On shooting oneself in the foot

A.S. Haley last week reflected on the consequences of the imminent consecration of Mary Glasspool –

“The image of a ham-fisted gunslinger, unable to keep from pulling the trigger before he can draw his Colt .45 from its holster, fits ECUSA to a T. It has recklessly ridden into the middle of the Anglican Communion and proceeded to shoot the place up, just as in a Hollywood grade-B Western. While everyone else ducks and runs for cover, ECUSA whoops it up, gets drunk on its cheap imitations of Scripture, and tosses its collective miter in the air to celebrate its raucous belligerence. It is still big and powerful enough to do considerable damage, but it is the rest of the Communion who will have to pick up the pieces.

Meanwhile, the local sheriff hides away in his home, and announces that just as soon as the bully has left, he will sponsor another round of indaba at the local saloon. Talk will go on, accomplishing nothing, but what the sheriff has not noticed is that there are fewer and fewer people at the table.”

– read it all at The Anglican Curmudgeon.

It’s getting dangerous out there — a preacher is arrested in Britain

“We have seen this coming for some time now. The public space has been closing, especially when it comes to Christian speech — and especially when that speech is about homosexuality.

Now, a Christian preacher has been arrested in Britain for the crime of saying in public that homosexuality is a sin. This arrest is more than a news event — it is a signal of things to come and an announcement of a new public reality…”

– Albert Mohler on the wider significance of the arrest of street preacher Dale McAlpine.

The AAC’s Bishop Bill Atwood on GSE4

30 April 2010

“And it shall be, on the day when you cross over the Jordan to the land which the Lord your God is giving you,that you shall set up for yourselves large stones, and whitewash them with lime. You shall write on them all the words of this law, when you have crossed over, that you may enter the land which the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord God of your fathers promised you.” – Deuteronomy 27:2-3

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Clearly, when the Jews left the wilderness and crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land, their struggles were not over. They still had many challenges and battles to fight, but the passage of crossing the Jordan was a tremendously important one, and the Lord called them to mark it with large stones.

The Fourth Global South Encounter (GSE4) that was just held in Singapore was a huge passage for many, but particularly so for the Anglican Church in North America. I have noted with interest that some people have expressed great disappointment with the lack of “action,” but I’d like to suggest that they may have missed some points of tremendous significance.   Read more

‘Why we always lose this debate’

“I’m convinced that we continue to lose the argument about homosexuality and Christianity because the traditionalist almost always makes his case within a conversation that has been framed by the opposing viewpoint. The Christian doesn’t lose the argument at the micro-level. The argument is lost from the beginning because of how the discussion is framed…”

– Trevin Wax, author of Holy Subversion, reflects on an appearance on Larry King Live on CNN last week. (h/t Tim Challies.)

Singapore: Shadow and Substance

Charles Raven writes on the significance of GSE4 – at SPREAD.

“Although not attended by great fanfare and ceremony, something quite remarkable seems to be happening in Singapore at the fourth Global South to South Encounter. We are seeing the emergence of a global Anglicanism of substance, displacing the shadow Anglicanism of institutional pragmatism.

Institutions which until recently had the appearance of substance – the Anglican Consultative Council, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself – are now taking on an unreal quality as shadows of a discredited past while the GAFCON movement, dismissed by many at its inception in 2008, is turning out to have foreshadowed a fundamental realignment which is now beginning to express itself in new structures…” (more.)

(Note: Charles Raven has updated the text of his commentary slightly on his website.)

Why the National Curriculum Must include the Bible

“Dousing the fire and brimstone of politics for a moment, the question has to be asked: Why?

Why shouldn’t elements of the Bible be taught in public schools? It has had an unparalleled impact on Western culture, history, music, the arts, politics, morality, law and literature.

Are we embarrassed about our country’s foundations or, worse, have we become intellectual cowards?…”

– Scott Monk in a thoughtful opinion piece in Quadrant Online. (h/t Andrew Cameron.)

Rowan Williams on the uniqueness of Christ

“On 2 March Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a lecture in Guildford, England entitled ‘The Finality of Christ in a Pluralist World’. It presents as a meditation on John 14:5–6 and Acts 4:8–13…”

– So, exactly what does the Archbishop of Canterbury say about the uniqueness of Christ? See what ACL President Mark Thompson thinks – at Theological Theology.

