Two reports of the services held this morning:
St Matthew’s Westminster, the Press Association filed Church Exclusion of Gays ‘Like Apartheid’, reporting the sermon given by Walter Makhulu, the former Archbishop of Central Africa. The service was also mentioned in this earlier filing.
Later addition: Here is a longer account via Associated Press, with additional comments, as published in South Africa.
St John’s Waterloo, the local press reports Waterloo prayers for Lambeth primates summit. I was present at this service and can report that the church was full.
0 CommentsUpdate (added by Simon Kershaw)
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme broadcast this interview (Real Audio required) with the Archbishop of Cape Town, Giles Fraser, and Andrew Carey.
Further update
Later in the morning, the BBC published this news report, and this survey Q&A: Anglican gay summit. And, this head to head with Philip Giddings versus Gareth Williams of St Michael’s College, Llandaff.
The British press this morning is remarkably united in its views on this.
Stephen Bates reports in the Guardian, Church in need of a saviour.
The Guardian also has a leader, A church divided.
Ruth Gledhill in The Times has Anglicans should love gays as Jesus would, African primate says about what Njongonkulu Ndungane says.
The Times also has an opinion column by Mary Ann Sieghart, Certainty is so unnerving and another one by Magnus Linklater, Thank God for Henry VIII: Anglican doubt is better than Catholic hypocrisy.
The Independent has an analysis by Paul Vallely, Talk of schism is rife as bishops debate homosexuality which states the five point plan as follows:
1 CommentUpdate
This press release from ACNS, Anglicans call for inclusive church and a new call to mission, reports that the primates meeting has prompted many lobbying groups and organisations to draft statements in support of an inclusive church.
Some later reports from UK and elsewhere can be found here.
Today, the following British press items:
In The Times Ruth Gledhill reports, in Bishops’ five-point plan to heal Church gay rift, that Philip Giddings has proposed this 5-point plan for the primates to save the communion:
Generally, I post near-daily News updates to my personal blog rather than on here. But really major events (NEAC was a recent example) are reported here on TA.
Clearly the upcoming Primates Meeting is also a really major event. So during this week, I will post about that on here, but any other routine news stories will still be on my personal blog.
Simon Sarmiento
The Church Times has a splendid 12 page pull-out section of articles relevant to the forthcoming Primates Meeting next week. Most of these are not on the web, so it is well worth buying or borrowing a copy. Not online are articles by David Edwards, Bishop Peter Lee of Virginia, and a major piece on Homosexuality in Africa by Kevin Ward, plus four other items.
Update for several more of these items online see newer entry here
Major items online are:
A primer for the Primates: Reflections on the choices that will face Anglican leaders editorial overview
1 Commentwww.inclusivechurch.net Surround them with prayer
Leading anti-apartheid Archbishop to preside at inclusivechurch service.
1 CommentLambeth vigil supported by 6000 Anglicans prays for inclusive church
PRESS RELEASE Tuesday, October 7, 2003 For immediate release
The leaders of the Anglican Church will be literally surrounded by prayer as a network of over 6000 Anglicans organizes a vigil in churches around Lambeth Palace on 15th October. At 11 am, grassroots church-goers will assemble at the parish churches of St Matthew’s Westminster, St John’s Waterloo and St Peter’s Lambeth – the three parishes that immediately surround Lambeth Palace – to pray for the future of the church. The vigil has been organised by Inclusivechurch.net.
1 CommentIn this At your service column in today’s Times Ruth comments on her visit to NEAC, which she says, ’ finally provoked me into “coming out” in my true liberal Catholic colours’. Her piece concludes with these words:
‘The Anglican Church is currently one Church. It is the Church I grew up in. In a few days the 38 primates meet at Lambeth Palace at an extraordinary meeting called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in an attempt to resolve the crisis over gays. If these people, through their unbending fundamentalism, force some new schism, I for one will never forgive them. Because forgiveness, as the Bible makes clear, is not in my gift. But I will pray to God that He might, one day.’
Amen to that!
0 CommentsStephen Bates has an article in the Guardian this morning, Church’s gay activists beg to be heard reporting on a letter (about which more anon) that LGCM (not named in the article) has sent to all those coming to the Primates Meeting.
But later in the article he also mentions that “in a stern counterblast in the religious journal New Directions, the leading evangelical Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, insisted that the time for listening was over”.
For more from Australia about Jensen’s article, see also News from Melbourne, and Expel US, Canadian Anglicans, says Jensen in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Additional note: Also this, Gay issue a ‘contest for soul of the west’, says Jensen published later from the same paper.
Also, Australia’s ABC radio has transcribed this interview with Jensen.
It’s a pity that Sydney diocese’s normally splendid website Anglican Media Sydney has been unable to update since 24 September. I expect the full text of this article will be available from FiF soon.
Update: it is now available in full, but in PDF format, download from here. FiF press release is here.
Friday 3 October update: AMS website came back to life and here is the full text of the article as a web page.
Oh yes, and another set of advice from Church Society can be found here.
0 CommentsThe Today programme this morning carried an interview with Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch (see here for review of his latest book).
The interview was not however about his book, but about the current debate on sexuality. In this interview DM noted that a paranoic hatred of homosexuals started in the 11th or 12th centuries and has continued to the present day, uniting the Pope and Ian Paisley. He compared the current dispute to the Reformation itself.
