Updated again Tuesday midnight
The Living Church has these reports:
Large Class of New Primates in Tanzania by George Conger
Elections and Politics Part of Tanzania Meeting by Steve Waring
Hero’s Sendoff for Presiding Bishop by Steve Waring
The Independent has a catch-up briefing:
The Big Question: Why is the Anglican Church facing a schism, and can it be prevented? by Adrian Hamilton
The Christian Science Monitor has Anglican leaders under pressure to prevent schism by Jane Lampman
And there is a report from Changing Attitude here.
Evening Update
The Living Church has Global South Will Propose Two-Province Solution
Ruth Gledhill has some information about an additional Nigerian attendee, see In case of spiritual crisis….
Midnight Update
Living Church
Alternate Primates’ Meeting Agenda Proposed
Primates’ Session with Episcopal Bishops Changed to Thursday
Telegraph Jonathan Petre Primates in their unnatural habitat
AAC David Anderson Security Goes Tight Around the White Sands Special Compound
The Times Ruth Gledhill It is time for the Anglican Luthers to divorce
Here is Father Matthew in Yonkers on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHflxOJbQS4
“Anglican primates of The Global South will propose a two-province solution to the divisions of doctrine and discipline confronting The Episcopal Church at this week’s primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.” And by whose authority would this be implemented? If ++Rowen accedes to this, he should be … words fail. Of course this has been planned all along – a replacement for the Anglican Communion in North America – and how long do you suppose it would take them to do the same in England and elsewhere? Can someone fax a picture of Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich to… Read more »
A two province “solution?”
The Episcopal Church gets to play Czechoslovakia, circa 1938.
I think that Hamilton’s comments are quite good and objective. However, his conclusion that there aren’t significant consequences for Anglicans if the Anglican Communion (AC) “fractures” is not exactly true. The Anglican Communion is not like other Protestant denominations. The relationships between member provinces are not grounded in dogmatics or scriptural hermeneutics. The AC, until this point in time operated in more of a Catholic manner. The covenant between the member provinces was relational, not doctrinal. The impact upon the Communion members’ relationships will be altered should provinces begin to re-align themselves.
Why postpone the inevitable? It’s not that the Primates can be Christian enough to join together at Christ’s table. Time to form the Nigerian Communion; let the N.C. get on with the business of determining who is or is not Anglican ENOUGH, and let the historic Anglican Communion get on with the business of reconciling ourselves and one another to Christ.
Father Matthew in Yonkers is way cool, and spot on in response to all the articles above. Thanks drdanfee.
Lois Keen
Praise Christ for Colin Coward, Caro Denton Hall and, most of all, Davis Mac-Iyalla’s prayerful presence in Tanzania: things are lookin’ up, Alleluia! 😀 ***** However, I’m concerned w/ The Living Church’s *headline* “Hero’s Sendoff for Presiding Bishop”. Episcopalians assuredly send their support and prayers for ++KJS, *as* our Presiding Bishop. Furthermore, many of us are encouraged, to see what a *calm, centered* representative she is for our Church. In light of what seems to be certain “personality cults” we see around some Primates (especially “The Lion of Abuja”) however, it would be a MISTAKE to perceive Episcopal support for… Read more »
“Meanwhile, TEC’s Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori arrived in Tanzania today with her own explicit agenda. “
Yes – looking for communication, looking to find common ground, looking for ways to walk together.
“Even Rome is weighing in subtly,”
Anglican Communion to Rome: Butt Out. Or so I would hope, but more politely.
I pray for Bp Kathariine and for all.
Re TLC’s “Global South Will Propose Two-Province Solution”
{sarcasm/ON}
My favorite part: “the college would nominate three candidates to be presiding bishop, one of whom would be ***selected as primate of the [USA] province by the primates’ meeting***”
Thank you, thank you, Primates Meeting, for saving us Yanks from our democratically-heretical selves!
