According to Anglican Mainstream:
Witholding invitation to Minns is witholding invitation to all Nigerian Bishops – Akinola
Tuesday May 22nd 2007, 5:42 pm
In response to requests for comments on the Lambeth Conference invitations, Archbishop Peter Akinola reaffirms that the Church of Nigeria is committed to the CAPA commissioned report “The Road to Lambeth”.
Since only the first set of invitations had been sent, it is premature to conclude who will be present or absent at the conference. However, the withholding of invitation to a Nigerian bishop, elected and consecrated by other Nigerian bishops will be viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria.
The Lord bless you as you remain in Christ.
The Venerable AkinTunde Popoola
Director Communication
Office: +234 [0]9 523 6950/ 0987/ 0989 Fax: 1527
Mobile: +234 [0]805 800 1382
E-mail: communicator1@anglican-nig.org , communicator1nig@yahoo.com
Primate’s Office, 24 Douala Str., Wuse Zone 5, P.O. Box 212 ADCP, Abuja,
F.C.T., Nigeria.
CANA has issued this Statement by Bishop Minns on Lambeth Conference:
(Fairfax, Virginia) — A statement was issued by the Anglican Communion Office on May 22 regarding the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Communion bishops scheduled for July 2008. The Rt. Rev’d Martyn Minns, Missionary Bishop of CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America), has made the following response:
“I have read the statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office regarding next year’s Lambeth Conference. While the immediate attention is focused on the invitation list, it should be remembered that this crisis in the Anglican Communion is not about a few individual bishops but about a worldwide Communion that is torn at its deepest level. This point was made repeatedly at the Primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam. Depending on the response of The Episcopal Church to the Primates’ communiqué by September 30, the situation may become even more complex. One thing is clear, a great deal can and will happen before next July.”
CONTACT: Mr. Jim Robb, CANA Media Officer
mobile: 202.285.4390
The Living Church interprets this as Global South Attendance at Lambeth Conference Doubtful.
50 CommentsWe list below reports on who has not been invited. From these it appears that they include Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire and the bishops from CANA (Martyn Minns) and AMiA. Bishop Robinson may be invited as a guest.
Robert Barr (Associated Press) in The Washington Post 2 Bishops Not Invited to Anglican Parley [This article has been published on many other sites but this appears to be the earliest.]
Update that Washington Post page now contains a later AP story by Rachel Zoll Gay Bishop Kept Out of Anglican Meeting. The earlier Robert Barr story can be found here.
Reuters Luke Baker Gay bishop snubbed by Anglican conference
Ruth Gledhill in The Times Gay bishop not invited to Lambeth conference
Natalie Paris and agencies in The Telegraph Gay bishop’s church conference snub
BBC Gay row US Anglicans miss summit
Bishop Robinson has responded to his non-invitation here.
The Living Church has more detail on other exclusions at No Lambeth Invitation for Bishop Robinson by George Conger.
8 CommentsThe Archbishop of Canterbury has sent out the ‘first’ invitations to next year’s Lambeth Conference.
The invitations have gone out to over 800 bishops from around the Communion, but the Archbishop notes that he has to:
reserve the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion. Indeed there are currently one or two cases on which I am seeking further advice. I do not say this lightly, but I believe that we need to know as we meet that each participant recognises and honours the task set before us and that there is an adequate level of mutual trust between us about this. Such trust is a great deal harder to sustain if there are some involved who are generally seen as fundamentally compromising the efforts towards a credible and cohesive resolution.
He also writes, in an extraordinary plea to all those invited to actually participate, that:
An invitation to participate in the Conference has not in the past been a certificate of doctrinal orthodoxy. Coming to the Lambeth Conference does not commit you to accepting the position of others as necessarily a legitimate expression of Anglican doctrine and discipline, or to any action that would compromise your conscience or the integrity of your local church.
Further invitations will be sent later to ecumenical representatives and other guests, and Mrs Williams will send out invitations to a parallel spouses’ conference.
55 CommentsPress release from Lambeth Palace:
8 CommentsMonday 21st May 2007
For immediate use
Bishop of Southwark – no further action
The Archbishop of Canterbury has caused the incident involving the Bishop of Southwark, which was reported in the media last December, to be investigated under the Church’s new clergy discipline procedure.
