Today’s Church Times has two news reports on the American House of Bishops meeting, and editorial comment.
Pat Ashworth
US Bishops reach agreement over gays and blessings
House wrestles for two days to find right words
Leader: Walking together and walking apart
And also:
Giles Fraser: “… Jenkins… spoke of the floods… like being “baptised with dirty water”… The whole point of the Reformation was to deny that access to God had to pass through the narrow weir of a restricted church order…. God can come to us all….” Corroborating biblical passages for Fraser and Jesus include: Zechariah 12:8 “… the LORD will shield… so that the feeblest among them will be like David…” Isaiah 30:19-21 “… your teachers will be hidden no more… your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Ezekiel 12:21-28 “…what is… Read more »
Clearest analysis I have seen so far on the TEC HOB response to AC questions
http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=237
Meanwhile Ruth Gledhill chooses her language carefully:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2543190.ece
“says world’s most powerful Anglican”
Power… ah so this is what it is about.
The Giles Fraser column affirms the direction my response, as a gay to man, to the bishops. I am thinking about resigning from the Episcopal Church and becoming free-lance baptized Christian. I could still take communion with my friends at my current church, but I wouldn’t have to take on the name of the human institution which, on paper, says I have a disorder which cuts me off from two of the sacraments. It’s interesting to speculate what simply being a baptized Christian would feel like–something like a Samaritan, I suspect, picking up crumbs here and there from the table… Read more »
But then, Power is what it’s been about from the git-go, isn’t it Pluralist? As to “most powerful Anglican”, let’s give it a few months – remember Croesus and Solon. Hubris is now in full flood.
Love Martin Reynolds’ comment – “The schism will continue and I predict by this time next year, every disappointed American cleric who wants to be a bishop, will have his wish”. “Every disappointed American cleric” – love it.
How powerful is my lord of Abuja?
He is certainly NOT the world’s “most powerful” Anglican.
If he were that powerful, he wouldn’t have to say people were signatories of documents when they weren’t. He wouldn’t need to fear defeat at the impending Lambeth – which he clearly does since he is pressing to have it postponed. He wouldn’t need to support laws which would imprison anyone who disagrees with him.
Akinola, like so many other tyrants an bullies in history, is a profoundly frightened little boy.
Get yourself a few TEC parishes like Truro and Falls Church and Akinola has probably the entire running opersations for the Church of Nigeria.
Truro and Falls Church income combine was probably more than the global souths combine.
Lots of money to be made in America.
I think the HoB was right essentially to say, “We have no authority to alter the decisions of General Convention.”
This has led to the puritans voting to “walk apart”:
http://tinyurl.com/2g52dr
Now if the primates who already claim parishes here (Akinola, Orombi, Kolini, Nzimbi & Venables — have I left anyone out?) disassociate themselves from the WWAC to take this people under their wing, things should move along more briskly.
I would have thought the “world’s most powerful Anglican” was Queen Elizabeth….”
BobinSwPA,
Nigeria decided long ago not to accept any money from Truro, Falls Church, and the rest of CANA.
Nigeria is giving sacrificially to orthodox Americans and not accepting anything in return.
Selah.
“I would have thought the “world’s most powerful Anglican” was Queen Elizabeth….”
Not when she’s in Scotland, when she morphs into a Presbyterian.
Worldly people can not imagine an end to tyranny, so they look to curry favors from authority figures e.g. Luke 20:20 or John 19:10-11. 2 Timothy 3:1-9 “People will be lovers of themselves… abusive… slanderous…having a form of godliness but denying its power…. their folly will be clear to everyone.” See also Micah 2:1-11. Romans 9:17-26 “…who are you, O man, to talk back to God? …Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? …“It will happen that in the very place… Read more »
Selah. Google and read “Following the Money” by Jim Naughton. And watch the interview that Archbishop Orimbi gave to Anglican TV, where he says of the American conservatives “….. they give us money. Oh they give us money. Since we began to relate with our orthodox brethren they have given us much more money, much more money, oh yeah, much more money. They have given us more money”. Orombi seems quite taken with American money.
http://www.anglicantv.org/blog/index.cfm/2007/9/9/Archbishop-Henry-Orombi
Selah wrote: “Nigeria decided long ago not to accept any money from Truro, Falls Church, and the rest of CANA.”
Can you substantiate that?
“orthodox Americans” I’m sure our Greek and Slavic brethren are quite grateful, but I have to wonder why the very Evangelical Church in Nigeria is generous to people whose theology is so antithetical to their own. In the meetings that must have preceded this generosity, did +Akinola meet with the Metropolitan of OCA, or are they giving sacrificially to those are still under the omophorion of a continental bishop? They do need our help, what with their sad divisions that stem from the Eastern Bloc politics of the first 50 years or so of the past century. Did they worship… Read more »
Ford, one of the sadder casualties of all this is the perfectly honorable word “orthodox,” which has come to mean “fundamentalist.” That’s a pity.