The full texts of the questions asked at February’s Church of England General Synod, and their answers are now online. The file includes the supplementary questions and written answers.
The official, verbatim, transcripts of all the sessions are also available.
Updated Thursday lunchtime
The Diocese of Virginia has issued a press release: Diocese of Virginia Appeals to Virginia Supreme Court in Order to Protect Religious Liberty in the Commonwealth.
Determined to restore constitutional and legal protections for all churches in Virginia, and to return loyal Episcopalians in Virginia to their Episcopal homes, the Diocese of Virginia today filed a petition to appeal The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia v. Truro Church, et al.
The Diocese is appealing on a number of grounds, including a challenge to the constitutionality of Virginia’s one-of-a-kind division statute (Va. Code § 57 9(A)) and the rulings of the Circuit Court in applying the law…
The full text of the appeal petition can be read as a PDF file here.
The Anglican District of Virginia has responded with ADV Responds to Appeal by The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia.
FAIRFAX, Va. (April 7, 2009) – In response to the appeal in the Virginia church property litigation filed on Tuesday, April 7 by the Diocese of Virginia and The Episcopal Church, the Anglican District of Virginia Vice-Chairman Jim Oakes issued the following statement:
“We are saddened that The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia find it necessary to continue this litigation with an appeal filed during Holy Week. The appeal process will cost additional millions of dollars that could be spent on mission and ministry. Both sides have already spent some $5 million in legal costs, money that could have gone to helping our communities during these tough economic times. The legal victories we’ve had so far in support of our religious freedom have only encouraged us to stand firm in our Anglican faith and work together to deliver the message of Christ.
“Since our final legal victory in December 2008, the Anglican District of Virginia has added two more congregations, bringing out total to 25 congregations and three mission fellowships. This continuing growth here and around the country is tangible evidence of the hunger for orthodox Anglicanism in the U.S. Despite today’s appeal, we will continue to move on with our mission to spread the transforming news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our doors are open to everyone, especially those who thirst for transformation and renewal.”
Thursday update
The Episcopal Church has also filed a petition, see The Episcopal Church’s Petition to the Supreme Court of Virginia to Hear Appeal (PDF).
There is a full article at ENS about all this, VIRGINIA: Diocese, Episcopal Church ask state Supreme Court to review property rulings by Mary Frances Schjonberg.
15 CommentsThere has been a desire amongst many Christians, at least since the time of the Reformation, when the full Gospel story became available in the vernacular, to re-create the Last Supper as faithfully as possible. The intention was to be more faithful to the Lord’s command to ‘do this in remembrance’.
Alongside this was surely a feeling that it must have been wonderful to be in the presence of the Messiah on that night, listening to his words, and receiving the bread and wine over which he had said the blessing.
But if we look at the occasion it appears in many ways to have been a most uncomfortable evening. It opened, in John’s Gospel, with Peter’s refusal to have his feet washed. He almost prevented Jesus from completing this invaluable sign to his Church. Next came the moment, brought to life by Leonardo’s painting, where Jesus announced to his disciples that one of them would betray him. They all look around, wondering who has been accused. That moment was beautifully portrayed for me this year in a children’s passion play. As Jesus began to walk around the table, saying ‘It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread’, one of the disciples leapt up and fled from the table saying ‘I’m not really hungry. Don’t give it to me!’ An uncomfortable moment indeed for all. In their drama, when Jesus gave the bread to Judas there was a visible loosening of tension in the other disciples as if this idea had been going through all their minds. The departure of Judas only made the occasion worse, as everyone was filled with foreboding. Perhaps the party would be broken up in minutes.
Luke’s gospel has another tension: the dispute which broke out among the disciples about which was the greatest. Perhaps it was this rivalry which led to the sign of the washing of feet.
As we look at the way the evening unfolded, we find the disciples so wrapped up in their own personal agenda that they were hardly able to grasp the significance of what was happening. Few of us can ever have attended a dinner party among friends which actually turned out to be so difficult.