‘Canonically Permissible Graciousness’

“…on May 15 the Presiding Bishop intends to do the very thing that the Joint Standing Committee — on which she serves — urged the Episcopal Church not to do. …

… even a rudimentary grasp of Jesus’ admonition to “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matt. 5:37) highlights a conflict between the Episcopal Church’s rhetoric of reconciliation and autonomous actions.”

– from an editorial in The Living Church.

(Photo taken at the November 2008 Joint Standing Committee meeting: ACNS Rosenthal.)

Where do we go from here? — Fulcrum

The leadership team of Fulcrum, the Church of England’s ‘open evangelical’ group seems to have accepted the reality of the situation in the Anglican Communion in a post on their website –

“The bishops and Standing Committees of The Episcopal Church (USA) have consented to the election of Mary Glasspool as bishop suffragan in the diocese of Los Angeles. That consent sadly confirms that TEC is determined to ignore all the repeated appeals of the wider Communion and, in the closing words of The Windsor Report, ‘walk apart’…

It is important that this is not simply a matter of disagreement about biblical interpretation and sexual ethics although these are central and important. It is now very clearly also a fundamental matter of truth-telling and trust.”

– Read the full article.

And John Richardson comments: ‘Fulcrum: their challenge to Canterbury and the challenge they must face’.

“Understandably, the statement is at pains to recognise Rowan Williams’s past efforts. Yet it is remarkably frank in the call it now makes upon him…”

(Photo courtesy ACNS/Rosenthal.)

God, Sex, and ‘Christianity Lite’

Albert Mohler:

“A project of theological revisionism is easy to start, but hard to stop. Like a spreading acid, theological liberalism moves from one doctrine to the next, developing patterns of argument that arise over and over again.”

– from his latest blog posting.

And then it’s worth re-reading Mark Thompson’s ‘The Anglican Debacle: Roots and Patterns’:

“It is increasingly clear that the gospel of salvation by the cross and resurrection of Jesus, with its call to faith and repentance has been replaced in some quarters by a liberal gospel of universal reconciliation, what some call ‘the gospel of inclusion’…”

TEC reaps the whirlwind

“Well it is now official: The Episcopal Church (TEC), a province of Anglican dioceses in the USA (and some neighbouring countries) has declared that it doesn’t care what the vast majority of the Anglican Communion believes to be the teaching of the Bible concerning sexuality. It simply does not care…”

– Bishop Glenn Davies writes at SydneyAnglicans.net.

Related: The TEC Diocese of Central New York, which evicted the Church of the Good Shepherd at 74 Conklin Avenue in Binghamton, appears to have found a new use for (at least some of) the empty building. (Earlier posts.)

Do Your friends know what Easter means?

“In Raised With Christ I argue that many have never heard the real gospel of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Today I share with you some research that demonstrates the truth of this.

Quite simply this is strong evidence that we are not speaking about the resurrection enough…”

– Adrian Warnock (in the UK) writes about the latest US research.

Do our Australian friends know what Easter means?

Don’t Be Afraid

Even though Australians are unaffected by US health care reform, Russell Moore (at Southern Baptist Seminary) has some great advice.

“The United States House of Representatives just passed a health care reform bill that I and lots of other Christians opposed. Such legislation should concern us. There are some bad consequences for the weakest and most vulnerable among us, principally unborn children. But should it also concern us that so many of us are talking today about how afraid we are?…”

– Read it all here.

Preachers who don’t believe

“‘Preachers Who Are Not Believers’ is a stunning and revealing report that lays bare a level of heresy, apostasy, and hypocrisy that staggers the mind …”

– Albert Mohler says that this report – written by a ‘new athest’ – is a wake-up call to the church.

Related: Vanishing Christianity — A Lesson from the Presbyterians.

No faith in their hatred

“The Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne last weekend worked a miracle on me. I’ve never felt more like believing in God. Especially the Christian one.

My near conversion occurred because the convention’s speakers managed to confirm my worst fear.

No, it’s not that God may actually exist, and be cross that I doubted. It’s that if the Christian God really is dead, then there’s not much to stop people here from being barbarians. …”

– Andrew Bolt, columnist with the Herald-Sun in Melbourne.

Importantly, see also the preview of Peter Hitchens, “The Rage Against God” – at Between Two Worlds. (Peter Hitchens is Christopher Hitchens’ brother.)

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