In the light of all the evidence submitted to him Dr Williams has determined, under section 12(1)(a) of the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, that no further action should be taken.
Updated Monday evening
Julia Duin in the Washington Times reports Church schism set for Va. court.
The mother of all lawsuits pitting Episcopalian against Anglican kicks off today in the red-brick confines of Fairfax County Circuit Court.
The case has amassed numerous court filings involving 11 churches, two dozen lawyers, 107 individuals, the 90,000-member Diocese of Virginia, the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church and the 18.5 million-member Anglican Province of Nigeria…
Meanwhile, the CANA website has some new material:
The following draft report was commissioned by the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) in February 2006; it was received with gratitude by the CAPA Primates on 19 September 2006 and commended for study and response to the churches of the provinces in Africa…
Updated Monday evening More useful links to background documents on this can be found in Andrew Gerns post at Episcopal Café titled Virginia Split Goes to Court Today. He also links to this op-ed article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch EPISCOPAL DILEMMA The Church Betrays Its Own by the “vice chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia”.
42 CommentsThe Times has a review by Geza Vermes of the book Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI.
And Alan Webster writes there about Life with Lenin in one corner and a holy icon in the other.
Peter Stanford writes in the Guardian about C Day-Lewis in Face to Faith.
Christopher Howse writes in the Daily Telegraph about Gregorian chant in Where stone comes to life.
Giles Fraser’s Church Times column is titled Community life isn’t all about pubs.
31 CommentsLast week’s Church Times carried my review of the new play at the Chichester Festival Theatre under the title Post-mortem on the year of three popes.
It has since been announced that The Last Confession will open in London in June at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.
2 CommentsUpdated Saturday
The Church Times has this report by Bill Bowder: Principal’s changes lead to resignations and wall of silence. It starts out:
WYCLIFFE HALL, Oxford, is the focus of a dispute involving allegations of a culture of bullying and intimidation, and of an ultra-conservative attitude to women.
The governing Council of the theological college, a permanent private hall of the University, is chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd James Jones. This week it said that it had embarked on a review of the college’s governance.
The complaints centre on the management style of the Principal, the Revd Dr Richard Turnbull, and his appointment of the Revd Simon Vibert as Vice-Principal. Mr Vibert had made public his belief that women should not teach men.
He co-wrote, with the Revd Dr Mark Burkill and the Revd Dr David Peterson, a Latimer Trust paper that argued that a woman on her own should not teach men about faith or lead a congregation (Ministry Work Group Statement concerning the ministry of women in the Church today). [PDF file]
Since Dr Turnbull was appointed in 2005, six full-time or part-time academic staff have resigned posts. In a letter of resignation to Dr Turnbull in March, the former director of studies, Dr Philip Johnston, accused him of leadership “without significant regard for your staff colleagues”. Dr Johnston wrote that the new Vice-Principal had been appointed despite a “very strong consensus” of staff and students in favour of a different candidate…
The Church of England Newspaper has, via Anglican Mainstream this report: Wycliffe Council backs Principal in process of change. Part of the report:
A LEADING evangelical theological college this week responded to allegations of bullying and deep divisions among staff due to it becoming more doctrinally conservative.
The Council of Wycliffe Hall, which is part of the University of Oxford, admitted the college was going through a period of change which was ‘unsettling’. The statement follows a document circulated to the press which claims the college in ‘in crisis’ after being ‘taken over’ by a ‘highly conservative evangelical faction who are deliberately trying to drive out longstanding and highly respected staff members by their aggressive, homophobic behaviour’.
The anonymous document claims that since the appointment two years ago of the current Principal, the Rev Dr Richard Turnbull,the culture at the college has ‘become increasingly hostile to women priests and openly homophobic’, and that a ‘culture of bullying and intimidation began to develop’.
It adds that unrest grew at the college when Dr Turnbull signed the controversial ‘Covenant for the Church of England’, a document drawn up by conservative evangelicals proposing alternative Episcopal arrangements for their churches in the row over homosexuality. The document claims that several members of the teaching staff have already resigned as they feel alienated and intimidated by the college management, and calls for the Church of England to intervene.