Their dispute, the anxiety not to be found in the wrong, Peter’s protestations and denials all add to make this a most painful but memorable evening. Clearly this memory of the disciples’ selfishness and lack of care stayed with them. Along with it was no doubt a profound regret that in Jesus’ hour of need they had not been able to rise selflessly to the occasion and give him their support.
Certainly, in our remembrance of the Last Supper, we would not wish to recreate the feelings which were around then. Fortunately, from the very first the Christian Church has not sought to replicate that Supper. Our holy day is Sunday, not Thursday. It is the day the witnesses to the resurrection found that the risen Christ came to them, offering from the first Easter Day the opportunity of forgiveness and a vision of their life and communion together.
3 CommentsThey had been waiting for him. He promised so much. And he arrived, waving to those who greeted him so enthusiastically (especially the photographers and the press), and rode the beast through the great city. Some had got ahead of themselves: they were already disenchanted, already crying ‘crucify’ — or at least ‘get the bankers!’ — but for most, the hope was there, the hope of a saviour, come at a time when the old ways, the old certainties, could no longer be sustained. Surely, with his coming there would be the promise of restoration: we would again feel comfortable with ourselves, assured that our lives would again be blessed and fruitful.
Well, so much for last week’s G20, and the arrival of Barack Obama. This week, of course, it’s a different story, a different arrival. The expected Messiah comes on a donkey, and it takes a while for the mood of the crowd to change. But the fearfulness with which we seem to live because of the global economic downturn, and the hopes invested in the meeting of world leaders last week, above all in the new US President, provided a strange parallel to what might have been the mood of an expectant, fearful, hopeful Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
Will we be as disappointed as those Jerusalem crowds in the outcome of last week’s deliberations? Will we turn on the politicians, the people in whom we invested those hopes, and demand reparation — not perhaps their lives, but at least their seats and their expenses, as compensation for not setting all right, not returning us to the ever-increasing affluence to which most westerners and some in the developing world have become accustomed?
In some churches, when the passion narrative was read last Sunday, the congregation will have given voice to the bystanders, the crowd. We, the gathered company, are asked to see ourselves as the fickle ones, now enthusiastic, now hopeful for the wrong things, now condemnatory. And if we are the crowd on Palm Sunday, so perhaps we should, as the spectators of the G20, ask what responsibility we have, what part we play in bringing ourselves, our economy, our environment to its current state — and ask ourselves too, just what our Easter hope is, this 2009.
1 CommentACNA has published its draft constitution and canons, see ACNA Canons Published, Comments Welcome for more detail.
The Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) has paid the Anglican diocese of Niagara $20,000, which it was awarded for legal costs by an Ontario Superior Court ruling. See Diocese of Niagara awarded $20,000 in legal costs at Anglican Journal.
The Falls Church congregation which split from TEC has issued a request to help pay legal bills. See the text of the letter sent as a PDF, and for background on the property development mentioned, see this news article in the Falls Church News-Press. (H/T Episcopal Café)
And in Colorado Springs, there are reports of the successful transfer of occupancy of Grace and St Stephens Church. See ENS report Colorado Springs parishioners celebrate Palm Sunday homecoming, and also in the Colorado Springs Gazette For two churches, a new beginning.
12 CommentsIn the time before America became part of me, while I was still alive to its idiosyncrasies, I would marvel at its culture of memorial. The trail of all of our shared history marks places by events or the people that shaped them. In Europe this has mostly been the prerogative of royal houses, and it is part of the founding character of the United States that anyone’s life can be commemorated. I used to like walking over a crossroads named after an infantryman or a schoolteacher, the subtext was that people of all stations in life build our quality of life, not just those of high social rank, and so it had more of a chance of remembering talent or virtue than most of the royal or aristocratic memorabilia back in England.
But the relentlessness of it would chafe. You couldn’t just drive on an interstate in New York, it had to be the Governor Thomas Dewey Freeway, you landed at John Wayne airport on Orange County and even the swings and slides in my local park would forever immortalise Hiram J Hackenbacker (or whoever’s) whose playground it would become. At worst, you could not pray in the National Cathedral in Washington DC without considering the family names of benefactors etched in huge serif upper case stone letters, a perpetual obscenity which violates the first rule of religious philanthropy: that you are only giving back to God what is God’s in the first place.
