Archbishop Mouneer’s view from Lambeth
Posted on July 28, 2008
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your prayers. God hears our prayers and in His time, answers them. The Lambeth Conference has been a time of great fellowship and strength; it has also been a time of disunity and conflict. Everything is going fairly well, but I do not believe that there is hope of a solution from this Lambeth conference.
However I hope that we would be able to come up with a road map for a final solution of the current crisis. There have been many benefits to the Lambeth Conference. One of the great strengths of the Lambeth Conference has been the statement from Archbishop Deng of Sudan calling for The Episcopal Church in the USA to repent and have Gene Robinson, the active homosexual bishop, resign for the sake of the Communion. This statement has shaken the foundation of Lambeth Conference. …
– Archbishop of Egypt, Dr Mouneer H. Anis, writes home from Lambeth. (Photo: ENS)
The Natural: You just can’t teach that in seminary
Posted on July 28, 2008
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After the [Lambeth] press conference some reporters persuaded Bishop Beetge to stay and converse a bit. There were a variety of questions. The most telling came toward the end of the session when a reporter who said he was shooting a documentary for “American television” tried to nail the bishop down on the question of homosexual behaviour. …
– We missed this earlier post from Stand Firm – thanks to Anglican Essentials Canada.
(Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld. Photo: Diocese of Monmouth.)
All but unmentioned
Posted on July 28, 2008
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The Lambeth Conference 1998 famously adopted a resolution on human sexuality, resolution I.10. The failure of the American and Canadian churches to honour that resolution are at the centre of the conflict which overshadows Lambeth 2008.
The Lambeth Conference 1998 also adopted a resolution, numbered III.2 calling on Provinces “to make such provision, including appropriate episcopal ministry”, as will enable those who dissent from and those who assent to the ordination of women to live “in the highest degree of Communion possible”.
The patent failure of the American and Canadian churches to honour this resolution has gone all but unmentioned at Lambeth 2008. …
– Warren Tanghe writes from an Anglo-Catholic perspective at the Forward in Faith website.
At Lambeth we need your prayers
Posted on July 27, 2008
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The Rev. Todd Wetzel, of Anglicans United and Latimer Press reports from Canterbury –
To inform your prayers, here are four things we believe need serious prayer:
- Spiritual warfare is real and it is intense. Please pray for spiritual protection over Canterbury, Kent University and especially over the orthodox bishops, that they might be bold and courageous in spite of mounting opposition.
- The drain on one’s emotions is real. We are in an intense environment and it sucks the life out of you. Even when not much appears to be happening, you feel tired.
- The intellect is on overload. This is a rich environment of thought and an environment beset by controversy. So far, no matter how hard the wheels spin, no solutions have been found. The sense of frustration at least at the leadership level, is very real. Patience is wearing thin.
- Physically, at least for those from the west, we’ve all done more walking than ever required to do at home. While this is healthy, it does wear on the body. The cobblestone streets, though charming, make walking semi-perilous.
– from Anglicans United.
A rival Global South movement?
Posted on July 26, 2008
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“A rival Global South movement is being set up here in Canterbury in an attempt to divide and conquer the Global South movement. A Lambeth compliant ‘Communion Partners’ movement is being encouraged in an effort to isolate mainstream evangelical and Anglo-Catholics who number 40 million of the 55 million church-going Anglicans throughout the world. …”
– David Virtue wonders where this might lead.
Lambeth Saturday press conference
Posted on July 26, 2008
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Matt Kennedy from Stand Firm live blogs from today’s Lambeth press conference and shows there is some confusion about the definition of being in the Anglican Communion …
– at Stand Firm.
Who’s a traditionalist?
Posted on July 26, 2008
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I am sick of being placed in the category of “traditionalist”.
Here are some examples, all from the same news article:
“persecuting clergy who wanted to stick to a traditionalist line”;
“distorting traditional Anglican beliefs”;
“how much influence a powerful traditionalist lobby could have inside the Communion”.
Tradition has nothing to do with it; the word has become the latest euphemism for “Christian”.
– Our friends at the Anglican Essentials Canada blog have articulated what others have been thinking.
Faith healer Todd Bentley called a fraud, false teacher
Posted on July 26, 2008
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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
Posted on July 25, 2008
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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
Posted on July 24, 2008
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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
Posted on July 24, 2008
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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.
A visit to Hillsong
Posted on July 24, 2008
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Over at The Sola Panel, Gavin Perkins describes a recent visit to Hillsong (the church, not the music label).
At the end of the night, following the calls from the mosh pit for encores and some good old early-90s-style crowd surfing (I’m serious), one of the song leaders declared that “This was the best weekend we’ve ever had at Hillsong”.
So, how good was it? Read Gavin’s notes at the Sola Panel.
(It’s also worth noting that Joel and Victoria Osteen will be speaking at the 2009 Hillsong Conference. See this broadcast from The White Horse Inn.)
Photo: Brian Houston at Hillsong.
Gene Robinson on University of Kent campus ‘dawn to dusk’
Posted on July 23, 2008
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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
Posted on July 23, 2008
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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
Posted on July 23, 2008
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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.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…