It concludes: “This college is no longer fit to be recognised either as a training institution for the ordinands of the Church of England or as a permanent private hall of Oxford University. It is not a safe place for women or gays … the Church and university must act to do something.”
A further report is in Cherwell24 Crisis at Wycliffe Hall as five staff resign in protest
103 CommentsThe Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) website carries this: Press briefing by Archbishop Peter Akinola on Sunday 13th May at the end of the Abuja Diocesan Synod.
In addition to various comments on Nigerian matters, he also gives his views on legislative developments in the USA and on the Hereford tribunal case in the UK:
Many people look to the USA as a Christian country and its leaders often assume the role of moral leaders for the world who are ready to point the finger at problems around the globe and yet we must not forget that there is another side to their story. The present generation of Americans would do well to remember their own history. While they and their forebears claim their nation to be a gift from God it is in truth a land forcefully taken with no respect for the human rights of the despised and dispossessed Indians – it is also a land where a great deal of its early economic foundation was built on the sweat and blood of de-humanized African slaves.
Americans seem to have forgotten the same LORD in whom they say “In God we trust”. Deuteronomy 7 and 8 are relevant biblical passages
“And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth” 8:18a“Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.” 8: 19
The God who has blessed so abundantly is also a jealous God who requires obedience and holy living. But instead of calling for obedience to the Word of God we now have the situation where those who call for faithfulness in holy matrimony or abstinence outside of it risk being accused of hate speech. The breakdown in marriages in the USA is a scandal. It is causing a massive crisis in their own society and the rest of the world. But instead of admitting the problem and finding creative ways to strengthen traditional families we see a relentless promotion and protection of so called ‘alternative lifestyles.’ Recent legislative bill H.R. 1592 (Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007) passed in the House on May 3rd 2007, and the H.R 2015 (Employment Non-Discrimination Act.) being discussed are worthy of note. God will not be mocked.
We see a similar crisis in the UK. The decline in marriages and the breakdown in families has become an epidemic. But instead of encouraging holy living and strengthening family life we read of a bishop of the Church of England called before tribunal to explain his refusal to hire a certain youth worker. His offence was ‘discrimination’, we were told because the job seeker in this case was a self-confessed homosexual and who said he had just ended a five-year homosexual relationship. Surely the Church has an obligation to promote holy living not apologise for it!
- Where is the Christian voice in all these?
- Why are Church leaders not concerned about this breakdown in society?
- Why are they ashamed of promoting holy living?
- Why have they lost their confidence in the Word of God?
We are very much aware of the challenges that face us today in Nigeria. Many of these we addressed in our Synod and continue to do so day by day. Our hope is in the Lord – the maker of heaven and earth – and in His Holy Word.
We call on Christians worldwide to rise to the challenge of protecting our Christian: –
- Freedom to read the Bible privately and in public
- Freedom to preach from the Bible, and declare uncompromisingly the total oracles of the Lord
- Freedom to shield ourselves, and our children, from what we believe our God says is immoral and abominable.
- Freedom to seek to help those willing to escape Satan’s deceitful traps.
- Freedom to live holy and acceptable lives in the sight of God
The issue here is not about homophobia. We are concerned about defending the right to existence of Biblical Christianity. It is about allowing the Spirit of God to transform people rather than deceive them that there is nothing wrong in their unholy practices. It is about rejecting a world system that wants to curtail our freedom to live as our Saviour taught us to. It is simply trying our best to live and encourage others to live to be HOLY as our GOD IS HOLY.
May the Lord keep us Holy.
hat tip Jim Naughton who comments here.
57 CommentsStop doing that which is pulling us apart – Archbishop of Canterbury appeals in interview is the headline at Global South Anglican. This is the transcript of an interview with Lucilla Teoh for the Diocese of Singapore’s Diocesan Digest. Here is an extract:
72 Comments…Q – So how do you see then things developing pre-Lambeth 2008 and post-Lambeth? If you can make a wish, what will that be?
