The central North Island hui amorangi (Maori diocese) of Te Manawa o Te Wheke has become the first New Zealand episcopal unit to formally give the thumbs-down to the proposed Anglican covenant.
Read more about this at Manawa o Te Wheke rejects Anglican covenant.
The text of the motion passed unanimously:
That Te Hui Amorangi o Te Manawa o Te Wheke, for the purpose of providing feedback to Te Hinota Whanui/ General Synod, states its opposition to The Anglican Covenant for the following reasons:
- After much consideration this Amorangi feels that The Anglican Covenant will threaten the Rangatiratanga of the Tangata Whenua.
- We believe The Anglican Covenant does not reflect our understanding of being Anglican in these islands.
- We would like this Church to focus on the restoration of justice to Te Tiriti o Waitangi which Tangata Whenua signed and currently do not have what they signed for.
There are five [Maori] hui amorangi. Any motion must gain a majority in all three Tikanga (Maori, Pakeha, and Polynesia) and three hui amorangi constitute a majority in Tikanga Maori. So two further similar votes would cause the Covenant to be “dead in the water” in New Zealand.
Peter Carrell has written Dead Duck Covenant?
Bosco Peters has written Maori vote against Covenant
37 Comments…Since 1992, the Constitution of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia provides for three Tikanga (cultural streams) partners to order their affairs within their own cultural context: Tikanga Maori (the indigenous people of Aotearoa-New Zealand); Tikanga Pakeha (those here by virtue of te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi); Tikanga Pasefika (encompassing the episcopal units of Polynesia in New Zealand, Vanua Levu and Taveuni, and Viti Levu West, and the Archdeaconries of Suva and Ovalau, Samoa and American Samoa, and Tonga).
When significant decisions are made at te Hinota Whanui/General Synod, as with other Anglican Provinces, there must be agreement across all houses – here those are the house of bishops, clergy, and laity. There must also be agreement across all Tikanga. In other words, even if Tikanga Pakeha and Tikanga Pasefica are in majority agreement in favour of the Covenant, if Tikanga Maori votes against the Covenant, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia would be saying no to the Covenant…
James Hannam writes for Patheos that Science and Christianity Can Get On Better Than You Think.
Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times that Faith offers a tragic wisdom.
Jay Michaelson in The Huffington Post asks Who Are the Real Sodomites?
Christopher Howse writes in The Telegraph that St George gets his bank holiday.
Emine Saner interviews Robert Winston and Sam Harris in The Guardian: Is there any place for religious faith in science?
3 CommentsThere have been several articles recently in the Living Church by Church of England writers.
Andrew Goddard has written about Establishment in the CofE.
See Arbiters of the Faith?
The Church of England, wrestling with internal differences over provision for opponents of women bishops and over responses to same-sex relationships, could soon find a further contentious topic being added to the mix: the question of establishment, the church’s relationship with the state. This has been highlighted by two recent developments in which government ministers or Members of Parliament have pressed for a certain conception of equality in English law and society…
Paul Avis and Geoffrey Rowell have both written about the Anglican Covenant.
See Catholicity Outweighs Autonomy by Avis.
The future of the Anglican Communion is in jeopardy. The Windsor Report proposed an Anglican Covenant, centering on mutual commitment, to secure a unified future for the Communion. The Anglican Covenant is the only credible proposal that I am aware of to help hold this family of churches together. The alternative to the Covenant is to allow the present sharp tensions to be worked out in the formal separation of some churches of the Communion from others — and that means schism, and the fracture and possible dissolution of the Anglican Communion…
And Belonging Together by Rowell.