You can hear the whole interview, using Real Audio here.
1 CommentThe Archbishop of Armagh and Senior Primate of the Anglican Communion, the Most Revd Robin Eames, examines some of the questions currently facing the worldwide Anglican Communion prior to the forthcoming special meeting of Primates at Lambeth Palace.
Read What Price Unity from the Church of Ireland Gazette.
Part of what he says:
In the blitz of opinion and counter argument over the election to New Hampshire I believe we need to be clear what we are talking about.
This election undoubtedly challenges the Resolution 1.10 of the last Lambeth Conference. It is clearly in breach of the majority opinion of the bishops in 1998. It is clearly contrary to the view of a large number of Anglicans. But the question still remains: Is there a tangible manner within the structures of our Communion as present constituted to do more than express concern and criticism and adopt attitudes within our own Provinces towards those others with whom we disagree?
To put it plainly – if no constitutional or legal rules exist for what constitutes membership of the Anglican Communion there are no rules for expulsion of a member Church.
0 CommentsSome news about INCLUSIVECHURCH.NET is available on this page.
Key points from this release:
ACNS has published the full text of a letter, released on 22 September, from Archbishop Akinola to Archbishop Ndungane. The letter is in response to the report in the Guardian dated 8 September, which included an interview with Archbishop Ndungane.
0 CommentsThe Guardian report by Stephen Bates, Evangelicals side with church rebels says that senior evangelicals meeting in Blackpool ignored pleas for tolerance and patience from the archbishops of Canterbury and York yesterday to send a message of support to parishes in the US and Canada which have fallen out over the issue of blessings for same sex couples and the election of an openly gay bishop.
Both this report and Ruth Gledhill’s in The Times, Liberal tolerance of gays in Church ‘is just paganism’ quote these remarks of Gordon Wenham:
“(Paganism) is raising its head again. Other examples are religious pluralism, abolition of Sunday as universal rest day, abortion, cremation, easy divorce … we should not be intimidated by the charge of being old fashioned: it is the so-called liberals who are really taking us back to the dark ages.”
The Telegraph report by Jonathan Petre strikes a less negative note, Evangelicals ‘must learn from gays’ and reports that “they were also told to counter criticism that they lack compassion by listening to and learning from the experiences of homosexuals.”
3 CommentsThe anatomy of schism: A battle of biblical tyranny discusses the current ECUSA difficulties from an American historical (and liberal) perspective.
Dr L William Countryman, professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif. has written an essay entitled Dealing with Conflict as Anglicans which is available in pdf format and can be downloaded from here.
The views expressed in both of these are, I would judge, in conflict with much of what is being said at NEAC. What we in the CofE call Conservative Evangelicalism (see Graham Kings’ discussion) has until quite recently been unknown inside ECUSA.
There is one point made in the first article on which all can agree:
“The Internet has made all the difference,” says the Rev. John Kater, professor of ministry development at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. “Thirty years ago it would have taken African Christians weeks or months to even hear what happened at General Convention, and another six months to have a response. Now it’s done instantly. It’s much easier to organize because we have websites, chat rooms, and instant emails.”
The Archbishop of York has attracted plenty of newspaper attention this morning:
in The Times, Gay debate tearing heart out of Church, archbishop says
in the Telegraph, Infighting is wrecking Church’s image, says archbishop
in the Guardian, Evangelicals told to pipe down and listen
which also has Church report reinforces gay policy
The BBC radio programme Sunday has a 7 minute audio report available here (Real Audio needed). Includes quotes from Francis Bridger (about Fulcrum) and from Christina Rees.
And here is the ACNS news release about Rowan Williams at NEAC.
0 CommentsThe Church Times, in an article entitled Groups vie to represent Evangelical mainstream reports on the formation of Fulcrum, a new Evangelical grouping which “aims to give a voice to those who identify with Evangelicalism’s centre ground, but who feel that their views are not adequately heard in the public arena”.
Fulcrum has its own website here with more about its aims and objectives. This is well worth a read.
There are also two articles (in pdf format) of some interest.
One is a longer version of the article in this week’s Church Times by Graham Kings. Canal, River and Rapids: Contemporary Evangelicalism in the Church of England can be downloaded here.
The other is English Evangelicals and the Archbishop’s Theology by Andrew Goddard, downloadable here.
Choose your medium:
The Telegraph says Evangelicals warn Williams on gay issue
The Times has Church is infected by sin, Williams tells evangelicals
The BBC says Evangelicals warm up in gay row
The Guardian says No room in the church: archbishop finds himself cast out by evangelicals together with ‘Most churches just want to help people’
NEAC itself offers A defining moment for Anglican evangelicals by Andrew Goddard, reproduced from the CEN.
The Observer carries a major news story today, headlined Anglicans face schism over gay row, and subtitled Conservative US bishops prepare to take on liberal British wing in bitter struggle for Church’s soul.
This article refers to money spent outside the USA by the American Anglican Council. In connection with this, an item I reported on 6 August in my personal blog under the heading of American Imperialism may be of interest as it mentions that some of this money is channelled through British institutions.
As usual, other news stories today are listed here.
1 Comment