A – I’m hoping and praying that we shall have no more actions that polarize the Communion between now and Lambeth 2008. This is the point I have already brought to the Canadian House of Bishops which we are trying to get across to the American House of Bishops. But also trying to say to some other provinces: Don’t step up the level of intervention in this crisis because all of that is just pulling us further and further apart. So I hope we can have a bit of moratorium on this, and in a way, a reflection on what kind of a church we want to be. Now, some parts of the Communion would be happy if we could be just a federation of loosely connected local bodies. I’m not happy with that. We could be more than that. We should be more than that. We should be living out of each other’s life and resources and vision and be more closely connected. Because I think that is what the New Testament assumes the local church should do and not live in isolation. They lived with each other, from each other’s life. So, that’s my vision.
I see the next Lambeth Conference ideally as the place where Bishops can really be re-equipped for their central task of enabling mission and in every sense educating the people of God and equipping them for their outreach. That’s how I can see it.
Q – This actually gets you to my next question. Do you think therefore a sort of centrally driven or some sort of concerted organized effort through the Primates or Province representatives?
A – I think at the moment we are in a very confused state with the structure of the Anglican Communion. People turn to the Primates because there doesn’t seem to be anything else that works, a forum for people’s interest, that meets regularly, that can assemble at short notice, which can work together. At the same time, I don’t think the Primates’ Meeting ought to be isolated from other bodies. And I have some hope for the integration of the Primates in the Anglican Consultative Council. Perhaps that will give us a better tool. I think we do need in our shared counsel the voices of priests and lay people as well as Primates and bishops. And the challenge is how to find a structure that will help us cohere in that way. We have some good examples. In fact the meeting of the Theological Education group that has been going on in Singapore this weekend brings together bishops, priests, lay people for a common task around the Communion which is not driven I think by a London-based or a New York-based agenda. It’s owned by everybody. It’s quite a good model. I think we need that sense of the whole Communion setting the agenda and getting away from the suspicion, right or wrong, that the agenda’s been fixed from somewhere else.
Q – So I suppose that’s basically how you see it right now in terms of encouraging the provinces to take more initiative?
A – Oh yes. I think, as I said, with the integration with ACC is in principle a good idea. We just need to make it work properly. I think in the next two years, let’s say, up to the Lambeth Conference, there needs to be quite a lot of thinking of how we make our common structure work better for us, to concentrate our energy where they need to be concentrated and to give us a way of dealing with crisis that isn’t just reactive…
Updated Thursday
The Diocese of Fort Worth has issued this announcement as a PDF:
FORT WORTH, Texas – The Executive Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth has adopted a statement of the diocesan Standing Committee calling for the diocese to move forward with its appeal for Alternative Primatial Oversight (APO).
The Bishop and Standing Committee of the diocese first appealed for APO at the General Convention in June 2006. That appeal was endorsed by the diocesan Executive Council in September 2006 and by the Diocesan Convention in November 2006. The Bishop and diocese remain firmly convinced of the need for alternative oversight; therefore, the Standing Committee, meeting Monday, May 14, adopted the following statement as an assessment of the current situation and a proposal to actively pursue all viable options. It was adopted by the Executive Council in its regular bimonthly meeting. The mood of the council was both thoughtful and sad, yet it was considered prudent to “explore the possibilities and count the costs.” According to the Constitution of the diocese, the Executive Council “exercises the powers of the Convention between meetings thereof.”
The full text of the statement mentioned above is copied here below the fold.
Update
There are two stories in The Times about this:
Anglican diocese defects over gays and the earlier Anglican diocese defects over gays (scroll down).
The Living Church reported it as Ft. Worth: Options Include Oversight Outside Episcopal Church.
See also what Episcopal Café and Preludium have to say about this.
Update Thursday
Episcopal News Service has a report FORT WORTH: Diocese renews its oversight request, proposes new structures.
There’s a story by Stephen Bates in today’s Guardian about trouble at Wycliffe Hall, a Church of England theological college in Oxford: Unholy row at Oxford’s college for clergy amid staff exodus and claims of bullying.
It starts:
One of England’s most respected theological colleges is facing claims that staff feel bullied and intimidated as the institution becomes increasingly conservative.
