LENT IN TEC: POVERTY TRUMPS THE PASSION

 

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

The Christian Challenge

January 2008

 

Lent is nearly upon us, and in The Episcopal Church (TEC) this year that means that – if TEC’s Presiding Bishop has her way – those who go to an Episcopal parish February 10 may be invited to take part, not in the Stations of the Cross, but the Stations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), complete with grammar school-type coloring and painting.

 

No, as the saying goes, we’re not making this up.

 

Carrying forward the new TEC tradition of world-centered piety, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has declared the first Sunday of Lent to be Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) Sunday, from 2008 onward. ERD, TEC’s official charity, has designed a new rite for the occasion: the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Liturgy. Luke Fodor, Network Coordinator at the Office of Church Relations at ERD, said in an e-mail to TEC dioceses that this “Stations of the MDGs” liturgy is “designed to be used during Lent in lieu of the traditional Stations of the Cross service.”

 

The MDGs are eight goals for world development, adopted by the UN in 2000 in a drive to “cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015.” The Goals include: “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” “achieve universal primary education for children,” “promote gender equality and empower women,” “reduce child mortality,” “improve maternal health,” “combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases,” “ensure environmental sustainability,” and “create a global partnership for development.” TEC endorsed the MDGs at its 2003 General Convention, and made them a “mission priority” in 2006; Mrs. Schori has made them a centerpiece of her tenure. It seems that Jesus’ Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) is no longer sufficient as a “mission priority.”

 

The MDG liturgy, posted by Mike Angell of the “Office of Young Adult and Higher Education Ministries” at “815” (TEC HQ), begins when the service leader tells the congregation, “Today, we will pray and experience the MDGs as Stations as we commit ourselves to living out the Baptismal Covenant by working to achieve the MDGs. We see ourselves and the Church as on a pilgrimage in the world, journeying with each other toward the justice of the Reign of God as manifest in the goals.” Next, all recite the Baptismal Covenant as given in the 1979 prayer book baptism service.

 

Members of the congregation then go to each of the eight Stations of the MDGs, and perform symbolic activities at each stop:

 

*Preparing bag lunches to be given to a local food pantry;

 

*Writing down “the names of women who have inspired them and why”;

 

*Coloring-in outline drawings of children’s faces, while a bell rings to remind the participants that a child dies of a preventable water-borne illness every 15 seconds;

 

*Placing hand prints (in ink or finger paint) on a bed-sheet every 30 seconds, while the leader explains that “the number of hand prints on the sheet symbolize how many children have died from malaria during the time you were at the station”;

 

*Computing carbon footprints; and

 

*Filling out cards to lobby Congress to spend on the MDGs.

 

The prayer at the beginning of each Station starts, “God, you created us and call us to be in this world, part of your creative force.” The prayer at the end of each Station is a with-it, activist form of the Trisagion: “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Transform us, That we might transform the world.”

 

After the procession through the Stations of the MDGs is done, the congregation is to recite the MDGs in unison - as Christians have traditionally said the Creed - committing themselves to “God’s Mission” as they pledge to realize the eight UN objectives. At the end of the service, the dismissal – said by all – is “We go in peace to love and serve” – unlike the usual TEC post-Eucharist dismissal, which tells worshippers, “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”

 

In her announcement of ERD Sunday, Schori said, “2008 will mark the first year of what will be an annual celebration of Episcopal Relief and Development’s role in our mission to seek and serve Christ in all persons. The Episcopal Church’s ongoing commitment to fight poverty and disease around the world is lived out in a variety of ways. Advocacy with our government for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is one vital way. Another is through the ministry of Episcopal Relief and Development, which works with the worldwide Church to alleviate hunger, fight disease, and strengthen communities.”

 

Despite the worldly bent of ERD Sunday, the TEC authorities still invoke Christ. Schori put her call to alms in a classical Lenten context, saying that, “Almsgiving is one of the traditional disciplines of the season and one of the ways in which we participate with Christ in walking to the foot of the Cross and into the light of Resurrection.” The prayer offered for meditation at one of the Stations of the MDGs seeks spiritual as well as secular education for children: “Lord, we pray for open hearts and open doors to allow all children to learn and grow in knowledge of your world and your Word.” Participants in the MDG liturgy are told to reflect on Matthew 25:37-40, in which Christ tells the elect, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

 

The Presiding Bishop also called on her flock to lobby for increased government spending on MDG-related programs: “I urge you also to deepen your advocacy efforts for robust financial commitments from the U.S. government toward achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Faith-based institutions like Episcopal Relief and Development are proving that poverty can be eradicated if the proper resources and strategies are brought to bear. However, private action alone will not be enough – collective action as a nation is necessary, and our voices are what will inspire our government to act.”

 

The Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables, recently offered a polar opposite view of the place that the MDGs should have in the Anglican Communion. He said the primary focus should be on “mission, not the Millennium Development Goals…The MDGs are not without value, of course, but the Gospel is far more urgent, and eternal in impact. The world is on a downward spiral, but Jesus came to turn it around. That’s why we preach Jesus and not millennium goals.”

 

Sources: Episcopal Relief and Development; Episcopal Life; Millennium Development Goals Liturgy; blog post by Canon George Conger; Stand Firm in Faith.

  

 

WILLIAMS TARGETS CHRISTMAS STORY,

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

 

In the eyes of some, anyway, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams again showed his talent for not really helping, or making things worse, in his December communication to Anglican leaders on the prevailing conflict in the global church.

 

Not to rest on these laurels, however, Williams is apt to comment, in hit and miss fashion, on any number of topics. Late last year he took aim at American foreign policy and the traditional Christmas story.

 

In November, Williams stepped aside briefly from the theological wars raging in the Anglican Communion to assert - notably to the British Muslim magazine Emel - that American leadership in the world had broken down, and to urge a change in U.S. foreign policy. He said that America needs to develop a plan to help ravaged peoples. Any Christians persecuted in Muslim countries who were waiting for him to condemn Islamic violence were disappointed.

"We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory; it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That's not working," he said in part during the wide-ranging interview. He poured scorn on the "chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God's purpose for humanity."

 

Church e-journalist David Virtue observed that many U.S. Episcopalians/Anglicans do not equate the Kingdom of God with America, and noted the vast generosity that the U.S. has shown

to other countries over many decades.

 

National Review writer Victor Davis Hanson was astonished by Williams’ comment that: “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalizing it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did - in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together - Iraq, for example.”

 

Hanson questioned Williams’ recollection of Britain’s handling of India, and wondered “who is clearing the decks and moving on (in Iraq)? And who are the `other people’ putting Iraq back together? Iran? Saudi Arabia? China? The British in Basra? First, we read from the anti-war Left that the U.S. is wasting a trillion dollars and thousands of its lives in Iraq, and yet now that we are clearing the decks and not putting it back together? Which is it?”

 

A few commentators thought the swipe against an overweening America might be an indirect slap at the arrogance of The Episcopal Church. But more wondered how Williams could think it right to pontificate on the problem with America when his own Anglican household is in such deep trouble, with its own leadership seen by many as having "broken down."

 

MEANWHILE, IN COMMENTS December 19, Dr. Williams said (inter alia) that disbelief in the Virgin Birth should not dissuade anyone from becoming a Christian, and dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men as mere "legend."

 

Although he believes in the Virgin Birth himself as part of what he has "inherited," the Archbishop advised that new Christians need not fear that they had to leap over the "hurdle" of belief in this dogma before they could be "signed up."

 

However, he thought that most such converts would get a "deeper sense of what the Virgin Birth is about" over time. "I would say that of myself. About 30 years ago I might have said I wasn't too fussed about it - now I see it much more as dovetailing with the rest of what I believe about the story," he told BBC Radio interviewer Simon Mayo.

 

Williams also said there is scant evidence for and information about the Magi. Matthew's Gospel, the only gospel that mentions the wise men, "doesn't tell us there were three of them, doesn't tell us they were kings, doesn't tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire." Anything else was legend, he maintained. "It works quite well as legend," the Archbishop said.

 

He also picked apart other elements of the Christmas story, saying, for example, that there is no evidence that there were any oxen or asses in the shelter in which Christ was born. And as for the star rising and then standing still, the Archbishop stated that stars just don't behave like that, though he acknowledged that he did not know what had happened in this regard. There are "various scientific theories about what it might have been," he said.

 

One observer wrote that "Dr. Williams was not saying anything that is not taught as a matter of course in even the most conservative theological colleges. His supporters would argue that it is a sign of a true man of faith that he can hold on to an orthodox faith while permitting honest intellectual scrutiny of fundamental biblical texts."

 

WITH WILLIAMS HAVING SPARKED DEBATE in the press over whether Christmas is a "tall story," the prominent, conservative Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said at a carol service in Rochester Cathedral on December 21 that "Down the ages of faith lots of stories have grown up around Christmas. This can be good because it helps people to celebrate the festival. This is true of the music at Christmas, and the great art about the nativity. But Christmas is not

just a story. It is solemn and serious. It is about God being with us, God speaking to us and God saving us. The reason that Christmas remains popular even in secular society, is that for a while

we see the benign heart of the universe."

 

In his Christmas message, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola cast no doubts on the Christmas story. He wrote in part that, "Though few human beings rejoiced at the birth of the baby Jesus, the Gospels tell about multitudes rejoicing in the heavens, about a bright star leading wise men to worship the newborn king, and they also tell about the trouble his birth brought to those unwilling to have him as their Lord and King.

 

"The incarnation is the divine condescension. The birth of Christ which we celebrate is the decisive divine intervention into human history...Today, multitudes of human beings join the angels to rejoice. Christians shining as light lead many to Christ, and there still exists great trouble among those who would not have Jesus."

 

Akinola challenged believers to stand against efforts to turn Christmas into a secular holiday season and remove symbols of Christianity in daily lives and in history "in an attempt to conceal

the fact that Jesus came to save an erring world from sin and eternal condemnation...We should...be bold to proclaim to an increasingly secularized world, the good news of the

Savior-born..."

 

*WHILE THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY thinks the Magi are mostly "legend," Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori seems to have recast them as women. She chose as the image for her Christmas card an "interpretation" of the Magi, showing women from around the world, with one holding the baby Jesus. An explanation said that, "Wise women throughout time and in every culture know themselves to be seekers and seers of the Divine." In

Janet McKenzie's interpretation of the Magi, titled Epiphany, "women around the world find an image of the Epiphany that includes and validates their encounters with the One Who Saves,

celebrated...in the powerful, protective and tender manifestation of a mother and her child, embraced and nurtured by a loving community. Here is the global inclusiveness and a vision of mutuality and interdependence - the giving and receiving of the three gifts essential to life itself: presence, love and daily bread. Epiphany proclaims again and anew: Christ for all people. God's favor extends to all!"

 

Sources: www.virtueonline.org, The Times, BBC

 

 

AS BLAIR BECOMES CATHOLIC, C OF E DISPUTES CLAIM IT HAS BEEN

OVERTAKEN BY ROMAN CHURCH

 

It was a one-two punch for the Church of England when, shortly before Christmas, Britain's former prime minister, Tony Blair, fulfilled longtime predictions that he would leave the C of E

for Roman Catholicism, and the media took the opportunity to report that the Roman Church had overtaken the State Church as the country's dominant Christian body.

 

More Catholics than Anglicans attended Sunday church services in England in 2006, according to new research.

 

"This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivaled influence following the Reformation,"

wrote The Sunday Telegraph. Leading figures warned that the C of E "could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call," the story said.

 

However, Church of England leaders disputed the statistics, saying that they were misleading and did not provide a fair comparison.

 

BLAIR was brought up in the Church of England, but his wife, Cherie, is a practicing Catholic. The former prime minister was received into the Roman fold at a service in the private chapel of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

 

"Critics are certain to use the developments to intensify their demands for the Church of England to be stripped of its historic established status," wrote The Daily Telegraph.

 

According to findings of the independent Christian Research organization, average Sunday attendance at Catholic services in England was 861,800 in 2006, compared with 852,500 at

Anglican services.

 

Peter Brierley, the former executive director of Christian Research - which helped compile the data for The Sunday Telegraph - said that Catholic congregations had been swollen by the large influx of immigrants from eastern Europe in recent years.

 

"There's been a substantial number of Poles coming in, and 85 percent of them are Catholic, so that's going to boost numbers," he said.

 

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said that the figures for Mass attendance sounded "about right," although he stressed that there were no precise statistics.

