Updated again Tuesday afternoon
Religious Intelligence FCA threatens Church run by “Satan” by Toby Cohen
Reuters Orthodox Anglicans won’t leave Church of England by Harpreet Bhal
Cif belief Anglican schism? Bring it on by Theo Hobson
The Times The spiritual battle for the soul of Anglicanism by Ruth Gledhill on Articles of Faith.
BBC Church group ‘not planning split’
The full text of Archbishop Peter Jensen’s presentation is here.
And the presentation on behalf of Archbishop Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria and Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council delivered by Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of Bendel, Nigeria, is here.
Updates
The Times
Ruth Gledhill Britain in battle for its soul, says Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen
and
Leading Article: Bishop’s wrong move
…Bishop Nazir-Ali is a longstanding critic of modern mores and church accommodation with them. He has become increasingly outspoken as his early retirement from Rochester approaches. But his willingness to provoke splits and risk schism within the Anglican Communion serves neither Church nor nation. He commented before yesterday’s gathering that homosexuals should “repent and be changed”. He thereby inflamed an issue on which social attitudes have changed radically for the better within a generation, and signalled insubordination to the authority of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. To adapt the words of Clement Attlee to an obstreperous Labour critic: a period of silence on his part would be welcome…
Telegraph Martin Beckford Bishop of Lewes: Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans formed to counter ‘heartache’
And an earlier report that I missed, Religious Intelligence Bishop attacks ‘lurid’ headlines
The Bishop, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, had given an interview to the Sunday Telegraph ahead of today’s launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in London.
In the interview he was reported as calling for gay people to repent and change, and his comments provoked a strong backlash from gay groups, liberal Christians and from the media…
Two items from Changing Attitude:
Davis Mac-Iyalla reports on Archbishop Okoh’s visit to Christ Church Beckenham
Schismatic bishops obsessed with gays
Archbishop Venables: “This is about the essentials of theology, and that’s where the division is coming. Those who say there is only one way; Jesus Christ, stand with us, stand with him, and those who say there are a lot of ways, Jesus is one of them. That is what this division is about and it’s not schism, it is real separation over Gospel truth.” And here I thought the “essentials of theology” were the triune God, the divinity of Christ, his role as our savior and not stuff like the gender of priests or what the congregants do with… Read more »
I had a look at the main photograph posted on the Ruth Gledhill site. Westminster Hall is a big place but the ‘congregation’ at the ‘Be Faithful’ gathering doesn’t look particularly big. Also, even when I enlarged the photograph and screwed my eyes up to look more closely, many of those there seemed rather elderly
“Consecrating women as bishops in the Church of England without proper provision for those opposed to the move would prompt FCA UK to challenge the current Church leadership. The Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, maintained that the fellowship was hopeful that this would not be necessary.” “He said: ‘I think we are hopeful that the Church of England will see sense and provide properly for loyal Anglicans of both integrities.'” So the blackmail begins! On behalf of the majority membership of TEC, we say to our CofE family, “Welcome to our world!” Those of you in England… Read more »
Hobson’s piece seems to me almost deranged: prey to the stupid and crippling polarisation mentality that seems hell-bent on destroying our church. He may be right that Liberals have been smug, but he badly underestimates the difficulties of securing a church-wide acceptance of homosexuality as legitimate. This is not always to do with homophobia. The difficulty is that it locks you into fairly radical reinterpretation (in this case, effective dumping) of the Bible. Many, many people are afraid of that, because it seems almost infinitely destabilising. Their fear is not irrational. Handling the gay and WO issues is extremely difficult.… Read more »
Doctor Jensen stated that FCA and GAFCON….
…exists so that evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics and mere Anglicans can continue to be Anglicans without compromising Biblical truth.
Yet he believes what Anglo-Catholics believe is not biblical.. see his personal web site!
The one Truth of Bishop Venables is a Hellenist truth, immovable, immutable, that is Heathen.
The Dynamic Creator God of both Testaments stand for a whole other reality. Or am I mistaken?
“And here I thought the “essentials of theology” were the triune God, the divinity of Christ, his role as our savior…” Amen Pat. A question for Christians. When God authorised the dethronement of Satan and discrediting of his followers – was that based on the name of the tyrant – or was God making a stand against tyranny per se? Christians who behave tyrannically testify that the issue was the name of the tyrant. The souls who are responsible for life on this planet (in all its diversity both seen and unseen) testify that God’s stand was against tyranny itself.… Read more »
Penwatch – all Anglican gatherings are rather elderly, so maybe FCA was just a representative sample!
Well, now, our cousins across the pond are finally getting a little taste of what we American Episcopalians have had to put up with for years if not decades. Pretty soon, these folks will be demanding a new “Province” in England, staffed by bishops consecrated in Africa. Then they will try to take possession of the family silver. How anyone can take seriously backward-looking windbags like Duncan and Jensen is beyond my understanding. (TEC supports “the sanctification of sin” Dr. Jensen? We American Episcopalians were preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, baptizing sinners saved by Grace and celebrating the Holy… Read more »
Schism and separation are the same thing, both etymologically and in usage (apart from the fact that ‘schism’ is a more formal and resonant term).
