What does it mean to be Anglican? III
“The Anglican inheritance in both doctrine and church practice is irrevocably tied to the cause of the Protestant Reformation. For all its insistence that it is genuinely catholic, that it was not another church set up as an alternative to that existing at the time but rather the true church reformed, the English church from which worldwide Anglicanism has grown was unambiguously Protestant. …”
– ACL President Dr Mark Thompson continues his posts on What does it mean to be Anglican?
Charles Raven on Burying the Bad News
This week a spokesman for Fulcrum, the ‘open’ evangelical’ grouping the in the Church of England, has claimed that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will fragment the Church of England, weaken its structures and polarise debate. Many might think that as far as the first two charges are concerned, the Church of England has been managing to bring these about quite effectively on its own without any help from the FCA in Great Britain and Ireland, but Kuhrt claims that the FCA needs to ‘bury good news’ and to substantiate this he buries the bad news. Read more
Why I praise God for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans
“The launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (UK and Ireland) on 6 July was an answer to my prayers.
I had feared that orthodox Anglicans, who share a common commitment to the essentials of our faith and a concern about departures from it within the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion, would spend more energy disagreeing over their different strategies for the defence and proclamation of the gospel than in supporting one another and working together for Christ in our church and nation. GAFCON gave me a glimpse of another possibility:…”
– Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford, writes in The Church of England Newspaper – reproduced at Anglican Mainstream.
(GAFCON photo by Joy Gwaltney.)
Scripture marginalised?
Bishop of South Sydney, Rob Forsyth, seeks to provoke discussion on reading Holy Scripture in church – over at SydneyAnglicans.net.
(And Allan Dowthwaite provides a link to Clifford Warne’s classic talk on The Art of Reading Aloud.)
Photo: Russell Powell.
Evangelism is not proselytism
“‘Mission’, ‘evangelism’ (and ‘evangelization’) and ‘proselytism’ are often muddled by speakers and this results in confusion and conjecture…”
– Bishop of Tasmania John Harrower points out the difference.
Episcopalians Deceived
“Those who wonder why the Episcopal Church Church accepted such a radical revision of the historic Book of Common Prayer in 1979 might profit from reading an article at episcopalnet.org: ‘How Episcopalians were Deceived’, by Francis W. Read, written for the New Oxford Review in 1981. He reveals that the authors of the new book resorted to deception in order to introduce a new theology into the church, ignoring their critics and lying about their true intent…”
– Roberta Bayer, Editor of Mandate, published by the Prayer Book Society in the USA. See her article on page 9 of this PDF file. She refers to this: How Episcopalians Were Deceived.
Christian radio and the gospel
Moody Bible Institute graduate and radio feature producer Paul Butler reports on a look at Christian radio in the US, and asks what is really Christian about much of it.
While the territory is not quite the same in Australia, the questions raised could be put equally well to Christians at work or at home – are we really any different?
Hear the two segments of the programme at Paul Butler’s Production Blog. (h/t Justin Taylor.)
Anglican Identity and Mission paper
Last month, Bishop Robert Forsyth spoke at the Anglican Identity and Mission Conference in Adelaide.
“We have a crisis in which some Anglicans have removed themselves from the Anglican Churches of their provinces or dioceses, claiming that in doing so they, not the province or diocese, embody Anglican identity. Or at least are still really Anglican despite the breach with their bishop or national church. Are they? How would we go about answering that question?”
The paper he presented is now available here as a PDF file.
As well, the Diocese of Adelaide’s Guardian (PDF file) has a report (pages 4 & 5) on the conference. (With thanks to Rob Forsyth. Photo: The Guardian.)
The need for GAFCON
“The immediate cause for GAFCON was the invitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams to those who had consecrated Gene Robinson as a Bishop to attend the Lambeth Conference. This invitation was sent in July 2007, and the timing was significant as I will show later.