 

But a representative of the Church of England said that Christian Research had seriously under-estimated its churchgoing numbers.

 

The head of research for the C of E, the Rev. Lynda Barley, said that official statistics for 2006 had not yet been compiled. However, she expected them to be broadly in line with the usual Sunday attendance in 2005, which was 993,000 (though that represents a decline from 1,010,00 in 2004).

 

She said that Christian Research based its figures on just one Sunday, whereas the C of E conducted a detailed head count of worshipers over four Sundays in October to produce an

average. She added that, as Anglicans were not under the same obligation as Catholics to go to church every Sunday, a more accurate comparison was the average attendance at all Church of

England services, both weekday and Sunday, over a month. That figure stands at 1.7 million, she said.

 

She said that while the C of E encouraged adherents to go to worship weekly, many who only went once or twice a year could consider themselves full members of the church.

 

Historically, Catholic Sunday attendance has been higher than that of Anglicans, but it has faced a steeper fall in recent years. This is now being offset by immigration. However, the influx is evidently not expected to endure. Danny Sriskandarajah, the head of migration, equalities and citizenship for the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: "We are already seeing numbers from eastern Europe dropping and many of them have already returned home. It is an important phenomenon, but it is likely to be temporary. I doubt we'll be seeing this level of attendance in another ten years."

 

Sources: The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph

 

 

WELSH WOMEN BISHOPS BILL PROTESTED

Report/Analysis By The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards

 

About one in seven of the clergy of the (Anglican) Church in Wales recently joined in expressing "concern and dismay" over the wording of a bill that, if passed, would allow women to be ordained as bishops.

 

In a letter written by the chairman of the group Credo Cymru, Fr. Alan Rabjohns, and published in the November 30 edition of The Church Times, 100 priests, deacons, and ordinands (of whom

three were women) said that key provisions of the proposed legislation offer "only a vague, non-defined indication of pastoral support" from Welsh bishops for traditionalists, leave open the "possibility of disciplinary action for not accepting the novelty," and expose opponents to civil prosecution for violating the ever-expanding catalog of offenses defined in the U.K. as sexual discrimination.

 

The protest letter from Credo Cymru (meaning "Welsh Belief"), the Forward in Faith (FIF) cognate organization in Wales, was clearly intended to put the Select Committee of the Welsh

Church's Governing Body on notice that Credo Cymru is not retreating from its assertion that passage of the legislation as currently framed would create an untenable situation for proponents of the traditional, apostolic ministry, including the Provincial Assistant Bishop (flying bishop), who currently provides pastoral care for Welsh Anglicans theologically opposed to women priests. The only way that this could be prevented, the objectors say, would be to amend the legislation to provide for a bishop who would be more than a floating assistant to the diocesan bishops.

 

Indeed, such a bishop would have to be accorded the authority to do in his own right (and not as someone else's stand-in) whatever a diocesan bishop customarily has to do, such as issue licenses, and provide for the theological training, selection, and ordination of clergy. Parishes would have to be given the right to opt into his jurisdiction. In effect, he would have to be a bishop with a jurisdiction overlaying the territory of the Welsh Church's six dioceses, much like the Third Province proposed by FIF for the Church of England.

 

The protest precedes an expected vote on the women bishops bill at the April 2-3 meeting of the Welsh Church's Governing Body, and follows an indication from Welsh bishops last July that

they would oppose the scheme the traditionalists are advocating because it would create "a church within a church."

 

That may have been the prelates' way of inviting Credo Cymru to negotiate. But the November letter made it clear that what the traditional Churchmen in Wales had proposed was not a

negotiating position at all, but a description of the minimum accommodation necessary to keep them within the Church in Wales.

 

The loss of a significant number of members over this issue would be a significant setback for the Church in Wales: As in the Church of England, where the ordination of women was trumpeted as a way to draw the disaffected back to the pews, there are downward trends in virtually all membership categories.

 

*DIVISIONS OVER WOMEN BISHOPS in the Anglican Church of Australia led October 26 to the establishment of a new group to represent those upholding historic Holy Order. More than a quarter of the 247 delegates to the ACA General Synod in Canberra held a hastily organized late-night meeting to set up the new Association for Apostolic Ministry, led by Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen, the church's leading Evangelical, and on the Anglo-Catholic side,

Ballarat Bishop Michael Hough. The action followed a September decision by the church's Appellate Tribunal that it was legal for individual dioceses to tap a woman as diocesan bishop even though the General Synod had not approved the innovation. Dr. Jensen said that those who oppose female bishops might number as many as as half of ACA members, scattered through the different dioceses. Only a few of the 23 dioceses oppose women bishops, but one of them is the Sydney diocese, which contains 40 per cent of Australia's Anglicans. The Synod earlier set up a group to work out ways to accommodate traditionalists and report to the bishops in April, and

both Jensen and Hough will be part of that.

 

Sources: Credo Cymru, The Church in Wales, The Church Times, The Age

 

 

A CHURCH OUT OF CONTROL

 

By Robert S. Munday

November 12, 2007

 

Anyone who lives in the Episcopal Church these days has probably already recognized himself (or herself) to be a victim of the (purported) old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times!" However, the last two weeks have seen the times get even more interesting than usual.

 

First, there was the news item: "Presiding Bishop reaches out to bishops attempting to withdraw dioceses." Such a compassionate sounding title for an article conveying that the PB had sent letters threatening disciplinary action against the bishops in question! As one commentator put it, "The Episcopal Church is probably the only place where 'being reached out to' means being threatened, deposed, and sued." These threats against bishops of dioceses come on top of the numerous places around the country where the Episcopal Church is involved in legal action against departing parishes.

 

A concurrent development with the escalating legal tensions over the past year has been the repudiation of the General Convention 2006 resolution (B033) urging restraint in giving consent to the election of a bishop "whose manner of life might present a challenge to the larger Communion" - in other words, a gay bishop. This call for restraint has now been repudiated by various dioceses, a partial list of which includes: Los Angeles, New Jersey, California, Rochester, and (just this past weekend) Chicago.

 

Chicago held its election for a new bishop this past weekend also. While Tracey Lind, the partnered lesbian candidate (and Dean of the cathedral in Cleveland) was not elected, the Chicago Tribune reported the successful candidate, Jeff Lee, from the Seattle area, as saying:

 

"I am overwhelmed and grateful to God for the opportunity to come to such a great diocese," Lee said by telephone. "In many ways, I believe Chicago reflects the face of the Episcopal Church in all its diversity. Rich and poor, urban and suburban, black and white, gay and straight ... and I believe I've been called to be a bridge-builder and a reconciler."

 

The election marked the most recent flash point in the conflict over homosexuality in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop, began a shift in the church and some thought there would be further divisions if Lind were elected bishop.

 

When asked about his stance on gays in the church, Lee said he supported full inclusion.

 

"I believe God is calling us to full inclusion of gays and lesbians in ministry of this church ... There is a place for everyone in the church, and the church has to catch up with God's vision," he said.

 

In case anyone doesn't remember, this is simply a repeat of the Diocese of California's election of a bishop, where they also did not elect the lesbian candidate, but elected a "straight, white, male" bishop who was just as strongly committed to advancing the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals.

 

This past weekend also brought news that the Diocese of Northern California has voted to support gay couples.

 

All of this means that, despite the Windsor Report and the Dar Es Salaam Communique, despite the General Convention's passage of B033, and regardless of what the House of Bishops said at its meeting in New Orleans, the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals will continue unhindered.

 

There was also this rather bizarre news item that the Episcopal Church is taking disciplinary action against three retired bishops. The three retired bishops: Fairfield, Bena, and Cox have, since their retirement, been received into, respectively, the Anglican provinces of Uganda, Nigeria, and the Southern Cone. Their "crime" is, apparently, that they have, under the direction of their new provinces, ministered to Anglicans in North America who are also affiliated with those overseas provinces. The substance of the complaint is that the bishops failed to "resign" in a way that was approved by the House of Bishops. I am sure the bishops thought their resignation was taken care of when they retired. To all but the most bellicose among us, pursuing these bishops in retirement must seem like an egregious example of legal overkill. But, hey, welcome to the Episcopal Church!

 

Then there is the news that the Province of the Southern Cone has passed a resolution opening its doors to any US diocese that desired to transfer into that province. This is a move obviously aimed at the bishops and dioceses who are "being reached out to" by the Episcopal Church's litigious Presiding Bishop. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

 

In all this, the silence from Lambeth Palace has been deafening!

 

Earlier in the week, there was a report from London Times religion writer, Ruth Gledhill, that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, "described the plan of [Southern Cone] Archishop Greg Venables [to take dissenting US dioceses under his wing] as a 'sensible way forward.'" I am willing to bet that this is the last talk of that sort anyone hears from the ABC. (It was. – Ed.)

 

There seems to be a pattern emerging here. This isn't the first time Rowan Williams has made a comment that seemed to support orthodox Anglicans in the US, only to have the comment nullified several days later in an official "clarification" issued from Lambeth Palace.

 

It appears that, if someone can actually talk with Rowan Williams, the fellow isn't really a bad chap. But then his Wormtongue managers at Lambeth Palace and the heavily US-funded Anglican Communion Office regain their control over him, and he becomes once again entranced to do nothing while evil prospers.

 

Actually, the ABC seems to be acting under the assumption that the best way to keep the Anglican Communion together is to keep the Episcopal Church together. Thus, he is remaining silent while the litigious (did I mention that already?) Presiding Bishop crushes all dissent. American conservatives are apparently supposed to reconcile themselves to being casualties in a war Rowan would like to pretend doesn't exist.

 

In reality, the only way to save the Anglican Communion is to discipline the Episcopal Church for its departure from Anglican Communion norms. The Archbishop of Canterbury can accomplish this discipline through his prerogative of invitations to the Lambeth Conference. The Primates can accomplish this discipline by censuring the American Church and limiting TEC's participation in the instruments of unity. If this does not happen, not only the Episcopal Church, but the Anglican Communion will fly apart under the centrifugal forces of the orbit into which the anarchic deviations of the American Church have cast it, and it will happen sooner rather than later.

 

Are you listening, Rowan?

 

 

INVALID TRUST

 

By Jack Estes

 

Trust is an essential principle of the spiritual life. Our relationship with God relies on the fact that he is trustworthy, and that we are willing to place our trust in him. Trust in his love. Trust in his provision. Trust in his word. In fact, trust is foundational to all healthy relationships – trust between friends, trust in marriage between husband and wife, trust between employer and employee.

 

Trust bonds us to one another. Every bond of trust exists with certain conditions that in turn promise certain benefits. Thus the bond of trust is covenantal by nature, flowing back and forth

between those who have committed themselves to one another.

 

Trust also functions as a bond in the life of a community, and is closely tied to authority. In our society, individuals and agencies in which we invest authority are expected to act in accordance

with the values of society, with righteousness, honesty, and responsibility. When and if they do not, the public trust is violated. Those at fault must be held accountable for trust to be restored.

 

In the life of our church, trust is even more important. Those in whom we vest authority - deacons, priests, and bishops, as well as vestries, councils, and committees - enter into a sacred trust between God and his people. When the conditions which form this sacred trust are violated, the perpetrators forfeit the benefits of the relationship, along with their claim to authority.

 

Consider the situation of a small parish somewhere in the ranks of The Episcopal Church (TEC). Decades ago faithful men and women formed a community of worship in accordance with their

faith, obedience, and trust in God. They affirmed and upheld the essential tenets of Christian belief, including the doctrines of Christ, the authority of scripture, and a biblical morality as affirmed by the tradition of the church for 2,000 years.

 

This faithful local church community gave of its time and resources. The church bought property with the money its members gave of themselves. They built buildings and planted trees. They

engaged in ministry and called a rector.

 

As the years went by, they invested their trust in God, in each other, and in The Episcopal Church. They honored the conditions of this trust, and the authority of their rector and bishop.

All shared in the benefits of this sacred trust - generation by generation.

 

Then one day, this parish finds itself with a new rector and a new bishop who declare that Jesus is not the only means of salvation, scripture has authority only when we say it does, and biblical

morality is outdated and must be modernized according to what we think is right. The parish is told to accept this new interpretation of Christian belief and practice. The parishioners' trust has been betrayed. The very fabric of communion has been torn at its deepest level.

 

Of course, this is exactly what is happening to parishes all over the church. TEC is in the process of perpetrating an immense and corporate violation of trust. What is outrageous is the fact that

the perpetrators continue to lay claim to the benefits of the covenant, namely the property that was bought and paid for by the faithful Christians through the decades who, had they foreseen,

never would have given a dime to this new religious order.