51 Comments…As vice-chair for a number of years of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations, I am aware of how divisions in the Communion pose challenges to our ecumenical partners in dialogue — who are we talking to? Do Anglicans affirm same-sex relationships as equal and equivalent to marriage, or do they uphold Christian teaching of marriage as being a lifelong union between a man and a woman? Behind the particular questions are questions about authority in the Communion, and our belonging together. The Anglican Covenant emerges out of this situation and is a result of careful consultation. If we can make ecumenical agreements with other churches we ought clearly be able to do so among ourselves…
The Standing Committee is a 14-member group (15, if the Archbishop of Canterbury is present, as he is an ex officio member, as well as being its President). Seven of its members are elected by the members of the ACC, and five are members of the Primates’ Standing Committee. The other two members are the Chair and Vice-Chair of the ACC, elected by the members in plenary session. Their function is together to assist the Churches of the Anglican Communion in advancing the work of their mission worldwide.
There is a Q and A about the Standing Committee here which has further information.
The previous TA update was this one. And later there was an interview with Canon John Rees which we reported here.
The minutes of the meeting held in July 2010 are available from this page as a PDF, here.
The meeting held in March 2011 was reported in a series of bulletins starting with this one, and continuing here, then here, and finally here.
0 CommentsThe Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Christopher Lowson, AKC, STM, MTh, LLM, Director of Ministry at the Archbishops’ Council, for election as Bishop of Lincoln in succession to the Right Reverend Dr John Charles Saxbee, BA, PhD, on his resignation on the 31 January 2011.
Press release from 10 Downing Street Bishop of Lincoln
Press release from diocese: Appointment of 72nd Bishop of Lincoln
11 CommentsThe Church Commissioners have announced their financial results. The full press release is now available here.
1 CommentChurch Commissioners’ results confirm long-term growth
The Church Commissioners have today announced a 15.2 per cent return on their investments during 2010. Their fund has now outperformed its comparator group over the past 10 and 15 years.*
Despite challenging economic times for both the Church and wider society, the Commissioners – who contributed more than £200 million in 2010 towards the cost of maintaining the mission of the Church of England – grew their fund to £5.3 billion (from £4.8 billion at December 31, 2009).
Although most of the costs of the Church’s mission are met by the generous giving of today’s parishioners, the Commissioners contribute around 17p in the pound towards the total. The Commissioners’ contribution is biased towards supporting poorer dioceses.
Today’s results show that the Commissioners are able to distribute £26 million more each year to the Church than if their investments had performed only at the industry average over the last ten years, while pursuing their policy of maintaining the real value of the fund.Andreas Whittam Smith, First Church Estates Commissioner, said: “These results are good news for the Church and its vital role in the life of the nation. Our mission is to support the Church’s ministry, particularly in areas of need and opportunity – we meet that by ensuring our investments achieve sustainable long-term growth.”
Returns from the fund, held in a broad range of assets, pay for: clergy pensions for service up to the end of 1997; supporting poorer dioceses with the costs of ministry; funding some mission activities; paying for bishops’ ministries and some cathedral costs; and funding the legal framework for parish reorganisation.
The Commissioners manage their investments within ethical guidelines, with advice from the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group.
Andrew Brown, Secretary to the Church Commissioners, said: “Investment performance was strong across the board in 2010 underlying the importance of our diversified portfolio. We plan to continue to diversify the fund into other attractive and appropriate asset classes to reduce further the fund’s overall volatility.
“In addition, our Assets Committee has adopted a deliberate policy of being more active in terms of the fund’s overall asset allocation, adjusting the level of risk depending on the market opportunity.”The main factors behind the fund’s strong performance in 2010 were:
- The Commissioners’ higher weighting in shares, particularly those held in companies with overseas interests.
- The bias to higher performing smaller companies within UK shareholdings.
- The low weighting in UK government bonds, index-linked bonds and UK investment grade bonds and higher investment in property compared with the average pension fund.
- The Commissioners’ property portfolio achieved a 15.4 per cent return, exceeding its comparator group, the Investment Property Databank.
- The contribution from the Commissioners’ multi-asset fund managers.
The Commissioners’ overall 15.2 per cent return was achieved against a comparator performance of 12.7 per cent for 2010. Over the past 10 years, total returns averaged 6.3 per cent per year, against the comparator group’s 4.5 per cent. Over the past 15 years, the Commissioners outperformed the comparator group with an average annual return of 9.3 per cent against 7.0 per cent…
The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, has been interviewed on a range of subjects. The full text is published on the website of the Church of Nigeria. Read it here.
