A Statement on Civility

“Political campaign ads are full of misrepresentations. Voting records are twisted, legislation is misstated, and generalizations are made. Then the other side just ups the ante and the vicious cycle continues…”

– Ed Stetzer makes some observations – and appeals – concerning political discourse in the USA.

1. We are too quick to label others who disagree with us.
2. We misrepresent others’ views to make them look stupid or evil.
3. We use fear as a weapon against the uninformed.

Beware of Anglicans bearing gifts

The American Anglican Council’s Phil Ashey reflects on statements by the Anglican Communion Office’s Secretary General on the relationship of TEC to the Anglican Communion.

Canon Ashey writes:

“This is like an arsonist’s victim saying ‘What is surprising and heartening is that we are in conversation with the arsonist, and that even though our house has burned down the conversation has been a great learning experience for all of us.’

Secretary Kearon’s statement is important because it gives insight into the mind of those who are shaping the agenda for the upcoming Anglican Consultative Council meeting (ACC-15) in Auckland, New Zealand in October.”

– Read it all here.

Ga ga for Gaga? PCUSA Backs American Capitalism

“It has been some months since I last had a rant about Lady Gaga, so I am grateful to the good old PCUSA for giving me the chance. Yes, the people whose General Assembly a few years back brought you the Carnival of Animals, presided over by some kind of Aztec divinity on steroids, and issued free masks of Mandragora to celebrate Calvin’s birth and evangelise Whovians at the same time, have now gone ga ga for Gaga. It seems her music, along with that of other titans of modern pop culture, featured somewhat significantly at the meeting of the highest court of the church, the General Assembly…”

– Insightful commentary from Carl Trueman at Reformation21.

Avoiding evangelical civil war

“John Stott famously lamented the pathological tendency of evangelicals to fragment. Others have remarked upon this as well, often as an argument for dismissing the veracity of any evangelical doctrine. How can the so-called evangelical position on this doctrine or that be accepted if there are other evangelicals who disagree with it? Evangelical theology is defeated by its own lack of consensus.

So how do we hold on to the truth, speak it with clarity, call upon others to hold it and stand firm against attempts to modify it, without starting World War 3 or its ecclesiastical equivalent?”

– Dr Mark Thompson writes at Theological Theology.

350th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer

Bishop Paul Barnett give thanks for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and points out three characteristics –

1. The BCP expresses a faith that is ‘catholic’.
2. The BCP expresses a faith that is ‘reformed’.
3. The BCP expresses a faith that is defended liturgically.

He goes on to comment on some recent trends –

“Post-modernism puts emphasis on the individual and evangelicals tend to be robust individuals. Many depart from the principle of commonality and uniformity and design their own services away from BCP. There is one Bible reading (or even none); there is no creed (or just occasionally); there is no calendar and no collects.

For them preaching the preacher is the all-important thing. The loss of liturgy means that the voice of the congregation is substantially silenced. Leaving only a single voice of the leader or preacher.

The preacher has replaced the liturgy as the defender of true doctrine…”

– But read it all here.

Even Barry Jones gets it wrong…

“To disagree with Barry Jones feels like taking on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You know he knows more than you do before you start, and whatever you do know, he will be able to show you that you are wrong.

This, of course, is to do him a great disservice. As a previous Federal Minister for Science and a keen educationalist, Barry Jones has always promoted the idea of inquiry, challenging ideas and public debate.

So, with some residual reservation of a child listening to the quiz show where Barry’s prodigious knowledge first came to public attention, I would like to challenge the public intellectual’s understanding of the relation of church and state in Australia. …”

– Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen writes in his weekly column.

When to jump ship?

“Anyone in a mainline denomination infected by liberalism, or some other divergence from the evangelical faith, will have faced the question of when to stay or when to go? How bad does the denomination have to get before you decide to abandon ship? Recently, this question came closer to home as an evangelical Anglican pastor in Australia, when a bishop in another diocese knowingly appointed a clergyman in an open same-sex relationship to charge of a parish. …”

– Over at The Briefing, Sandy Grant mulls the question – with help from John Charles Ryle.