I think the point they made was that the authority of Jesus is an essential, albeit it can be disregarded in numerous quite different ways.
What I found most interesting was the posts on “Anglican TV” These are folks who had hopes of attending, and, if unable, actually watched the presentations. They are posts from people who were predisposed to support and affirm what they hoped would happen here. But… From the posts, of which I admit I was taken back by how few, there seem to be a couple of themes that were surprising. 1. The posters were turned off by the tone of the opening day as so negative 2. The posters were discouraged by the cost of the attendance, how admission and… Read more »
“The difficulty is that it locks you into fairly radical reinterpretation (in this case, effective dumping) of the Bible.” How does changing our understanding of homosexuality do this any more than changing our understanding of ordination of women, or usury, to name but two? I think this whole “If we do this we are rejecting the Bible” thing is actually untrue. We have reinterpreted many things in the last 2000 years, how is this reinterpretation different? This is something that conservatives throw out there all the time, and I don’t see why we are huldering them into it. This is… Read more »
“How does changing our understanding of homosexuality do this any more than changing our understanding of ordination of women, or usury, to name but two? “
I would have gone with “women being silent in church,” myself. But your point is well made. We go against Biblical mandates – not to eat blood, not to charge interest, veiling women – and no one says we’re “dumping the Bible.”
And for a group that swears up and down that “it’s not about sexuality,” that’s all they ever really seem to come back to time and time again.
Ford, Calm down. I am not saying one shouldn’t do this: I am saying that for many people it’s a difficulty, especially when it’s stated as a general principle. People are very afraid of ‘the slippery slope’, and in a way, from their point of view, they’re right. If Paul is crackers about homosexuality (as he is), why isn’t he crackers about the resurrection, his own conversion, etc. etc.? Not everybody who is ‘anti’-homosexuality is a homophobe; not everybody who is anti-WO is a misogynist. Not all these people can be persuaded, certainly not within any foreseeable time-frame. Many of… Read more »
I should like to see a breakdown of the number of people attending and the ratio of clergy to laity. It was hard to tell from the photo, but the Hall certainly didn’t look full.
“Jesus Christ, stand with us, stand with him”
To equate standing with a certain group of human beings, an “us” (sinners all!), with ***Jesus Christ*** is nothing short of BLASPHEMY.
Lord have mercy!
How long the Conservatgive Antigay Shock and Awe wars will serve as the effective, vivid demonstration of conservative righteousness? Remains to be seen. If following Jesus of Nazareth – and by what authority? – is the core divide? Then I think we are hearing the last gasps of closed, winner takes all penal atonement authority over believer discernment and conscience. Again and again, beneath or woven through nearly all the presenting either/ors constantly preached by Anglican rights as ultimate and divisive – is the underlying message, Penal Atonement or hit the highway you pagans aka New religionists. Calling any change,… Read more »
Re: BBC, Church not planning split. I can only make sense of this denial if I take pains to reconstruct its possible conservative campaign context. That means I reconstruct the primary aim of the conservative realignment campaign: Take over, everything. So in that sense, the campaign is not meant to split or divide, though that is its most likely outcome. A takeover campaign says it is not seeking splits but its special, closed, conformed brand of so-called repentance. Since conformity to a closed set of beliefs is the prime demonstration or indicator of real repentance, the whole thing fits together… Read more »
Colin Coward is, obviously, incorrect to assume that Michael Nazir-Ali does not also oppose those 2 other fruits of secularism, divorce and premarital sex. He has already made clear that secularism with all its fruits is the root enemy. Unless CC can disprove this with evidence, e.g. a quotation.
Christopher, you seem to have misread Fr. Coward’s column. His point, as I understood it, was not that Bishop Nazir-Ali doesn’t oppose divorce and premarital sex, but that homosexuality is singled out from the catalog of sins for the vigorous campaigns of folks from FoCA. Of course Bishop Nazir-Ali opposes divorce and premarital sex – in a rather subdued sort of way…but he and his fellow-travellers are absolutely exercised about homosexuality.
“People are very afraid of ‘the slippery slope'” But my point was that this no more represents a “slippery slope” than any other “reassessment” we have carried out in the past two millennia. It is fear that drives all this, and it’s pretty clear that the leadership of the conservatives manipulates that fear to their own ends. I appreciate that many conservatives are devout and sincere. I also have respect for what you refer to as “simple faith”. We can’t all be theologians and scholars, we understand as God gives us the ability. I also agree that opposing gay marriage… Read more »
Bishop Benn happily exists in a gay diocese and diocese where the 39 articles are flouted by his diocesan bishop and most of the clergy.
