Ecclesiastical Fascism Rearing its Head
“The fictional ‘abandonment of communion’ used by revisionist Episcopal bishops to deny and dump orthodox priests has now become a standard mantra by those who want to retain power and repress those who would uphold the faith, demanding that they accept the church’s new fangled theology, and bless same-sex marriages…”
This week’s commentary by US-based Kiwi David Virtue.
Paul, Peter and moderate Baptists
Former president Jimmy Carter convened a large assembly of moderate and liberal Baptists in Atlanta a few weeks ago, meeting under the banner of a “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant”…
Tragically, however, these Baptists do not even agree on the Gospel. … while there was a call for unity around the Gospel and even appeals to spread the Good News, a breakout session demonstrated the lack of clarity, to be as charitable as possible, concerning the nature of Gospel.
– Opinion piece by James A. Smith on Baptist Press. (Any lessons for Anglicans here?)
(Photo of former President Clinton, who was also present, from the New Baptist Covenant.)
Fathers and Sons
Os Guinness seeks to set the record straight about Francis and Edith Schaeffer by critiquing Frank Schaeffer’s book ‘Crazy for God’ –
“I have never met anyone anywhere like Francis Schaeffer, who took God so passionately seriously, people so passionately seriously, and truth so passionately seriously. The combination was dynamite … The idea that such a man was ‘crazy for God,’ let alone a two-faced con man, is and will always be utterly anathema to me. I was there. I saw otherwise, and I and many of my friends have been marked for life. …”
The review is available in Books & Culture at ChristianityToday.com.
“Arrogant Archbishop’s protest conference ignores own advice”
“Prelates such as Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen demonstrate considerable arrogance by holding their protest conference in Jerusalem against the wishes of its bishop, Suheil Dawani. …
Dawani is closely involved with efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East, to which he gives a higher priority than the theological squabble over homosexuality. …”
– An unsympathetic opinion-piece in The Sunday Canberra Times.
However see Archbishop Peter Jensen’s statement to the Standing Committee of Sydney Diocese about that “theological squabble”.
And in a report about the Diocese of Kentucky’s annual Convention, the whole debate is characterised as “a family argument”.
Why GAFCON?: The Anglican Communion over the past year
“Criticisms have been directed against GAFCON, many of them by those considered to be conservatives. And these criticisms are not to be ignored. But for the Global South and their allies, no real alternative to GAFCON is evident, given two factors.
The first is the evasiveness of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in responding to the communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting of February 2007.
The second, no less compelling, is Canterbury’s undercutting of the Primates’ Meeting and of the Primates themselves, apparently to avoid rejection of the HOB response. By way of giving grounds for this view, this article traces the sequence of events giving rise to GAFCON. …”
Read the rest of this analysis by the Rev. Theodore L. Lewis, Theologian in Residence at All Saints’ Church, Chevy Chase, Maryland, on VirtueOnline.
An Unfortunate Draft
“The fundamental weakness of the Covenant, as many have pointed out, has been the decision not to push for an agreement on theological foundations as either a part of the Covenant document itself or as a necessary corollary to it. As it stands the Covenant is simply a way of relating. It is a structure founded on a process that exists for the sake of the structure. …”
Matt Kennedy at Stand Firm suggests that the draft Anglican Covenant can only legitimise heresy.
Thinking theologically about the UK debate
“But there is a second reason why Rowan Williams was theologically wrong, and that is that the Christian approach to Muslims should surely be neither to bring them further under the laws of Islam, nor to offer them the scraps from the table of modern secularism, but to offer them the gospel.”
John Richardson gets to the heart of the issue on
The Ugley Vicar.
Spot the difference? Why Rowan said so much about Islam and Sharia
“Right now I’m feeling rather less sympathetic towards Rowan Williams than I was on Friday night.
The reason is this. Go to the Archbishop’s website, as I (and doubtless many others) did in the wake of the controversy in the press, for the text of his talk …”
Read the full comments from John Richardson on Ugley Vicar. See also this opinion piece from The Spectator.
(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury’s website.)
Orthodox attendance at Lambeth would give wrong impression
Dr. Chik Kaw Tan, a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, has written to the Church of England Newspaper –
“If orthodox bishops really believe that Anglicanism as practised in many parts of the Western world is a denial of Scripture and is inconsistent with apostolic teachings, then they cannot, indeed must not, share communion with the leaders of that new pseudo-Christian religion. On that count, I cannot but express my highest regard for those primates and bishops who choose, at great personal cost, not to attend Lambeth 2008. …”
Text of the full letter is worth reading at Anglican Mainstream.
(Photo credit: Jim Rosenthal, Anglican World.)
Bishop John Rodgers interviewed
Bishop John Rodgers, one of the founders of AMiA and Interim Dean and President of TSM, has been interviewed on his hopes for the Anglican Communion:
“We have assumed we are part of a global Anglicanism that is true and good and turned a blind eye to its actual condition. We have been idolatrous about the Anglican Communion. The truth is that for us to be faithful Anglicans we can no longer be simply identified with the present Anglican Communion. It must be reformed or divided.”
Read the full interview on VirtueOnline.
Bishop Jones’ Exegesis: from here to wherever
The great thing about the knight in the game of chess is that it can jump intervening squares and pieces to get from one location to another. This is what gives the knight its attacking power. I think it was Anthony Hoekema, however, who coined the phrase ‘knight’s jump exegesis’ to describe the way some people jump from one part of the Bible to another to ‘prove’ their point.
Hoekema argued that Jehovah’s Witnesses do this with regard to, for example, the date of Christ’s return (somewhat overdue by now, on their reckoning). Unfortunately, as was reported in today’s Guardian newspaper, something like this has now also been done by the Rt Revd James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool…
Read John Richardson’s analysis in The Ugley Vicar.
Food for thought
“…even assuming that there will be a remnant of Evangelicals at Lambeth … the 70% who will be there represent a MINORITY of Anglicans worldwide, while the 30% of bishops attending GAFCON represent 70% or more…”
From a Viewpoint article by Anglican journalist David Virtue.
What is Anglicanism? – Archbishop Orombi
This 2007 essay by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, Anglican Archbishop of Uganda is well worth reading:
“We would not be facing the crisis in the Anglican Communion if we had upheld the basic Reformation convictions about Holy Scripture: its primacy, clarity, sufficiency, and unity. Part of the genius of the Reformation was its insistence that the Word of God and the liturgy be in the language of the people — that the Bible could be read and understood by the simplest plowboy. The insistence from some Anglican circles (mostly in the Western world) on esoteric interpretations of Scripture borders on incipient Gnosticism that has no place in historic or global Anglicanism. …”
Read the full text at First Things.
Who is running the Anglican Communion?
“Readers of the Anglican Communion Office’s website might begin to wonder who is running the Anglican Communion. …
Curious… that the ACO website lists the Diocese of San Joaquin as ‘vacant’ – curious, because it isn’t. …”
John Richardson is perplexed – at Anglican Mainstream.
J I Packer on the state of the Anglican Communion
Widely respected theologian J I Packer has spoken about the current state of the Anglican Communion in an interview with VirtueOnline.
“I expect congregations in TEC and the ACIC being fed on liberal theology will continue to wither on the vine as they have done for the last half century. Liberal theology, without the gospel, proves to be the smell of death rather than of life.”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…