Christian organisations campaigning against helping Christians flee the Middle East genocide?

“In the USA a terrible tragedy is happening. A nation that was founded by Christians fleeing religious persecution is tearing itself apart over its new president ordering the US refugee system to prioritise religious minorities fleeing persecution. Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy faces Christian refugees fleeing genocide in the Middle East.…”

– An editorial from Barnabas Fund. (via Anglican Mainstream.)

Canterbury Cathedral to host Service for Freemasons

“Canterbury Cathedral is hosting a service to “celebrate” 300 years of Freemasonry after receiving a donation from the Masons of £300,000. The Duke of Kent, who is the Grand Master of the Freemasons, will be among those attending the special service of thanksgiving on 18 February. …”

– Could be a wonderful opportunity. (Photo: Canterbury Cathedral.)

GAFGON Chairman’s February 2017 letter

“It seems … that the Church of England bishops have recommended the right thing for the wrong reason. They have retained the Church’s traditional teaching, but because they think that holding opposite views together will eventually produce a consensus, not because it represents an apostolic boundary.”

– from Archbishop Okoh’s February 2017 letter to GAFCON supporters.

GAFCON Statement on TEC voting in Lusaka

Here is a statement from GAFCON General Secretary, Dr. Peter Jensen:

“The agreement from the January Primates meeting in 2016 was broken when The Episcopal Church (TEC) took part in decision making on issues pertaining to polity and doctrine in Lusaka. Equally damaging, was an attempt by the Anglican Communion Office to deny the fact by claiming that, technically, the process included no formal votes. This is sophistry.

The Primates agreement in January was never limited to the narrow issue of the method of voting. It said that ‘[The Episcopal Church] will not to take part in decision making on issues pertaining to polity or doctrine.’ [Primates 2016 Communique]

Whether a meeting uses a consensus model, or a voice vote, or paper ballots, or electronic ballots is of no relevance. The Episcopal Church was not to take part in decision making on issues pertaining to polity or doctrine. They did.

As the GAFCON Primates Council has said: ‘The future of the Anglican Communion does not lie with manipulations, compromises, legal loopholes, or the presentation of half-truths; the future of our Communion lies in humble obedience to the truth of the Word of God written.’ [Gafcon Primates Communique, April 2016]

Archbishop Peter Jensen
General Secretary.”

From GAFCON.

C of E college apologises for students’ attempt to ‘queer evening prayer’

“A leading theological college that trains priests for the Church of England has apologised after it hosted a service to mark LGBT history month that referred to God as ‘the Duchess’.

Student priests at Westcott House in Cambridge organised the evensong service on Tuesday in the college chapel. …”

– Story from The Guardian. Photo (not of the event described above) from Westcott House.

Related:

Westcott House History:

“Westcott House began its life in 1881 as the Cambridge Clergy Training School whose first president was the then Regius Professor of Divinity, Brooke Foss Westcott. A pioneering and respected New Testament scholar himself, the school was the product of Westcott’s own passionate concern to raise the standard of clergy education and so took the name of its founder after his death. … ”

Church of England Bishops’ Report: More Questions than Answers

“For the last week I have been digesting the ‘Report from the House of Bishops on Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations,’ known by its shorthand as GS (General Synod) 2055.

This “Report” was a document prepared by the Church of England’s Bishops and presented to the Church’s General Synod last week. The perspective of LGBT pressure groups within the Church of England is that they were betrayed by the Bishops’ upholding the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage. Some are even hinting at going ahead with same sex marriage in defiance of the bishops.

The disappointment of the LGBT community has been matched by suspicion and criticism from Biblically orthodox Anglicans in the Church of England. To them, GS 2055 is a Trojan Horse. The Bishops’ failure to define boundaries in a clearly Biblical way ensures a theological incoherence that will permit ‘generous pastoral provision’ for LGBT couples to will quickly become facts on the ground (new liturgies and blessings) that make the Church’s teaching on marriage a mere shell.

I sympathize with those suspicions because of my experience with such ‘Trojan Horse’ reports in The Episcopal Church as it marched to gay marriage.

Despite my sympathies, I have tried to find an objective point between the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of hope. I’ve tried to read all 19 pages of GS 2055 inductively, asking what the text really says. All 19 pages are agonizing to read—rather like an essay which reads ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’ with no resolution. Except of course for the resolve that ‘it is hubristic for anyone to propose that there is one definitive answer which solves all the moral, ethical and missiological problems we face.’ (para. 7) …

Barbara Gauthier goes on to make a telling observation, from paragraph 65 of the Report:

‘65. ….To maintain an unambiguous position on [the] doctrine [of marriage] while enabling a generous freedom for pastoral practice that does not directly and publicly undermine it is entirely consistent with our traditions and is a perfectly coherent approach to take. (emphasis added)

The implication would seem to be that whatever might ‘directly and publicly’ undermine the doctrine of marriage may be perfectly admissible if done ‘indirectly and privately.’ The progressive wing of the Episcopal Church used that ploy for years, surreptitiously establishing facts on the ground, until it couldn’t be ignored any longer.’…”

– From The American Anglican Council’s Canon Phil Ashey. Read it all here.

GAFCON UK response to The Bishops’ Report on Marriage and Same Sex Relationships

“The Report as a whole requires a much fuller response than we can give here. However we do not have confidence that this document will guarantee the maintenance of orthodoxy within the Church of England for the future.  We need to express our serious reservations about the many ambiguities in the text relating to how we as Anglicans understand truth and goodness, sin and salvation, and how we should carry out pastoral and liturgical practice. 

