Updated Wednesday
The American Anglican Council has issued a press release, which contains a fairly detailed commentary on One Baptism, One Hope in God’s Call.
Earlier responses to this document were linked here. Note in particular the analysis of Ephraim Radner which is rather more constructive in its approach.
Update
Archbishop Drexel Gomez has expressed some views too, as reported by the Bahama Journal in Fears Of Anglican Split Persist.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Sermon for Easter Day is published in full here.
The Bishop of Oxford preached this sermon on Tuesday in Holy Week, and also has an article in the Observer Science does not challenge my faith – it strengthens it.
The Bishop of Durham preached this sermon on Maundy Thursday.
The Archbishop of York preached this sermon on Maundy Thursday, this one on Good Friday and this sermon on Easter Day. And you can also read Archbishop Sentamu’s Good Friday article for the Yorkshire Post.
5 CommentsJane Williams has the Face to Faith column in Saturday’s Guardian.
And here is her husband’s Easter Message to his Diocese.
Andrew White writes the Credo column in The Times today: Faith makes for safety in Baghdad, the most dangerous parish in the world.
Christopher Howse writes on The tragic-comedy of Richard Sibthorp.
Charles Curran writes in the Tablet about Benedict XVI’s first year: From division to unity.
1 Commentcommentisfree is the Guardian’s new collective group blog. Madeleine Bunting and Andrew Brown have just had an exchange of views there:
In Sugar or saccharine? Madeleine asks:
What role does religion play for societies and individuals? And is it a good thing?
In Stronger stuff Andrew replies that
Madeleine Bunting is mistaken. Religious is neither sugar nor saccharine, but good old nineteenth century opium.
Giles Fraser wrote a column on Thursday Resurgent religion has done away with the country vicar. This has provoked many website comments and some letters in the paper (scroll down) on Friday. The Guardian carried a Good Friday editorial Fight the good fight. which refers to the above article, and concludes thus:
…Religious liberals support the values of the modern secular state. They oppose racism and homophobia, they advocate the separation of church and state, they promote tolerance. This is why the current tension in the Anglican church should matter to everyone. If Rowan Williams were to decide that the Anglican Communion could only be saved by a lurch to conservatism, liberal secularism would be one of the losers. It may be that only 2 million regularly go to church, but three-quarters of Britons still regard themselves as Christian. The fight for women bishops and gay clergy is part of the wider fight for equality and tolerance throughout society. Religious liberals and defenders of the secular are fighting on the same side. In these pages yesterday, the vicar of Putney, Giles Fraser, called for liberals to rediscover their fight. So too must the defenders of secularism.
Rowan Williams broadcast this Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 on Good Friday.
Mark Sisk Bishop of New York preached this sermon earlier in the week at the diocesan Chrism Mass: What then is the spirit of our age?
The Times also had a leader on Good Friday. So did the Telegraph : Truth brings all honest people into an alliance.
On Ekklesia Simon Barrow has How Easter brings regime change.
This week in the Church Times Giles Fraser has The limits of silence at the cross.
1 CommentThe church newspapers publish a day early this week, because of Good Friday. So today we have:
Church Times ECUSA commission backtracks on gays and the resolutions are republished here.
Church of England Newspaper ECUSA to slow liberal agenda by George Conger.
12 CommentsLEAC has launched a petition to bring presentment charges against Bishop Robinson and his consecrators.
You can read their press release about this at PRELATES WHO INSTALLED GAY BISHOP FACE PETITION TO INDICT UNDER CHURCH LAW and the petition itself is a PDF file available here.
34 CommentsUpdated Thursday 13 April
According to the Nation :
The enthronement of Leonard James Mwenda as Anglican Bishop of Lake Malawi Diocese at All Saints Church in Nkhotakota on Sunday was conducted under police guard as a group of some faithful resorted to stone-throwing to stop the Zambian from succeeding the late Bishop Peter Nyanja….
Read Anglicans stone new bishop.
And now, this also: Anglicans seek injunction against bishop.
Some members of the Anglican Diocese of Lake Malawi have dragged newly-enthroned Bishop Leonard Mwenda to court stopping him from conducting business until matters surrounding his election to replace Late Bishop Peter Nyanja are resolved.
Update Thursday
The Nation again: Court stops Anglican Bishop
The High Court in Lilongwe Wednesday granted some members of the Anglican Diocese of Lake Malawi an injunction restraining newly-enthroned Bishop Leonard Mwenda from conducting business, pending a meeting between the laity, the clergy and Archbishop Bernard Malango.
Justice Ivy Kamanga ordered that the two parties should meet within 21 days to sort out outstanding issues concerning the election of the Bishop of the Diocese of Lake Malawi.