{sarcasm/OFF}
(Back) to Hell w/ this! >:-0
{breathe}
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Adrian Hamilton’s article contains one particularly muesli-spraying-type howler:
“To the liberals, who mainly come from the “Western” provinces, but also include elements in the African and Asian churches, the acceptance of sexual differences has become a litmus test of modernity and tolerance.”
Excuse me if I’ve totally misunderstood this whole saga, but isn’t it those who are opposed to this so-called *liberal agenda* who are using views of sexual difference as the litmus test of doctrinal purity?
Rome already intervened in Anglican debates when Card. Ratzinger wrote a supportive letter for the conservatives a few years ago. But he is losing that battle even on his own home front, in Italy. Ruth Gledhill’s enthusiasm for schism is very irresponsible. Her equation of ECUSA concern for gay people with a merely “secular” idea of justice is confused and insulting. Jefferts Schori may not be a profound a theologian as others, but the readiness of the conservatives to pounce and smear is very disedifying. Here is an exchange cited against her: “”What are you: a Unitarian?!?? [laughs] What are… Read more »
“the college would nominate three candidates to be presiding bishop, one of whom would be selected as primate” of the American Anglican Confederation of Puritan Excluders who can’t seem to stop projecting sin, rampant paranoia and pending ungodly evil in everyone and everyday life…kinda like Bush and/or Rumsfeld being enthroned at Ft. Worth, Texas as Primate of Hate?
Re Ruthie:
2 of the 3 characters she mentions might well be Lutheresque sorts of characters…but given that the 3rd has been plotting and scheming and looking for an excuse for the kind of divorce Ruth mentions…isn’t Lucifer a better name?
kieran asked, “…isn’t it those who are opposed to this so-called *liberal agenda* who are using views of sexual difference as the litmus test of doctrinal purity?”
Well, to put it plainly…
Yes.
/me pauses, looks around in a slightly befuddled manner, and wonders, “was this a trick question ?” 😀
Yes, indeed if I were living in Yonkers, I probably would sojourn at St. Paul’s in the historic Anglican broad church tradition. Funny how golden it now seems to me that sometimes we believers should lay aside all our doctrinal finery and dueling weapons of mass discernment, in order to worship, pray, sing and enact metanoia together – asking Jesus to guide us in all our fallibilities and dependencies.
After Tanzania, our journeys continue.
Praise the Lord and pass round all the open-endedness our cisterns can spare.
I must dissent with the description of Fr. Matthew as cool. How cool can anyone possibly be in a clerical collar? Now maybe if he rode a big Harley up that bell tower, then we might have something truly cool.
I agree that he is absolutely right. He makes a good point when he uses oranges to describe the various factions. The part where he juggles them is a nice clever touch.
It seems to me that the lady of the Times and the press don’t quite appreciate how utterly destructive a show-down is.
There will only be one outcome whichever “way” it goes.
Utter destruction.
Am I correct in thinking that the Global South is now trying to shift the terrain of debate from homosexuality — on which reasonable arrangements to live with disagreement are fairly easy to establish; see http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/catech.html — to a wider and deeper issue where they can give full vent to their indignation, namely, the divinity and Lordship of Christ as sole Saviour of the World? The outcry about Bp Jefferts Schori, painted as an uncritical admirer of Bp Spong, is of rather recent vintage, and the Global South has not as far as I know distinguished itself particularly by credal… Read more »
predictable postings above, of course…..
you know that it is not a right to be at the communion table, do you?
(have a careful read – Corinthians should help – life and doctrine matter a lot according to St Paul……but maybe VGR and KJS know better)
Cynthia says KJS and so TEC are “looking for communication, looking to find common ground, looking for ways to walk together.”
Is this the same TEC which ignoring all pleas to show restraint, deliberately inflicted a tear on the fabric of the communion? Now we are supposed to believe that TEC is looking for ways to walk together….after the GC06 refusal to respond to Windsor – I guess one needs a revionist view to see TEC as a peacemaker and desiring unity.