TA readers may be most interested in this section:
38 CommentsQUESTION: HOMOSEXUALISM WHAT IS YOUR NEW? [sic]
RESPONSE: The fight against homosexual had been on for quite some time and the Anglican church in Nigeria and I must say not only in Nigeria in other places of the world have said no to the homosexual lifestyle, that that type of sexual orientation is unbiblical, ungodly, unnatural, unacceptable.
We have said that over and over again, we discover that those who are set on it think we are ignorant, they think we are living the old past time- ancient days but that this is a post modern day and that they can rewrite the bible to suit their culture the way they want it.
But what we have continued to say is that that sexual relationship is against the society because the society rules through procreation and when we allow a sizeable member of the society to be homosexuals or Lesbians we cannot expect procreation to take place so naturally it is against nature.
It is unfortunate and right now, the other time I visited United Kingdom they were saying that people are free to come to the places where they worship to come and solemnize their homosexual relationship or lesbian relationship in their places of worship.
I am aware that the Church of England says no and so also the Roman Catholic Church.
There are quite a number that says they don’t mind and that the basic thing is that two people love themselves which is a very selfish perspective.
The issue at stake is not just a case of if it will make two people happy if they love themselves. I think that the rejection of absolute truth, absolute right and wrong had turned everything to the doctrine of relativism.
We are in a kind of free moral fall and we do not know when it is going to stop. Let me say this is not an Anglican form, it cuts across denominations. Some have decided to keep quiet because it is very embarrassing they decided to hide it.
The Anglican Church has been quite vocal about it discussing it openly. Those of us in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and some other parts of the world, some parts of Australia, some part of America, some parts of United Kingdom.
You don’t have a particular place where you will say the whole of this people are homosexuals we just have pockets, in fact this is a kind of focal minority who are trying to turn the table against the majority and right now as I talk to you, the journalists, the lawmakers, in the UK, the politicians, the school authorities, the government, they are all in support. In America, we now have two bishops who are homosexuals and of course Canada supported it.
I can say that this vocal minority has redefined the family in a very radical way. What we used to know is a family made up of a man a woman and Godly raised children. We are now being told that a man and a man can form a family and then they can get a child.
There was even a very amusing one claiming to be a mother and presenting another man who is the husband and they adopted a child from a surrogate mother. All these are happening in our time, and when you dare raise objection they say you are not sufficiently educated, they say you are living in the pre-medieval age, they say you need to be exposed.
But the question we continue to ask is that the gospel came to us and identified areas where we were not living well and the gospel corrected us, the gospel transformed our lives, for instance we were killing twins here and when it was exposed to us that we were wrong, we dropped it.
The irony of the situation now is that the people who brought this are now telling us that such things are right but thank God we are not very confused we are not confused at all.
The scripture has been given to us we will not return it to anybody, we have accepted it and we are implementing it because we have a heavenly agenda.
The Diocese of Los Angeles has issued this press release: Diocese of Los Angeles declines to endorse Anglican Covenant.
And there is this video documenting the process by which Diocesan Convention initiated the response.
Here is an extract:
25 Comments… We are concerned about the omission of the laity from Section 3. As St. Paul teaches, we are all of us the Body of Christ and individually members thereof (I Corinthians 12). There are four orders of ministry in the Church – bishops, priests, deacons and lay people, who also minister as members of the baptized people of God. Such an ecclesiology should both undergird the theology expressed in the Covenant and the church structures developed as means of connecting and serving the churches of the Communion. A Covenant to which we could subscribe would need to re-imagine the Instruments of Communion to provide a stronger representation from all the orders of ministry.