 

TEC asserts that all property is held in trust - people may leave but parishes and dioceses may not. But this trust is invalid. It is a unilateral trust in which TEC receives all the benefits with no

accountability. Trust means you trust us and we do whatever we please. If you don't like it, get out, and we keep your investments.

 

One need only assess the public doctrinal statements of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and other bishops, along with the actions taken by them and the General Convention, to

see this is the case. How can they assert rights to anything, much less the property and buildings of those parishes on which they are trying to force a new religious agenda?

 

No greater evidence exists to demonstrate the departure of TEC from Christian faith and practice than the lawsuits foisted upon those same parishes which, upon realizing their trust was violated, have sought to extricate themselves from the situation. How are these lawsuits an expression of Christian love? Accept our new doctrine, or we will take all that the generations of your parish family have given.

 

This is nothing short of coercion.

 

What is even more outrageous is that our courts are rendering judgments in support of this coercion. What divorce court would say to a wife of 50 years that she was entitled to nothing,

(that) even though her husband has left her and now lives with another woman, he gets to keep the house and all the savings accounts?

 

The courts are wrong in supporting TEC, for the courts have not considered properly the parameters of the trust. Secular judges fail because they seek to separate church and state, doctrine and property in their rulings. This is not possible. In the life of a community of faith, doctrine, property, worship, buildings and authority are bound together in a sacred trust, a covenant that flows in two directions. TEC has broken that trust. It has violated the covenant, and therefore is no longer entitled to any benefits from the relationship.

 

The Christian thing to do would be to bless those who disagree and allow them to go their way. Instead, TEC is waging a legal battle against those who dare oppose it. TEC is willing to bankrupt local churches through the cost of litigation rather than acknowledge the integrity of their community and the investments made by them. These tactics will only bring grief to all concerned.

 

I call on the leadership of TEC to repent - to honor the faith, commitment, and investment of those local churches which cannot abide by the new order - and to allow them to depart in peace, with property intact. It is simply the Christian thing to do.

 

The Rev. Jack Estes is the rector of St. Luke's Church, Bakersfield, Calif.

 

The foregoing article was first published in the September 23, 2007 edition of The Living Church, and appears here by permission.

 

HOW CAN WE CALL IT ROBBERY?

 

Bishops Maurice Benitez and William Wantland

November 12, 2007

 

Many of those on the liberal side of The Episcopal Church (TEC) have called those who have chosen to depart from TEC, and who feel they have some right to retain their property, to be "robbers," and that their actions amount to "thievery" and "stealing."

 

We wish to make the case that those who feel that TEC has moved on and left them, because this church has departed in significant ways from the doctrines of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, are not bad people. They are not criminals, nor any worse sinners than the rest of us. They have been our brothers and sisters, and we need to let them go graciously.

 

We still believe that reasonable and godly folk can find equitable solutions to these kinds of problems that are fair to TEC, to bishops and dioceses, to those congregations that are separating to another Anglican jurisdiction, as well as to those who are staying where they are.

 

We begin by asking: how can it be robbery for those congregations to retain their property in cases where the congregations have full title to the property, if neither their dioceses nor TEC have ever invested anything in the purchase of the real property of those congregations and in the construction and maintenance of the improvements on the property? Even in those cases where their dioceses have title to the properties, a case can be made that the congregations that built the buildings and maintained them over the years have at least some rightful interest in the property.

 

In cases where the current congregation has inherited from those who preceded them valuable historic property, it needs to be fully considered. Likewise, when the current congregation has, through its sacrificial stewardship, invested significantly in building a magnificent plant, that also should be considered. If the time comes when those congregations choose to separate from TEC, and would like to retain at least some of their interest in the property, it may be unfortunate and painful for all concerned, but it hardly can be called "robbery."

 

It is our contention that reasonable and godly Christian people, through deliberation, and perhaps through a mediation process, can arrive at reasonable solutions that are equitable to all parties, such as possibly leasing, or even selling the property to the congregation that is becoming a part of a different Anglican jurisdiction. Such financial payments, whether through paying on a lease or a mortgage, could at least partly make up for the lost income incurred by the diocese in the departure of most or many in the congregations.

 

Certainly such a process has to be preferable to what is happening now. What is the merit in TEC and its dioceses, by litigation, driving congregations completely off the properties in which they have at least some interest, requiring them to purchase other properties, and to build anew, with TEC, as it did in 2006, according to the treasurer, spending $900,000 more than was budgeted for such litigation? This does not take into account the resources that the dioceses are expending for this litigation - funds that were given by faithful church members for the doing of the business of the church, the winning of more people to Christ, and the planting of new churches.

 

How does it further the kingdom of God to relegate the smaller remnant congregations that are left after the majority are gone and have vacated the church to those all but empty church buildings? These churches were built for much larger congregations, and the remnant will struggle to maintain them without the ongoing support of their dioceses. And how does it further the kingdom for the dioceses, even if they win all of their litigation, to gain back all but empty church buildings for them to maintain, for the new, smaller congregations? They might even be faced in the future with a financial requirement that they sell the property to someone else.

 

And who is to blame? One side says it is the other side that has departed from some of the historic teachings of the apostolic Church and the authority of holy scripture. The other side declares that it is those who are walking out of TEC who are to blame. To argue this way is like two young boys arguing after a fight over who started it. It does not matter at this stage! What matters now is attempting through reasonable negotiations to find an equitable solution - one that will best serve all parties, including TEC, to get out of the lengthy and expensive litigation. What matters is getting all parties back to using their resources, money and energy for the furtherance of God's kingdom. Just think how many new churches could have been planted by even a fraction of what is being consumed by lawyers' fees and court costs for this extensive litigation.

 

We return to the original question, "How can you call it robbery?" We humbly suggest that no robbery has been, or is being committed. We specifically note successful cases of balanced response in past years in Oakland (Diocese of California), Tulsa (Diocese of Oklahoma), Plano (Diocese of Dallas), and Overland Park (Diocese of Kansas), to name a few such cases. Finally, can we comply with the request of the primates at Dar es Salaam and end litigation as a tool of repression? We think so.

 

The Rt. Rev. Maurice M. Benitez is the Bishop of Texas, retired, and the Rt. Rev. William C. Wantland is the Bishop of Eau Claire, retired. The foregoing was first published in The Living Church and appears here by permission.

 

 

CANON BISHOP SAYS NATIONAL CHURCH HAS

NO LEGAL CLAIM TO CHURCH PROPERTIES

 

An exclusive interview with the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, the retired Bishop of Eau Claire (WI), who led the jurisdiction from 1980 - 1999. He is a canon lawyer and lives with his wife in

Oklahoma. He agreed to be interviewed by VirtueOnline about church property lawsuits, a number of which are making their way through various courts in the United States.

 

By David W. Virtue

www.virtueonline.org

11/26/2007

 

VOL: Bishop Wantland, because of the Dennis Canon there is the overwhelming belief, substantiated in a number of state courts, that all parish properties are held in trust for the local diocese. Is that true in all cases? If not why not?

 

WANTLAND: Generally speaking, there is a trust interest running from the parish to the diocese. In 1570, the British Parliament passed legislation restricting the disposal of parish property. This

was carried over to New York law, where an early statute provided that the bishop and standing committee would have a say in the disposition of parish property, but so would the New York

Legislature. This (without reference to state bodies) was added to Title II (now Canon II. 6) shortly after the Civil War. In the 20th century, a similar canon was enacted in Title I, adding all

parish property to that requirement, not just church or chapel buildings. Most states in the U.S. follow implied trust principles of law, so in those states, the diocese would prevail. Several states follow neutral principles of law, and in those states, the local parish might, under certain circumstances, prevail.

 

VOL: Recently in the State of California, the Court of Appeal reversed a lower court ruling, placing three parishes at risk of losing their parishes. They reversed an Orange County Superior

Court's prior ruling that [the] three former Episcopal churches, which disaffiliated from the national denomination in 2004, did not forfeit their property. This division of the appellate court broke with nearly 30 years of California church property law, and instead ruled that hierarchical church denominations can take over local church property. Where is this going?

 

WANTLAND: It is going to the California Supreme Court, which has already agreed to hear the matter.

 

VOL: Attorney Eric C. Sohlgren said the decision puts one division of the appellate court in direct conflict with other California court of appeal decisions that for almost 30 years have rejected the idea that a court must automatically defer to a church denomination in church property disputes. He said that idea offends basic principles of fairness and property ownership.

Do you agree?

 

WANTLAND: The latest Appellate Court decision certainly offends the previously settled law in California. However, nothing would prevent the California Supreme Court from rejecting the

neutral principles idea, and moving to implied trust.

 

VOL: It is also alleged that all properties are also held in trust for the national church. Is that automatically true if the diocese can also lay claim?

 

WANTLAND: What is the national church? We commonly use that title, but the so-called national church has no current machinery for holding title to property outside of New York. While the canons in both Title I and II recognize an interest in parish property for the diocese, this only re-states law that has been a part of our church for over 400 years. Further, a careful reading of the Dennis Canon does not grant any real interest in diocesan property to 815 2nd

Avenue.

 

VOL: What exactly is the national church? Is it an ecclesiastical body or strictly an administrative body?

 

WANTLAND: The so-called national church is an administrative body with very limited authority. It has defined itself in a number of documents over the years as a confederation of dioceses. Neither General Convention nor Executive Council has any jurisdiction over dioceses granted in either the church constitution or canons.

 

VOL: In the 'which came first, the chicken or the egg', is the national church a product of General Convention, or are the dioceses the product of the national church and General Convention?

 

WANTLAND: The Episcopal Church came into being in 1789. Dioceses preceded the existence of TEC by a number of years. For example, the Diocese of Connecticut not only existed for years before 1789, but elected a bishop and had him consecrated in Scotland in 1784. New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia also elected bishops and had them consecrated in England in 1787. Clearly, the dioceses came together to create the Episcopal Church by adopting a constitution and canons and a Book of Common Prayer. The dioceses created the Episcopal Church, and not the other way round.

 

VOL: If the national church or General Convention is the product of dioceses and not the other way round, then what legal claim can the national church make in court for parish properties?

 

WANTLAND: The only way TEC could even claim a trust interest in parish property is to rely on the imprecise language of the so-called Dennis Canon. However, prior to 1979, the so-called national church never claimed any trust interest in parish or diocesan property. A basic principle of trust law is that two people can agree to create a trust interest in property which one of the parties owns. However, a third party cannot then claim a trust interest in that property without the consent of the original parties. While it might be possible, I am not personally aware of any diocese which has recognized the interest of 815 2nd Avenue in any property. To the contrary, a number of dioceses have specifically rejected any claim of the so-called national church to property within those dioceses. With the possible exception of the Diocese of California, I am not aware of any parishes voluntarily granting an interest in their property to 815. In the absence of such a granting of trust interest, I doubt any court would uphold it.

 

VOL: Does the Presiding Bishop have any canonical authority in a diocese, any diocese, either liberal or conservative?

 

WANTLAND: The authority and duties of the Presiding Bishop are set forth in Canon I. 2. 4. In regard to dioceses, the P.B. shall consult with the ecclesiastical authority of the diocese if there be a vacancy in the office of bishop, but the P.B. has no authority to act, only to consult. Further, the P.B. is to visit every diocese, and takes order for the consecration of bishops within a diocese. No other duties in regard to dioceses are delineated. All other duties apply to the administrative structure of the Episcopal Church.

 

VOL: Mrs. Jefferts Schori, while holding the title of Presiding Bishop, is in reality the bishop of nothing. She has no diocese, unlike the Archbishop of Canterbury who is both the titular head of

the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In that case, does she have any legitimate (legal or ecclesiastical) authority over the leadership of a diocese?

 

WANTLAND: The Presiding Bishop has no authority over the leadership of a diocese, except if charges are brought against a bishop. The P.B. does have certain responsibilities in regard to the

charges, as set forth in Title IV of the canons. However, there is absolutely NO authority in any instance over standing committees, diocesan councils, or other diocesan leadership.

 

VOL: Ft. Worth Bishop Jack Iker said to his diocese recently that "there is no such thing as `the national church.' We are a confederation of dioceses, related to each other by our participation in General Convention." He went on to say that from the earliest days of the beginnings of the Episcopal Church in this country, including the formation of dioceses and eventually the creation

of the General Convention itself, "there has been a strong mistrust of centralized authority that is deeply rooted in our history as Episcopalians. We do not have an Archbishop in this Church, who has authority over other bishops and their dioceses. Instead, we have a Presiding Bishop, with very limited canonical responsibilities, mainly administrative in nature." Do you agree with him?