I do believe that the GS are shifting as Fr Joe asks to a much wider debate including the Lordship of Christ.
Fr Joseph. The christological stuff has been going on for a while. There is a paradigm that Jesus is the complete, pure and perfect manifestation of God. Anything else is considered sacriligious. Although, the idea that God could be completely embodied by any one human, let alone in a paltry 30-something years is patently absurd. Spong has been hated for a long time, what is new is to see them referring to the camaderie between Schori and Spong (I’ve only seen that mentioned in the last few days); but then I don’t watch all the net and trust God to… Read more »
“Although, the idea that God could be completely embodied by any one human, let alone in a paltry 30-something years is patently absurd.” I don’t agree here, Cheryl. Jesus IS God Incarnate. Of course, the Creator becoming the Created sounds absurd to us, but it is one of the great mysteries of Orthodox Christianity. All the rest of our faith hinges on it. Orthodoxy does not seek to understand this, merely accepts it as a mystery beyond our finite comprehension. I am also uncomfortable with what looks to me like a non-Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead. This isn’t an attack,… Read more »
To Ruth Gledhill on her ‘information about an additional Nigerian attendee’, It was interesting to read that Abp Nicholas Okoh is in Tanzania. But what i don’t accept is your permutation that he may have been brought in to ‘contend’ with Rowan’s choice to allow Sentamu to the Primates meeting. You would recall that in August 20, -2006 before all these hullabaloo about Primates meeting- Abp Okoh preached an inspiring sermon at the consecration service of Bp Minns and three others in Abuja. http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/weblog/comments/contend_for_the_faith_archbishop_nicholas_o_okoh/). He is a disciplined man, who preaches and lives on what he believes with a firm… Read more »
Cynthia says KJS and so TEC are “looking for communication, looking to find common ground, looking for ways to walk together.” Now we are supposed to believe that TEC is looking for ways to walk together….after the GC06 refusal to respond to Windsor – We studied Windsor and responded. Windsor is a report and we responded to the report, after considerable study. Windsor is not a mandate or a set of laws. It is a report, and one which, I may say, is itself flawed – e.g., in its inaccurate account of the history of women’s ordination and its poradic… Read more »
jcf – you do realise that “democracy” in TEC is a weak argument, don’t you?
were Paul, Peter, James, John…..elected?? (maybe TEC is doing things in the wrong way? maybe in a worldly way?)
you know Hitler was elected?
-“democracy” can lead to terrible mistakes -it is certainly not a virtue in and of itself nor is it a model for running a church given in the bible….but that would not bother the current TEC leadership, would it?
NP: you lose, according to the dictum by which the first person to mention Mr H has forfeited the argument:-) But although it’s fair to say that God doesn’t HAVE to work through a democracy (and there are plenty of Scriptural examples where the majrity is wrong), it seems to me to border on the heretical to suggest God CANNOT work through the will of the people of God. I would have thought that any child of the REformation, and its accompanying suspicion of priestly unique access to the mind of God, would have found such empowering of the priesthood… Read more »
Herr Hitler was a p p o i n t e d by the Reichspräsident Marschalk von Hindenburg, because his party NSDAP had made gains in the General Elections.
“nor is it a model for running a church given in the bible” This is the fallacy of Evangelicalism, that the Bible actualy gives us a model of how the Church should be run. It does not, no matter how much the Reformers needed to create credibility by inventing a continuity for their ideas with those of the Early Church. And seriously, if the People of God ought not choose their bishops, how do we get bishops, other than crowning our own Pope or something? Even in Orthodoxy, where I believe bishops are selected by bishops, the people’s cry of… Read more »
NP,
can you tell me why those like yourself who oppose democracy—those who say “it is not a right to be at the communion table”{*} —then immediately go on to place *THEMSELVES* in the role of JUDGE? A role reserved (says this democratic Episcopalian) for GOD ALONE???