Section 4 is of greatest concern. It creates a punitive, bureaucratic, juridical process within the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, elevating its authority over the member churches despite previous affirmations of member church autonomy (see, e.g., Section 4.1.3). It contains no clear process for dispute resolution, no checks and balances, no right of appeal. The concept of mediation, introduced in Section 3.2.6, is not mentioned in Section 4. The covenant’s focus on “maintenance, dispute and withdrawal” bodes of an immobilized church mission instead of one that is flexible and prophetic. For these reasons, we cannot agree to Section 4.
We cannot endorse a covenant that, for the first time in the history of The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion, will pave the way toward emphasizing perceived negative differences instead of our continuing positive and abundant commonality. We strongly urge more direct face-to-face dialogue, study, prayer and education before the adoption of a document that has such historic significance in the life of the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church. Our differences should not be seen as something that must be proved wrong or endured but rather a motivation to dig deeper into discerning God’s purposes for God’s church…
Updated
The English House of Bishops has issued new Guidance on the marriage of persons from outside the European Economic Area which can be downloaded from here.
This page links to two documents:
In addition, reference is made in the first document to:
Here is the official press release: Bishops act to tackle sham marriages
And some press reports:
Alan Travis in The Guardian: Sham marriages targeted in Church of England crackdown
Tom Whitehead in The Telegraph: New rules for migrant church weddings
BBC: Church of England in ‘sham marriage’ crackdown
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Nicholas Roderick Holtam, BD, MA, FKC, Hon DCL, Vicar of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields in the diocese of London, for election as Bishop of Salisbury in succession to the Right Reverend Dr David Staffurth Stancliffe, MA, DD, on his resignation on 30 September 2010.
Press Release from 10 Downing Street: Diocese of Salisbury
Statement on diocesan website: New Bishop of Salisbury Announced
Statement on the St Martin-in-the-Fields wesbite: Revd Nicholas Holtam appointed Bishop of Salisbury
18 CommentsBRIN (British Religion in Numbers) reports on a study of Self-Supporting Ministry in the UK.
In 2009 3,100 or 27% of all the Church of England’s diocesan licensed ministers were in self-supporting ministry (SSM), sometimes described as non-stipendiary ministry. Hitherto, comparatively little has been known about these SSMs and how they are utilized by the Church.
That omission is now rectified by research published in the Church Times of 1 April 2011 (pp. 5, 22-3) and 8 April 2011 (pp. 4, 22-3, 30). These articles, together with some of the raw data in chart form, can be downloaded from:
The study was undertaken by Rev Dr Teresa Morgan, Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Oriel College, Oxford and herself in the SSM, in the parish of Littlemore.
Fieldwork took place during the autumn of 2010 by means of an online questionnaire, to which 890 SSMs in the UK (but mostly from England) responded, representing 28% of the universe.
SSMs were found to contribute a significant amount of time to their ministry, with one-quarter putting in more than 30 hours a week and a further one-fifth between 20 and 30 hours. Only 15% spent fewer than 10 hours a week on their ministry.
Moreover, the overwhelming majority regarded their ministry as a privilege and a joy and had received extensive pre- and post-ordination training.
Notwithstanding, many respondents gave the clear impression that they were ‘ignored, overlooked or under-used’ in the Church, ‘parked somewhere, and left’, and ‘sidelined’. Some commented that stipendiary ministers appeared not to regard SSMs as ‘proper’ clergy and treated them badly.
Likewise, many SSMs reported a degree of stagnation in their ministry since ordination. 46% had held only one post since ordination, and 41% reported no change in their ministry during this time. Just 13% had lead responsibility for ministry in their parish or chaplaincy. 59% exercised no significant ministry beyond the Church. Almost one-quarter claimed to have received no ministerial development review. Lailonni Ballixxx getting pounded hard Mouth Fuck and Black Cock Inserted Deep Hot Naked Teen Chatting On Webcam Tattooed skinny teen gets screwed hard Veronica Rodriguez fucked after deep throat Hunk is stimulating babes needs with his rubbing Sporty MILF Gets Gangbanged Busty Jasmine Black tertures tattooed Paige Delight https://www.pornjk.com/tags/xxnx/ Natural titted blonde gets fucked and creamed Sexy chick having a meaty cock for her twat Natalie gets pussy pounded by huge cock Horniness groundbreaking study Cute teen Alex Mae punished and smashed Two Horny Girls Making Out Beautiful Kharlie Stone bangs in her tiny pussy
Morgan is critical of the Church for its lack of strategy with regard to SSM and especially of the failure of dioceses to consider SSMs in their planning processes. She dismisses the raft of alleged impediments to the effective use of SSMs often cited by Church leaders, arguing that her survey has empirically disproved them.