68 CommentsThe discontent at Wycliffe Hall, an evangelical Anglican college which is part of Oxford University, has seen several resignations among its small academic staff and claims that one of its most prominent members, the regular Thought for the Day contributor Elaine Storkey, was threatened with disciplinary action.
Religious Intelligence carries this report by Christopher Morgan:
Will Brown hand back powers to the Church?
25 Comments…The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told senior colleagues that he intends to give the church control over its own senior appointments. At the moment the Prime Minister plays a major role in the appointment of diocesan bishops and has the sole right to nominate deans of most English cathedrals. Mr Brown himself hinted at lifting control of the ecclesiastical appointments in a speech to the Fabian Society last year. Until 1976 the church had no formal role in the appointment of bishops at all, although it was consulted as a matter of courtesy. Thirty years ago, however, James Callaghan then Prime Minister established the Crown Appointments Commission, now renamed the Crown Nominations Commission, which draws up a shortlist of two names which it may offer in order of preference. The Prime Minister chooses either of the names or seeks other names from the Commission. Tony Blair used this veto at least once in 1997 to turn down both candidates proposed for the diocese of Liverpool.
The Prime Minister’s appointment secretary plays an active role in the whole process and is a non-voting member of the Commission.
Sources close to Mr Brown, who is a member of the Church of Scotland, indicated that he will introduce the change by producing a memorandum of agreement with the Church’s General Synod. One source said: “Brown does not need to introduce any legislation or take up any parliamentary time in this matter. He is simply altering convention.”
The present Crown Nominations Commission would remain but present only one name to Downing Street which the Prime Minister would then pass on to the Queen for her final appointment. In the case of cathedral deans it is said that Mr Brown will invite the bishop of the diocese to consult with his senior colleagues to produce one name which again he will then pass on to the Queen. However the Chancellor’s advisors are not so clear about these intentions. It is expected however that he would leave untouched the appointment of deans of Westminster Abbey and St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in which the Queen still plays an active role. As “royal peculiars” the monarch remains the ultimate authority rather than a bishop…
Episcopal Café has a major article by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane:
The Primate of the Anglican Church of South Africa delivered a long and thorough address at St. Saviours Church this past Tuesday.
In his address, the Archbishop shares his concerns about the present state of the Anglican Communion, how the Church of South Africa came to be a part of the Communion and talks about the present roles of the “Instruments of Unity” as described by the Windsor Report. He speaks about what future course the Anglican Communion might take, both in terms of the roles of the Instruments of Unity and in terms of the relationships of the various provinces to each other.
Read the full address here.
Three other articles:
In response to the most recent ACI, Inc. article by Ephraim Radner, Vocation Deferred: The Necessary Challenge of Communion, Tobias Haller has written Rearranging the Chairs.
Christopher Seitz has written another article for the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. this one titled Possibilities for an Anglican Future?
64 CommentsGiles Fraser writes in the Church Times this week about a church planting in West London: Beating the bounds into the bishop. He writes:
56 Comments…the Vicar of All Saints’, Fulham, the Revd Joe Hawes, was hopping mad at the leaflet popped through his parishioners’ doors last week. Bearing the C of E logo, it proclaimed “a new church for Fulham”. The back of the glossy flyer had a map showing half of his parish.
It was the first he had heard of this new church. He phoned the Area Dean, who also hadn’t heard that any service was starting. He phoned the Central Fulham Churches forum. It was completely in the dark, too. We are always being told that church-planting requires extensive consultation. This one was parachuted in under the cover of darkness.
As usual, the story is complicated. It seems that Fr Hawes’s neighbouring parish — St Etheldreda’s, a small Anglo-Catholic outfit — has made room for a church plant from the Co-Mission Initiative. This is a nominally Anglican organisation that has proved itself indifferent to parish and diocesan boundaries.
It is the same team that secretly flew over a bishop from the Church of England in South Africa to perform its own ordinations, because it refused to submit its candidates to the diocesan selection procedures (News, 11 November 2005). The imported bishop wasn’t even in communion with the C of E. It’s the same lot that goes in for lay presidency. And will they pay a parish share? It looks unlikely.