[{*} You know that it is not a right to EXCLUDE from ***CHRIST’S*** communion table, don’t you?]
Lord have mercy!
A two-province solution to the divisions of doctrine and discipline confronting The Episcopal Church? Forget it; it’s unacceptable. I can tell you right now that the vast majority of Episcopalians—even most Episcopal conservatives—won’t go for it. So they might as well take it off the table.
Ford
Jesus is God incarnate but not ALL of God incarnate. It was a personification of many traits of God, but Jesus never gave birth to a child, for example, never got pregnant either for that matter.
Jesus authority to act as God’s representative and proof of his annointment for that role is not questioned. But God moves through more than just Jesus and Jesus can also be disciplined.
The one who annointed and resurrected Jesus has the capacity to discipline Jesus.
Auswitzch has not gone unnoticed nor unanswered.
… and because the Reichspräsident Marschalk von Hindenburg had been pressured by certain circles (business, and so on) that Herr Hitler would be more tractable as head of Government than as head of Opposition ;=)
The Buck as Gardener is an age-old ruse.
(the same reasoning no doubt prompted someone to appoint ++Gomez to chair the Anglican Covenant group)
“Jesus is God incarnate but not ALL of God incarnate. It was a personification of many traits of God, but Jesus never gave birth to a child, for example, never got pregnant either for that matter.” What you find missing here could perhaps be found through a meditation on such topics as teh following: (1) the work of the Logos bringing grace, revelation, salvation into all human minds since the beginning — John 1.1-18; (2) the idea of the Mystical Body of Christ — wherein “Christ plays in a thousand places, lovely in eyes and limbs not his, to the… Read more »
Cheryl, so you don’t buy the whole ‘For in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’ (col 2.9) argument? I just ask because I am studying for a class reading Athanasius and Irenaeus, and based on them (as well as the ecumenical councils) it seems pretty important that Jesus gets his ‘authority to act as God’s representative’ from the fact that He is indeed not only fully God, but the fulness of God. I may misunderstand you though. What do you mean when you say that Jesus insn’t ‘all’ of God incarnate. I mean, obviously some terms will… Read more »
To add. This is one of the times where the GLBT Christians have identified the common pattern faster than the others: http://www.hrc.org/scripture/week.asp The cloud at Mt Sinai and the cloud at Jesus’ transfiguration (luke 9:34-35) are the same consciousness. If Jesus wanted to act as a pure independent, then Jesus should not have asked for God’s will to be done in the garden of Mount of Olives (Luke 22:42), nor made representations to the Daughter of Zion on his entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:5). Having sought the endorsement from others, it was no longer only Jesus’ reputation that was at… Read more »
JCF – I suggest you listen again to the ABC’s comments that the gospel is not always and everywhere inclusive. At least you now know that saying that KJS was democratically elected is a very weak argument. AS for the table, if you believe that it is open to all you are being incredibly selective in your reading… Include all – is that really the gospel message? Really? Jn3:36 – just for example – do you even believe JC said this? Would you have rebuked him for not being “inclusive”????? (you can say it is his right to judge….but do… Read more »
NP,
Do stop telling people what they have or have not, believe or believe not!
Cheryl, For me, your response suggests that Jesus is somehow less than “God”, by which I understand the Father. It also seems to be close to Subordinationism, which some in the Evangelical camp are now trotting out as backup for their opposition to “female headship”. I may be wrong, but I hear it is practically doctrine in Sydney. It seems to me Arian in some form. Jesus isn’t just God’s representative, He IS God. That’s the point of the Incarnation, that the Creator of all redeems His Creation by becoming part of that Creation. As to your remarks about the… Read more »
NP asked
“Jn3:36 – just for example – do you even believe JC said this”
Of COURSE liberals don’t believe Jesus said this. For obvious reasons, if only you would stop reciting from your book of knock down proof texts and read the scriptures (perhaps even with brain switched ‘on’). Unless it is now part of ConsEv strategy to insist we believe Jesus was a ventriloquist and had the Baptist sitting on his knee like a dummy….
