Presiding Bishop welcome in Brisbane, says Primate

“The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is welcome to visit the Diocese of Brisbane, according to Dr Philip Aspinall, Archbishop of Brisbane and Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia…”

– Report from Anglican Media Melbourne. Related: ACL Statement on visit.

(Photo taken at the November 2008 JSC meeting: ACNS Rosenthal.)

Jefferts Schori in Canterbury

Not that Canterbury. TEC Presiding Bishop Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori spent Sunday evening in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, preaching at St. Michael and All Angels in Christchurch.

Sermon here. Also, Episcopal News report. (Photo: Anglican Taonga.)

The ACL protests Katharine Jefferts Schori’s visit to Australia

The President of the Anglican Church League, the Rev Dr Mark Thompson, has issued this statement on behalf of the ACL’s Council:

We note with profound sadness that the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori, has been invited to preach in a Brisbane church in early July. This invitation shows an appalling lack of judgment and contempt for those who have suffered at the hands of the revisionists in The Episcopal Church.

The Presiding Bishop has defied the vast majority of the Anglican Communion, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury, by pursuing a program of moral and doctrinal revision, endorsing homosexual behaviour and approving the appointment of a lesbian bishop. Her actions have been taken in full awareness of the widespread international concern which has led to an official call for a moratorium on any such measures.

As recently as April 2010, the Statement issued at the end of the 4th Global South Encounter spoke of TEC’s ‘total disregard for the mind of the Communion’ and the way these churches ‘continue in their defiance as they set themselves on a course that contradicts the plain teaching of the Holy Scriptures on matters so fundamental that they affect the very salvation of those involved’. The statement continued, ‘Such actions violate the integrity of the Gospel, the Communion and our Christian witness to the rest of the world’.

This alarming behaviour has been compounded by a virulent attack on Anglicans in America who wish to remain faithful to the teaching of Scripture. The Presiding Bishop has been responsible for pursuing, in the secular courts, those who oppose her program of revision, as her agents seek to remove orthodox clergy and take over the property of faithful, Bible-believing congregations.

Katherine Jefferts Schori bears a great deal of responsibility for the current turmoil, division and anguish in the Anglican Communion. It is entirely inappropriate that she should be welcomed into any diocese in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Faithful Anglicans throughout Australia will be offended by this decision. The Council of the ACL calls on Archbishop Aspinall to reconsider and rescind the invitation.

Mark Thompson
President, Anglican Church League,
on behalf of the ACL’s Council,
26 June 2010.

Updated 9Marks website

The 9Marks website has been updated recently. New sections include Answers for Church Members and Answers for Pastors. Well worth a look.

Katharine Jefferts Schori heads Down Under for ‘conversations around human sexuality’

From the Episcopal News Service:

“The Anglican churches in Australia and New Zealand are hosting Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori for an informal two-week visit to the two provinces.

‘I’m to speak with people there about their conversations around human sexuality and also about their missionary development work…’ Jefferts Schori told members of Executive Council during their June 16-18 meeting in Maryland…

During her visit to Australia, the presiding bishop will preach July 4 at Christ Church St. Lucia in the Diocese of Brisbane, where Archbishop Philip Aspinall of the Anglican Church of Australia serves as bishop.…”

J I Packer’s preface to Griffith Thomas’ Principles of Theology

In 1977, Dr J I Packer wrote the Preface to an edition of W.H. Griffith Thomas’ The Principles of Theology.

“As in general terms Calvin’s 1559 Institutes rounded off the forty-year Reformation era in European theology, so in general terms The Principles of Theology may be said to have rounded off a four-hundred year era of Protestant Anglicanism, and in particular to have summed up a century of vigilant scholarship which, in face of what looked like Rome’s Trojan horse in the Church of England, had sought to vindicate historic Protestantism as authentically Anglican and as the only position with more than squatter’s rights within the Establishment.

This was the scholarship of such men as William Goode, George Cornelius Gorham, T. P. Boultbee, T. S. L. Vogan, Nathaniel Dimock, E. A. Litton, Henry Wace, Handley C. G. Moule, J. T. Tomlinson, W. Prescott Upton and Charles Sydney Carter – giants in the land in their own day, however little remembered now.”

– Read the rest on the Church Society website.

Learn more about Griffith Thomas here. (Photo: Theopedia.)

Sinclair Ferguson on Preaching

In March, Sinclair Ferguson (Minister at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina) gave the 2010 den Dulk Lectures on Pastoral Ministry at Westminster Seminary in California.

In this talk linked below (56MB mp3 file), he speaks on “The Pastor and his preaching”. Very sobering – and encouraging – for preachers.

Link via Unashamed Workman. Other lectures on this page. (h/t Faith by Hearing.)

SMBC Preaching conferences

Sydney Missionary and Bible College has a couple of interesting preaching conferences coming up in September. Click on the links for PDF brochures: Communicating Isaiah and Preaching the Old Testament with Integrity.

‘Federal leaders court Christian vote’

A few cliches in this ABC TV Lateline report on the Australian Christian Lobby’s leaders’ debate.

And Russell Powell has this report at SydneyAnglicans.net.

In Memoriam, James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000)

“June 15 marks the tenth anniversary of the death of James Montgomery Boice, who was for thirty-two years the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, the dean of Reformed pastor-scholars in his generation…”

– At Reformation21, Rick Phillips gives thanks for James Montgomery Boice, who died ten years ago. (Photo: Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia.)

Bishop of Ballarat resigns

“Shock and relief have rippled through the south-west Anglican community in the wake of Ballarat bishop Michael Hough’s decision to step down.

His departure follows months of speculation and was announced at a synod in Portland by Melbourne assistant bishop and acting Ballarat vicar-general Philip Huggins.

It will take effect on December 20, with a 12-member committee elected over the weekend to find his replacement…”

– Report from the Warrnambool Standard. (Image: Diocese of Ballarat.)

A Canonical Analysis of ‘Mitregate’

AS Haley (the Anglican Curmudgeon) looks at the fuss about why Katharine Jefferts Schori had to apply for a license to officiate as a priest (and not a bishop) at Southwark Cathedral last week.

(Photo: ENS.)

Tasmanian Prayer Pilgrimage continues

Bishop John Harrower would appreciate your prayers as he continues his ‘Prayer Pilgrimage’ around Tasmania.

Jesus says, ‘for apart from me you can do nothing.’ – John 15:5.

All you need is ‘love’

Bishop Michael Bird, Anglican Diocese of Niagara, in a letter to the National Post , claims –

“… whether a man loves a woman or another man, or a woman loves a man or another woman, to God it is all love …”

– in response to this article about St. Hilda’s Anglican Church Oakville, which left the Anglican Church of Canada.

h/t the Anglican Essential Canada blog. (Photo: Diocese of Niagara.)

New Archbishop of PNG

“The provincial council of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea has elected the Rt. Reverend Joseph Kopapa, bishop of Popondota diocese, as its new archbishop and primate…”

– report from the Episcopal News Service.

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