The Christian origins of NAIDOC week
“This week is NAIDOC week across Australia, celebrating the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
NAIDOC originally stood for ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’. What many don’t realise is that it was Aboriginal Christians that started NAIDOC week. Specifically, it was the initiative of an Aboriginal Christian, William Cooper, who asked the churches to start praying for aborigines on what would become known as ‘Aboriginies Sunday.’…”
– Dominic Steele writes at The Briefing.
‘Church of England says yes to women bishops’
“Women can now become bishops following an historic vote by the Church of England’s General Synod today.
Following a day of debate at the General Synod meeting in York on the issue of women in the episcopate, at least two thirds majority of each house – laity, clergy and bishops – voted in favour of the measure to pass.
General Synod votes in favour in all three houses:
• Bishops: 37 in favour, 2 against, 1 abstention.
• Clergy: 162 in favour, 25 against, 4 abstentions.
• Laity: 152 in favour, against 45, 5 abstentions…”
– from the Anglican Communion News Service.
See also: The transcript of the Archbishop Justin Welby’s remarks during the General Synod debate.
Beware of scams
The Church of Nigeria warns of scams involving requests supposedly coming from Archbishop Nicholas Okoh –
“It has come to our knowledge that some unscrupulous persons fake the identity of the Primate of All Nigeria online and create impostor facebook accounts bearing his picture and his name. These same people also use these scam facebook accounts to defraud some unsuspecting members of the public by raising money online under a pretext to support some charity causes.”
– PDF file from The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion).
Gospel Coalition Australia announced
“Following the broad pattern of the original TGC, we have formed a Council drawn from across Australia. Building on existing relational networks, we have drawn together a group of 13 men committed to the TGC Foundation Documents and to one another.
Whilst we haven’t tried to ensure that every possible constituency is represented, we have ended up with a real mixture of denominations, backgrounds, geographical locations, and experience. The founding Council Members are listed for your information below.”
– from The Gospel Coalition website.
‘Anglican archbishops clash over assisted dying ahead of UK law debate’
“Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has stressed his opposition to assisted dying as one of his predecessors announced he has changed his mind and will now support the right of terminally ill patients to seek help to end their lives. …
George Carey … said he would now oppose the church’s official line by supporting the right to be helped to die…”
– Report from The Sydney Morning Herald.
Related:
Blogger “Cranmer” weighs in: “Lord Carey unhelpfully tells us via the Daily Mail that ‘The old philosophical certainties have collapsed in the face of the reality of needless suffering’.”
“Desmond Tutu: I support assisted dying” – The (UK) Telegraph.
Archbishop of Canterbury to visit Melbourne
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will attend the installation of Dr Philip Freier as the new Primate at a service of Choral Evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne on Wednesday August 13. Archbishop Welby will preach, after flying from the Solomon Islands the day prior, and before to a trip to New Zealand the next day.
Bishop Edwin Ngubane
“Many Sydney Anglicans are grieving the death of a very dear brother in Christ.
Rt Rev Edwin Ngubane, the Area Bishop for Johannesburg and Pretoria with REACH (Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa, formerly known as CESA) and Rector of Christ Church Hillbrow in the heart of Johannesburg’s red light district, died on Sunday 29th June. Edwin was 44. He succumbed to a series of strokes following many months of battling TB and pneumonia.”
– Very sad news via David Mansfield. It would be good to pray for Edwin’s wife, Genevieve, and family, and for the church at Hillbrow.
Tribute from Gorge Whitefield College Principal Mark Dickson.
Related: Rescued From Hell in Hillbrow. (Photo: REACH South Africa.)
A succession plan for our parish
“Blake’s words about ‘dark, satanic mills’ were not specifically about Oldham, but they could have described the Oldham of my childhood, surrounded as we were by over 360 mills.
The damp, gloomy atmosphere of this Pennine town, together with the coal mined here, provided ideal conditions for it to be the textile processing capital of the world. The parish of Christ Church Chadderton was founded in 1870 at the height of this industry as a clearly evangelical witness.…”
– At Church Society, John Simmons shares why his parish has asked Church Society to be its Patron. (It’s a rather different system in the CofE – and evangelical patronage is a significant responsibility.) Photo: Christ Church Chadderton.
Andrew Symes on the ACNA Assembly
“The Anglican Church in North America exists as a kairos response to a crisis in a mainline denomination.