 

WANTLAND: Bishop Iker has stated precisely what I feel the situation to be.

 

VOL: Mrs. Schori has said she will allow the sale of properties back to the parishes, even to other religious groups, but not to another Anglican jurisdiction. In your mind is that legal? Can she in fact do that? Is she breaking some federal statute by saying that a property sale can be restricted because she says so?

 

WANTLAND: Federal law does not apply here. The law of the state rules. I would simply observe that the previous Presiding Bishop declared in Louisiana that the so-called national church had no interest in property disputes between a parish and the diocese, and would not intervene unless asked to do so by the diocese. Therefore, if a diocese is negotiating with a parish to avoid a costly lawsuit, what right does a Presiding Bishop have to dictate terms? None whatsoever.

 

VOL: Recently the Diocese of Western Michigan sold their cathedral to an independent Evangelical mega-church without apparently a whimper from the national church or David Booth Beers, Mrs. Schori's attorney. But when the pro-cathedral in El Paso, Texas, under the ecclesiastical authority of then Bishop Jeffrey Steenson in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, wanted to leave the diocese and TEC, I was told by Steenson that Beers raised all hell. Steenson told me that he did not want to litigate, and furthermore the parish gave the diocese $2 million as part of the deal! Why do you think Beers ignored one situation and yet weighed in on another?

 

WANTLAND: Because of prejudice against so-called (Anglican) conservatives.

 

VOL: David Booth Beers bills out his time at $600 an hour, less (a) 15 percent discount for TEC at a cool $510 an hour, so I have been told. Presumably he has a team working with him. He

seems to be everywhere - Virginia and Philadelphia (recently). I [can] imagine that at the end of the day millions of dollars in legal fees are being given to him by the national church. Where, in

your opinion, is the money coming from?

 

WANTLAND: The money, in all probability, is coming from the endowment funds of TEC, which funds [total] more than $200 million.

 

VOL: A number of bishops, including yourself, have asked Mrs. Jefferts Schori where the money is coming from for the present litigation, but she has not replied. Why is that?

 

WANTLAND: I was one of the bishops to raise this question. To date we have received no answer. My guess is that TEC doesn't want to start the precedent of providing full and complete information about anything. The name of the game is "spin."

 

VOL: Is it possible that litigation costs could, in the end, bankrupt the Episcopal Church?

 

WANTLAND: I doubt it. While the cost of litigation is ridiculous, I don't think it will deplete the endowment funds.

 

VOL: Can the trust funds be raided without accountability and financial responsibility to pay legal costs?

 

WANTLAND: Some of the trust funds are unrestricted, and can be used however 815 2^nd Avenue sees fit. Others are restricted, and cannot be legally used for purposes other than (those) stated in the establishment of those funds. In any instance, the matter of [Episcopal Church] Treasurer (Ellen Cooke) who went to jail for misuse of trust funds proves that there must be accountability.

 

VOL: In the end, if the national church takes possession of dioceses that will be 90 per cent empty, is the victory anything more than pyrrhic?

 

WANTLAND: In the highly unlikely event this were to occur, it is not really a victory of anything. What do you do with property you can't use? History has shown that it gets sold at a great loss.

 

VOL: With empty or near empty churches which will have to be sold in the open market, what is the ultimate victory for the national church?

 

WANTLAND: The only victory is for the forces of Satan and secular humanism.

 

VOL: Thank you Bishop Wantland.

 

 

ONE PARISH'S APPROACH TO "A MOMENT OF DECISION"

 

St. Stephens Church Leadership Seeks Realignment and New Province of Affiliation

 

To the Members of St Stephens Episcopal Church, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Diocese of Pittsburgh

A Letter about Denominational Realignment From your Rector and Vestry

 

October 12, 2007

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

I write to you as your pastor and brother in Christ in a season of great importance concerning our future, and I write with the unanimous support of our Vestry. For decades under multiple

generations of leaders this parish has been filled with glad followers of Jesus Christ, working for the mission of his Gospel, and laboring for the reform and renewal of the Episcopal Church -

under Holy Scripture and through the Holy Spirit. At St. Stephens we have been deeply thankful for this call upon our lives; we love the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we love this Church.

 

A Moment of Decision

 

As we enter the latter part of this decade, it is now evident that differences of faith and practice have torn the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, probably beyond mending. The challenges we face are rooted in longstanding developments inside western culture that are spreading worldwide.

 

These challenges cannot be avoided, for we face them everywhere. I thank God for your endurance, your courage, and your clarity in this important struggle.

 

We have come to a moment of decision. After years of effort and much personal anguish, I now believe that the Episcopal Church has clarified and hardened its opposition to the historic and

biblical Christian faith to such an extent that we cannot pursue our gospel mission fruitfully while remaining under its authority.

 

Your Vestry concurs. For the sake of our health and future mission, we believe that we must now partner with our diocese to realign our congregation and affiliate with a different Province of the Anglican Communion.

 

What is the Issue?

 

The presenting issue is the question of human sexuality and in particular the morality of same-sex relations. Same-sex relations in a committed partnership are now held to be consistent with the Christian faith and central to the values of the Gospel by the dominant majority of Episcopal Church leadership. In 2003 the Episcopal Church confirmed Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. It was a defining moment for our church. Subsequent Episcopal councils have rejected widespread and repeated appeals from the Anglican Communion to step back. The decision of 2003 has proven to be an irreversible action with permanent consequences. The Episcopal Church is now committed to spreading a gospel of sexual liberation throughout the Communion and the world.

 

The underlying issues go far deeper than sex, to the very heart of our faith, including our understanding of the Triune God, the devastating impact of the fall upon human nature, the

mission to the world, the interdependence of the Anglican Communion, the sanctity of human life, and above it all the final authority and full trustworthiness of Holy Scripture guiding us

through these matters. At its core, this is a dispute about whether God has definitively spoken to us in the pages of the Bible, and about whether those pages can be read, understood, and trusted in their plain and natural sense by common people.

 

Though our faith is in concert with the majority of our worldwide Anglican Communion and the historical roots of our Church, we now find ourselves fundamentally divided from the leadership

in the Episcopal Church over these issues of first importance. The tragic result of abandoning the guidance of scripture is that modern people who are caught in sexual brokenness are denied the blessings of the gospel: including forgiveness, the new birth, and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to reorder our deepest affections…Many of us who were won to faith in Jesus out of the ruins of the sexual revolution feel this loss most keenly. The Gospel of new life is being denied to a whole subsection of our culture.

 

Liberal Intolerance

 

We have noticed a widespread and growing trend in the Episcopal Church as it pursues its progressive agenda...In many places congregations and dioceses are no longer free to recruit,

develop or choose leaders who share their historic faith and biblical values. Mandatory diocesan assessments are used to compel parish funding of causes in opposition to parish values.

 

If the trend continues, acceptance will be soon required of behavior that Scripture reveals to be immoral and destructive. Litigation, hostile property claims, and presentments are being widely

used against congregations and their leaders who in conscience resist or who seek the freedom to realign with other parts of our Communion. It is clear that opposition to classical, creedal,

biblical theology and ministries is being orchestrated from the highest levels of the Episcopal Church. We are plainly being told to submit or to leave.

 

Our Appeals And Concerns To The Leadership Of The Anglican Communion

 

This appeal process has been going on for 10 years, and leaders from this parish have been intimately involved. We have been heartened by the broad attention and support we have received. We hoped that the Lambeth Conference, the Windsor Report, and the Tanzania Communique would provide a workable way forward for our ministries and the Anglican Communion itself.

 

We were stunned by the rapid, summary dismissal of the Tanzania Communique by our House of Bishops and Executive Council [in the first part of 2007], and by their failure to provide ad

adequate protections for dissenting dioceses and parishes. We understand this to signal a decided rejection of Anglican Communion authority, of our most deeply held values, and of our future ministries. We believe there shall be no viable long term future for our parishes in this church unless we make unacceptable compromises on matters of first importance.

 

What is God Doing?

 

It seems to us that God is raising something up, even while he is bringing something down. We believe we are seeing the end of denominationalism, built on geographical and hierarchical

structures that no longer hold to the faith that gave them birth. In their place in the West, we are witnessing the rise of a creative family of networks, built on shared conciliar leadership,

non-geographical structures, local property ownership, vital evangelistic mission commitments to the contemporary world, solid confidence in the full trustworthiness of the Bible, and a common vision for disciple-making.

These networks are unified by people and congregations freely believing in Jesus as their Lord and Savior, eagerly learning from and trusting in the Scriptures, and the confession of the Nicene faith. All of this testifies to the work of the Holy Spirit. Threats are not used to gain consent, but instead God is drawing people who happily surrender to his gracious gospel work. There is a growing movement of this kind within American Anglicanism called the Common Cause Network. We believe God is behind it, and we wish to join it and help it grow.

 

What is our Plan?

 

Working with friends overseas and around the country, our Diocese (Pittsburgh) has developed a plan to realign with an overseas Province of the Anglican Communion which shares our faith and

our values. In doing this, we would also partner with the growing Anglican network taking shape in North America outside the Episcopal Church. Parishes that wished to remain in the Episcopal

Church would be given that option. This realignment will take three actions of our diocesan convention to complete.

 

The first step comes at diocesan convention this November 2 and 3 (2007). Steps two and three would likely come next October or November. Steps one and two would change our constitution, giving us the right to choose our affiliation within the Anglican Communion. Step three would actually select the new Province of affiliation. We are one of four, perhaps five dioceses that are preparing to take these steps together over the next months. Other dioceses and parishes look on with hope to see if a realignment path can be opened. We believe we have the right and responsibility to do this.

 

What is the Cost?

 

Our plan will be opposed, certainly in convention, and probably in civil and church courts as well. We believe we have a strong case and significant precedent within the Anglican Communion and American law. But there are difficulties to face. There are many who would love to see us go, but not with any of the church buildings or endowments we own. There are many congregations in our diocese who find their survival threatened by these developments within our church. No one, on either side of this dispute, looks forward to extended litigation.

 

The cost could be sharp for many, but the price of inaction would be even worse. We will probe every opening for a negotiated settlement along the way that is fair, generous. It will take

patience, endurance, wisdom, grace and much prayer to see what is possible. Perhaps the Episcopal Church will respond with a solution that will pull our Communion back from the brink of division. We should have a good picture of how this is likely to resolve within a year, and perhaps sooner. We trust God for the road ahead, confident of his leading. It is a walk of faith, like that of Abraham. If there is a difficult cost, we ask God to give us the heart to bear it with joy, and with trust in him.

 

What is our Heart?

 

We have not wanted to act in haste, as our congregational life over the past 40 years attests. We are concerned that the history of the Church is littered with the wreckage of strife and division. We do not wish to add to these ruins. We are mindful as well that our own hands are not clean in the development of this history, and are particularly brokenhearted over the pride that has too often accompanied our witness. We beg God and others across our Church for the forgiveness we need.

 

So we wish to carry our convictions with grace and humility, not with judgment. We know that God is concerned to correct things in us as well as in others. We are eager for that correction. We want to speak with clarity and charity towards those we oppose. We are mindful of the wisdom of Gamaliel (Acts 5.38-40), who in a season of persecution persuaded the religious authorities to release these words:" Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be His speech persuaded them."

 

I think, in the end, this is what we will need to do: and to trust one another to God, confident that in due time he will sort it out...Towards that future, we now move, asking your partnership, your prayer, and your support.

 

Geoffrey W Chapman, Rector

Fred Dale, Senior Warden

Michael Mullin, Junior Warden

With the unanimous support of the Vestry

 

 

INDIANAPOLIS BISHOP CLAIMS BOLIVIAN PRELATE NOT RECOGNIZED BY CANTERBURY

 

IT IS A COMMON PLOY used by liberal establishment Anglican leaders - claiming that other orthodox Anglican clergy or groups are not authentic, as a guard against losing their flocks to the traditional message.

 

Among the latest to employ this tactic was Indianapolis Episcopal Bishop Catherine Waynick. She claimed in a pastoral letter that she ordered to be read in all her churches October 23 that

Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia is not a recognized Anglican prelate. Lyons has been among foreign bishops offering episcopal care to faithful Anglicans who have left The Episcopal Church

(TEC), and had recently been in the Indianapolis area in support of that mission.