The two reports in the Church Times are
Unpaid, unregarded, and under-used
Equipped and ready for action
although the second of these is only available to subscribers until Friday.
11 CommentsDavid Lose in The Huffington Post asks Is the Bible True?
James McGrath writes for Religion at the Margins about The Veil That Prevents Fundamentalists from Understanding the Bible.
Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times that The Bible is not like moral sayings.
Here’s an early Easter message from the USA: The Presiding Bishop’s Easter message.
Harriet Baber writes in The Guardian that Religion is not really about ethics. “As a compendium of moral doctrine the Bible doesn’t come off well. Its relevance lies in its teaching of the nature of God.”
Her article is one of several answers to this week’s The Question: What would you add to the Bible?
updated Friday morning to add Church Times article and Guardian editorial, and again to add Times interview, and in the afternoon another Guardian article.
It was announced yesterday that the astrophysicist Martin Rees had been awarded the 2011 Templeton Prize.
The Guardian covered this story extensively.
Ian Sample: Martin Rees wins controversial £1m Templeton prize
Templeton Prize 2011: Full transcript of Martin Rees’s acceptance speech
Ian Sample interviewed Martin Rees on Tuesday before the announcement that he had won the Templeton Prize. This is a full transcript of the interview: Martin Rees: I’ve got no religious beliefs at all – interview.
The Guardian also has these comment articles
Mark Vernon: Martin Rees’s Templeton prize may mark a turning point in the ‘God wars’
Jerry Coyne: Martin Rees and the Templeton travesty
Michael White: Martin Rees and the Templeton prize: why are the atheists so cross?
Dan Jones: The Templeton Foundation is not an enemy of science
and this editorial: Martin Rees: Prize war.
But there was other coverage.
Michael Banks at physicsworld.com: Martin Rees wins £1m Templeton Prize
Daniel Cressey in Nature: Martin Rees takes Templeton Prize
Steve Connor in The Independent: For the love of God… scientists in uproar at £1m religion prize
Chris Herlinger in The Huffington Post: Martin Rees, British Astrophysicist, Wins Templeton Prize
Ed Thornton in the Church Times: Non-believing churchgoer is winner of Templeton Prize
Hannah Devlin and Ruth Gledhill of The Times interview on YouTube: Martin Rees, winner of The Templeton Prize, on God, life, the universe (21 minutes)
The Church in Wales is inviting the public to comment on the Anglican Covenant, see this page.
To help in this matter, a commentary provided by the Church in Wales Doctrinal Commission has also been published, as a PDF file, here (link now corrected)
23 CommentsThe following passage comes from Archbishop Okoh’s opening address to the Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria held on 3 March 2011. (It has only just come to my attention.)