“I believe this initiative seriously undermines the Church of England’s ministry in this area,” said Fr Hawes. He is right to be concerned. Despite the fact that he runs a growing church, with more than 600 on the electoral roll, the Co-Mission Initiative wouldn’t regard him as a proper Christian. He is a liberal Catholic, and therefore fair game for poaching…
Geoffrey Rowell writes in The Times that Ascension raises more than a cordial for drooping spirits.
Christopher Howse writes from Spain in the Daily Telegraph about A ploughman who was Chaucer’s ideal.
Christina Rees writes in the Guardian about Li Tim-Oi in Face to faith. See also this site.
Two earlier columns from Ekklesia:
Simon Barrow asked last week Is religion the new parliamentary belief divide?
Even earlier Jonathan Bartley asked Is ‘Christian nation’ rhetoric aiding the far right?
The previous TA report on Zimbabwe is here.
Last week’s Church Times contained an article by Bishop Nick Baines entitled The real situation in Zimbabwe:
…Given this dire situation, which the Mugabe regime blames on everyone except itself, why does the Anglican Church appear to be silent? In contrast with the recent Pastoral Letter from the Roman Catholic bishops, which called for an end to bad governance and corrupt leadership, the statement issued after the (Anglican) Episcopal Synod of the Province of Central Africa, held in Harare on 12 April, appears typically bland and timid. That is how it has been caricatured in the world’s media. I think, however, that to say this would be to miss the point…
This week, there is a letter in response to the article (link available next week) which severely criticises this piece. The letter refers to the way the statement was interpreted in the government-controlled Herald in this article dated 20 April Anglican Bishops Rap Sanctions starting thus:
THE Anglican Church Province of Central Africa has added its voice to the growing condemnation of the illegal Western sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and called for their scrapping, urging Britain to honour its obligations to fund land reforms in the country.
In their Pastoral letter issued at the end of their Episcopal Synod in Harare last week, the 14 bishops and one canon, among them the head of the Province of Central Africa, the Most Rev Bernard Amos Malango, acknowledged that the economic situation in Zimbabwe stemmed from illegal sanctions.
“We, the bishops, are concerned and pained at the distressing occurrences that have been taking place in Zimbabwe; the deteriorating economy has rendered the ordinary Zimba-bwean unable to make ends meet.
“This, we note, has been exacerbated by the economic sanctions imposed by the Western countries, these so-called targeted sanctions (presumably) aimed at the leadership of the country have affected the poor Zimbabweans who have borne the brunt of the sanctions . . .
“We, therefore, call upon the Western countries to lift the economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, we further call upon the British government to honour its obligation of paying compensation to the white farmers.”
The Anglican Bishop’s pastoral letter exposes the patently political nature of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishop’s Conference that released its own letter ahead of the Easter holidays, accusing President Mugabe and the Government of corrupt governance and human rights abuses…
Another opinion article dated 11 May, from the Zimbabwe Independent and titled Diabolic is the Perfect Description includes this:
…And we have now the shocking scandal of Anglican prelates who are happy to identify themselves with tyranny and brutal repression.
The Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, who was reported in the Herald as accusing the British media of “peddling lies” about Zimbabwe during a meeting with Cephas Msipa, has now clarified his position.
At no point did he say the British press had lied about Zimbabwe, he said.
“What I said was that they shouldn’t complain about poor reporting of Zimbabwean affairs if journalists were banned from the country and had to rely on second-hand information,” he told a British-based weekly paper.
A man calling himself a journalist from the Herald approached him, he said, and claimed to have evidence that Church of England groups supported the MDC.
“Of course I denied the assertion and asked him why on earth anyone would wish to recolonise Zimbabwe.”
All rather different from the Herald version isn’t it!
Meanwhile, Anglican bishops have complained that their church’s episcopal letter, condemning sanctions and framed in language which mirrors that of the ruling party, was penned by the Bishops of Harare and Manicaland (Nolbert Kunonga and Elson Jakazi) and two others in Central Africa.
The Bishop of Masvingo, the Rt Revd Godfrey Tawonezvi, says he didn’t even get to see it.