When you consider the high reliance America’s public sector has on private philanthropy you have to ask why this arrangement is so dependable? Any dime-store psychologist will tell you that it is about the need for significance and about the fear of death and oblivion. It is a way of making sure that you have not been overlooked, it is a way of buying good memory, it is a way of immortalising your name, just in case God doesn’t deliver. It is the final testimony to the supremacy of the individual, there is no common achievement, no civic good.
It is also driven by fear, the fear of being nothing, the fear of being forgotten.
Today we rehearse a story whose power lies in living where this fear has no power. It is not a story without fear or despair. It is the sense of loss, betrayal and abandonment that makes it an heroic story. But the events of Holy Week have at its centre a man who is not driven by the fear of death. As difficult as the journey becomes, there is an underlying persistence to the end. Jesus may be the central figure in the Holy Week story, but it is not about him, he points to something beyond himself, his words and acts are testimony to God’s purpose, not his immortality. He walks towards death as if its horrors were a mirage.
We can’t begin to engage with this imaginatively unless we can conceive what it would be like to live as if our deaths were behind us. Imagine if your death were not somewhere in the future, but in the past. Think of what could be set aside.
Concerns about status, rivalry, family feud, affronts to dignity, seeking justice for a wrong done, needing to be noticed, given our proper regard, even the need to be memorialised. All these things would melt away along with all their imperatives, that intensity, because they are driven by the fear of death. With our deaths behind us, all these melt away and look trivial, even frivolous.
The Last Supper is not Jesus’s attempt at memorial, it is framing his death in a way that invites his followers to emulate, to live as if their deaths are behind us and mortality an illusion. This is the power we see unfolded in Holy Week.
It is fulfilled after Easter Day. The resurrection stories in Christian sacred texts are about a man walking among his friends whose death is behind him. He is walking a new life. He doesn’t go back to Herod or Pilate or the high priest Caiaphas or Judas Iscariot for revenge, or even vindication. He returns to the life-enhancing business of meals with friends, and his presence a testimony to their never having to fear for themselves, an invitation to put the fear of death behind them.
Paradoxically, this life becomes one of the most remembered in history, but the power of its message remains confined, hidden even from many of his followers, and seen only by those with eyes to see.
So we rehearse the final days of a man walking towards his death, surrounded by the wreckage of a world financial system, driven by a few who are compelled to acquire, profit, and rob in the futile cause of being significant, and trying to stay their mortality. This week, the way ahead is in their midst.
7 CommentsThe Peoria Journal-Star reports Top Episcopal Church bishop visits Peoria.
An unprecedented visit to Peoria on Saturday by the top leader of the Episcopal Church was welcomed by some local churches but was largely ignored by the 19 that have broken away from the national organization.
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, called a special synod at St. Paul’s Cathedral to name new leadership within the Peoria-based Diocese of Quincy and “to get the diocese back on its feet.”
More detail is available in this ENS report Joy, hope and excitement surround formal reorganization of Diocese of Quincy.
Deputies to a special synod meeting of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy acted with dispatch on Saturday, April 4 as they quickly and unanimously elected new leadership, approved a diocesan budget and elected a provisional bishop. The actions were necessary after a majority of deputies at the 2008 annual synod voted to leave the Episcopal Church and realign with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.
Deputies elected the Right Rev. John Clark Buchanan, retired bishop of the Diocese of West Missouri, as provisional bishop of the Diocese of Quincy. Buchanan most recently served as interim bishop in the Diocese of Southern Virginia.
The homily preached by the Presiding Bishop is available here.
The Church of England Newspaper has a report Quincy Dioceses files lawsuit against Episcopal Church which says that:
10 CommentsThe breakaway Diocese of Quincy has filed suit against the Episcopal Church in an Illinois Court, asking the court to clarify its rights to the name and assets of the diocese.
“We hoped from the beginning to avoid any legal action,” the President of Quincy’s Standing Committee, Fr. John Spencer said on March 31. However, preliminary moves by the national church to seize the diocese’s bank accounts prompted the court filing, he said.