33 CommentsVisit to the UK: In our meeting in Lagos, we were mandated to visit the UK to ascertain the condition of Nigerian Anglicans, and how to help them. Our first attempt was on 17th December 2010, which failed because excessive snow fall, led to the closure of Heathrow airport. We rescheduled for 16th February, 2011. Thank God we were able to go. It was a full delegation. The Group was made up of:
The Most Revd Nicholas D. Okoh – Primate
The Most Revd Joseph Akinfenwa – Ibadan
The Most Revd Michael Akinyemi – Kwara
The Most Revd Bennet Okoro Owerri
The Most Revd Ignatius Kattey Niger Delta
The Most Revd Emmanuel Egbunu – Lokoja
The Rt. Revd David Onuoha – Secretary
Barr. Abraham Yisa – RegistrarThe delegation was well received by the Nigerian High Commission in London. There was a brief meeting and an interactive section. The group also visited the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace. Our message:
The need to allow Nigerians to worship “the Nigeria way” in abandoned Church buildings or allow them a scheduled time in parish Churches where they could express themselves unreservedly in worship, to save us from the unceasing and intense bleeding of our young executive Anglicans moving over to the New Generation Churches due to what they describe as “cold” worship style. Our request was viewed positively by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England. We also visited the Lord Bishop of London and the Bishop of Southwark. Other places visited include Manchester and Birmingham. In summary the Archbishop requested us to put our proposal into writing. He assured us that it is a practical proposal. We addressed a group of Nigerians of different age brackets in London, Manchester and Birmingham and had a special session with representatives of Nigerian Clergy in the UK. Our visit was said to be timely. But a few had their reservations.
Another issue which has emerged in this visit is the status, sponsorship and future of the Nigerian Chaplaincy in the UK. At the moment they are enjoying the last part of the generosity of the CMS, and the grace and benevolence of St. Marylebone. These are issues requiring urgent attention.
press release from The Chicago Consultation
2 CommentsCHICAGO CONSULTATION RELEASES PUBLICATION ON PROPOSED ANGLICAN COVENANT
The Genius of Anglicanism includes essays by theologians, church leaders
April 5, 2011—The Chicago Consultation, which advocates for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the worldwide Anglican Communion, has released a collection of essays and study questions on the proposed Anglican Covenant.
The Genius of Anglicanism, a 64-page booklet, includes eight essays and study questions, and may be downloaded at no cost at www.chicagoconsultation.org.
“We believe that congregations, bishops, General Convention deputations and individual Episcopalians will benefit from this careful exploration of the proposed covenant,” said the Rev. Lowell Grisham, co-convener of the Chicago Consultation and rector of St. Paul’s Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
“The proposed covenant is a complex document that could have a major impact on the Episcopal Church and its many vital and longstanding relationships within the wider Anglican Communion,” he added. “We are grateful that well-respected theologians, clergy and lay leaders were willing to analyze it for us.”
The Very Rev. Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and former dean of divinity at New College, Oxford, wrote the introduction for the guide, which was edited by Jim Naughton and includes essays by:
- The Rev. Ruth Meyers, Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, on the relationship of the proposed covenant to the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Church
- The Rev. Ellen Wondra, editor in chief of the Anglican Theological Review and academic dean at Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois on how a theological innovation, such as the proposed covenant is received or rejected by a community of faith
- The Rev. Timothy Sedgwick, Clinton S. Quin Professor of Christian Ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary, on the concept of episcopal authority in the proposed covenant
- Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Mary Wolfe Professor Emerita of Historical Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cam bridge, Massachusetts, on how the proposed covenant will affect the participation of the laity in Communion affairs
- The Rev. Canon Mark Harris, of the Diocese of Delaware, a member of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council on the proposed covenant and the traditional concept of “the historic episcopate locally adapted”
- Sally Johnson, chancellor to Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies on the judicial and disciplinary provisions in the fourth section of the proposed covenant
- The Rev. Gay Jennings, the Episcopal Church’s clergy representative to the Anglican Consultative Council, on the Anglican Communion’s existing covenant, which is grounded in the Five Marks of Mission
- The Rev. Winnie Varghese, priest-in-charge at St. Mark’s-Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City and member of Executive Council on the kind of covenant necessary to make the Communion an ally of the poor and the oppressed.
Grisham, who prepared the study questions that accompany each essay, said he believes the booklet will be widely used in the run-up to the Episcopal Church’s next General Convention in July 2012.
The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. To learn more about the Chicago Consultation, visit www.chicagoconsultation.org.
Aidan O’Neill QC has written about Religious Organisations and Secular Courts: The Ministerial Exception.
Read it in two parts at the UK Supreme Court Blog.