 

In her letter, Waynick wrote: "It may help you to know that this bishop of Bolivia is not recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He recently came here to celebrate confirmations

and ordinations, though he is well aware he is in defiance of ancient church councils and Anglican tradition, and his actions have been denounced by the Anglican Consultative Council and the primates."

 

Waynick "unfortunately...misrepresented my standing as the legitimately ordained Bishop of Bolivia, and a constituent member of the Province of the Southern Cone under Archbishop Gregory Venables," replied Lyons, who added that he has received a full invitation to the 2008 Lambeth Conference. "If she had referred to the Episcopal Church's own Episcopal Church Directory for [2007], she would have found my name there nestled quietly among the dioceses of the...Southern Cone on page 483, in communion with Canterbury, a full member of the Anglican Communion and in good standing."

 

Lyons recently transferred the oversight of ten U.S. congregations he was shepherding to the Nigerian-backed Convocation of Anglicans in North America. But he said that his cross-boundary episcopal care had been offered at this time "because of the failure of TEC to

respond pastorally to those who oppose their highly irregular actions based in speculative theology. These actions, unheard of in Christian tradition, now divide the Anglican Communion."

 

Some grumbling from the Communion's top echelons aside, it does not appear that there has been any change in Lyons' or his province's Communion status since the Southern Cone invited San Joaquin and other U.S. dioceses that may leave TEC to affiliate with it until the crisis in the Communion is resolved.

 

Source: www.virtueonline.org

 

 

MORE TURMOIL IN CENTRAL AFRICA

 

The Anglican Church in Central Africa has removed Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare, and Bishop Elson Jakazi of Manicaland, as prelates, after both purported to lead their dioceses out of the province.

 

The notorious Dr. Kunonga, however, promptly formed an independent “Church of the Province of Zimbabwe,” breaking with the Anglican Communion. The has also enlisted the aid of the government of his strong ally, the infamous Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, to consolidate his hold over the diocese. Armed police broke up rival worship services recently, arresting three priests and a number of lay leaders loyal to the “official” Acting Bishop of Harare, Sebastian Bakare.

 

In an unprecedented intervention, the Archbishop of Canterbury denounced '”unequivocally the use of state machinery to intimidate opponents of the deposed bishop of Harare,” and declared his support for Dr. Bakare and the Province of Central Africa in the dispute.

 

Allegedly, the secession of Kunonga and his followers was due to a pro-gay bias in the largely conservative Central African province, but some said Kunonga was using this claim to deflect attention from his close, controversial alliance with Mugabe, who is widely seen as a wholly corrupt figure who is destroying his nation. As well, serious ecclesiastical charges - including incitement to murder - were earlier brought against Kunonga but have never been adjudicated within Central Africa. An attempt to try Kunonga in 2005 collapsed when the judge quit.

 

In an October statement, the dean of the province, Bishop Albert Chama of Northern Zambia, said that it was "impossible" for Kunonga and Jakazi to withdraw their dioceses from the province under the terms of Central Africa's constitution, unless it had been authorized by a two-thirds vote of the Provincial Synod. The final decision rested with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chama asserted, as Dr. Williams must determine whether the secession affected "the terms of communion between the church of this province, the Church of England and the rest of the Anglican Communion." Archbishop Williams has now made clear his position on the matter.

 

With Mugabe almost certainly pulling strings, however, a Zimbabwe court declined in October to issue an emergency injunction on behalf of the province that would have forced Kunonga to turn

over diocesan assets in his control. A rump of the Harare diocese has remained loyal to the prelate.

 

"The board of trustees of the Diocese of Harare is the custodian of all properties of the diocese and no one other than licensed personnel will be allowed to use our facilities," the bishop maintained.

 

Accordingly, police wielding batons more recently broke up over 20 worship services led by priests loyal to the official Anglican province. At St James Church in the suburb of Warren Park, 16 parishioners loyal to Bishop Bakare were arrested, as was a priest at the parish in Marlborough, while worshippers at Harare's Cathedral loyal to the establishment province were given ten minutes to vacate the parish hall or be jailed for unlawful assembly.

Police subsequently posted a warning, saying that only priests loyal to Kunonga would be allowed to lead public worship services in Harare.

 

Dr Williams said he was 'appalled' by the police action and applauded the witness of Harare “clergy [who] have publicly and bravely refused to acknowledge Kunonga's Episcopal authority.” Lambeth Palace reported that Dr. Williams “stands in solidarity” and the other “loyal Zimbabwean bishops in supporting the acting Bishop of Harare, Bishop Sebastian Bakare.'

 

The official province has not yet elected a successor to its conservative former primate, Archbishop Bernard Malango, who recently retired. Despite the opposition to the recent secessions, there are plans to partition Central Africa into national churches for Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

 

IN A RELATED STORY, the Archbishop of York, the Ugandan-born John Sentamu, cut up his clerical collar on live television in December, in a dramatic protest against Robert Mugabe's rule. Sentamu pledged that he would not wear this symbol of his vocation and of his identity again until the Zimbabwe president had been removed from power. He insisted the gesture represented the way Mugabe had "destroyed the identities" of his people through oppression and economic mismanagement.

 

Sources: The Church of England Newspaper, Press Association

 

 

FUNDS SOUGHT FOR "LISTENING PROCESS"

 

Liberal Anglican leaders are fond of de-emphasizing most of the 1998 Lambeth Conference's orthodox sexuality resolution (1.10) and focusing on one aspect of it: a call for Anglican leaders

to listen to the experience of homosexuals.

 

So it is that a "listening process" continues in the Communion, with support from Anglican primates and other church officials - though liberals claim it has yet to really get underway, and

conservatives say the issue has already been talked to death.

 

Whatever the case may be, two Episcopal Church personages "with profoundly different convictions about matters concerning human sexuality" recently co-authored an appeal for financial contributions to supplement the limited amount of money designated for the

Archbishop of Canterbury's Listening Process in the Anglican Consultative Council budget.

 

The Episcopal House of Bishops' recent agreement to stall their pro-gay agenda "has created space to launch an Anglican Communion-wide listening process," maintained the Rev. Canon Brian Cox and Louie Crew in a letter e-mailed to bishops on October 10.

 

"The time has come for a global conversation in the...Communion about human sexuality. The purpose of the Listening Process is not to create a predetermined outcome or to `wear opponents down.' It is to hear respectfully one another's stories, hopes and fears about this matter," wrote Cox and Crew. The former is rector of Christ the King, Santa Barbara, California, president of the Reconciliation Institute, and a member of the conservative American Anglican Council; the latter is the founder of the Episcopal gay group, Integrity.

 

The Rev. Canon Philip Groves, Archbishop Rowan Williams' appointee as Listening Process facilitator, backed the two leaders' appeal, in which Cox and Crew were seeking $80,000. Results of the Listening Process are to be considered at the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

 

Source: The Living Church

 

 

ANGLICAN AND GENERAL INTEREST NEWS BRIEFS

 

ANGLICAN INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS:

 

*ANGLICAN WORLD MAGAZINE, the Anglican Communion's quarterly house publication, is ceasing publication after a final printing of 126 issues. The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), which launched the periodical in 1971 under the name Anglican Information - the

first of four names the journal would carry - declined to state why the glossy, full-color Anglican World was being shelved, nor is it known if subsidies from the U.S. Episcopal Church that had

underwritten the magazine in past years had been withdrawn. However, past meetings of the ACC's standing committee have seen questions and comments directed towards the magazine's

editor, the Rev Canon James Rosenthal, urging that it be made into a profit center for the organization. "While the Internet robbed the magazine of much of its immediacy as a news source in recent years," noted a Religious Intelligence report, "supporters say it had an extraordinary reach across the Communion, and was particularly valued in the developing world as a visible symbol of the fraternal links of the church around the world."

*THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY AND YORK expressed relief in early December over the pardoning of British teacher Gillian Gibbons and her release from a Sudanese jail. Astoundingly, Mrs. Gibbons, 54, had been imprisoned in the African nation for allowing her

class to choose Muhammad as the name of a teddy bear. After international pressure, she was allowed to return home, reuniting with her son and daughter at Heathrow Airport. Archbishop of

Canterbury Rowan Williams - who coincidentally was convening an academic conference between Muslim and Christian scholars in Singapore - said in part that Gibbons' release "will be

welcome news to all in Britain and elsewhere, Muslims included, who have seen this episode as a most unhappy over-reaction which has distressed people of all faiths and has caused such

suffering to someone manifestly dedicated to the welfare of Sudan and its people." Archbishop of York John Sentamu gave thanks that "common sense has finally prevailed" and contended that

Gibbons had been a victim of "misunderstanding and muddled thinking." But he also called on the media to move their focus to the situation in Darfur, adding that he hoped that pressure would now be applied to the Sudanese president "to ensure his own people are released from their suffering." - The Church of England Newspaper

 

*A WOMAN PRIEST IN CORNWALL has had to take a leave of absence from her ministry in the wake of threats against her by an as-yet-unidentified person who is evidently opposed to female priests. The Bishop of Truro, William Ind, announced in December that the Rev. Yvonne Hobson will stand down from her curacy at St. Paul's, Newlyn in West Cornwall while police investigate the hate mail she has been receiving for the last six months. The suspect even went to the extent of leaving a burning log on her doorstep. - The Church of England Newspaper

 

ANGLICAN USA BRIEFS:

 

*THE FIRST ANNUAL TRADITIONAL ANGLICAN MILITARY CHAPLAINS' CONFERENCE has been set for May 12-16, 2008, at Daylesford Abbey, Paoli, Pennsylvania. The conference will begin with a Quiet Day and continue with presentations by Dr. Patrick Burke, retired professor of religion at Temple University, on Just War Theory; the Rev. Dr. David Ousley, rector of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, on Anglican Catholic spirituality; and the Rev. Dr. Alan Koller, retired Army chaplain, on pastoral theology. The conference will conclude with a trip to Valley Forge. Chaplains from all traditional Anglican jurisdictions are invited and urged to attend. A full schedule for the gathering will be forthcoming. Those desiring details are asked to contact The Rt. Rev. Dr. David L. Moyer, Bishop of the Armed Forces (Anglican Church in America) at FatherMoyer@verizon.net or 610/525-7070; or Captain Jerry Sherbourne, U.S. Army, at gerald.sherbourne@us.army.mil. - VirtueOnline

 

*AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT, liberal Washington Episcopal Bishop John Chane went to Iran in October to meet with leading officials of the Islamic Republic. Chane's entourage withheld news of the impending trip to reporters, but in Tehran, three news agencies affiliated with the Iranian government touted the bishop's participation in a conference hosted by a radical Shiite ayatollah that was aimed at "defeating the designs of the Zionists." After meeting in Qom with Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, Bishop Chane was quoted by the Mehr News Agency as saying that, while war and politics separated him from his Iranian hosts, "we share common goals and targets, to spread the message of peace and brotherhood among all human beings." Shirazi, on the other hand, told the Islamic Students News Agency (ISNA), that the "Zionist media are waging a negative propaganda campaign" against Iran and against Islam, and that Bishop Chane's visit was part of Iran's efforts to counter it. "The Zionists spread a negative picture of Islam among the Christians, and a negative picture of Christians among Muslims," he added. Chane was accompanied by the Rev. Canon John Peterson, the former Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council who now serves at the National Cathedral in Washington. In 2006, the two men hosted former President Mohammad Khatami at the cathedral, where he gave a highly-publicized speech that was widely protested by Iranian-American groups and by orthodox Anglicans in the U.S. Khatami issued a return invitation to Chane to visit Iran, the bishop's spokesman stated. The Rev. Canon James J. Doust, an Anglican cleric currently posted to the Middle East, told NewsMax in Amman, Jordan, that Chane's Iran trip was "a very ill-advised move without sensitivity to the local situation or to the church in the local situation." Separately, a U.S. clergyman who has worked extensively in the Middle East told NewsMax that: "This is an unbelievably stupid move. It makes the work of the new Anglican bishop in Tehran, Azad Marshall, much more difficult." By meeting with Iranian officials, even under the guise of a religious gathering, Bishop Chane was "allowing himself to be manipulated for political purposes," a third Anglican official stated.

