Faith healer Todd Bentley called a fraud, false teacher
A new faith healer is making headlines for his claims of supernatural powers, but conservative evangelical leaders warn that Todd Bentley is a fraud and a false teacher.
Bentley, leader of a revival that began in Lakeland, Fla., this spring, is known for his multiple body piercings and tattoos, his violent healing techniques, his claims of angelic visions and “holy” laughter and “holy” vibrating shakes. He even claims to have raised dozens of people from the dead. …
– A helpful report from Baptist Press.
Tense times behind the scenes at Lambeth
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s efforts to steer the Anglican Communion away from the theological and political shoals appears to have been for naught, as the 14th Lambeth Conference began to founder on its second business day.
While the three day retreat led by Dr. Williams was universally applauded by bishops from across the geographic and theological spectrum, once the bishops were loosed upon each other the tensions that have plagued the Communion stepped back into center stage. …
– George Conger writes for the Church of England Newspaper.
Lambeth: David’s Diary Day 7
The Anglican Communion is hanging by a thread. We are into the 7th day of Lambeth, but only the 4th day in terms of real Indaba talk. Already there are signs of fragmentation everywhere one turns.
Gene Robinson is roaming the campus with a body guard and press officer, the darling of the liberal media, offering his thoughts on exclusion and his personal pain at not being admitted to the Lambeth conference. …
A real dust up occurred at a press conference, yesterday, when Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, the bishop’s press officer was challenged about why a list of all the bishops could not be handed out to the press. …
– David Virtue reports at VirtueOnline.
Thursday: Buckingham Palace
Today is the London Day for the Lambeth Conference. The bishops and their wives are leaving the campus at 7 a.m. after a week on site to march along Whitehall in support of the Millennium Development Goals, to have lunch at Lambeth Palace and tea at Buckingham Palace. …
The March of Witness will be attended by the Anglican Mainstream team, largely on the grounds that there has been very little opportunity to meet with bishops at all. No one knows where any of the bishops are living, not even the bishops. There is no access to any of the meetings, except the occasional plenary. So we will not be at tea at the Palace, unlike 1988 when the press were invited. How times have changed. …
– Today’s report from Anglican Mainstream.
Gene Robinson on University of Kent campus ‘dawn to dusk’
Here are some extracts from today’s report by Cherie Wetzel for Anglicans United and Latimer Press —
I heard several different people report from the American provincial meeting held on Monday afternoon, that our bishops are finding it difficult to encounter so many disagreeable attitudes towards them. In short, they are wondering why they are disliked (some said ‘hated’) so strongly by so many bishops from other provinces.
And folks, they “don’t get it.” …
Their efforts to tell the others that there is nothing wrong with the American church and that we are not in turmoil and/or crisis is falling on deaf ears. …
Yesterday at the ad hoc press conference with Archbishop Deng Bul of the Sudan, the Episcopal News Service correspondent here asked if he had spoken with Gene Robinson. When he replied “No”, she asked if he would like to.
That’s when the archbishop replied, “We will not talk to Gene Robinson or listen to him or his testimony. He has to confess, receive forgiveness and leave. Then we will talk. You cannot bring the listening to gay people to our Communion. People who do not believe in the Bible are left out of our churches, not invited in to tell us why they don’t believe.”
The gay press people and gay advocates are here en masse. Gene Robinson is on the campus of this Conference from dawn to dusk, with events planned every evening – last evening he spoke at the Law School – and many of these sessions are by invitation only. There is no secret that they are here to inform and convert. Their daily newspaper is found in every building on the campus. The American bishops talked about moving the location of their next provincial meeting so Gene can come, which means a non-restricted area on the campus, such as a cafeteria or green space, outside the watchful eyes of Kent Campus Security.
And so, the schizophrenia continues. …
– Read the whole report here.
(Photo of Gene Robinson at a ‘Changing Attitude / Integrity Eucharist’ in Canterbury: Episcopal News Service/Mike Collins)
US bishops furious over Robinson exclusion
There is a growing concerted effort by American bishops to find a way to bring Gene Robinson, the homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire, into the Big Tent. America’s liberal bishops are furious by the exclusion of Robinson from the Lambeth Conference and on the first full day of the Lambeth Conference spent most of their time trying to figure out how to get Robinson in the door. …
– Today’s Lambeth report from VirtueOnline.
Sudanese demand Robinson resign
The openly gay bishop of New Hampshire must resign if the Anglican church is to be saved from schism, a senior Archbishop said today. The Archbishop of Sudan, Dr Daniel Deng, who has the backing of more than 150 bishops and archbishops from 17 provinces in the Global South, said that if Bishop Gene Robinson was to be true to his Christian faith he had no alternative but to step down. …
– Ruth Gledhill at Times Online reports from Lambeth.