Part 1: The Ministerial exception in US case law
On 28 March 2011 the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Perich v. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church. This means that an appeal can be brought before the US Supreme Court in which, for the first time, that court will consider the constitutionality of the legal doctrine known as the “Ministerial exception”.
The “Ministerial exception” is a US court created (common law) principle which is said to be implicit within and derived from the US Constitution’s First Amendment’s prohibition of “religious establishment” and its guarantee of “religious freedom”…
Part 2: The Ministerial exception in UK and EU case law
1 CommentPerhaps under the influence of this US case law, by the last quarter of the twentieth century the growing tendency of the courts – at least in England and Wales – was to seek to avoid becoming mired in matters of ecclesiastical sensitivity and/or theological controversy by denying that they had jurisdiction to consider (intra- or inter-) religious disputes brought before them.
Paradoxically, this new found uneasiness as to the propriety of the civil courts ruling on matters religious might be thought to reflect the growing secularisation of public life in the UK, with the judges drawn from an increasingly unChurched class who – in contrast to their church-going and religiously literate Victorian and Edwardian forbears – felt uncomfortable and unqualified to sit in judgment on religious matters. Thus, the courts in England and Wales in this period declined to consider applications for judicial review brought by individuals exercising ministerial functions within various non-established religious denominations on the grounds that there was no “public law” element such as to make the case suitable for judicial review, apparently relying on a UK public law principle of separation of Church and State which had, in fact, no place historically with the polities making up the United Kingdom…
Alan Perry has just written an analysis of Section 3 of the Anglican Covenant, see Life Together.
Section 3 of the proposed Anglican Covenant describes the way in which the Churches of the Anglican Communion collaborate with each other. At the heart of this section is a description of the Instruments of Communion. These used to be know as Instruments of Unity, but for some inscrutable reason the term was changed in recent times.
Section 3.1.2 correctly notes, quoting the Lambeth Conference of 1930, that “Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound together ‘not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference’ and of the other instruments of Communion.” This statement is a little ironic, of course, being contained within a document which is being proposed as central legislation for the Communion, and which gives at least some executive powers to the Instruments of Communion and the Standing Committee. As we say in Quebec, it seems the proposed Covenant is speaking out of both sides of its mouth…
His earlier analyses of Section 1 are called Defining the Faith and Living the Faith.
That of Section 2 is called Vocation and Mission in the Anglican Communion.
And there is lots more analysis of the Anglican Covenant elsewhere in his blog.
2 CommentsThe Diocese of Pittsburgh reports that the earlier court decision in its favour is upheld.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has turned down a request made by former diocesan leaders to reargue their appeal of a lower court’s ruling concerning diocesan property.
On February 2, 2011, Commonwealth Court affirmed the decision by Judge Joseph James of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County that found the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church to be the rightful trustee of diocesan-held property and assets, based on a Stipulation the former diocesan leaders agreed to in 2005. Those former leaders had appealed Judge James’ decision to Commonwealth Court, and two weeks after the appeals court affirmed Judge James, they asked the appeals court to reconsider its ruling.
The actual court order is available as a PDF, but the content is reproduced here:
30 CommentsNOW, March 29 2011, having considered appellants’ application for re-argument before the court en banc and appellees’ answer, the application is denied.
Maggi Dawn writes for Ekklesia about Recovering ‘Refreshment Sunday’. The article is also on her blog under the title Mothers Day (AKA Refreshment Sunday).
Brett McCracken in Relevant asks Is Church Worth It? “Many of us have been hurt by church. But what if sticking with it actually matters?”
Giles Fraser in the Church Times explains Why I did not march on Saturday.
Becky Garrison writes in The Guardian that Trans clergy are finally gaining greater acceptance. “As we approach Transgender Faith Action Week, progress can be seen in attitudes to trans people within the church.”
Christopher Howse has two Sacred mysteries columns in The Telegraph this week: Why did the king sack El Greco? and Mary’s feet on the dusty ground.
8 Comments