The leadership of the official Anglican denomination in the USA and Canada became more and more liberal. Bishops regularly pronounced that Jesus is one of many possible Saviours , that the Bible contains some of the word of God, that Christian mission is to help fulfil the Millenium Development Goals of the United Nations. It became commonplace to have multifaith services where occult pagan practices would be celebrated in Cathedrals as part of Holy Communion Services, as ‘the Spirit’ can apparently be discerned in all faiths and none…”
– Anglican Mainstream’s Andrew Symes reflects on the just-concluded Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America.
Anglican Church in North America elects new Archbishop
“The College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America elected today the Rt. Rev. Dr. Foley Beach of the Diocese of the South. Bishop Foley Beach will succeed the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, the first archbishop for the Anglican Church in North America…”
– from The Anglican Church in North America.
And a response from Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Glenn Davies:
“Bishop Foley will be a strong conservative voice within this newly formed province, among the GAFCON Primates and throughout the Anglican Communion. He is a man who has stood firm for the gospel in difficult circumstances, and has not been afraid to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.”
Credo: Shadow and Substance in Contemporary Anglicanism
The Rev. Charles Raven gave three lectures last month at George Whitefield College in Capetown. His topic: “Credo: Shadow and Substance in Contemporary Anglicanism.”
Charles is well qualified to speak about the key issues facing the Anglican Communion.
“My personal story has been closely bound up with these momentous events. What you will hear from me is not just the product of academic study.
The church of which I was incumbent in England was the first after the Lambeth 1998 Conference to act on the biblical principle that fellowship cannot be continued with leaders who persistently and publicly contradict core truths of Christian doctrine and morality.
In February 1999, my diocesan bishop likened the Lambeth Conference to a Nazi Nuremburg rally and claimed that those bishops who had affirmed the historic biblical understanding of sexuality were a manifestation of the demonic powers and principalities of Ephesians 6:12.
After a period of prayer and reflection, my Church Council declared that it could not receive the ministry of the bishop. The result was that after some two years, I lost the parish church, the vicarage and my stipend. I did not however lose the congregation.”
You can read the text of his lectures at the GAFCON website. Summaries (from the GAFCON website) here –
Since the Lambeth Conference of 1998, there have been two basic reactions to radical revisionism in the West. The theological response, focused by GAFCON, is recovering the confessing Anglicanism of our Reformation title deeds, whereas the Lambeth based ‘Instruments of Unity’ have succumbed to the pragmatic attraction of an illusory middle ground where biblical truth is relativized to culture.
Whereas in Thomas Cranmer we find hermeneutic confidence and ecclesiological pessimism, in Rowan Williams we find the reverse – hermeneutic pessimism and ecclesiological optimism. While the former, as developed by his successors such as Jewel and Hooker, offers a stable paradigm of what it is to be both Catholic and Reformed, the latter is neither Catholic nor Reformed and is irretrievably unstable.
The great sign of hope among the chaos is that there is a consciousness within the Communion that it must define itself by the history of God as revealed in Holy Scripture rather than the history of England. Paradoxically, it seems that what I believe to be my country’s greatest contribution to the world, the English Reformation, will only come to its full fruition in the Anglican Communion when England is no longer at its centre.
Charles is also the author of Shadow Gospel: Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion Crisis.
C of E General Synod agenda ‘built around women bishop business’
“The General Synod of the Church of England meets in York in July for a five day meeting from 3.00 pm on Friday 11th July until 1.00 pm on Tuesday 15 July.
The Agenda for the meeting is published today. The Agenda is constructed around a sequence of legislative business on Women in the Episcopate…”
– Report from The Church of England.
Presbyterians Church (USA) to allow gay marriage ceremonies
“At their gathering in Detroit, the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States voted to allow their clergy to perform same-sex marriages…”
– Report from USA Today.
And for something quite different, the June edition of The Pulse, magazine of the Presbyterian Church in NSW is well worth a look.
High Court strikes down chaplaincy funding
“Funding for school chaplains has been declared constitutionally invalid for the second time by the High Court of Australia…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has reassured the community of the government’s commitment to the program when he said it ‘very much supports [the program] and wants it to continue’. It follows the announcement in May to continue to fund the program a further $244 million over four years.
In the Senate Question time today, Senator Brandis said “It is important to note that in arriving at that conclusion, the Court did not deal with the merits of the program, merely that the question of whether it fell within a particularly constitutional definition”…”
– Report from The Australian Christian Lobby.
Keeping in touch with the Pressies
The latest issue of New Directions, from the Presbyterian Church of Queensland is now out.
It’s a good way to be encouraged by (and to pray for) what’s happening elsewhere.
(h/t Gary Ware.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…