The April issue of New Directions contains two articles on the proposed form of legislation for women as bishops in the Church of England.
Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, has expressed some opinions in the Sunday Telegraph.
See Ignore our Christian values and the nation will drift apart.
14 CommentsI have resigned as Bishop of Rochester after nearly 15 years. During that time, I have watched the nation drift further and further away from its Christian moorings. Instead of the spiritual and moral framework provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we have been led to expect, and even to celebrate, mere diversity. Not surprisingly, this has had the result of loosening the ties of law, customs and values, and led to a gradual loss of identity and of cohesiveness. Every society, for its wellbeing, needs the social capital of common values and the recognition of certain virtues which contribute to personal and social flourishing. Our ideas about the sacredness of the human person at every stage of life, of equality and natural rights and, therefore, of freedom, have demonstrably arisen from the tradition rooted in the Bible…
Doug LeBlanc reports in the Living Church: AAC Official: Canterbury’s Recognition Unlikely
The Anglican Church in North America is unlikely to be recognized by the See of Canterbury, a leader of the American Anglican Council said on April 1.
“We do not believe that Canterbury will recognize us, at least while the current archbishop is still in office,” said the Rev. J. Philip Ashey, the AAC’s chief operating officer and chaplain, in a brief speech in the suburbs of Richmond, Va…
And Fr Ashey also said this:
6 CommentsAsked during a discussion period about the AAC’s relationship to Anglican Communion Partners, Fr. Ashey said the AAC had proposed collaboration more than once.
“We have been politely turned down,” he said. “We are two very different organizations.”
Fr. Ashey compared the AAC to the Special Forces of the U.S. military.
“Like Special Forces, we go behind the scenes and we blow up things,” he said, adding quickly that what the AAC blows up is principalities and powers.
Geoffrey Rowell writes in The Times about The ride to salvation in lowly pomp on a donkey.
David Monkton writes in the Guardian that The events of Palm Sunday remind us that spin is no modern invention.
Savi Hensman writes at Ekklesia about Resisting the urge to scapegoat.
Paul Vallely writes in the Church Times that The light of spring symbolises hope.
The Church Times leader is about changing the Act of Settlement and the Royal Marriages Act: The insults of the past.
Earlier in the week, before the announcement of the appointment of Vincent Nichols to be Archbishop of Westminster, Andrew Brown wrote Can we build a society without myths? in response to Britain has sold its soul to pursuit of ‘reason’ over religion, Catholic Archbishop warns in the Telegraph.
In connection with that appointment, Andrew Brown wrote A new combative style in the Catholic church. (See also here, and here.)
2 CommentsThe Church Times carries a report by Pat Ashworth BNP puts Jesus on its poster.
There have been several strong responses recently to the BNP, including:
Jonathan Bartley at Ekklesia has been critical of those who sometimes take a different tack, such as the Archbishop of York. See his piece on Ekklesia Responding to the BNP over ‘What Would Jesus Do?’.
…The advert asks: “What would Jesus do?”. Of course the BNP don’t have a clue about the answer, but the answer from John Sentamu’s office, as recorded by the Daily Telegraph seems to be that perhaps Jesus wouldn’t say anything. “A spokesmen for the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu and for the Church of England refused to comment saying the BNP was mounting a ‘publicity stunt’ designed to give the party the ‘oxygen of publicity’” the paper said…
…Silence certainly hasn’t been the response of other churches. The Methodists. Baptists and United Reformed Church all put out a statement condemning the adverts. Indeed, Christian denominations and church groups have been making strident denouncations of the BNP ahead of the impending elections. On the same day as the BNP launched its advert, the major church denominations in West Yorkshire issued a press release announcing resources to combat the threat from the British National Party at the 4 June European elections. In fact there isn’t a church to my knowledge that has failed to condemn the BNP.
So what is really behind the Archbishop of York’s reticence to be quoted (which many in the Church of England might mischievously suggest is a rarity!)