Kamanga said Archbishop Malango should ensure that Mwenda does not proceed to carry out duties and functions of the office of the bishop of the diocese.
The injunction also restrains Bishop Mwenda from using the official residence, offices of the diocese and any other assets.
Background: here is the text of the resolutions passed at the December clergy conference of the diocese.
1 CommentThe New Yorker magazine this week has an article by Peter J Boyer entitled A Church Asunder The Episcopal tradition confronts a revolt. This article is not (so far) available online, but a related interview is:
33 CommentsFaith Matters
Issue of 2006-04-17
Posted 2006-04-10
This week in the magazine, Peter J. Boyer writes about how the election of a gay bishop has divided the Episcopal Church. Here, with Matt Dellinger, Boyer discusses the controversy and the changing face of religion in America.
Updated 13 April
First, on the Davis MacIyalla story.
Since the last report, the recent comments made on TA include several by the principals in the case. This week the Church Times carried another article, Nigerian attitude is unchanged by Pat Ashworth. And then Changing Attitude issued another statement on Thursday, Colin Coward addresses the new attack made against Davis MacIyalla, Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria.
Update A further press release from CA dated 13 April can be found at Open letter to Canon Akintunde Popoola, Director of Communications, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion).
Second, on the matter of Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria.
This letter to the editor appeared last week in the Church Times: Important cultural difference in Nigeria.
Third, the World Organisation Against Torture has issued a press release New Bill Puts Human Rights Defenders of Sexual Rights at Risk (link via allAfrica.com) which calls on the Nigerian government to withdraw the proposed legislation.
11 CommentsThis morning’s BBC radio programme Sunday interviewed the Bishop of Arizona, Kirk Smith, and also Stephen Bates of the Guardian.
You can hear the interview by opening this Real audio file, and going forward about 21.5 minutes. The segment lasts about 9 minutes. A better URL will be posted by the BBC on Monday.
Update the better URL is now here.
Reference is made in the second interview to one particular “unsubstantiated rumour” on titusonenine regarding actions that might happen at General Convention. I do think this kind of speculation should be treated with severe caution at this stage. However, this report from Fort Worth does also mention future consecrations by Archbishop Akinola in the USA. And there is this report.
32 CommentsChristopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about how dreadful publishers are in using quotes from book reviews out of context. Read Now I know how theatre critics feel.
In The Times Jonathan Sacks writes about Next year in Jerusalem – teaching children the story of their people.
Bryan Appleyard wrote an article in the New Statesman entitled Religion: who needs it?
Lucy Winkett preached a sermon recently at St Mary Islington on Confession and Absolution.
The Guardian’s Face to Faith column is by Theo Hobson.
1 CommentUpdated twice Monday 10 April
Ephraim Radner has a detailed analysis of the report on the ACI site.
Michael Watson has an analysis of the resolutions wording.
The Guardian has US church offers olive branch to Anglicans on gay clergy by Stephen Bates
The Witness has published A Personal Reflection on the Special Commission’s Report by Sarah Dylan Breuer
This report was issued too late on Friday for Saturday’s British newspapers.
Associated Press Rachel Zoll Episcopal Panel: Use Caution in Elections
Reuters Michael Conlon Episcopal Church gets a caution flag on gays
Religion News Service Episcopal Panel Advises Caution on Gay Bishops
The Living Church Windsor Report Resolutions Released
Somewhat surprisingly, neither the American Anglican Council nor the Anglican Communion Network has yet issued any press release. Other press releases have come from Integrity and from Oasis California.
Blog comments have come from Fr Jake and Mark Harris and Blog of Daniel.
British church press coverage, written prior to the release of the report:
Church Times Douglas LeBlanc ECUSA shows signs of bowing to pressure on gays
Church of England Newspaper George Conger Over half of US bishops regret gay consecration Note: this headline and the first paragraph of the report are somewhat misleading, as regular TA readers already know, nevertheless the report is referenced by Reuters at the end of the story linked above.
11 CommentsForward in Faith has published TEA – a further examination which contains the report of the Forward in Faith Legal Working Party on the Guildford Group report GS 1605. The report lists nine numbered paragraphs containing what the working party considers to be fundamental defects of TEA, and then continues with a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the report.
Earlier, FiF had published TEA – an interim commentary.
15 Commentsupdated Thursday
Jonathan Petre wrote a story for the Telegraph on Monday, which was headlined US bishops set for U-turn on gay ‘marriages’. Then today Wyatt Buchanan wrote a story for the San Francisco Chronicle Episcopal panel seeks slowdown on new gay leaders Church to be urged to repent for electing Gene Robinson.
This reporting depends heavily on an email sent by one bishop, Kirk Smith of Arizona, which can be read in full here but which was not intended for publication beyond an Arizona diocesan mailing list. He has subseqently commented further in an interview with the Living Church Bishop of Arizona Calls for Civil, ‘Religious’ Discourse.