We see the document as giving a rationale for maintaining the current position, but along with many faithful Anglicans in England we believe that the current position is not at all satisfactory, as it involves a lack of clarity about our message, openness to revisionist theology and practice, and further conflict within the church.…”

– Read it all here. And the original Bishop’s report is here (PDF file.)

See also:

A critique of the Bishops’ Report – by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali:

“The report tells us in several places that the Church’s teaching has to be related to a fast-changing cultural context but makes no value judgements about the desirability of such change nor to the principles of development which should guide our engagement with culture. …

The thrust of the report seems very much to be that there should be no change in doctrine but that there should be a change in pastoral provision and in the public prayer for those entering same-sex unions. The question is, of course, when does ‘usual practice’ become teaching, especially when provision is made for public prayer.”

Read it all.

Australia Day Honours 2017

Over at SydneyAnglicans.net, Russell Powell has a report on Sydney Anglicans recognised in today’s Australia Day Honours.

Dr Gavin Ashenden resigns as Chaplain to the Queen

“After a conversation instigated by officials at Buckingham Palace, it is with regret that the Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden – theologian, academic, columnist and occasional contributor to [The Archbishop Cranmer] blog – has decided to resign his position as Chaplain to the Queen.

It was, he says, “the most honourable course of action” following “attempts to silence or defenestrate” him…”

– News from “Archbishop Cranmer”.

And you can read Dr. Ashenden’s full statement here.

“I have held the position for the last nine years. But over the last few years people who objected to my defending the Christian faith in public wrote to both Lambeth Palace and Buckingham Palace to try to get the association ended. …”

Remnant in Scotland finding hope through GAFCON

GAFCON has posted this video message from The Rev. David McCarthy, Rector of St. Thomas’ Church, Edinburgh.

GAFCON General Secretary Dr. Peter Jensen writes, “In this video, Revd David McCarthy, rector of St Thomas’s Edinburgh, laments the crisis which hit the Scottish Episcopal Church in June 2016 when the General Synod rejected the bible’s teaching by voting to change the church’s Canon on marriage.

However, reminded how in the recent past the Gafcon Primates came to the aid of Anglicans in North America, David and fellow orthodox Anglicans in Scotland are encouraged by support from within the wider communion and ask for our prayers.”

The Archbishops’ Statement on the Reformation

“The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have released a joint statement on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The statement recognises that ‘many Christians will want to give thanks for the great blessings they have received to which the Reformation directly contributed’. Furthermore it includes among those blessings, ‘clear proclamation of the gospel of grace, the availability of the Bible to all in their own language and the recognition of the calling of lay people to serve God in the world and in the church’. The Archbishops make clear that the Church of England will be participating in the celebrations of this anniversary, ‘including sharing in events with Protestant church partners from Continental Europe’.

So despite how some of the more popular press might try to spin it, this statement is not a repudiation of the Reformation nor of its doctrine. …”

– At Theological Theology, Moore College Principal Dr Mark Thompson asks if “the departures from biblical truth that occasioned the split at the time of the Reformation have been addressed by the Roman Church”.

40th anniversary of the Granville train disaster

“A former Police Rescue officer who personally rescued two people from the rubble of the Granville train disaster has reflected on the tragedy 40 years ago today.

Chief Inspector Gary Raymond APM, OAM (Retired) was a young member of the Police Rescue Squad which responded to the train derailment and bridge collapse in 1977 that claimed 83 lives and injured 213 others.  Read more

Brazilian Anglicans ask for prayer support

Members of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil have written to the ACL and other Anglican groups asking for prayer.

“We are a group of clergy of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, we are being persecuted for defending a biblical position of marriage and asking that the Anglican episcopal church of Brazil maintain its unity with the Anglican communion, which in turn, in voice through the chamber of the bishops want to approve this position by imposition.”

They include these links –

1. Creation of the alliance movement. (Select the English Version tab.)

2. Response of the Bishops – Original Portuguese. English translation

3. Letter from Bishop Sebastião (Emeritus Bishop in the Diocese of Recife) to the Bishops – Original Portuguese. English translation

4. Letter of Covenant to Bishops.

Related:

Earlier posts on happening in the Diocese of Recife.

Report from Virtueonline.

Overseas Muslim marriages and Australian law

“Two cases involving purported marriages under Islamic law, entered into overseas by Australian residents, have received recent press coverage.

The decisions of the courts involved seem to be clearly correct, and they helpfully illustrate some important principles of Australian law. A person whose home is Australia cannot legally travel outside this country and enter into a valid marriage with a minor, or enter into a second marriage when already lawfully married under Australian law. …”

– At Law and Religion Australia, Neil Foster looks at the operation of Australian law and overseas marriages.

Qur’an in the Eucharist?

koran-recitation-glasgow-cathedral“I have just returned from Paris where I was invited to be part of a conversation with three imams sponsored by Lebanese TV.

I thought they were kind, impressive and delightful people. It was a privilege to meet them and talk to them. We had many things in common, but most of all a deep attraction to God who made us, whose intentions towards us, we know, are love and mercy.

The strength of the encounter was the friendship and mutual admiration it produced. The weakness was that we did not speak at all about ‘the problem’. …

What is the significance, then, of a Muslim standing at the lectern in a Christian cathedral and publicly proclaiming words from the Koran which announce that the Gospel writers were engaged in a blasphemous deceit?”

– The Rev. Gavin Ashenden writes at ArchbishopCranmer.com to reflect on a recitation from the Qur’an at service of The Lord’s Supper for Epiphany in the Cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church in Glasgow.

See also:

In response to the Qur’an recitation in St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow – Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali.

This Qur’an recitation was not the first at Glasgow Cathedral. Carol Service, December 2014.

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