There is a tactic employed by many, to try and freeze the BNP out in the hope that they will be marginalised. This is what the Archbishop’s office was perhaps attempting to do. But such tactics don’t seem to be working as Hazel Blears amongst others has recently suggested.
And there is another dimension to this issue which makes it increasingly hard for the church to engage in the way that it has done previously – and that is that the BNP has put the Archbishop and many others within the Church of England in a rather awkward position. The BNP is now using exactly the same rhetoric about ‘persecution’ and defending ‘Christian Britain’, that John Sentamu and others within the Church have been using…
The Telegraph report on which his criticism rests is here: BNP uses Jesus in advertising campaign.
A forthright response to Ekklesia appeared in the unlikely venue of the Archbishop Cranmer blog, in the comments to The Church of England and the BNP. Arun Arora who is Archbishop Sentamu’s press officer wrote:
4 Comments…As the spokesperson for the Archbishop of York may I correct you on your assertion that:
“A spokesman for the Archbishop of York said: ‘Jesus wouldn’t say anything’.”
That particular inaccuracy is being propagated by the Director of the Ekklesia think tank who was rather put out that I refused to comment on a story that only came to the media’s attention through his press release.
The BNP themselves did not press release the billboard and in fact have admitted that they have put up “only one or possibly two” such posters.
Unfortunately in their haste to promote their own comment on the issue, Ekklesia effectively effectively acted as the BNP’s PR agency through their naive promotion of the BNP’s campign, which has given the poster the kind of media attention they could otherwise never have hoped (or paid) for.
Ekklesia unfortunately compounded this basic PR blunder by misquoting my response to their story.
In fact the comment I gave to the Press Association was: “this is clearly designed to seek the oxygen of publicity. We refuse to provide it”.
There is clearly a big difference between refusing to engage with a poster campaign (providing publicity) and taking every other opportunity to reiterate that the BNP is an odious and racist organisation against which the CofE stands firm.
Certainly for any organisation, such as Ekklesia, to question the Archbishop of York’s commitment to racism from the safety and security of their own offices is quite absurd when one considers that when he was vicar in South London John Sentamu’s house was firebombed by the National Front.
Whilst we can all share in a common united opposition of the BNP, the cause is not helped by the basic errors of “think tanks” which seem to be keener on self-promotion than working together against fascism.
Updated Friday evening
ACNS announces Top Anglican legislative body Anglican Consultative Council to meet in Jamaica.
The Anglican Consultative Council, made up of lay people, clergy and bishops from the 38 Anglican Provinces of the Communion, meets in Kingston Jamaica May 1 – 13, to consider among other things, mission in the 21st century, the future structure of the worldwide Church, and theological education.
The ACC meets approximately every three years under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who will give a presidential address on May 11.
Foremost on the agenda for this, the 14th meeting of the Council, will be consideration of a Covenant for the Provinces of the Anglican Communion and reception of the final report of the Windsor Continuation Process. Both of these documents are key to discerning a way forward for the Anglican Communion in light of recent stresses cause by differences over matters of human sexuality…
ENS reports Design Group works on Anglican covenant revision.
The group charged with “designing” a covenant that could be used as a unifying set of principles among the provinces of the Anglican Communion met March 30-April 3 in Cambridge, England to work on a new revision of the text.
“A completed revision of the proposed covenant has been finished, along with a commentary explaining our work,” the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, one of two Episcopal Church members on the Covenant Design Group, told ENS at the conclusion of the meeting. “We have taken seriously the array of responses received from the provinces and from around the communion and larger church.”
The latest incarnation of the Anglican covenant, along with the design group’s commentary, is expected to be “posted on the Anglican Communion website sometime next week,” said Radner…
And also ENS has Windsor process, covenant to top Anglican Consultative Council agenda.
The Windsor Continuation Group has been charged with addressing questions arising from the 2004 Windsor Report, a document that recommended ways in which the Anglican Communion can maintain unity amid diversity of opinions, especially relating to human sexuality issues and theological interpretations. Its report calls for the development of a “pastoral council” and supported Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ plan to appoint “pastoral visitors” to assist in healing and reconciliation within the communion.
