ELCA proposes tougher rules for departing congregations

“According to the Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) leaders are proposing new rules that will make it harder for congregations to leave the denomination.

The changes are proposed as nearly 300 congregations have completed current departure requirements, and another 140 congregations have begun the process. These congregations represent a loss of 200,000 ELCA members…”

– Story from The Layman Online (h/t AAC.)

Related:
Lutheran CORE November 2010 newsletter (PDF file).
ELCA documents on human sexuality.

Photo: ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, from the ELCA website.

The Authorised Version? – GAFCON and the Anglican Ordinariate

Charles Raven:

“It is sadly ironic that on the first day of the year which marks the 400th anniversary of King James’ Authorised Version of the Bible, which has had such a profound impact on the English speaking world, three Church of England bishops were received into the Pope’s Anglican Ordinariate in Westminster Cathedral.

The fact that the Ordinariate is described as ‘Anglican’ while having no authorization from the Church of England or the wider Anglican Communion is a reminder of just how bold a stroke this is. There are now two fundamentally different forms of Anglicanism in England itself, one of which is part of the Church of Rome…

A GAFCON sponsored mission in England would be an ‘authorised version’ of the Ordinariate because while not part of the Church of England, it would be indisputably Anglican in both faith and order.”

– Read all of Charles Raven’s latest opinion-piece at SPREAD.

(Photo of Pope Benedict during his visit to Westminister Cathedral last year.)

Petition to support B&B owners in Cornwall

While the petition being organised is for UK citizens only, it’s good to be aware of this case involving a Christian couple who run a Bed & Breakfast in Cornwall.

The Christian Institute has the background on their website – including this one page fact sheet (pdf).

And here’s a story from Mail Online (8th Dec 2010).

For UK readers, the petition, calling the Prime Minister to repeal or amend the UK’s the Sexual Orientation Regulations, may be seen here.

Churchman article on Bishop J C Ryle

“Well-wishers sent him an ornately embroidered cope and mitre, but he returned them, saying he ‘had no intention of making a guy of himself’, and another gift of a pastoral staff was graciously, but firmly declined: ‘No staff for me, if you send me a staff I shall lock it up in a cupboard and never see it again. A Bishop wants a Bible and no staff.’…”

– Church Society has republished Eric Russell’s 1999 Churchman article on Bishop J C Ryle. Available here as a PDF file.

‘Marriage of 2 lesbian Episcopal priests adds new twist to gay issues’

“Episcopalians here and across the country are already divided over whether to elect gay bishops and allow their priests to perform same-sex weddings. Now they have another issue to discuss: The marriage of two lesbians who are high-level Episcopal priests in Massachusetts.

In a wedding that appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S. – at least in the Episcopal Church – former Plymouth priest the Rev. Mally Lloyd married the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, on New Year’s Day.”

– report from The Patriot Ledger in Boston.

Related: “Abortion is a blessing”. (Photo: Episcopal Divinity School.)

The Pursuit of Holiness – free audiobook

The free audiobook from Christian Audio for January 2011 is Jerry Bridge’s The Pursuit of Holiness. Grab it here.

Stott on Charles Simeon

In November 2004, at Taylor University in Indiana, John Stott delivered a 33 minute introduction to Charles Simeon. The video was recently uploaded to Vimeo.

On preaching, Stott quotes Simeon: “Does [the sermon] uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Saviour, and to promote holiness?”

(h/t Justin Taylor, who also has some useful links.)

Narnia Invaded

Writing before the release of the most recent film, Steven D. Boyer looks at the Hollywood interpretation of the Narnia books.

“If there is a possibility that Lewis was right—even a bare possibility—then this loss of the original Narnia, this domestication of Aslan, is distressing indeed. It signals nothing less than an invasion by a foreign and hostile power.

The creators of this ‘new improved’ Narnia have taken the single element in Lewis’s tales that twenty-first-century viewers most need to be instructed in, and they have recast it so that it contributes to the error rather than correcting it.”

– In the November–December edition of Touchstone.

‘Communion for Anglican bishops becoming Catholics’

“Three Anglican bishops who are converting to Roman Catholicism have taken holy communion at Westminster Cathedral, with three ex-Anglican nuns…”

– Report from BBC News.

Biblical inerrancy

“I have long wanted to write a serious piece on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Recently I was given the opportunity to do so through an invitation to contribute to a volume essays, The Bible and the Academy: Critical Scholarship and the Evangelical Understanding of Scripture in the 21st Century, edited by James Hoffmeier and Dennis Magary and to be published by Crossway in 2011.

I do not intend to reproduce the article here but instead simply to outline its argument…”

– ACL President Mark Thompson writes at Theological Theology.

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