wycliffe and the English Bible by F.F. Bruce – first published in Churchman in 1984.
As the Lambeth Conference rolls on, with some defying the clear teaching of the Bible, it’s good to reminded of those who laboured long and hard to make God’s Word accessible to us all.
The article is available as a PDF file – direct link.
Williams offers ambiguous response to sexuality question
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams offered an ambiguous response to a direct question posed to him about sexual behaviour saying that sexual sin is defined as “any relationship outside a public covenant of mutual support and love in the presence of God,” seeming to endorse committed same sex arrangements. …
– David Virtue reports from the Lambeth press conference.
Lambeth: bishops divided over opening Eucharist
The opening Eucharist service of the 2008 Lambeth Conference exemplified everything that is wrong with the Communion and the Conference, with substance given a second place to ceremony, one Global South primate told ReligiousIntelligence.com. …
The tensions have led to three primates and an undisclosed number of bishops declining to receive the sacraments during the opening Eucharist, highlighting the tensions lurking beneath the surface of the every ten year gathering of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. …
– Report by George Conger at Religious Intelligence. (Photo: Lambeth Conference media.)
Archbishop Kolini speaks out on Lambeth
The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini, has spoken out on their refusal to attend the Lambeth Conference, saying that they cannot sit to deliberate on wicked issues.
The Archbishop claimed that it was not a boycott since they had declined the invitation. He said that their stand was based on strong Biblical views yet Canterbury had ignored the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality. …
Asked whether by refusing to attend the meeting, the members were not deepening the rift in the church, Kolini said this year’s conference could not be the platform for unifying them because they had always spoken against gay marriages but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has always ignored their advice. …
– from The New Times, Rwanda. (Photo: Joy Gwaltney)
The shindig begins…
The 14th Lambeth Conference had everything befitting a party that has been ten years in the planning: bouncers, paparazzi, an international guest list of thousands, in Canterbury Cathedral the most well-established venue in the city, world-renowned musicians and even half-naked dancers.
It also had everything you might expect at an awkward family party: unspoken feuds, some people refusing the invitation, others not asked to come, the host looking a little nervous and speeches entreating everyone to get along. …
The Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Right Rev Bob Duncan, said: “It was a glorious service, it was a gathering of the family, but there were troublesome elements – the Buddhist chant, for example, and the sermon had a few challenges. A number of our brothers didn’t make their Communion.”… (emphasis added)
– Comment by Joanna Sugden at Times Online. (Photo: Lambeth Conference.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…