Hi BillyD- Of course that has to be the case, because homosexuality is the presenting issue at present, as well as being the most hotly divisive issue. In any age, you’ll agree, the presenting issues and hotly divisive issues are the ones that generate most talk. Could it be otherwise? Should it be? If they were really obsessed with it, they would have talked just as much about it even when it was not the presenting issue. Yhe truth is that the amount people talk about it is in ratio to how far it is the presenting/main contested issue at… Read more »
“homosexuality is the presenting issue at present” Homosexuality is NOT the presenting issue at present, and many many conservatives will tell you so. Indeed, in some of their public statements they claim to have gotten beyond that issue. Their issue is what they see as the creeping influence of what for them is a godless liberalism that will sell out the Gospel in the interests of gaining the approval of the world. It’s right there in the Jerusalem Declaration, all that “another Gospel” nonsense. Indeed, even here conservatives have been quite vocal in stating that what they see as the… Read more »
Hi Ford- Precisely. The way they are typically using the term ‘presenting issue’ is that one issue happens to have caused the rift in contingent historical terms (been the straw that broke the camel’s back), but any number of other issues might have done so, since the root problem is something deeper: the nature of authority and whether we think it possible to disobey Christ (who in his attitude to the sinfulness of sexual sin -as opposed to his attitude to forgiving it when the sinner was repentant – was a typical Jew of his day:Mk 7 – or sometimes… Read more »
“the nature of authority and whether we think it possible to disobey Christ…..quite so blatantly.” But here is where we disagree. We have to think with the mind of Scripture, to follow the spirit, not the letter, of the Law. Are we actually following the spirit of the Law when we refer to two caring, committed, monogamous individuals as being sinful? Christ might have been a typical Jew of His day when it comes to sexual sin, but He never mentioned homosexuality. Or, if He did, those who recorded what they were inspired to think was necessary to record of… Read more »
Hi Ford- It’s not often that you say something that is *certainly* wrong, but you are talking nonsense (and I use the word advisedly) when you speak about said NT passages being added hundreds of years later. Not only would this leave a trace in at least one strand of the manuscript record, but we would also have to contend with the fact that we can derive the NT as it stands from the writings of the early church fathers alone. In addition I have been in NT studies for 15 years and have never even heard the view you… Read more »
“In addition I have been in NT studies for 15 years and have never even heard the view you mention.” Is it not accepted that only seven of the Epistles accredited to Paul were actually written by him? Does not Goran repeat this over and over? He has clearly heard of this, if you haven’t. Bit, I am no Biblical scholar, much less a theologian, so I bow to the expertise of those, like yourself, who ARE educated in this area. But I believe Goran is also educated in this area, and his opinion seems to disagree with yours. So,… Read more »
Hi Ford- You are speaking as though a consensus exists. Quite the contrary. It is quite impossible that there would be agreement or consensus on such a matter as the authorship of Paul’s epistles. You must have a very unusual view of the scholarly community if you think that they will form consensus on many things. There is always healthy disagreement. That is just in the nature of the scholarly community. You write ‘He has clearly heard of this, if you haven’t.’ This is what we call a bias or a tendenz, your particular bias being towards negativity. How could… Read more »
“You are speaking as though a consensus exists.” In which case I made the point a bit too strongly. Sorry. I am well aware of the nature of scientific debate. I was of the impression that it was fairly widely accepted in the community that studies such things. I am not in a position to know otherwise, so if people who study in that field tell me it is still an open question, so be it. But in Medicine and in Linguistics there are theories that have wide acceptance, though not complete. It would certainly be a mistake to say… Read more »
The point is, also, that even those letters which some think not to have been written by Paul are almost universally considered to emanate from the first century. The only exceptions are the Pastorals. though these are widely dated in the first century, dates up till around 135 AD are also possible. Although one does not generally find the fullest treatments coming to such a conclusion. In truth, people often do not come to conclusions at all; they just assign proportional probabilities to various options. Portions of Paul being actually written 100 or 200 years later does not rate as… Read more »
“The point is, also, that even those letters which some think not to have been written by Paul are almost universally considered to emanate from the first century.” I don’t really care if God inspired one of Paul’s disciples to add something to flesh out one of his writings. The significance of the inspiration of Scripture is in its inspiration, not in the person inspired. Besides, the Church discerned the Scriptures from the writings of their day, so if the Church decided that the pastorals reflected the Gospel, then what odds if parts of them were written a bit later?… Read more »
There I don’t follow your argument. Inspiration is a clear phenomenon (tunes and solutions and insights coming to one out of the blue), but your view that the *whole* of the Bible is inspired in that way sounds to me more dogma than reason. For example: the gospel-writers Matthew and Luke[-Acts] used their existing sources and personalities to compile their accounts with a background of prayer and Christian community. The term ‘inspiration’ is clearly too strong for that process. The writers never mention receiving inspiration. And so on. You are right that all sorts of people, not just apostles, can… Read more »
Archbishop Venables: “This is about the essentials of theology, and that’s where the division is coming. Those who say there is only one way; Jesus Christ, stand with us, stand with him, and those who say there are a lot of ways, Jesus is one of them. That is what this division is about and it’s not schism, it is real separation over Gospel truth.” And here I thought the “essentials of theology” were the triune God, the divinity of Christ, his role as our savior and not stuff like the gender of priests or what the congregants do with… Read more »