The Influence of Liberalism upon Evangelicalism — ‘the Curate’s Egg’
“When a term is used frequently enough it can become over used and so end up being abused. We may think, for example, of the word, ‘awesome’. A mobile phone can now be described as ‘awesome’ and pretty soon everything is awesome which means nothing is so. We have a similar problem with the term ‘evangelical’. It can now mean little more than indicating that one prefers guitars to organs in public worship…”
– Church Society has just reprinted this 2007 Churchman article (PDF file) by Melvin Tinker.
As Night follows Day?
“The premise is wrong, the logic is wrong and the conclusion is wrong, but who cares so long as we can make the Bible say what we want it to say?”
– Church Society’s David Philips on the slippery-slope of making the Bible teach whatever you want. (90kb PDF file.) From the Autumn 2009 edition of Cross†Way.
Where now, after October 20th?
“As long ago as 1971, Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote a book titled, What is an Evangelical? John Stott addressed the same issue in 1977, as did Mark Thompson as recently as 1995 in a book titled Saving the Heart? subtitled, What is an evangelical?
However, in recent years the evangelical identity has become even more diffuse, even within Anglicanism…”
– John Richardson gave this address at Forward in Faith’s Manchester branch last weekend. (It was on October 20th that the Vatican made its offer to Anglo-Catholics.)
‘ABC outdoes BBC’
– says Russell Powell in his weekly roundup of media stories at SydneyAnglicans.net.
Has ‘the Anglican Experiment’ really failed?
Charles Raven: “The Anglican Communion crisis is not about Anglicanism in itself, but a crisis of faithfulness. Failure to maintain Anglicanism’s doctrinal and moral integrity precipitated GAFCON and is the root cause of the Pope’s offer of the Ordinariate.”
– Charles Raven responds to a statement by Forward in Faith UK’s Chairman (and also Bishop of Fulham), John Broadhurst, that ‘the Anglican experiment is over’. At SPREAD.
(Photo of Bishop Broadhurst: Diocese of Fulham.)
Responsible gambling?
Opinion from Peter Brain, Bishop of Armidale –
“From time to time I enjoyed watching Friday night football on the telly (quite an admission from one brought up on the other rugby!)
What surprised me was the statement by the commentators (at half-time, I think it was) that advised us that we could ‘get $1.18 for St George and $4 for Parramatta by ‘phoning … – but please remember to gamble responsibly.’ Read more
What Will Rowan Do?
“What will Rowan do?” That’s the question posed by Bishop David C. Anderson President of the American Anglican Council as he reviews this week’s moves by the Vatican:
Beloved in Christ,
The news that has overtaken much of the Christian media (and a good bit of the secular as well) is the announcement from Rome that they are opening up a personal prelature for orthodox Anglicans. This would allow Anglicans to maintain much of their liturgy and custom, and for many of the Anglican clergy, it would offer the option of becoming a Roman Catholic priest. Read more
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s solution?
From the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – 23 October 2009.
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which has previously been denounced by liberals of ‘splitting’ the Anglican Communion, could be the solution for an Archbishop of Canterbury who wants to keep ‘Orthodox’ Anglicans within the Church. Read more
Richard Bewes: 50 years ago and now
John Richardson has posted this thoughtful article by Richard Bewes on contending for the faith – then and now.
“Do you know, life was altogether more simple when I was ordained! The evangelical intake in September 1959 numbered about seven percent of the total.
Who were we? What were we? Nothing, in the minds of the wider church. It was Backs to the Wall for us despised evangelicals…
It was really in 1962 – with Honest to God – that true battle began.”
Richard Bewes was Rector of All Souls, Langham Place until late 2004 and has also served as Chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council. (Photo: RichardBewes.com.)
Desperate bishops invited Rome to park its tanks on Archbishop’s lawn
“Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lawn after manoeuvres undertaken by up to fifty bishops and begun two years ago by an Australian archbishop, John Hepworth.
As leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a breakaway group claiming to represent up to 400,000 laity worldwide, he went to Rome seeking a means to achieve full, visible unity for his flock…”
– Ruth Gledhill writes in Times Online. Related: Traditional Anglican Communion website
(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury’s website.)
What does it mean to be Anglican? IV
Mark Thompson continues his series –
“Anglicanism is both genuinely catholic and unambiguously Protestant. But what type of Protestantism is embedded in the Anglican formularies — Lutheran, Reformed or Anabaptist?…”
– read it all at Mark’s blog, Theological Theology.
Theological Education: the Next Battlefield
Mark Thompson, Academic Dean of Moore College and also President of the ACL, writes about a challenge we need to be aware of –
“Strategic thinking, generous support and courageous initiatives are needed now.”
It should come as a surprise to no-one that theological education has emerged as a new battleground in the war against liberal revisionism. The leaders of liberal churches such as The Episcopal Church in America, reeling at the resistance their program of revision has encountered from the Global South and conservative elements in the West, have embarked on an ambitious plan to win the long term struggle by taking charge of the agenda for Anglican theological education and infiltrating seminaries in the two-thirds world. Read more
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.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…