Lambeth ‘failure’ featured on ABC Radio
Posted on August 4, 2008
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This morning’s AM programme on ABC Radio covered the conclusion of the Lambeth Conference.
Audio of the segment (in which Gene Robinson describes Bible-believing bishops as ‘bullies’) is now available from the ABC website. Direct link to mp3 file. (The 1.5MB file runs for 3 minutes 15 seconds.)
Lambeth ends: TEC PB’s statement
Posted on August 4, 2008
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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at the conclusion of the 2008 Lambeth Conference:
“… The Anglican Communion is suffering the birth pangs of something new, which none of us can yet fully appreciate or understand, yet we know that the Spirit continues to work in our midst. …”
– read the full statement via the Episcopal News Service.
Also worth reading: Galatians 1:3-9.
(Photo: Episcopal Life Online.)
Communion broken, patient dying from wounds
Posted on August 4, 2008
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From the beginning, numerous voices here at Canterbury have been saying that this was the Archbishop’s show – start to finish – his to win or his to lose.
He’s functioned admirably as teacher and retreat leader. His lectures were excellent. He succeeded in keeping everyone here talking. Meanwhile Canterbury has added the weight of history. This is the mother church of the Communion.
The Communion gathered here at Canterbury is broken.
The Episcopal Church has run helter skelter through its ranks and left devastation – a rogue elephant that simply will not be reigned in. The problem is it’s a very wealthy rogue and the trail of money is everywhere. …
– The Rev. Todd Wetzel reports from Canterbury at the end of the Lambeth Conference for Anglicans United and Latimer Online.
Bishop Lawrence: GAFCON is heir apparent
Posted on August 4, 2008
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The Global Anglican Fellowship Conference (GAFCON) is the heir apparent to assume leadership of the Anglican Communion, said three bishops during an informal media briefing this afternoon at the Lambeth Conference.
Bishops Mark Lawrence of South Carolina and Keith Ackerman of Quincy were joined by Bishop Hector Zavala of Chile from the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone on the campus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, shortly before Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was scheduled to deliver his final presidential address of the conference. …
– Report from The Living Church. (Photo: Bill Murton, Diocese of South Carolina.)
Archbishop Mouneer Anis at Lambeth press conference
Posted on August 4, 2008
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“From my experience of the Bible studies and of the Indaba discussions I see a great wall being put up by revisionists against those orthodox who believe in the authority of Scripture. The revisionists among us push upon us the view that current secular culture and not the Bible should shape our mission and morals. In this we are not divided by mere trivialities, or issues on the periphery of faith but on essentials.
I am shocked to say that we are finding it very hard to come together on even the essentials of the faith we once received from the Apostles. …”
– Archbishop Mouneer Anis, Primate of the Middle East, at a Lambeth press conference. Text via Global South Anglican.
GAFCON, the future and the Jerusalem Statement
Posted on August 4, 2008
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The Global Anglican Future CONference held in Jerusalem at the end of June 2008 occurred not to stop a split in the Anglican Communion but because there already exists such a split. That is a sad but hard fact. …
In 2002 Rowan Williams was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams had publicly admitted to ordaining a man he knew had a homosexual partner …
– David Holloway, Vicar of Jesmond Parish Church, Newcastle upon Tyne, reflects on the need for GAFCON – at Anglican Mainstream. (Photo: Reform.)
Bishop Richard Ellena of Nelson: Lambeth an expensive exercise in futility
Posted on August 3, 2008
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Stand Firm has published, with permission, a letter from Bishop Richard Ellena of the New Zealand Diocese of Nelson:
We are now in the last couple of days of Lambeth and I am feeling deeply sad.
I don’t know why at the moment – everything I came here hoping for looks set to be agreed to:
It is very likely that the Windsor continuation report will be approved – which means that a moratoria on gay bishops will continue etc….
And it seems likely that a covenant process will be endorsed and a draft agreed to.
All this seems good to me and yet I can’t help this overwhelming sadness.
Because I am more convinced than ever that none of this will help us. Those who have stayed away will not agree to it and will continue their ministry in the States. And TEC will continue to bleat that they won’t follow the moratoria while these Africans continue to ignore it.
I believe (at this stage – and there are still two days to go) that this has been the most expensive exercise in futility that I have every been to. …
– Read the rest of the message at Stand Firm.
Sarah Hey of Stand Firm has also posted online an audio interview with Bishop Ellena.
(Photo: Diocese of Nelson.)
Lambeth 2008: A Conversation with Archbishop Venables
Posted on August 2, 2008
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Kevin Kallsen of Anglican TV has posted online a 35 minute video interview with Archbishop Gregory Venables.
Archbishop Venables compares Lambeth with GAFCON and notes that Lambeth has totally ignored GAFCON – it’s as if it didn’t happen.
