From the Files: To Lambeth or not?
Decisions about the Lambeth Conference have not been made in haste. Here’s news from our website from one year ago –
“Standing Committee … respectfully requests the Archbishop of this diocese to communicate to the Archbishop of Canterbury our dissatisfaction at the attempt to maintain union with the unrepentant while continuing to refuse fellowship to faithful and orthodox Anglicans such as the Church of England in South Africa …”
Read this excerpt from the minutes of the Standing Committee of Sydney Diocese on 25th June 2007 – Read more
Phillip Jensen on the Anglican family
You can’t split a marshmallow. You can melt it. You can even cut it. But, marshmallows are too malleable to be split. Something has to be brittle to split.
So there will be no split in Anglicanism. It is just not the kind of thing that is open to splitting.
The heat of the society in which we operate may melt us. Outside forces can even cut into us. But we have no mechanism to split even if we had the desire to do so.
Here is the strange strength and weakness of Anglicanism. Having resisted the tyranny of Roman rule, Anglicanism could not replace it with Lambeth rule. Thus each national church is free to follow the Lord Jesus in their own culture. Read more
‘Hard-line bishops make a mess of it in the Holy Land’
“If it was being held in a brewery, it’s a fair bet that the organisers of the supposedly greatest threat to authority in the Church since the Reformation would not be feeling particularly tipsy. …”
– This piece, by George Pitcher in The Telegraph in the UK, ably demonstrates that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Another chilling precedent
A recent court decision in Canada should send chills down every parent’s spine. The ruling is so out of bounds that the news story sounds like a parody – but it isn’t. A Canadian judge ruled that a 12-year-old girl was “excessively” punished when her father told her she could not go on a school camping trip because she had broken rules for use of the Internet. …
– from Al Mohler’s blog.
Holy smoke! What a headline!
Again and again, we need to stress that newspaper reporters rarely, if ever, write the headlines for their stories.
I mention this because of a stunning headline in The Telegraph about the pre-Lambeth strategy meeting that conservatives are having right now in Jerusalem (after making a quick exit from Jordan, for complicated and perhaps political reasons). There are many complex angles to the Global Anglican Future Conference, or GAFCON, which is why this particular headline simply leaps off the page:
Anglican church schism declared over homosexuality
– Terry Mattingly at GetReligion comments on some of the more sensational reports about GAFCON.
First-hand account of the Lakeland ‘revival’
There’s a great deal of buzz in some circles about a so-called ‘healing outpouring’ taking place in Florida under the leadership of one Todd Bentley. His daily revival meetings are being shown across the US on ‘God TV’ and include claims of healings and resurrections. For those who may be aware of these events, this first-hand account by Justin Peters (pictured) of one meeting is worth hearing.
Justin was interviewed on Way of the Master Radio in California on Tuesday. While the style of programming might not be to the liking of all, the interview – starting 37 minutes into this mp3 audio file (direct link – 12MB) – is illuminating.
See also our earlier post on Justin Peters’ seminars on Word of Faith preachers.
23 Minutes in Hell – a review
No, it’s not an experience of a particularly bad sermon – Tim Challies reviews a sure-to-be-popular book –
I suppose it was inevitable that, with a bestselling book describing an author’s “90 Minutes in Heaven,” one would soon follow detailing a journey to hell. Sure enough, Bill Wiese follows Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven with his own 23 Minutes in Hell.
Wiese’s story is simple. One night, while sleeping, he was transported to hell. There God showed him hell in all its horror and terror. He was thrown into a barred cell, he was abused by demons, he was shown lakes of fire, and he saw people suffering torment. After a brief visit with Jesus, he was transported back to earth in order to tell people that Jesus is returning soon and to assure them that hell is a real place (and one that exists in the center of the earth, apparently). Wiese’s hell seems to be equally influenced by the works of Ray Comfort, Mary Baxter and Gary Larson. …
– Already available in Australia at some Christian bookshops. Read the review at Discerning Reader.