The continuation group also addressed the moratoria on same-gender blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate. “If a way forward is to be found and mutual trust to be re-established, it is imperative that further aggravation and acts which cause offence, misunderstanding or hostility cease,” the group’s report states. At their February meeting, the primates called for “gracious restraint” with respect to such actions.
The final report of the WCG is available here, as a PDF.
Further background material:
16 CommentsFollowing the conclusion of the G20 summit, we now resume our regularly scheduled programmes.
Living Church GAFCON Primates Invite Bishop Duncan
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) primates’ council will meet in London April 13-18. The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone and Archbishop-designate of the Anglican Church in North America, has been invited to attend as a guest, according to the Rev. Peter Frank, director of communications for the diocese.
Pat Ashworth Church Times Dr Nazir-Ali steps down to work in persecuted Church
THE BISHOP of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has announced his resignation. He is leaving to undertake a new global ministry in places where the Church is under pressure and Christians are in a minority. The Archbishop of Canterbury has described his move as “a courageous initiative and a timely one”.
The news, which was announced in a statement on Saturday, appears to have come as a complete surprise to many. Dr Nazir-Ali has been increasingly outspoken on the threats posed by the rise of radical Islam — something he believes is filling a moral and spiritual vacuum left by the loss of Christian faith and the fall of Communism…
…The Bishop will effectively stand down at the end of June, when he has completed his diocesan visitations. His farewell service will be held at Rochester Cathedral on 12 September.
Anglican Mainstream Be Faithful! July 6, Central Hall Westminster. Book online
UK LAUNCH OF FELLOWSHIP OF CONFESSING ANGLICANS
JULY 6, 2009, WESTMINSTER CENTRAL HALL, LONDON
THE launch in the UK and Ireland of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), an orthodox Anglican movement for mission at global and local level, is to take place on July 6 in London…
… Speakers at the July 6 gathering, where around 2,300 bishops, clergy and laity are expected, will include contributors from across the Anglican Communion, including Bishops Keith Ackerman (President of Forward in Faith International), Wallace Benn (Bishop of Lewes), John Broadhurst (Chairman of Forward in Faith UK) and Michael Nazir-Ali, Dr Chik Kaw Tan plus Archbishop Peter Jensen (secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans www.fca.net)…
Anglican Mainstream Bishop Nazir-Ali – a Christian Public Intellectual
9 Comments“We wish to express warm appreciation for the ministry of Bishop Michael Nazir Ali as a senior Bishop in the Church of England, and in and beyond the Anglican Communion. He has exercised a ministry as a ‘Christian public intellectual’ and apologist for the Christian faith in our public life which has made a very significant contribution to our national life. Our prayers and good wishes are with him and his family for God’s blessing on the new ministry to which he is being called to strengthen and encourage Christians and churches in minority situations.”
Dr Philip Giddings Convenor, Anglican Mainstream
Canon Dr Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary
Updated again Friday evening
Dave Walker is providing comprehensive coverage of G20 events, and you can follow his reports at the Church Times blog and on Twitter.
For more details see his post here.
Some transcripts:
Archbishop of Canterbury Interview with Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme ahead of G20 summit
Gordon Brown PM’s speech at St Paul’s Cathedral
Friday updates
Bill Bowder in the Church Times has Agencies question G20 ‘triumph’
THE TRIUMPHAL end of the G20 leaders’ meeting in London, and its pledge of $1.1 trillion of fiscal support, was questioned by aid agencies yesterday (Thursday).
The leaders agreed that, besides fresh plans to stimulate the global economy and action to close tax havens, at total of $750 billion would be made available to the International Monetary Fund to support struggling economies. A key element of the plan was to increase the funding available to developing countries hit by the global downturn.
Who will benefit from the new plan, and how, will not be clear for some time, campaigners were saying yesterday. The Put People First Coalition, a group of 160 organisations, including the TUC, Oxfam, Christian Aid, Tearfund, ActionAid, World Vision, and Friends of the Earth, asked whether the package was enough of a break from the “failed policies that brough about the global crisis”.