At Lambeth? “We haven’t talked about the gospel. We haven’t talked about salvation.” “The toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube and we are not able to put it back again.”
Reports of Anglican demise exaggerated
Posted on August 2, 2008
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There is an industry saying that people uncritically accept media reports, except in their area of expertise. Then the media gets it totally wrong. Although I have been a journalist for 30 years, my time in the GAFCON pressroom proved that old adage.
As well as being responsible for Archbishop Jensen’s media liaison, I was privileged to be a part of the GAFCON media team, a group made up of Anglican press officers from around the world: Uganda, Canada, Nigeria, the US and Kenya plus a Norwegian fellow traveller. …
– Russell Powell reflects on the media’s reporting of GAFCON at SydneyAnglicans.net.
(Russell interviews Bishop Al Stewart – with Tim Robinson filming – overlooking the Sea of Galilee . Photo: Zac Veron.)
Pittsburgh changes address – just in case
Posted on August 2, 2008
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The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is in the process of moving its online home to www.pitanglican.org. The new address, based on Pittsburgh’s airport code, now is the primary host for the diocesan website and all diocesan staff email accounts.
“We are grateful for the use of our former address, pgh.anglican.org, which has been very kindly loaned to us by the Society of Archbishop Justus for more than a decade. That said, given the diocese’s coming vote on realignment and the decision of the Society earlier this year to take back the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin’s address after it approved a similar vote, it seemed prudent to make this change now,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.…
– More at pitanglican.org. (See also “San Joaquin website disappears” from March 2008.)
“An Open Door, Pittsburgh Laity Discuss Realignment”
Posted on August 1, 2008
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A ten minute video has been produced to help members of the Diocese of Pittsburgh as they consider realigning with the Province of the Southern Cone.
Featuring lay members of churches across the diocese, the stark choice of either staying in The Episcopal Church or leaving is clearly presented. Worth watching as a reminder to pray for these brothers and sisters as their diocesan convention approaches next month.
– The video is available at parishtoolbox.org – a website produced by the Diocese of Pittsburgh. (Photo: Dr. Edith Humphrey narrates the video.)
Bishop speaks of ‘Interfaith relations’ with members of the TEC House of Bishops
Posted on July 31, 2008
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Bishop Peter Beckwith of Springfield spoke of his own Christian faith and responded to questions from the media during a 45-minute session at the Lambeth Conference on July 30.
It was one of the few unscripted moments that the media have been able to observe to date at this event, and Bishop Beckwith drew a large group that delayed the start of an official Episcopal News Service media briefing…
[Speaking of some of his TEC episcopal colleagues, he said –]
“It’s not just that we’re not on the same page,” he said. “We are not in the same book. We are in different libraries. I am dealing with interfaith relations within The Episcopal Church.” …
– Report from The Living Church. (Photo: Diocese of Springfield.)
… it’s knowing they’re foreign that makes them so mad
Posted on July 31, 2008
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I was reminded of this line from the Flanders and Swann piece of gentle self-mockery, A Song of Patriotic Prejudice, when I discovered that in a cross post to my little article on Thirty-two years of women’s ordination in the American context someone on the Stand Firm website had listed a whole string of similar words and actions which we in England might find bizarre, but which are quite common, it would seem in TEC. …
– from John Richardson at the Ugley Vicar.
Why we need an ACL
Posted on July 31, 2008
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– That’s not the title of the Rev. Todd Wetzel’s report from Canterbury, but the American experience shows what can happen when committees and synods take on a life of their own, not representing the local churches.
In 2000, I called the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson the most dangerous man in the Episcopal Church.
Before you jump to conclusions, let me say that I was very clear that it was not because I considered him a “bad” person. Quite the contrary, he was (and is) very articulate, a capable and well liked priest, intelligent, reasonably good looking, a skilled consultant who was (and is), by his own admission, non-celibate and a person of homosexual orientation. As a member of the diocesan staff, he was well known locally. I called him ‘dangerous’ because he was elect-able. And, if elected, and consecrated, chaos would emerge within the Episcopal Church and the Communion. …
Read his full post at Anglicans United. (See also the ACL’s Policy Objectives.)
The Pointy Hat Club
Posted on July 31, 2008
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Once upon a time in a far away place called Dar Es Salaam there was a party attended by boys and girls who liked to wear pointy hats, including one girl who liked to wear a pointy hat, but who sometimes wore a rainbow-colored oven mitt on her head instead. The other boys and girls were very polite and never used the words “oven mitt” in front of the one girl because they knew it would make her very cross. …
– Robert S. Munday, Dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin, has written this little story. You might enjoy it – but it has a serious side.
(Photo: Episcopal Life Online / Richard Schori.)
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…