Challenging equality Britain

“George Orwell’s famous allegory, Animal Farm, gave us the wry phrase, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. It brought out the way that you could have all the talk about equality and rights, but that it actually worked out with inequalities and with favoured groups. In Animal Farm, you remember, it was the pigs who ended up more equal than others.

I suspect that is how many Christians are coming to think about equality Britain. It’s a Britain where comedians are feted for their ‘daring’ in taking on the Christian religion on national TV, while never quite having the bottle to dish out equal satire to the equally fervent Richard Dawkins. It’s a Britain where major human rights abuses against Christians in countries such as North Korea or Syria are not reported as such.

It’s a Britain where you pray with someone in hospital at your peril, in case some third party takes offence. It’s a Britain where a prime minister appears to be under the impression that he can change what constitutes marriage. I suspect many of us find ourselves both frustrated and bewildered. How did it come to this?…”

– Oak Hill Principal Mike Ovey writes in the latest issue of Oak Hill’s Commentary magazine – available as a 6.4MB PDF file. Download it for the many worthwhile articles.

The Two-Pronged Strategy of a Master Evangelist

“It’s amazing how culture changes and we don’t notice it. The practices that one generation took for granted become unknown, and slightly shocking, to a later generation. Even for those of us who live through the change it happens too incrementally for us to observe it. It is when we revisit the old times that we detect how much we have changed – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and often without any real difference.

Recently, I had the privilege of publicly interviewing John Chapman as he recounted his many decades of Christian ministry. In the interview, he unwittingly challenged us about changes happening that neither he nor we had noticed. …”

– Phillip Jensen writes in his weekly column. (Photo: John Chapman, 1980.)

On preaching and preachers

“This is an article about preaching that is meant to be read by non-preachers. … As someone who is rather new to the pulpit, I thought it might be helpful to tell you what some of the surprises have been as I’ve somehow transitioned to a person who preaches on a regular basis…”

– Tim Challies shares some thoughts about preaching. Perhaps you could use these to inform your prayers for preachers.

The collapse of the liberal church

“Two weeks from now, the United Church of Canada will assemble in Ottawa for its 41st General Council, where it will debate church policy and elect a new moderator. The top item on its agenda is a resolution calling for a boycott of products from Israeli settlements.

Fortunately, nobody cares what the United Church thinks about Israeli settlements, or anything else for that matter, because the United Church doesn’t matter any more. … the church is literally dying.”

– This opinion-piece by Margaret Wente in The Globe & Mail on The United Church of Canada has a similar tone to several articles published recently. See also:

The Dark Night in Denver — groping for answers

Albert Mohler reflects on the tragic events in Colorado –

“The Fall released human moral evil into the cosmos, and every single human being is a sinner, tempted by a full range of sinfulness. When someone does something as seemingly unthinkable as this, we often question how anyone could do such a thing. …” – Read it all here.

Related, an opinion-piece on movie violence written in 2008 – ‘Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows’.

Three lessons from crisis and decline in the mainline denominations

Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Alabama, draws three lessons from the crisis in TEC and other denominations –

“1. There is an intrinsic connection between spiritual vitality and theological integrity.
2. The continuing saga and approaching collapse of mainline denominations should prompt us to pray.
3. Evangelicals have no room to boast or gloat over the ‘sickness unto death’ in the mainlines.”

– full article at The Gospel Coalition.

A measure of security in an insecure world

“Australians, Field Marshall Thomas Blamey commented about the time of the outbreak of WW2, were like gazelles playing on the edge of a jungle, completely oblivious to the dangers all around. He spoke those words in the shadow of the greatest threat Australia had ever faced.

Things are not that critical as I write but I think we Australians still take for granted something that it has cost generations of Australian Servicemen and Women in peace and war a great deal to protect. That is the security that we are so inclined to take for granted. …”

– Geoff Webb, Principal Chaplain Army, writes about security – both temporal and eternal – at Defence Anglicans.

Pokies: Who cares?

“I remain sickened by the tragedy upon tragedy caused by poker machine gambling. What needs to happen for our political leaders to act in compassion on this matter? State Governments gamble life and lives away through their support of poker machine gambling – often deceptively referred to as ‘gaming’ [Oh, Please!].…”

– Bishop of Tasmania John Harrower pleads with political leaders to act.

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