 

*THE REV. STEPHEN STRAWN, rector of St. John's Anglican Church in Quincy, Illinois, was consecrated a bishop recently for the Diocese of the Missouri Valley in the Anglican Church in America, succeeding the Most Rev. Louis Falk. Assisting Falk in the consecration of Strawn were George Langberg, Bishop of the Northeast, who is also president of the ACA House of Bishops; Wellborn Hudson, retired Bishop of the Armed Forces; Daren Williams, Bishop of the West; and Michael Gill, Bishop of South Africa-Traditional Rite. Among guests at the consecration service were representatives of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

 

*THE REFORMED EPISCOPAL DIOCESE of the Southeast recently elected the Very Rev. Alphonza Gadsden Sr., to be the new bishop ordinary of the diocese, to succeed Bishop James C. West, Sr., who died suddenly in May 2006. A native of Berkeley County, South Carolina, Gadsden has been serving and will remain as rector of Liberty Church, Jamestown, South Carolina. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Limestone College, and a Master of Divinity degree from Cummins Theological Seminary, Summerville, South Carolina. He is now pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree from Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, South Carolina. He is married and the father of six children; his granddaughter, Ashley, is being raised in the couple's home. The REC, formed by Episcopalians who left the Episcopal Church in the latter 19th century, is in the Common Cause Partnership, which is working toward a unified, orthodox, biblical Anglican presence in North America.

 

CAPTAINS AND COURTS, a book laying out a biblical defense of the episcopal form of church government, has been authored by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Ray R. Sutton, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Mid-America in the Reformed Episcopal Church. "Whether you are Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Independent, this book certainly deserves a thoughtful read," wrote VirtueOnline. The book can be downloaded for free at the following web address:

http://www.biblelighthouse.com/govt/captains_and_courts.htm.

 

*GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, an Episcopal institution, has begun a major "greening" initiative said to be the largest geothermal project in the northeastern United States. GTS, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, is converting the 190-year-old institution's heating and cooling system into a more energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly operation that will wean the seminary off fossil fuel.

 

*THE FACULTIES OF TWO CONSERVATIVE EPISCOPAL SEMINARIES have committed to cooperate with each other. After two days of worship, dialogue, and brainstorming, the faculties of Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin and Trinity School for Ministry

in Pennsylvania, meeting on the Nashotah campus in October, announced their commitment to partner together in common witness to a biblically faithful, traditional Anglicanism, and to

welcome opportunities to join in common ministry as they emerge. "While each seminary has its own unique character and ethos, we are united in our core theological convictions," said the Very Rev. Robert S. Munday, Dean and President of the Anglo-Catholic Wisconsin school. "Above all, we are united in our commitment to training biblically faithful leaders for the Church, and in our desire to support a renewed orthodoxy within North American Anglicanism today." "We each belong to our own tradition," said the Rt. Rev. John Rodgers, Dean and President of the Evangelical Pennsylvania institution, "and we each need to be faithful to our own tradition. But it's growing increasingly clear that the fullness of our faith and our tradition is realized when we come together. We rejoice in each other's encouragement. And we need to be a caution to each

other. We want the diversity and the fellowship of both traditions sharing the same table." The two schools are contemplating a wide variety of possibilities for future collaboration, including

sharing expertise in creating and growing new degree programs, and engaging each faculty in stimulating the other in terms of academic scholarship. "We recognize that each school, because of its particular emphases, teaches subjects that the other doesn't," said Bishop Rodgers, "and it's easy to see how students could profit from being able to take advantage of what both seminaries have to offer." The 22 faculty members of both schools will meet again in the Spring of 2008, on the campus of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, to continue their discussion. - http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/7112/

 

*IN THE EYES OF ONE NEW YORK EPISCOPALIAN, the liberal leader of the Diocese of Long Island, Bishop Orris Walker, who has called for the election of his successor, will leave his diocese in ruins when he goes. "The Cathedral of the Incarnation, jewel in the crown of architecture on Long Island, has been in disrepair for years, with the scaffolding on the spire a grim reminder of the corruption at the heart of the diocese," the unnamed diocesan source wrote VirtueOnline. "Across the street, new houses stand where my alma mater, Cathedral School of St. Mary, once raised its ugly but beloved towers. Here was its new science lab, there its gym, here the playing field where I once had to rake leaves. All gone. Its brother school, Cathedral School of St. Paul, stands empty on 42 prime acres, surrounded by weeds. The hospital owned by the diocese has been sold to the Roman Catholic Church. The convent on the South Fork has been sold, the sisters and students scattered. This is perhaps the most valuable piece of real estate in the USA. Perverts and ignoramuses run rampant through the halls of the diocesan office and parish churches." The source said that one couple that had attended the cathedral from childhood, were married there, and took their children there, were told to go. "They were very devout, very much immersed in The Episcopal Church for several generations. In the end, a fellow vestryman told them if they didn't like the new order, they should look for another church. They did. Imagine the void this has created in their lives." Walker's tenure has been punctuated by some memorable events. One of his priests ended up at the center of a 1990s Penthouse magazine expose about a cabal of clergy who allegedly imported young men from Brazil for sex; the bishop later tried to reinstate the clergyman in question. Walker also admitted needing treatment for alcoholism, and was compelled at one point to make financial restitution after improprieties were uncovered in diocesan books.

 

GENERAL INTEREST NEWS BRIEFS:

 

*ONE IN TEN CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE is subject to severe restrictions or hostilities, according to a new edition of the German yearbook, Marytrs 2007. The survey claims that at least 200 million Christians are either suffering persecution or discrimination, and for many of those the situation has deteriorated over the last year. The Middle East, India and Pakistan are listed as some of the flashpoints, with three out of every four Iraqi Christians fleeing their homeland, fearing harassment, assassination, or kidnap. - VirtueOnline

 

*AN ENGLISH COUPLE are the latest victims of an "equality" drive that allows gay rights to trump religious beliefs, conservatives say. Vincent and Pauline Matherick, who have cared for nearly 30 foster children at their home in Chard, Somerset, since 2001, had their latest foster son taken away in November and are being refused the care of further children because they have declined to sign new British sexual equality regulations. Earlier in 2007, the Somerset County Council's social services department asked the Mathericks to sign a contract to implement the Labour government's new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act of 2006, which makes discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal. Officials told the couple that, under the regulations, they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages. They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings. Mr. Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, and the father of three grown children, said, "I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs. We have never discriminated against anybody, but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God." - The Daily Mail (London)

 

*CELEBRATED AUTHOR Mark Steyn was recently summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges of speaking ill of Muslims in his book, America Alone. The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. "The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point," asserted a New York Post editorial. Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading "hatred and contempt" for Muslims. The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication. Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported "hate speech." "Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press. Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the `crime' of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about," asserted The Post. If Maclean's, Canada's top-selling magazine, is found "guilty," it could face financial or other penalties. Such a decision would also have a serious impact on opinion journalism in Canada generally. The Post warned, too, that Americans should not dismiss the Canadian case as a northern eccentricity, pointing to signs of similar attempts being made in America, most notably on college campuses. At this writing, Canadian public opinion appeared to be supporting free speech rights.

 

*THE POPE MAY HAVE CONDEMNED the Harry Potter books, but J.K. Rowling recently revealed that Christianity has been one of her major inspirations. Critics have pointed to the Potter books' occult content, with Pope Benedict XVI describing them as "subtle seductions" capable of corrupting young Christians. Breaking her silence on the much-debated question in the U.S. in October, however, Rowling confirmed that the books echoed her personal struggle with faith. She was open about the Christian allegories in her latest book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "To me, the religious parallels have always been obvious," Rowling said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going." At the end of her latest and final installment in the series, there are specific references to Christianity and themes of life after death and resurrection. At one point Harry visits his parents' graves and finds two biblical passages inscribed on their tombstones. "They are very British books, so on a very practical note, Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones," she said. "But I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones ...they sum up, they almost epitomize, the whole series." However the author, who was brought up an Anglican and is now a member of the Church of Scotland, said she still wrestled with the concept of an afterlife. "The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot." - The Daily Telegraph

 

*THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES and the United Nations reaffirmed their commitment to collaborate during a meeting between the general secretaries of both organizations, says the Geneva-based church grouping. "As the UN faces the 21st century

highlighting the interrelatedness of development, security and human rights, the WCC strongly believes multilateralism is the only way to respond to the challenges of today," said WCC general secretary, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, at an October 29 meeting at the UN headquarters in New York. According to a WCC media release, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the WCC is a key member of the UN constituency in terms of worldwide church representation, and because the two organizations share common objectives.

 

*THE REV. BOB EDGAR recently ended his term as general secretary of the U.S. National Council of Churches and has become the head of the Washington-based advocacy group, Common Cause. The president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, James Tonkowich, credited Edgar with leaving behind a financially sound NCC but "not a strengthened ecumenism." When Edgar's tenure began in 2000, the Council faced runaway spending and a

shortage of funding from constituent denominations, asserted an IRD release. Since that time, the Council has returned to financial solvency by paring staff and seeking out funding from

secular sources in lieu of support from member denominations, “many of whom face difficult financial decisions of their own due to decreased membership," the release said. Tonkowich said

that Edgar sought funding from "secular liberal foundations that were interested in a leftist political agenda, not the spread of the gospel. The NCC's ever-reluctant member communions

were unconvinced by Edgar that they needed to further bear the financial burden of the activities done in their name. Clearly, the NCC's increasingly political agenda did not appeal to many of the member denominations, many of whom declined to contribute any financial support to the organization...During Edgar's tenure, the NCC continued to prove unappealing to more orthodox faith groups, with Evangelicals wary of the NCC's agenda and one member denomination choosing to permanently disassociate itself form the Council."

 

*THE NUMBER OF STATES REFUSING FEDERAL MONEY for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence allegedly grew that the approach is ineffective. At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will not longer be requesting the funds, or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available, officials said. Among states that have opted out are Virginia, Ohio and Washington. Until 2007, only four states had passed up the funding. The jump in states opting out followed a series of reports questioning the effectiveness of the abstinence-only approach, including one commissioned by Congress. In addition, federal health officials reported in December that a 14-year drop in teenage pregnancy rates appeared to have reversed. Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services pointed out that birth rates have continued to decline for 10- to 14-year-olds, the ages typically targeted by the abstinence programs. "I think it's awfully hard to blame abstinence education for the increase in birth rates," he said. - The Washington Post

 

*FOR THE FIRST TIME, the U.S. House of Representatives moved in October to recognize the holy month of Ramadan, adopting a resolution similar to those it passes commemorating

holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. U.S. Muslims had pushed for such recognition for more than a decade. Lawmakers passed the resolution October 2; there were no votes against it, but more than 40 representatives withheld their support. - Charlotte

News-Observer

 

*ACADEMY AWARD WINNING ACTRESS Ellen Burstyn told a Canadian interviewer in September that having an abortion was the lowest moment in her life. The acclaimed 74-year-old actress, known for her roles in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and "The Exorcist," was interviewed by CFRB radio in Toronto while she was in town promoting her new book, Lessons in Becoming Myself. "You know that was really an extremely painful experience," Burstyn said

of the abortion. "Did you feel you didn't have a choice?," asked the interviewer. "At the time I was just young and dumb, I didn't really want to have a baby then," she replied. "It was the wrong thing to do and I really didn't understand that till later," said the actress. - LifeSiteNews.com

 

*THE PHILADELPHIA COUNCIL OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA will lose the lease on its historic premises for its refusal to bow to pressure from the gay lobby to accept homosexual members and leaders, according to LifeSite News. The city has told the Scouts they will be evicted if they cannot come up with $200,000 a year "market value" rent for the land on which their building sits. Until now, the Scouts had paid a nominal $1 per year lease fee,

although the youth organization had originally owned the premises in 1929. The famous Beaux Arts style building was built and paid for by the Scouts, and turned over to the city with the understanding that the Scouts would be allowed to remain in it rent-free "in perpetuity." City solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. told Philadelphia's "Cradle of Liberty Council" of the Scouts that if they would not renounce their anti-gay policy, they had until June 1 to vacate their historic building. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2000 said the Boy Scouts were a private organization that had the right to bar anyone they chose from their ranks. But the city of Philadelphia has a policy that no organization that "discriminates" may receive public subsidies, and the City Council is backing the interpretation of the law backed by Diaz, an open and practicing homosexual. An editorial appearing in the online edition of Investor's Business Daily asked, "Isn't it hypocritical, though, to be intolerant in the name of tolerance, to say that it's wrong to disapprove of the lifestyles of others but okay to condemn the religious and moral beliefs of others?"