– See also this report by Cherie Wetzel at Anglican United and Latimer Press –
“We have just had a briefing with the Archbishop of the Sudan, the Most Reverend Dr. Daniel Deng Bul. He informed the press room this morning that he would come and speak with us, since the Anglican Communion News Bureau running this conference, would not schedule a time for him to address the press.”
Earlier, the Sudanese Bishops released this Statement to the Lambeth Conference –
In view of the present tensions and divisions within the Anglican Communion, and out of deep concern for the unity of the Church, we consider it important to express clearly the position of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) concerning human sexuality. …
(Photo: Episcopal News Service.)
Williams offers ambiguous response to sexuality question
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams offered an ambiguous response to a direct question posed to him about sexual behaviour saying that sexual sin is defined as “any relationship outside a public covenant of mutual support and love in the presence of God,” seeming to endorse committed same sex arrangements. …
– David Virtue reports from the Lambeth press conference.
Lambeth: bishops divided over opening Eucharist
The opening Eucharist service of the 2008 Lambeth Conference exemplified everything that is wrong with the Communion and the Conference, with substance given a second place to ceremony, one Global South primate told ReligiousIntelligence.com. …
The tensions have led to three primates and an undisclosed number of bishops declining to receive the sacraments during the opening Eucharist, highlighting the tensions lurking beneath the surface of the every ten year gathering of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. …
– Report by George Conger at Religious Intelligence. (Photo: Lambeth Conference media.)
Archbishop Kolini speaks out on Lambeth
The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini, has spoken out on their refusal to attend the Lambeth Conference, saying that they cannot sit to deliberate on wicked issues.
The Archbishop claimed that it was not a boycott since they had declined the invitation. He said that their stand was based on strong Biblical views yet Canterbury had ignored the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality. …
Asked whether by refusing to attend the meeting, the members were not deepening the rift in the church, Kolini said this year’s conference could not be the platform for unifying them because they had always spoken against gay marriages but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has always ignored their advice. …
– from The New Times, Rwanda. (Photo: Joy Gwaltney)
EFAC ‘heartily endorses’ GAFCON declaration
“We heartily endorse the fourteen points of the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and, like those at GAFCON, are fully committed to remaining within the Anglican Communion, and to bearing joyful witness to evangelical distinctives. …”
– From the EFAC UK pre-Lambeth meeting at Trinity College Bristol – via Anglican Mainstream. (GAFCON photo: Joy Gwaltney.)
GAFCON reports: a highlight of the ACL’s Annual General Meeting
SydneyAnglicans.net has posted four video clips from the ACL’s Annual General Meeting held at Moore College last Thursday night.
Sydney delegates to GAFCON related their impressions of the Jerusalem gathering. Among them, 21-year-old Sylvia Tong, called for more involvement by young people in the movement, saying they need to be aware of the struggles of their brothers and sisters around the world.
See the video clips –
- Sylvia Tong speaks on young people and GAFCON and her experience in Jerusalem.
- The Rev John Mason speaks of liberal tactics in North America,
- Tony Payne looks to the future of the GAFCON movement,
- Claire Smith speaks about the diversity of the GAFCON participants.
SydneyAnglicans.net also has this report by Russell Powell.
Who’s NOT at Lambeth?
David Virtue has compiled a partial list of those bishops who haven’t gone or been invited to Lambeth. The list includes “Anglicans who would never be invited because they are not part of the Lambeth Conference and yet are, by any theological definition, Anglican.”
The point? “The Lambeth Conference is not the sum total of the Anglican Communion. It is now one of many networks that make up the Anglican Communion.”
See the list (which still has names being added) at VirtueOnline.
(Photo: GAFCON media team.)
St. Andrew’s draft text of Anglican Covenant flawed – GAFCON
“… An Anglican Covenant was intended as a response to a crisis in the Anglican Communion which has been accurately described as ‘a rending of the Communion at the deepest level’. Determined departures from the teaching of Scripture on human sexuality by The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are the immediate cause this situation.
There appears no prospect of repentance from this repudiation of biblical authority on the part of either of these bodies (or from those elsewhere who have followed their lead in endorsing behaviour which Scripture explicitly forbids).
Underlying these actions is a long history of marginalising, avoiding and at last rejecting the plain teaching of the Bible. In other words, the issue which we should expect this covenant to address is one of apostasy. …”
– This response from the GAFCON Theological Resource Team points out serious theological flaws in the draft Anglican Covenant.
– See also this earlier post with links to the Draft Covenant.
GAFCON responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury
“The Global Anglican Future Conference gathered leaders from around the Anglican Communion for pilgrimage, prayer and serious theological reflection. We are grateful to the Archbishop of Canterbury for engaging with the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. We wish to respond to some of his concerns. …”
– from the GAFCON Primates.
See also the Archbishop of Canterbury’s response to GAFCON, published on June 30 2008.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…