Canterbury must say ‘enough’!
Last weekend we learned that the House of Deputies (clergy and lay representatives of the convention) effectively recommended an end to the moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops, established by Resolution B033 in 2006 in response to a recommendation of the Windsor Report, calling upon Bishops and Standing Committees to ‘exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.’
This week we now learn that the House of Bishops followed that lead by a 2/3 majority (99 to 45 with 2 abstentions) by passing resolution D025 …
– Bishop Glenn Davies writes at SydneyAnglicans.net. (Photo: Russell Powell.)
Two Rival Religions?
“On November 3, 1921, J. Gresham Machen presented an address entitled, “Liberalism or Christianity?” In that famous address, later expanded into the book, Christianity & Liberalism, Machen argued that evangelical Christianity and its liberal rival were, in effect, two very different religions. ”
See also three talks, ‘Christianity and the Tolerance of Liberalism’ by Lee Gatiss.
(Image of J. Gresham Machen: The Theologian.)
The Chicago Consultation: read it and weep
“One of the things I’ve been reading recently is the Study Guide prepared for The Episcopal Church by the Chicago Consultation, titled Christian Holiness and Human Sexuality. …
… the document must presumably be regarded as the ‘best of’ arguments for changing the Church’s traditional teaching and practice on same-sex relationships.”
– John Richardson writes at The Ugley Vicar.
John Dickson pays tribute to Martin Hengel
“As the music world farewells Michael Jackson, the king of pop, academia mourns the loss of a don of truly biblical proportions. Martin Hengel was Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism at Germany’s prestigious University of Tübingen from 1972 until (as Professor Emeritus) his death last Thursday (July 2). …”
– John Dickson pays tribute to Professor Martin Hengel – at Sydney Anglicans.net
Welcome the FCA
“Andrew Goddard, perhaps the best-informed and most thoughtful critic of FCA, argues: ‘There is, at present, no widespread sense that this new initiative is a necessity for Anglicans to be faithful and maintain fellowship within the Church of England and with the churches of the Communion.’
… So why should anyone support FCA and why should it be launched now?”
– Andrew Carey gives some good reasons why the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is needed now.
Ichabod — the glory departing from Scotland
“The Church of Scotland has declared that the Bible is not the Word of God, that active homosexuality is no bar to the ministry, that a magisterium is to be set up to determine what the Word of God is, and crowns it all by an unchecked stomach-churning display of mockery and faux repentance. A Rubicon has been crossed and there is no turning back. …”
– The Minister of St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, David Robertson, writes about the new territory in which the Chirch of Scotland is now travelling. (h/t Reformation21)
On Being Moderately Faithful
“Although the GAFCON movement is firmly rooted in the apostolic faith and the historic reformation formularies of the Church of England, this very clarity has been very unsettling for those whose instincts are first and foremost to preserve the Church as an institution and the whole system of power and patronage which goes with it, formal and informal. The most unsettled are evangelicals who want to preserve the status quo…”
– At SPREAD, Charles Raven answers critics of next week’s launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in the UK.
Smart Planting, Right Planting
“It wasn’t so much that anyone called us to prayer, but that the day reminded us all of the way that God is sovereignly growing his church, in all sorts of unexpected places and amongst the least likely of people. God’s word is powerful and his mighty Spirit is transforming lives. …”
– At The Sola Panel, Paul Grimmond reflects on last week’s church planting conference at Moore College.
Why I don’t have a television and rarely go to movies
“But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshipping Christ. …”
– John Piper challenges Christians to consider the influence of what they watch – at Desiring God.
A Tortured Existence
“We want our celebrities to start strong and finish weak, to begin with a bang and then fizzle, pop and sputter, all for our enjoyment and entertainment… Jackson gave us so much to talk about, so much to enjoy. More than any other celebrity he embodied the ‘vanities’ of Ecclesiastes. …”
– Tim Challies reflects. (Image: Google News.)
ACNA is the elephant in the tent
“The formation of ACNA is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of The Episcopal Church (TEC). Four dioceses have left TEC: San Joaquin in California, Quincy in Illinois; Fort Worth in Texas and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. The new Province includes 11 Northern Virginia parishes, some of which pre-date the American War of Independence. It is no surprise then that TEC is litigating over millions of dollars worth of property. …”
– ACL Chairman Robert Tong writes at SydneyAnglicans.net
Don’t take your iPod to church!
“Reading the Bible in electronic format makes it easy to chase down cross-references, to read notes related to the content, to find word definitions and so on. But all of this is at the cost of the natural, God-given flow of the text. As we use our iPods in place of our Bibles, we begin to understand Scripture as we do Wikipedia, a text suited more to browsing than deep study.…”
– Food for thought as Tim Challies reflects on how the medium affects how we read the message. Part 1, part 1.5, part 2.
The Anglican Church in North America – Hidden reefs ahead
“The launch of the Anglican Church in North America this week should be a cause of great thanksgiving to God for all who long to see the Anglican Communion united in the gospel, rather than a counterfeit unity engineered through endless ‘conversation’ and artful ambiguity.
However, we can be certain that this new stage of the global Anglican realignment will be opposed. …”
– Charles Raven writes at SPREAD.
A Trite Habit?
“It is a slowly growing pattern of life. So slow in its development that we do not even notice it happening to us. We make a thousand little decisions and finish with a way of living that we never planned or meant to happen. …”
– Phillip Jensen, Dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, writes about the great danger of living in the Western world.
Money, Sex, Indaba: Corrupting the Anglican Communion Listening Process
“The Listening Process, also known as the ‘Continuing Indaba Project’, was announced last month at the Kingston, Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council after a briefing by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Office (ACO).
The staff of the ACO, under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that a $1.5 million gift was given to fund this project-a gift 2-3 times the size of any previous gift received by the Anglican Communion Office for its work… The delegates to the Anglican Consultative Council were told that the money was coming from a grant through the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
After subsequent questioning at press conferences, it turns out that the Satcher Institute is not the source of the $1.5 million dollars.
So where did the money come from?…”
– Ralinda B. Gregor, writing for The American Anglican Council asks some uncomfortable questions of the Anglican Communion Office.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…