“I did not sign the statement and I know that most bishops did not sign since the statement was written after the bishops had left Zimbabwe,” he said…
Episcopal News Service and others carry the report by Trevor Grundy that Rowan Williams speaks on failed bid to help starving Zimbabweans:
3 Comments…At a May 1 meeting held at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, Williams was asked why Anglican church funds were not used to fill trucks with food and send them across Beit Bridge from South Africa to Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe where people are starving.
Williams surprised those attending the meeting by saying that four years ago he held discussions with Southern Africa Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town about the best approach to help Zimbabwe.
A year ago, Williams again held talks with central and southern African Anglicans — a meeting that did not include Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare, a staunch ally of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. Again, he asked what sort of intervention from outside could be useful.
“The message I had from them was any intervention under the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury would instantly be branded in Zimbabwe as the British government by another name,” Williams said.
Williams met with Kunonga in March “to ask him whether he would contemplate not only rediscovering his soul, so to speak, in relation to the Mugabe government, but whether he would contemplate an arrangement which we would willingly broker with the World Food Programme administered through the Anglican church in Zimbabwe. The answer was ‘No’!”…
Updated Friday
The BBC radio programme Sunday had this:
Breakaway Anglican church in Virginia
A British man, Martyn Minns, was installed as bishop of the breakaway Convocation of Anglicans in North America, which is a mission of the Church of Nigeria. The Nigerian Archbishop, Peter Akinola, led the service in Virginia, having ignored pleas not to go from both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori. Critics see it as an unwelcome form of Anglican colonialism. Julia Duin of the Washington Times reports.
Listen (3m 39s)
Michael Conlon at Reuters wrote Anglican church turmoil over gay issues deepens in which Bishop Mark Sisk is interviewed.
Andrew Brown wrote on Comment is Free about The end of communion. His article concludes like this:
…What Dr Akinola did was an act of unequivocal ecclesiastical aggression: it has been a recognised principle among Christians since the fourth century that there is only ever one bishop governing every diocese. So where you have two bishops claiming jurisdiction over the same territory, you have two churches. Dr Akinola’s actions show beyond any shadow of doubt that he does not consider himself to be part of the same church as the liberals. He is, in fact, in schism with them.
The rest of the churches which once constituted the Anglican communion will now have to choose whether they want to belong to any international body at all, and if so, who will head it. Here it seems that Dr Williams may have played a subtle game, because Dr Akinola’s ambition has repelled a great many of his potential supporters. The American, liberal line on homosexuality is not popular around the world; at one stage it seemed that 22 or more of the 38 Anglican primates would demand the Americans be expelled. But the more it became obvious that they would have to choose between being globally led by Dr Akinola or followed round the world by Dr Williams, the more popular the prospect of Dr William’s non-leadership became.
The number of primates supporting Akinola has steadily diminished from 22 to about eight. Even among the American conservatives, it is only a minority who are prepared to join up with him and his new enterprise. Installing Bishop Minns may prove to be the moment when he decisively over-reaches himself. Even if it does not, it is decisive for Dr Williams, too. Nothing that he now does or says can be justified on the basis that it preserves the unity of the Anglican communion. That unity has now been shattered. There is no communion, and no good reason for anyone to pretend otherwise.
Update Friday
The Church Times report by Rachel Harden is titled Akinola installs US bishop, despite appeals.
ACO reports:
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference met in the offices of the Anglican Communion Secretariat during the week beginning 30 April 2007. In its meeting, it reviewed its work so far and discussed how best to follow up the work that had already been undertaken. It has currently completed outstanding work on all the references made to it by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Panel also reviewed the Report which the Chairman, the Most Revd Dr Peter Carnley AO, had made to the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam in February, and authorised him to release an updated version. The Panel also set dates for future meetings in late 2007 and in 2008.
The Review of the Work of The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference can be found here as a tiny PDF.
Earlier reports on Florida, Fort Worth and New Westminster, together with other material about the POR can be found here.
18 CommentsArchbishop Peter Akinola has replied to Rowan Williams’ letter to him concerning his US visit.
The full letter is contained in a press release on the Nigerian provincial website. (The full text of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter has not been released so far.)
The reply letter is reproduced here below the fold.
Episcopal News Service reports on the weekend at Nigerian Primate proceeds with CANA installation.
138 Comments