 

*A MONUMENT, COLORADO, CLASS VALEDICTORIAN forced by school officials to apologize for referring to Jesus in her graduation speech has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the school district of violating her rights to free speech and equal protection. During the June 2006

speech in question Erica Corder told the audience of students and parents about "someone who loves you more than you could ever imagine," namely, Jesus Christ. Afterward, a school official

told her to issue an apology or risk having her diploma withheld. Initially, Corder sent an e-mail to the Lewis-Palmer High School community apologizing for failing to warn school officials

about the content of her speech. Subsequently, she felt her rights had been violated and filed the lawsuit. A spokesperson said the school district would "vigorously defend" its position, insisting that "all actions taken by school officials were constitutionally appropriate." Corder is now a student at Wheaton College in Illinois. - The Washington Times

 

*THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT who triggered an uproar by ordering the historic Wren Cross removed from the centuries-old chapel at the College of William & Mary has decided to focus on "external" school matters, leaving the day-to-day operations in the hands of Provost P. Geoffrey Feiss, according to a newspaper report. The Virginia Informer, a publication independent of the college, said in September that Feiss said Nichols has expressed a desire to do more with fundraising and work with the alumni. The move comes after a coalition of alums organized a petition calling for the school's Board of Visitors not to renew Nichols' contract. - World Net Daily

 

 

ANGLICANS MAKE TIME MAGAZINE

LIST OF TOP 2007 RELIGION STORIES

 

Time magazine placed it at Number 4 on its list of top ten religion stories of 2007: The Slow Motion Episcopal/Anglican Train Wreck.

 

The article said that the Episcopal bishops' meeting in New Orleans last September failed to stem either the ongoing defection of conservatives over the church's position on homosexuals, or the likelihood of a worldwide Anglican split over the same issue.

 

On the Time list, the Anglican story followed the move by Pope Benedict XVI to lift the ban requiring a bishop's permission to celebrate mass in old-school Latin. But it preceded a story

about a growing movement represented by Green Evangelicals, a group concerned about global warming, along with poverty and torture.

 

Source: www.virtueonline.org

 

 

TEC PRESIDING BISHOP, GLOBAL SOUTH PRIMATES, PRAISE CHINA’S STATE-RUN PROTESTANT CHURCH DURING VISITS

 

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

 

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola are at opposite ends of the Anglican spectrum on acceptance of same-sex unions and practicing gay clergy. But in separate trips to the People’s Republic of China last fall, the two primates (provincial leaders) found a point of agreement: praise for the Communist-approved Protestant church.

 

On November 12-13, 2007, Schori toured Shanghai and Nanjing with officials of the China Christian Council (CCC) and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the only legal Protestant church organizations in China. (“Three-Self” refers to a Chinese slogan about church governance: “Self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.”) Schori and her entourage from The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the U.S. were impressed by the reconstruction of churches that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and by the seminary under construction in Nanjing.

 

The Rev. Cao Shengjie, the first woman CCC president, expressed her joy at meeting Jefferts Schori, the first female Presiding Bishop. She added, “We really treasure the long-term friendship of the Episcopal Church and the church in China…When you visit, the friendship and cooperation of our churches is enhanced.”

 

Schori told CCC/TSPM seminarians in Nanjing that their “experience in a post-denominational church has a good deal to teach” Episcopalians and Anglicans elsewhere.

 

Schori and her colleagues also paid a brief visit to Bishop K. H. Ting, age 92, the former leader of the CCC and of the TSPM. Schori reminded Ting of his visit to TEC’s 1988 General Convention. “Many people remember your spiritual theology at the Convention,” she said, and Ting smiled at the reminiscence. Ting had praised former California Bishop William Swing’s United Religions Initiative when Swing toured the globe in 1996, seeking support from religious leaders for his interfaith venture.

 

IN HER WARM MEETINGS with the Communist-approved church leaders in China, Schori was (knowingly or not) following a trail blazed during the previous month by ten Global South primates and bishops: Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Bernard Malango of Central Africa (now retired), John Chew Hiang Chea of South East Asia, Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean, Mouneer Hanna Anis of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Ofei Akrofi of West Africa, Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda, Fidèle Dirokpa of the Congo, and Francis K. J. Park of Korea.

 

The aforementioned Global South Anglicans traveled through Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing, and Shanghai between October 21-30, 2007, at the invitation of Ye Xiaowen, the Minister of the State Administration for Religious Affairs. The primates praised “the level of cooperation that prevails between the State and the China Christian Council and the National Committee of the Three Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China (CCC/TSPM). We wholeheartedly commend the Chinese government for its openness and desire to extend sustainable support to the work of the church here.”

 

The Third World primates noted that the “Church in China affirms itself as a post-denominational institution with Chinese characteristics. This is an area where the churches in the Global South and the Church in China can work together so that the apostolicity and catholicity of the Church may be upheld. The capacity of the Chinese Church to integrate traditional and contemporary spiritual experiences is impressive.”

 

They added, “We are greatly impressed by the love of the Chinese Church for the Word of God, the respect for its authority on life and doctrine, and the miraculous achievement of the Amity Press in Nanjing, China, in the printing of more than 50 million bibles between 1987 and 2007, of which 16 percent are exported to other countries.”

 

The Primates said, “We are greatly encouraged by the way the Church in China has established itself as a national institution based on the Three Self Principle as the touchstone of emancipation from the sociopolitical constraints of the past.” As such, they upheld the principles of government control of the Churches, and of autonomy of local churches from international control (i.e., the Vatican.)

 

“In the same way,” the Global South religious leaders said, “we are inspired by the way the nation and people of China have been transformed in the past 30 years through shared hard work and determined commitment to social and economic development. We in the Global South can learn from that and work towards economic self-empowerment, as we seek the welfare of our respective societies. We share the same commitment with the Chinese Church to biblical ethics and morality as well as the call to live out the Gospel in serving the needy while faithfully proclaiming the Word of God.”

 

In applauding the social order of the People’s Republic, the primates skipped over some inconvenient truths about morality in China: massive environmental destruction, widespread corruption in government and business, the continuing one-child policy (which has led to widespread forced abortions and to the infanticide of baby girls), the Chinese laogai concentration camp system (a worthy successor to the Soviet Gulag), and the persecution of Christians (members of Protestant house churches, and Catholics loyal to the Holy See) who do not wish to have their churches controlled by the government.

 

Sources: Episcopal News Service; United Religions Initiative document issued by Bishop Swing in 1996; Global South Anglican

 

 

SCHORI, EAMES, PROMOTE “RECONCILIATION” AT ANGLICAN-BACKED KOREA PEACE CONFAB

 

Following upon a visit to the People’s Republic of China, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was in North and South Korea November 14-20, as part of the “Towards Peace in Korea” (TOPIK) conference, hosted by the Anglican Church in Korea.

 

The TOPIK conference arose from a 2005 resolution of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) calling for peace, reconciliation, and reunification of Korea. Over 150 clergy and laity – from South Korea, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Cyprus, Palestine, and the United Kingdom – attended.

 

At the start of the ACC-backed conference, Bishop Schori was given a prominent place, preaching at the opening Eucharist - demonstrating that The Episcopal Church (TEC) remains in the good graces of the top-level Anglican establishment.

 

For her part, Schori appeared during her Korean sojourn to minimize the differences between totalitarian North Korea and democratic South Korea.

 

Schori’s sermon drew from the liberal, universalist boilerplate on peacemaking: “How do we perceive the stranger – as threat or as the image of God?…We might do well to remember that the unknown stranger just might be a divine messenger, or an angel. I begin to be convinced that every such stranger may bear a divine message if we are able to discover and receive it. Certainly every encounter brings an image of God, an image we do not yet know, and that meeting must therefore be rich with creative possibility … Loving our enemies means letting go of our fear of their perceived difference, letting go of our fear that they will take something precious from us, letting go of our fear that they intend only evil toward us. … If we would make peace, we must feed all our neighbors, both stranger and friend, with the same gusto we feed our own children. … Loving our enemies is only another version of loving our neighbors, for in truth all God’s creatures are neighbors. We do not have the luxury of distinguishing stranger from neighbor or friend.”

  

Similarly, Archbishop Robin Eames, the retired Primate of Ireland and the president of TOPIK, who also represented the Archbishop of Canterbury at the gathering, told those attending that peace “has to do with forgiveness, has to do with saying ‘sorry.’ Also the word ‘regret.’ You will rarely get a government to say ‘sorry.’ … Reconciliation can never be a definite point in time. … Reconciliation is a process and we will only know with hindsight when it has really moved the hearts of people.”

 

Schori’s visit included a November 14 trip to Geumgangsan, a closely guarded enclave for foreign tourists in North Korea. The Anglican travelers presented $20,000 in humanitarian aid for villages destroyed in recent floods, and celebrated the first Anglican Eucharist in North Korea since World War II. Afterward, Schori said, “In our travels to North Korea, I was struck by the contrast between the natural beauty of the Geumgang area and the evidence of abject poverty and abundant societal controls…Our visit was filled with hours of waiting for official mechanisms to do their grinding, uncertainty as to the outcome, and visions of miles of barbed wire and electrified fences along our tourist road. When we finally met with North Korean representatives to offer our small gift, however, there was good fellowship and laughter. Face to face, human beings of all sorts and conditions can recognize a neighbor, even former enemies from around the globe.”

 

Sources: Episcopal News Service, Presiding Bishop’s sermon at the opening Eucharist of the TOPIK conference

 

 

REMEMBERING MADELEINE L'ENGLE

 

By Sue Careless

The Anglican Planet

1. http://www.anglicanplanet.net/TAPIntern0709a.html

September 2007

 

Prolific Anglican author, Madeleine L'Engle, whose young adult classic A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Award in 1963, has died. She was 88. L'Engle wrote more than 60 books, including

science fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often drawing on her deep Christian faith.

 

In an interview she granted me in 1997 she said she was finding it easier to believe the impossible. "It was a crazy thing to do to be incarnate." Her book, The Glorious Impossible, reflects this paradox.

 

For many years she was the librarian and writer-in-residence at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. On Sundays she would attend services at All Angels Church in the upper west side, which had a service for street people, many of whom were on crack.

 

"I pass prostitutes, drug pushers and street people every day," she said. "I am part of who they are and they are part of who I am."

 

Judy Sarick, long-time owner of the now defunct Children's Book Store in Toronto, said L'Engle's books are popular because "they speak the truth. They ring true to human nature. There are writers who sell even more, but they tend to be formula stuff which is heavily marketed," Sarick confessed. "They are not in her league."

 

Twenty-six publishers rejected Wrinkle as too hard for children, yet teachers later reported that the time trilogy motivated non-reading boys to read.

 

"I didn't know when I wrote A Wrinkle in Time that you don't use female protagonists in science fantasy. If it has a young protagonist it's marketed as young adult fiction [12 to 16-year-olds]. I

don't write any differently for adults or young adults."

 

L'Engle wanted her writing to affirm that "Life is worth living; the adventure is worth taking."

 

She also believed, "If you write about the deepest issues of the heart, they're there in every generation."

 

By 2004, Wrinkle had sold more than 6 million copies. Some viewed A Wrinkle in Time as a precursor of the Harry Potter series. L'Engle told Newsweek in 2006 that she had read one Potter book but was not impressed. "It's a nice story but there's nothing underneath it. I don't want to be bothered with stuff where there's nothing underneath."

 

L'Engle read particle physics as well as the 16th and 17th-century writers George Herbert and Henry Vaughn to savor their use of language and metaphor. "I think we owe the world good

language." She also made up words "that are not encrusted with other meanings."

 

In her classic, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, she wrote, "If our lives are truly 'hid with Christ in God' the astounding thing is that this hiddeness is revealed in all we do and say and write."

 

L'Engle said "Christ pulled me into his life. ...Even though for me there was no Damascus road, even though it all has been gradual....there are moments when God comes in new and fresh

ways."

 

Wrinkle tells the story of a young teen, Meg Murry (drawn on L'Engle herself), her brilliant little brother Charles Wallace, and their battle against evil as they search across the universe for their missing father, a scientist. Aided by their neighbor, Calvin, and some down-to-earth supernatural spirits, they must pass through a time travel corridor (the "wrinkle in time") and overcome the totalitarian regime which is holding the father on another planet.

 

L'Engle followed it up with further adventures of the Murry children, including A Wind in the Door, 1973; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, 1978, which won an American Book Award; and Many Waters, 1986.

 

Almost simultaneously L'Engle wrote a second series about the Austin family. A Ring of Endless Light, 1980, was perhaps the best received. In all, there were nine Austin books from 1960 to

1999, and eight Murry books from 1962 to 1989.