Some comments have been published by other bishops who attended the meeting. See for example, Jeffrey Steenson of the Diocese of the Rio Grande and Charles G. vonRosenberg of East Tennessee. Also Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh made this comment.
Update See also these comments from John Howe of Central Florida and from Duncan Gray of Mississippi.
The special commission’s report which was discussed at the meeting was also referenced by Michael Langrish of Exeter, as previously noted. It has been finalised since the HoB meeting and will be published in full, along with many other pre-Convention documents on or around Monday 10 April. That’s about a week away.
Meanwhile, Jim Naughton’s opinions on what will happen may well be a better-informed estimate than other reports.
23 CommentsUpdated Monday evening
The interview of Rowan Williams, conducted by Alan Rusbridger editor of the Guardian, was analysed in some detail in the Church Times last week, by Andrew Brown. The column was headlined Man not born to be king. Andrew wrote in part:
…If the interview had a theme, it was not the warnings and denunciations contained in the news story; it was a portrait of a man who doesn’t want to be a leader, and doesn’t believe that leadership is even possible in most situations.
It is enormously refreshing to find an Archbishop who doesn’t believe his own propaganda. But I think it’s wrong of an Archbishop not to take advantage, at least intermittently, of the fact that other people do believe his propaganda, and want to. Equally, there is a danger that a man who does not believe his own propaganda will find himself repeating the propaganda of others. How else is one to interpret this exchange:
Rusbridger: “The Archbishop of Nigeria recently told Nigerian Muslims, in the aftermath of the Muhammad cartoon furore, that they did not have a monopoly on violence and that Christians might strike back. Coincidentally or not, the remark was followed within days by a spate of attacks on Muslims by Christians which left 80 dead.”
Williams: “Hmmm, I think that what he – what he meant was, so to speak, an abstract warning – you know, ‘Don’t be provocative because in an unstable situation it’s as likely the Christians will resort to violence as Muslims will.’
“It was taken by some as open provocation, encouragement, a threat. I think I know him well enough to take his good faith on what he meant. He did not mean to stir up the violence that happened. He’s a man who will speak very directly and immediately into crises. I think he meant to issue a warning, which has been taken as a threat, to have meant a provocation. Others in the Nigerian Church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured.”
Giles Fraser had a column in the Church Times headed The Church needs some sort of leadership. Part of that reads:
…We know the Communion is in critical trouble. We hear Chinese whispers of meetings and phone calls trying to broker deals. Last week, I phoned Lambeth with a worry about a rumour. “Trust us,†comes the reply. OK, I have to; we all have to. And what I am trusting in, as much as anything, is the Archbishop himself. He might not like this over-investment in him personally, but there it is.
I don’t want a fantasy archbishop on a white charger, a deus ex machina who appears to make everything well. But the mood among many ordinary Christians is one of apprehension: are we being sold out? After the Jeffrey John disaster, the worry is that the Archbishop allows himself to be bullied off the ball. Yet, despite all this, trust to keep on believing in this Church remains for many of us a trust in the Archbishop. It’s a trust that’s in need of a bit of help. And that, surely, is the essence of leadership.
Update
In the original interview, there is this:
Rusbridger: And have you got a strategy for going forward as to how, given the media is always with us, what is your strategy for engaging with it in the future?
Williams: It’s a big question to ask really and I know that I’m not the world’s greatest strategist of thinking forward, but I think I need to take more advice on what makes sense or what sounds alright, a great temptation to try and do everything or be good at everything you can’t be.
A response to this is to be found today on the Guardian website (not in the paper edition) where Andrew Brown has written a letter of advice to the archbishop, in his regular Monday column. A fragment:
10 Comments…So I think that the media strategy you need is plain. You need to explain to the rest of us, who believed you inhabited our moral universe, just why sharing a church with gay bishops is a matter of theological gravity comparable to sharing it with enthusiastic Nazis and in the end just as much incompatible with real Christianity. You need to explain just what the arguments were that persuaded you, after 30 years of standing up for the outcast, that God really is on the side of the big battalions in your church…
Updated Monday 3 April
Changing Attitude has just published three four press releases, resulting from a recent meeting in Geneva, where Colin Coward met Davis MacIyalla and held extended discussions with him. (The background to this was the ILGA Conference.)