Beyond homophobia
Dr. Andrew Cameron of Moore College has written a thoughtful and helpful piece, “Beyond homophobia”, Briefing #076 for the Social Issues Executive of the Diocese of Sydney.
You can read it at the SIE website.
Should orthodox C of E bishops still go to Lambeth?
Four Episcopal dioceses, three in California and the Diocese of El Camino Real, have come out with ringing endorsements of the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling on same-sex marriages. …
There is little doubt that the behaviour of these bishops, in this regard, renders them unacceptable to any council of Christian bishops. Can you imagine the Council of Jerusalem or the Council Nicaea sitting down with these bishops? The question must be raised, on what grounds are the orthodox Bishops prepared to meet with them in this fashion? – David Virtue at VirtueOnline.
‘Gay wedding’ liturgy analysed
This is the first of a series of posts looking at the news this morning that a London Anglican Clergyman “married” two other male priests in a ceremony that mimicked marriage.
This post looks at the liturgy used in that service and compares it to a BCP marriage service to show that the explanation that this was only intented to be “a blessing” is specious.”
– from Peter Ould in the UK (hat tip to Anglican Mainstream).
Update: Peter has followed with a second post – on the theology of the service:
“This leads us to a problem with the liturgy that not only demonstrates how its actions runs counter to Scripture, but also presents a significant issue for the Church of England to address if no disciplinary action is taken on those who carried it out. Having identical vows for both partners of a same-sex marriage, while at the same time drawing on the Ephesians 5 model for those vows, implies that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding in the church’s application of Ephesians 5 up to this point. The BCP service indicates clearly that the sexual distinctiveness of the two partners is critical to understanding the mystery of the sexual union of the spouses – the gay union liturgy implies that it is not.”
Note also the video of this BBC interview with the Rev. Martin Dudley, who conducted the service.
The Tragedy of 1662
Lee Gatiss, Co-ordinator of Reform London, spoke last month about the persecution and ejection of the Puritans from the Church of England in 1662, and the lessons we can learn from those events.
The talk is 35 minutes long (it is preceded by a 6 minute introduction to Reform London). Download it from Reform London at this page. Direct link to the 14.1MB mp3 file.
Also available on the same page is the audio of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (at the same meeting) speaking informally on the uniqueness of Christ, GAFCON and the future of the Church of England. Direct link to that 19MB mp3 file here.
Plan to Plant Conference, Saturday July 26
“You may be an experienced church planter, or someone who really wants to be.
You may want to start new ministries in a sub-culture or in a new way.
You may be a part of a larger team or working by yourself.
You may have no ideas or be full of them… but if you want to be stimulated by others who are currently multiplying Gospel ministry – you need to be here.”
Martin Morgan, from Rouse Hill Anglican Churches in Sydney’s west, invites you to a day for all who want to multiply gospel ministries.
Saturday 26th July 2008 at Rouse Hill. Download a leaflet for details.
Run to win the Prize – Tom Schreiner
Professor Tom Schreiner from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, spoke at the Oak Hill School of Theology in London last month. His topic? “Run to win the prize – The nature of warnings in New Testament theology”.
Our friends at Oak Hill have generously made the audio files of the talks available – on the Oak Hill website.
The M’Cheyne daily Bible reading calendar
Need encouragement to read the Bible regularly? Ben Edgington has made available Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s daily Bible reading calendar in several formats.
Links to PDF files and an online interactive version are linked from this page at www.edginet.org. (There’s another online version here.)
From the Files: Peter Jensen on GAFCON
In December 2007, shortly after GAFCON was announced, Archbishop Peter Jensen wrote this about the meeting –
“The Anglican Future Conference is not designed to take the place of Lambeth. Some people may well choose to go to both. Its aim is to draw Biblical Anglican Christians together for urgent consultation. It is not a consultation which can take place at Lambeth, because Lambeth has a different agenda and far wider guest list. Unlike Lambeth, the Future Conference is not for Bishops alone – the invitations will go to clergy and lay people also. But it is a meeting which accepts the current reality of a Communion in disarray over fundamental issues of the gospel and biblical authority. …”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…