 

She said that by the 1960s "the Evangelical world began to understand that story is not wicked, that story is not a lie." Evangelical colleges invited her to discuss art and religion. "There was such a deprivation of art and symbolism there. Thank God that was one thing we never lost [in Anglicanism]."

 

Among L'Engle's memoirs is The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, 1974, about her own mother's death at age 90. In it she reflects on inspiration: "...if any artist of any kind sits around waiting for inspiration, he'll have a very small body of work. Inspiration usually comes during the work, rather than before it."

 

She compared such artistic work to prayer. "If I don't struggle to pray regularly, both privately and corporately, if I insist on waiting for inspiration on the dry days, or making sure I have the

time, then prayer will be as impossible to me as the C Minor Fugue without work."

 

She met her future husband, actor Hugh Franklin, when they both appeared in a New York production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.

 

L'Engle died September 6 in Connecticut of natural causes. Her husband and son predeceased her. She is survived by her two daughters, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

 

---Sue Careless interviewed Madeline L'Engle for the Anglican Journal and Christian Week when L'Engle was the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of

Huron in London, Ontario in June, 1997.

 

400,000 PEOPLE, AND NO MEDIA?

 

By Kelly Boggs

October 5, 2007

 

BAPTIST PRESS EDITOR'S NOTE: The following column addresses issues of homosexuality and is written to inform adults. It contains graphic descriptions of the Folsom Street Fair, an annual sexually

charged event in San Francisco with mostly homosexual participants. The column shows what is at stake in the cultural battle and what the future holds for the society and our children if activists succeed in defining homosexuality as a protected status.

 

ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP)--An estimated 400,000 people congregated in San Francisco on September 30. Crowds flooded the neighborhood known as "South of Market" to take part in the 24th annual Folsom Street Fair. People from all over the nation -- even the world -- flocked to the Golden Gate city to celebrate and call attention to an aspect of their lives of which they are very proud.

 

Conspicuously absent from the huge gathering in northern California were reporters from any major news outlet. The Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters News Service apparently were all no shows. Even though the event took place in the Golden State, there were no reporters from the Los Angeles Times.

 

It would seem the mere fact that 400,000 people gathered in one place would be news, regardless of the reason they came together. The big three television networks didn't seem to think so, since they also were missing in action.

 

If it were not for a few niche and alternative news publications, no one outside of San Francisco would have an inkling of what took place at the Folsom Street Fair.

 

So what is the event and what exactly takes place? Be forewarned, the following descriptions are not for the faint of heart, even though they have been edited to mute the content.

 

The Folsom Street Fair is one of San Francisco's premier celebrations of alternate lifestyle -- specifically "leather pride." The "leather community" is a euphemism for those that indulge in

sadomasochism, also known as S&M. These are individuals that enjoy bondage, whipping, spanking and other…perversions.

 

While the Folsom Street Fair does draw a few heterosexual sadomasochists to the event, it is clear from reports that the overwhelming number celebrating were homosexuals - mostly male.

 

The most detailed report of the event came from Pink News, an organization that describes itself as "Europe's largest gay news service."

 

"American police adopted a distinctly relaxed approach to this year's Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco," Pink News observed, "taking little notice of the hundreds of men baring their genitals

on every street corner."

 

According to Pink News, there were orgies in the street, drawing "laughs and photographs from curious onlookers but no police action." Homosexual men and women walked down the street,

completely naked, performing sex acts, the website reported. (Keep in mind the website provided far more detailed descriptions.)

 

Sounds like a wonderful event, doesn't it?

 

So why did the news media ignore a gathering of 400,000 people? What would cause them to collectively look the other way? Because the Folsom Street Fair is as much a celebration of unbridled homosexual behavior as it is a fetish festival.

 

If the truth of what took place in the streets of San Francisco on September 30 were broadcast from sea to shining sea, the "homosexual rights" movement would suffer a significant setback. If

grassroots Americans saw homosexuals blatantly flaunting their sexuality in public, they would be appalled.

 

Make no mistake about it: America's major news organizations are complicit in promoting homosexuality. Hence, they chose to act as if the Folsom Street Fair did not even happen.

 

Even a bit of controversy did not cause the major news groups -- apart from a few conservative talk show hosts -- to give the event any attention. This year's Folsom Street Fair official

promotional poster featured a parody of Da Vinci's Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples replaced by costumed sadomasochists with sex toys on the table.

 

Two conservative organizations -- Concerned Women for America and the Catholic League -- both called attention to the poster. That led to an additional controversy over Miller Brewing Company, one of the fair's major sponsors. While Miller did not pull its money from the event, it did instruct the fair's organizers to remove its logo from the poster.

 

Even with two major public policy groups calling attention to the event and its promotion, no major news organization, with the exception of Fox News, made any reference to the controversy.

 

According to Texas Media Watch, a non-partisan and independent media monitoring project, the most prevalent evidence of news bias can be found in the stories a news organization chooses to

cover and the ones it chooses to ignore.

 

Let the infamous and unbiblical Fred Phelps and six of his followers show up to protest anywhere, and it will make the news. But 400,000 people show up at the Folsom Street Fair and

the media completely ignores it because they understand it will impact negatively on the homosexual movement.

 

Still think there's no media bias?

 

Kelly Boggs, whose column appears each week in Baptist Press, is editor of the Baptist Message, the newspaper of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

 

 

CONSERVATIVE PRESBYTERIANS LEAVE CHURCH

The Episcopal Church isn't the only mainline Protestant group shaken by open conflict between theological liberals and conservatives.

 

The Kentucky-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is facing similar trials, with traditionalist congregations planning to bolt and a conservative denomination preparing to take them in.

 

As of the fall of 2007, about 30 of the nearly 11,000 Presbyterian congregations had voted to leave the national church since the denomination's national assembly session in 2006, according

to The Layman, a conservative Presbyterian publication. Denominational leaders say they could lose an additional 20 congregations.

 

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a conservative group separate from PCUSA, has voted to accept any of the departing congregations. Presbyterian conservatives are meanwhile organizing

themselves through groups such as the Presbyterian Global Fellowship and the New Wineskins Association of Churches.

 

As in The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian leaders assert that only a fraction of their congregations are leaving. But any litigation over church property could hurt the church's reputation and its bottom line. And the departures come after years of dwindling congregational membership and recent budget woes.

 

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is the country's ninth-largest Christian group, but its membership has shrunk from about 3 million in 1986 to 2.27 million at the end of 2006. During that same year, the denomination eliminated 75 jobs at its headquarters amid

budget cutbacks.

 

Like other mainline Protestant groups, Presbyterians have been debating for decades how they should interpret Scripture on salvation, truth, sexuality and other issues.

 

Tensions erupted after a June 2006 meeting, when delegates granted new leeway in some cases for congregations and regional presbyteries to sidestep a church requirement that clergy and lay

officers limit sex to traditional marriage.

 

Delegates at the national assembly also voted to let church officials propose experimental liturgies with alternative phrasings for the divine Trinity - "Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Among the possibilities: "Mother, Child and Womb" or "Rock, Redeemer, Friend."

 

While opinions on the denomination's long-term prospects vary widely, the Rev. Parker Williamson, editor emeritus of The Layman newspaper, said entire congregations are leaving, an escalation from the usual pattern of disgruntled individuals leaving on their own. He contends the pace of departures is "ramping up significantly."

 

Source: The Associated Press

 

 

VATICAN JOINS HISTORIC TALKS TO END

950-YEAR RIFT WITH ORTHODOX CHURCH

 

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent and Paul Bompard in Rome

The Times of London, November 16, 2007

 

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches took tentative steps towards healing their 950-year rift [November 15] by drafting a joint document that acknowledges the primacy of the Pope.

 

The 46-paragraph "Ravenna Document," written by a special commission of Catholic and Orthodox officials, envisages a reunified church in which the Pope could be the most senior patriarch among the various Orthodox churches.

 

Just as Pope John Paul II was driven by the desire to bring down Communism, so Pope Benedict XVI hopes passionately to see the restoration of a unified Church. Although he is understood to

favor closer relations with traditional Anglicans, the Anglican Communion is unlikely to be party to the discussions because of its ordination of women and other liberal practices.

 

Unification with the Orthodox churches could ultimately limit the authority of the Pope, lessening the absolute power that he currently enjoys within Catholicism. In contrast, a deal

would greatly strengthen the Patriarch of Constantinople in his dealings with the Muslim world and the other Orthodox churches.

 

Pope Benedict...called a meeting of cardinals from all over the world in Rome on November 23, when the document [was to] be the main topic of discussion. The Ravenna "road map" concedes

that "elements of the true Church are present outside the Catholic communion."

 

It suggests that means "be sought out" to set up a new ecumenical council, similar to those of the early Church which drew up the Nicene and other creeds, and to which Catholic and Orthodox bishops would be invited. Such a council would attempt formally to end the schism of 1054 between East and West.

 

If the proposals move forward, the Pope would be acknowledged as the universal Primate, as he was before the schism. Although it is not stated outright, he would be expected by the Orthodox

churches to relinquish the doctrine of infallibility. The proposals could also allow married priests in the Catholic Church, as already happens in the Orthodox.

 

However, continuing disputes within the Orthodox Church between Constantinople and Moscow mean that there is unlikely to be agreement among the entire Orthodox community about

reconciliation with Rome.

 

The document, The Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church, has been produced by a commission of Orthodox and Catholic bishops and theologians that met in Ravenna in western Italy [in October]. The Russian delegate walked out of the meeting, an indication of the enduring disputes within the Orthodox Church.

 

Referring to the early councils of the Church, whose decisions are still central to doctrine throughout Christendom, the document adds: "In the course of history, when serious problems arose affecting the universal communion and concord between Churches - in regard either to the authentic interpretation of the faith, or to ministries and their relationship to the whole Church, or to the common discipline which fidelity to the Gospel requires - recourse was made to Ecumenical Councils." These councils, which assembled bishops from Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, are still regarded as binding by Catholics and the Orthodox in particular. "The means which will allow the reestablishment of ecumenical consensus must be

sought out," the document states.

 

The Catholics at the Ravenna meeting were led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The Orthodox were headed by Metropolitan Zizioulas, of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

 

A delegate from Moscow blamed Constantinople for upsetting the talks, and the final text published by the Vatican was agreed without the input of the Moscow Patriarchate. After Rome

and Constantinople, Moscow is agreed to be third in the hierarchy of "equals," but it is still at odds with Rome over the Uniate Catholics in Ukraine, whose loyalty is to the Pope.

 

If the Orthodox were able to move closer to Rome, the Constantinople Patriarchate would have much stronger influence in its dialogue with the Muslim world in Turkey and beyond. Healing

the schism would in effect turn Patriarch Bartholomew into an Orthodox "Pope."

 

The document suggests that the Pope, always referred to in the text as "Bishop of Rome," could be the "first" among the regional patriarchs. But this would be only as a primus inter pares, with

his authority resting firmly on the support and consensus of the other patriarchs. "Certainly Rome could not be the absolute center of administration, with authority over all the others," Greek Metropolitan Athanasios Chatzopoulos, one of the participants of the Ravenna conference, said. "The 'primus' would not be able to do anything without the consent of the other Patriarchs."

 

The great divide:

 

- On July 16, 1054, Pope Leo IX excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch, Cerularius, soon reciprocated, excommunicating the Pope.

 

- Christianity has since been split in two, largely because of three words: The Nicene Creed of the Roman Church says that the Holy Ghost "proceeds from the Father and the Son"; the

Orthodox Church claims the Holy Ghost originates with the Father alone.

 

- This "Filioque clause" was the official reason for the Great Schism, but other disputes would now need to be clarified before the churches could unite.

 

Sources: Catholic Encyclopedia, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Britannica, Orthodox Research Institute

 

 

POPE PUSHES FOR PURGE OF MODERN MUSIC

The Pope is considering a dramatic overhaul of the Vatican in order to force a return to traditional sacred music.

After reintroducing the Latin Tridentine Mass, the Pope wants to widen the use of Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music.

In an address to the bishops and priests of St Peter's Basilica, he said that there needed to be "continuity with tradition" in their prayers and music.

He referred pointedly to "the time of St Gregory the Great", the pope who gave his name to Gregorian chant.

Gregorian chant has been reinstituted as the primary form of singing by the new choir director of St Peter's, Father Pierre Paul.

Source: The Daily Telegraph