Has ‘the Anglican Experiment’ really failed?
Charles Raven: “The Anglican Communion crisis is not about Anglicanism in itself, but a crisis of faithfulness. Failure to maintain Anglicanism’s doctrinal and moral integrity precipitated GAFCON and is the root cause of the Pope’s offer of the Ordinariate.”
– Charles Raven responds to a statement by Forward in Faith UK’s Chairman (and also Bishop of Fulham), John Broadhurst, that ‘the Anglican experiment is over’. At SPREAD.
(Photo of Bishop Broadhurst: Diocese of Fulham.)
Responsible gambling?
Opinion from Peter Brain, Bishop of Armidale –
“From time to time I enjoyed watching Friday night football on the telly (quite an admission from one brought up on the other rugby!)
What surprised me was the statement by the commentators (at half-time, I think it was) that advised us that we could ‘get $1.18 for St George and $4 for Parramatta by ‘phoning … – but please remember to gamble responsibly.’ Read more
What Will Rowan Do?
“What will Rowan do?” That’s the question posed by Bishop David C. Anderson President of the American Anglican Council as he reviews this week’s moves by the Vatican:
Beloved in Christ,
The news that has overtaken much of the Christian media (and a good bit of the secular as well) is the announcement from Rome that they are opening up a personal prelature for orthodox Anglicans. This would allow Anglicans to maintain much of their liturgy and custom, and for many of the Anglican clergy, it would offer the option of becoming a Roman Catholic priest. Read more
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s solution?
From the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – 23 October 2009.
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which has previously been denounced by liberals of ‘splitting’ the Anglican Communion, could be the solution for an Archbishop of Canterbury who wants to keep ‘Orthodox’ Anglicans within the Church. Read more
Richard Bewes: 50 years ago and now
John Richardson has posted this thoughtful article by Richard Bewes on contending for the faith – then and now.
“Do you know, life was altogether more simple when I was ordained! The evangelical intake in September 1959 numbered about seven percent of the total.
Who were we? What were we? Nothing, in the minds of the wider church. It was Backs to the Wall for us despised evangelicals…
It was really in 1962 – with Honest to God – that true battle began.”
Richard Bewes was Rector of All Souls, Langham Place until late 2004 and has also served as Chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council. (Photo: RichardBewes.com.)
Desperate bishops invited Rome to park its tanks on Archbishop’s lawn
“Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lawn after manoeuvres undertaken by up to fifty bishops and begun two years ago by an Australian archbishop, John Hepworth.
As leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a breakaway group claiming to represent up to 400,000 laity worldwide, he went to Rome seeking a means to achieve full, visible unity for his flock…”
– Ruth Gledhill writes in Times Online. Related: Traditional Anglican Communion website
(Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury’s website.)
What does it mean to be Anglican? IV
Mark Thompson continues his series –
“Anglicanism is both genuinely catholic and unambiguously Protestant. But what type of Protestantism is embedded in the Anglican formularies — Lutheran, Reformed or Anabaptist?…”
– read it all at Mark’s blog, Theological Theology.
Theological Education: the Next Battlefield
Mark Thompson, Academic Dean of Moore College and also President of the ACL, writes about a challenge we need to be aware of –
“Strategic thinking, generous support and courageous initiatives are needed now.”
It should come as a surprise to no-one that theological education has emerged as a new battleground in the war against liberal revisionism. The leaders of liberal churches such as The Episcopal Church in America, reeling at the resistance their program of revision has encountered from the Global South and conservative elements in the West, have embarked on an ambitious plan to win the long term struggle by taking charge of the agenda for Anglican theological education and infiltrating seminaries in the two-thirds world. Read more
What does it mean to be Anglican? III
“The Anglican inheritance in both doctrine and church practice is irrevocably tied to the cause of the Protestant Reformation. For all its insistence that it is genuinely catholic, that it was not another church set up as an alternative to that existing at the time but rather the true church reformed, the English church from which worldwide Anglicanism has grown was unambiguously Protestant. …”
– ACL President Dr Mark Thompson continues his posts on What does it mean to be Anglican?
Charles Raven on Burying the Bad News
This week a spokesman for Fulcrum, the ‘open’ evangelical’ grouping the in the Church of England, has claimed that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will fragment the Church of England, weaken its structures and polarise debate. Many might think that as far as the first two charges are concerned, the Church of England has been managing to bring these about quite effectively on its own without any help from the FCA in Great Britain and Ireland, but Kuhrt claims that the FCA needs to ‘bury good news’ and to substantiate this he buries the bad news. Read more
Why I praise God for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans
“The launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (UK and Ireland) on 6 July was an answer to my prayers.
I had feared that orthodox Anglicans, who share a common commitment to the essentials of our faith and a concern about departures from it within the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion, would spend more energy disagreeing over their different strategies for the defence and proclamation of the gospel than in supporting one another and working together for Christ in our church and nation. GAFCON gave me a glimpse of another possibility:…”
– Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford, writes in The Church of England Newspaper – reproduced at Anglican Mainstream.
(GAFCON photo by Joy Gwaltney.)
Scripture marginalised?
Bishop of South Sydney, Rob Forsyth, seeks to provoke discussion on reading Holy Scripture in church – over at SydneyAnglicans.net.
(And Allan Dowthwaite provides a link to Clifford Warne’s classic talk on The Art of Reading Aloud.)
Photo: Russell Powell.
Evangelism is not proselytism
“‘Mission’, ‘evangelism’ (and ‘evangelization’) and ‘proselytism’ are often muddled by speakers and this results in confusion and conjecture…”
– Bishop of Tasmania John Harrower points out the difference.
Episcopalians Deceived
“Those who wonder why the Episcopal Church Church accepted such a radical revision of the historic Book of Common Prayer in 1979 might profit from reading an article at episcopalnet.org: ‘How Episcopalians were Deceived’, by Francis W. Read, written for the New Oxford Review in 1981. He reveals that the authors of the new book resorted to deception in order to introduce a new theology into the church, ignoring their critics and lying about their true intent…”
– Roberta Bayer, Editor of Mandate, published by the Prayer Book Society in the USA. See her article on page 9 of this PDF file. She refers to this: How Episcopalians Were Deceived.
Christian radio and the gospel
Moody Bible Institute graduate and radio feature producer Paul Butler reports on a look at Christian radio in the US, and asks what is really Christian about much of it.
While the territory is not quite the same in Australia, the questions raised could be put equally well to Christians at work or at home – are we really any different?
Hear the two segments of the programme at Paul Butler’s Production Blog. (h/t Justin Taylor.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…