Davis MacIyalla describes his work with Bishop Ugede in the Diocese of Otukpo
Nigerian Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act introduced to House of Representatives
Davis MacIylla reports suspicions of Anglican Church involvement with new bill
In the first of these, it is reported that Davis MacIyalla is known personally to various senior church officials in Nigeria, including Archbishop and Mrs Akinola. The press release asks:
A further challenge to Canon Akintunde Popoola
In the press release issued on 28 December 2005 Canon Akintunde Popoola maintained that he had consulted over 6,000 clergy and none of them knew of Davis MacIyalla. We would now like to ask whether he contacted the people named by Davis in this report, including the Primate of All Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter J Akinola and his wife. Canon Popoola’s denial that Davis was a member of the Anglican Church is all the more remarkable given Davis’s deep involvement in the life of the Church of Nigeria from his earliest years and more recently in the Diocese of Otukpo.
In the third release the personal danger to individuals is discussed. Changing Attitude had also written its own open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, concerning this matter last February.
Update
A fourth release: Nigerian gay representatives meet officer at Nigerian Human Rights Commission. This makes further grim reading.
Apologies to anyone who noticed this weekly feature was omitted last Saturday when I was on holiday. The most significant article it would have contained was the Guardian Face to Faith written by Marilyn McCord Adams that carried this strap Liberal Anglicans should not sacrifice their beliefs in order to hold on to church unity at all costs.
During the week Madeleine Bunting wrote a Guardian column Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins. Today, the Face to Faith column is written by Colin Sedgwick and is about why Trying to be hilarious by being hurtful to other people or by being crude is really no laughing matter.
Over at The Times Jonathan Romain wonders how Moses would have coped with the duplicity of the internet age in Electronic false prophets tell lies in His name. Geoffrey Rowell writes that Christian Communion celebrates love in the midst of Man’s betrayal.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about An elephant in the Tower.
The BBC Sunday radio programme had a splendid 5 minute piece by Diarmaid MacCulloch on the 450th anniversary of the death of Thomas Cranmer. Listen here (Real audio).
7 CommentsFor earlier articles go here and here.
Next, two reports in the Church Times by Doug LeBlanc:
Survey is part of anti-liberal bid on 17 March and
Low-budget fight-back begins in Maryland on 24 March.
Then, this report by Sarah Dylan Breuer in the Witness Inside LEAC.
And now, the LEAC website at http://www.layepiscopal.org/. This contains several pages which make clear the mission and objectives of LEAC, together with The LEAC Difference and The Call for Lay Help, and the LEAC Response, not to mention Less Talk, More Education, More Action.
Unsurprisingly their press release on the website reports that:
Bishops responding to LEAC survey reject key homosexual agenda items.
The version of this sent to others appears to be rather shorter, see Episcopal Bishops, If Voting Secretly, Would Oppose Church’s Stance on Homosexual Agenda Items Adopted in 2003, a Lay Poll Reports.
They sent surveys to about 298 bishops, and got 80 responses. Of these responses, they report that:
56.25% of respondents now would disapprove of the 2003 General Convention resolution which led to consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson, and 57.5% would oppose provisions for church blessing of same-sex domestic partnerships, another of the convention’s historic resolutions.
Considering the first of these two resolutions, this means that 45 bishops recorded to LEAC that they would now have voted against and that 35 recorded that they would now have voted in favour. The actual numbers of bishops who voted in 2003 was 43 against, and 62 in favour with 2 not voting. (Only active diocesans had a vote on the matter, whereas this survey went to all current members of the house.)
Voting by bishops on the second resolution at GC 2003 is not known as it was done by a voice vote.
Update
Magic Statistics has weighed in again with ECUSA survey results released. He comments in detail on the differences between the two press releases, and shows how misleading the public press release is.
On the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme last Tuesday 28 March, the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed his concerns over the issue of climate change.
A full transcript of the interview is available on the CofE website. (Also on Lambeth Palace and ENS sites.)
You can also listen to the interview (Real Audio required) on the BBC website – 17 minutes total, but the archbishop comes first in sequence, and this lasts about 9 minutes. The other person interviewed is Margaret Beckett who is the UK Secretary of State for the Environment.
Church Times Dr Williams: Billions could die from climate change by Pat Ashworth
BBC Archbishop urges emissions cuts
A few nuggets on what the Church of England is doing about this itself can be found here.
1 CommentThe recent remarks of Bishop Michael Langrish in the USA previously mentioned here have been published in full on his diocesan website. You can read them at Some Reflections offered to the House of Bishops of ECUSA.
(*Addendum* This diagram, included in the article by Andrew Goddard mentioned below in a comment, may also be useful for readers of the original article.)
This has been reported today in the Church Times by Pat Ashworth as ECUSA could wreck it all, envoy warns US Bishops.
The Episcopal News Service reported this also, in Exeter bishop, South Indian scholar offer texts from House of Bishops’ meeting.
The other speaker whose remarks are published by ENS is Sathi Clarke, a priest of the Church of South India and a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. who delivered a paper on biblical interpretation: Sathi Clarke’s speech at Spring 2006 House of Bishops meeting .
13 Comments