Following this invitation, Archbishop Peter Akinola made a visit in October 2007 at his own expense to London to meet with Archbishop Rowan Williams to ask him most seriously to delay the Lambeth Conference until the issue of the consecration of Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church could be resolved. When Archbishop Williams proved immovable on this certain things became crystal clear to Archbishop Akinola and his colleagues. …”
– Chris Sugden spoke at last week’s launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Southern Africa. Read the full text at Anglican Mainstream.
A New Evangelical Anglican Vision?
“Just this past term I have had the great pleasure of co-teaching – with Professor Ashley Null, the renowned Cranmer scholar – a MA unit offered here at Moore College entitled ‘Anglican Identity’. In it we made careful study of the development of the English reformation and the works of leading figures like Fisher, Cranmer and Hooker.
A highlight was reading the moving testimony of Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII, to her conversion to the gospel of justification by faith.
I was curious, however, as to why so few Sydney clergy thought this was a subject that might interest them, or that the study of the founding documents of our denomination might be well worth their while…
More than ever, we need to renew our vision of what it means to be an evangelical Anglican. My conviction is that not only is being evangelical the most authentic way of being Anglican – we’ve been saying that for years – but also that being Anglican is a great way of being evangelical.”
– Read Michael Jensen’s full post at The Blogging Parson.
Tea or Tanks on the Lambeth Palace Lawn?
“This week, seven ‘Communion Partner’ bishops from The Episcopal Church made a private visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury. We might well imagine them enjoying a cup of tea in the Lambeth Palace gardens and little more imagination is needed to guess the reason for their call…”
– Charles Raven’s latest piece on events in the Anglican Communion may be found at SPREAD.
Related: Canterbury hosts seven Episcopal bishops for private meeting – from EpiscopalLifeOnline.
Moralism is not the gospel
“Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the Gospel to a message of moral improvement. In other words, we communicate to lost persons the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.…”
– Albert Mohler writes on the very real danger of preaching a false gospel.
The Nameless One
Carl Trueman writes about the ‘young, restless and reformed movement’ – and more – at Reformation21. –
“One striking and worrying aspect of the movement is how personality oriented it is. It is identified with certain big names, rather than creeds, confessions, denominations, or even local congregations…
Often cults of personality can degenerate in short order into cults, pure and simple, especially when every word of the guru figure becomes virtual Holy Writ…”
Update:
Tim Challies writes of this article –
“I had something else to post today but wanted to put it on hold for a day or two so I can draw your attention to what I consider a very important article… In the past few months I’ve sat down again and again to write out some of my thoughts about the whole Young, Restless, Reformed movement we are experiencing today. But never have I quite been able to convey my thoughts on it as clearly and succinctly as I’d like. I’ve wanted to share both praise for what God is doing and misgivings for what I think we, the church, are doing poorly. Never was I able to strike the balance, so I just left it rotting in my drafts folder.
Trueman, though, has nailed it. …”
815’s Day of Reckoning approaches
(‘815’ is the nickname for the TEC’s headquarters at 815 Second Avenue, New York.)
“[San Joaquin, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Quincy] are the four dioceses which have thus far voted to leave the Church, and each departure has spawned a lawsuit. ECUSA from the beginning has adopted a high-stakes, winner-take-all strategy which depends for its success on its ability to prove in court the proposition that a diocese is not free to withdraw from the voluntary unincorporated association which ECUSA has been since its formation at common law in 1789…
The fact is that ECUSA has never – until now – had to prove its unwritten prohibition against leaving in a court of law. But there are four court cases currently pending in which it will have to do so, sooner or later…”
– Christian lawyer A.S. Haley writes at Anglican Curmudgeon.
Image adapted from the TEC donation website.
Davies and Spong agree
“It is not often that I find myself in agreement with Bishop Jack Spong.
According to the Church of England Newspaper report of 21 August, the former Bishop of Newark has rejected Presiding Bishop Katharine Schori’s contention that nothing had changed as a result of the 76th General Convention’s votes on gay bishops and blessings…”
– Bishop of North Sydney, Glenn Davies, writes at SydneyAnglicans.net.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…