I think the technical phrase is ‘own goal’.
NP, Dja ever stop to think that maybe rejecting the Son refers to rejecting His basic teaching of “love God, love your neighbour”? Dja ever think that maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with crying aloud, publically for all to hear, that “Jesus is lord of my life”? That kind of statement gets you the praise of a certain section of society, and you sit with them week by week in Church. I seem to remember Jesus having something to say about that kind of behaviour. Isn’t there something about whited sepulchres? We are called to walk in the… Read more »
I am overjoyed to have Mynster tell me to “read the scriptures”.
This is the best, most constructive response I have have ever seen on TA.
Now, I will obey you Mynster because you are giving wise advice.
But I am not going to ignore the scriptures when they are inconvenient or difficult for me to obey or accept – I want to obey both the MEANING of specific texts in the broader context of all scripture…….
……do you think reading the scriptures is going to lead me to say VGR should be a bishop? Seriously – from the scriptures?
“But I am not going to ignore the scriptures when they are inconvenient or difficult for me to obey or accept”
Your impatience for the TEC foot to take heed to your “I have no need of thee” proves the above statement is untrue.
As to +VGR’s right to be a bishop, you would have to prove that unrepentant homosexuality is a worse sin than unrepentant lust for power, or unrepentant hypocrisy, or unrepentant false witness, or else you’d have to deny the episcopate to many of those Conservative leaders you idolize.
Re: NP asked “Jn3:36 – just for example – do you even believe JC said this” mynsterpreost: “Of COURSE liberals don’t believe Jesus said this.” I agree with NP. Anyone who REALLY READS and UNDERSTANDS the Bible will be in NO DOUBT as to the wrongness of Gene Robinson’s consecration and the agenda of his supporters and fellow-travelers. Obviously, the Liberals and Revisionists who read the Bible WITH a cynical attitude will continue to claim to know better than the Master. Christ actually warned against this mindset (not that it matters one bit to the Revisionists what Christ said or… Read more »
And which denomination do you belong to Spiro?
As for NP’s question, I think we already had that one not long ago…
As I remember, all answered Yes the holy scriptures of the Bible lead me to this very understanding of the Gospel.
It isn’t clear who is speaking in John 3.36 – NIV (Mynsterpreost’s version of choice?) suggests John the Baptist by its punctuation, while NRSV makes it a comment by the Evangelist. But it could also by Jesus, considering the Evangelist’s rather elliptical style. But the question isn’t that important. It’s obvious that the author considers the words to be true and binding and an accurate reflection of the mind of Christ. The bigger question to which NP alludes – and which Mynsterpreost doesn’t address – is the general rejection within liberalism of John’s gospel as a dependable witness to the… Read more »
Steve Watson dear, the trouble is not John 3:36, the trouble is your (excedingly late) interpretation.
As always: if the answers don’t add up, it’s not because there’s anything wrong with the answers but because there’s something wrong with the question.
;=)
Christ Jesus did not preach “hellfire”.
Hell was not invented in his day.
Sheol does not mean Hell, Gehenna does not mean Hell.
Hell is found in Dante’s Divina Commedia.
Only Purgatory ever made it into Roman Dogma (Lateran IV 1215), but this is soon to be abolished by Benedict XVI.
“NIV (Mynsterpreost’s version of choice?)”
Aaargh! Never. Fetch the garlic!
NIV (Mynsterpreost’s version of choice?)
Umm, actually I was working from Aland (synopsis quattuor evangeliorum). English translations are SO untrustworthy, and the demise of compulsory Greek as part of ordination training in the CofE is a cause of much heartache for me.
And the point I was making was that NP asked whether we ‘liberals’ accepted this as the words of Jesus. Whether they are the words of JtB or of the narrator, they are manifestly NOT the ipsissima verba of the Lord. As for the rest, I put my trust in a number of things, including commentaries….