Dave Walker wrote earlier: Thoughts on the final communique and has now added G20 Blog: Christian development agencies disappointed by G20 communique.
The full text of the communiqué can be found here (scroll down for links to the two annexes).
3 CommentsUpdated Tuesday morning
George Conger Religious Intelligence Bishop of Rochester’s surprise resignation
…Details of Bishop Nazir Ali’s new work have not been finalized, the diocese noted, leading to speculation that the 59 year old bishop might be preparing for another role in the Anglican Communion in light of his high profile stance within the conservative wing of the church.
However, the General Secretary of the Church of Pakistan, Humphrey Peters tells The Church of England Newspaper the news of the resignation came as a surprise. “So far we have no idea nor have we heard anything from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali. But, in case he feels like working for Church in Pakistan in these most critical times, the Church will be more than happy to welcome him.”
A spokesman for the Gafcon movement, stated while its leaders were generally aware of Dr. Nazir Ali’s wish to move on, they had no specific knowledge about his Saturday announcement.
Speculation that Dr. Nazir Ali might take a leadership role in the third province movement in the US was downplayed by its leaders, who noted that there was no shortage of bishops in the breakaway group. Dr. Nazir Ali had sought out posts in the US in the past, and in 2004 explored becoming dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, however US sources expect the conservative leader to lend his considerable talents to the church in the developing world…
Andrew Brown Comment is free Belief What next for the Bishop of Rochester?
12 Comments…His position within the diocese of Rochester had become a difficult one. A lot of his clergy were unhappy with his decision last year to boycott the Lambeth Conference, which was meant to be a gathering demonstrating the unity of the Communion’s 800 bishops around the world. In the event, something like 230 stayed away but the only English heavyweight to do so was Nazir Ali.
Signing up for a declaration that describes the Archbishop of Canterbury as an apostate for his tolerance of liberal views on homosexuality was not a way to endear himself to his colleagues, who already regarded him as vain and ambitious. But he is also consistent about his beliefs and prepared to act on them and suffer for them. As a young man in Pakistan, the son of a convert from Islam, he became the youngest Anglican bishop in the world, in a back-country diocese from which he had to be rescued, after local fundamentalists threatened to kill him and his family.
That kind of experience shaped his view of Islam in general and Pakistani peasant Islam in particular. It lay behind his claim last year that there were already “no go” areas in British cities, although he never specified where they were. It also shaped his curiously fierce monotheistic criticism of the religion. The last time we had a serious conversation, he wanted to talk about how Sufistic Islam was corrupted by its veneration of saints. He has also been unfashionably fierce in his view of Roman Catholicism as a corruption of pure Christian virtue.
I will miss him because he was one of the few principled conservative intellectuals in the House of Bishops; while I thought he was wrong about almost everything, he spoke from a lot of knowledge and a real sense of tradition…
Dave Walker has published a comprehensive report on Saturday’s events, at the Church Times blog. He concludes his report with this:
…Overall, a worthwhile event. I personally was disappointed by the turnout at the service, but it didn’t really surprise me given the lack of interest there seemed to be from Christians on blogs and social networking sites in the week leading up to it (feel free to disagree or twll me why that is in the comments below). However, the ‘Put People First’ event as a whole seemed to be well reported in the Sunday papers and appears to have done well in terms of getting its message out. Let’s hope that the G20 leaders, meeting this week, heed that message. I will be blogging from the G20 meeting – more about that in another post.
See Report from the ‘Put People First’ service and rally.
Lambeth Palace has published a communiqué from a wide range of religious leaders in Britain. See G20 leaders must not forget promises to the poor – Religious Leaders Communiqué:
3 CommentsWe write as religious leaders who share a belief in God and the dignity of human life. We wish to acknowledge with realism and humility the severity of the current economic crisis and the sheer complexity of the global and local challenge faced by political leaders. We pray for the leaders of the G20 as they prepare to meet in London this week. They, and we, have a crucial role to play in recovering that lost sense of balance between the requirements of market mechanisms that help deliver increased prosperity, and the moral requirement to safeguard human dignity, regardless of economic or social category…
Updated further on Monday morning
Ruth Gledhill The Times Bishop of Rochester steps down early
Jonathan Wynne-Jones Telegraph Bishop of Rochester is stepping down
Ruth Gledhill The Times Bishop of Rochester to resign a decade early
Jonathan Wynne-Jones Telegraph Michael Nazir-Ali steps down as Bishop of Rochester
Press Association via the Guardian Controversial bishop quits Rochester diocese
Damian Thompson Telegraph The resignation of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali is a victory for Islamism
Kent Online Bishop of Rochester resigns
BBC Bishop of Rochester stands down
Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph Bishop of Rochester resigns to become defender of persecuted Christians
Ruth Gledhill Sunday Times Radical bishop quits early for new mission
Sunday Times leading article A troublesome priest in a timid church
Mail on Sunday Church of England’s most outspoken and only black Bishop is to quit
Note This headline was changed some time after 8 am Sunday, but here is the evidence of the earlier version.
The new headline is Bishop Nazir-Ali, scourge of Church liberals, steps down.
Independent Bishop of Rochester retires
United Press International Pakistani bishop in England resigns
Sunday Mirror I quit: Islam row bishop headline changed to Islam row Bishop of Rochester to step down.
Associated Press of Pakistan Bishop Ali to quit his post: a report
George Pitcher Telegraph Bishop Nazir-Ali retires; a rebellion fizzles out
Riazat Butt Guardian Michael Nazir-Ali steps down to focus on helping persecuted Christians
Ekklesia Anglican bishop resigns and announces plan to support harassed Christians
Melanie Phillips Mail When a bishop has to leave the Church of England to stand up for Christians, what hope is left for Britain?
and a Mail Comment article, We’re losing our faith in a desperate bid to appear inclusive and tolerant
There was still no sign of this release on the Rochester diocesan website at 6.00 pm Saturday, last website update was on 20 March, it says.
Monday lunchtime
A copy of the press release has at last appeared on the Rochester diocesan website, as a PDF file.
——
PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT EMBARGOED UNTIL 10 a.m. 28 MARCH 2009
Bishopscourt, Rochester, Kent ME1 1TS
01634 814439 / 07791 968819
Bishop Michael announces his intention to step down as Bishop of Rochester
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has announced his intention to step down as Bishop of Rochester as from 1st September 2009. He will have been Bishop in the Diocese for nearly 15 years and during this time has played a major part in the life of the church.
Bishop Michael is hoping to work with a number of church leaders from areas where the church is under pressure, particularly in minority situations, who have asked him to assist them with education and training for their particular situation. Details of this arrangement are still being worked out.
Bishop Michael, who will be 60 in August, is the 106th Bishop of Rochester. He is originally from Asia and was the first non-white Diocesan Bishop in the Church of England. He was appointed to Rochester in 1994. Before that he was the General Secretary of CMS from 1989-1994 and before that Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan and theological Assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Since 1999 he has also been a member of the House of Lords where he has been active in a number of areas of national and international concern.
Bishop Michael says, “We thank God for his blessings and for friends we have made in the Diocese in the past 15 years. I am so grateful to God for the friendship and loyalty of those around us and ask for people’s prayers as we take this step of faith ‘not knowing where we are going’ (Heb 11:8).
7 CommentsJonathan Sacks writes in The Times that Darwin pointed the way to an unselfish evolution.
Oliver Rafferty writes in the Guardian that: The ideas that led to George Tyrrell’s excommunication still confront Christianity.
For extra measure, Catherine Robinson writes in the same paper that Tim Berners-Lee’s invention symbolises Unitarian desire to foster communication.
In the Church Times John Packer argues in The West needs to understand faith that there is a dangerous ignorance of religion in the West’s foreign policy.
Giles Fraser writes there about Philip Blond, in Behind the allure of the Red Tory.
The best comment I saw about the parliamentary debate yesterday on the Royal Marriages and Succession to the Crown (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2008-09 was the Channel 4 News interview with David Starkey. There is a link to the video clip from this page. (For the best background briefing paper see this – H/T Ruth Gledhill.)
15 Comments