www.washingtontimes.com
September 29, 2007
By Julia Duin - Fifty-one Anglican and Episcopal bishops announced plans yesterday to form a separate Anglican province in North America within 15 months, giving disaffected Episcopalians a chance to flee their increasingly liberal denomination.
The Common Cause partnership, which includes bishops from several Episcopal dioceses and leaders of nine Anglican organizations, met yesterday in Pittsburgh. The leaders represent 600 congregations and more than 100,000 people.
The bishops said they will meet in December to put together an office staff for a 39th province of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion.
"We took some steps in the right direction," said Bishop Martyn Minns, the former rector of Truro Church in Fairfax who now leads the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a group of 60 former Episcopal churches that have left the denomination. "It was quite a journey but I am pleased with the movement we made."
A timeline released yesterday said Common Cause leaders will meet once every six months to hammer out the structure of the new province. The members represent a disparate group of U.S. Episcopalians, former Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans, some of which ordain female priests and others that do not. But all of them wish to align with the Anglican Communion rather than the 800,000-member Anglican Church of Canada or the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church.
Conservatives began bolting from the Episcopal Church after the 2003 consecration of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, a divorced man living with a male lover. Canadian Anglicans narrowly voted in June not to allow same-sex blessings but left the door open for their approval in the near future.
"The goal is to call a constitutional convention within 15 months," said Peter Frank, spokesman for Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, a group of 10 conservative Episcopal dioceses. "We are going to try to make this happen. The intent of this group is to create enough unity among Orthodox Anglicans for a coherent structure. Then we take this to the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has refused to recognize CANA and similar breakaway Anglican groups as part of the Anglican Communion. However, yesterday's document did not refer to Archbishop Williams. It did refer to some 20 "Global South" bishops, most from Africa, who in 2006 instructed the North Americans to start forming a "separate ecclesiastical structure."
Last week, the Episcopal House of Bishops met in New Orleans, and bishops agreed to "exercise restraint" on ordaining future homosexual bishops. Episcopal bishops also said they would not authorize any public same-sex "marriage" rites but did not rule out private "blessing" ceremonies allowed in churches across the country, including in the Diocese of Washington.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Akinola Rejects U.S. Bishops' Move On Gay
This Day (Lagos)
NEWS
28 September 2007
Posted to the web 28 September 2007
Lagos
Peter Akinola, Primate, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), yesterday rejected assurances by U.S. Anglican Bishops to halt ordination of gay bishops.
The bishops recently met in New Orleans, U.S., pledging not to authorise same-sex union, in a bid to restore unity in the Anglican communion.
Akinola described the assurances as "not a whole-hearted embrace of traditional Christian teaching. Instead of the change of heart (repentance) we sought, what we were offered was a mere temporary adjustment," he said in a statement.
A fortnight ago, Akinola wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him to postpone Lambeth 2008, a once-a-decade meeting for all Anglican bishops the world over, due to alleged intransigence of U.S. bishops on the issue.
Akinola said the latest response was a calculated attempt to win support and make protesting bishops attend Lambeth.
The Church of Nigeria, has the largest congregation in the Anglican communion worldwide. Its 126 bishops had threatened to pull out of Lambeth, if Episcopal bishops, who support homo sexuality were invited to the meeting.
In a bid to save its members in the U.S. from churches who support homosexuality, Akinola floated a branch to cater for them.
The branch known as Convocation ofAnglican in North America (CANA) willconsecrate additional four bishops thisDecember, a move that will certainlyinfuriate the Americans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
allAfrica.com
NEWS
28 September 2007
Posted to the web 28 September 2007
Lagos
Peter Akinola, Primate, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), yesterday rejected assurances by U.S. Anglican Bishops to halt ordination of gay bishops.
The bishops recently met in New Orleans, U.S., pledging not to authorise same-sex union, in a bid to restore unity in the Anglican communion.
Akinola described the assurances as "not a whole-hearted embrace of traditional Christian teaching. Instead of the change of heart (repentance) we sought, what we were offered was a mere temporary adjustment," he said in a statement.
A fortnight ago, Akinola wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him to postpone Lambeth 2008, a once-a-decade meeting for all Anglican bishops the world over, due to alleged intransigence of U.S. bishops on the issue.
Akinola said the latest response was a calculated attempt to win support and make protesting bishops attend Lambeth.
The Church of Nigeria, has the largest congregation in the Anglican communion worldwide. Its 126 bishops had threatened to pull out of Lambeth, if Episcopal bishops, who support homo sexuality were invited to the meeting.
In a bid to save its members in the U.S. from churches who support homosexuality, Akinola floated a branch to cater for them.
The branch known as Convocation ofAnglican in North America (CANA) willconsecrate additional four bishops thisDecember, a move that will certainlyinfuriate the Americans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
allAfrica.com
PITTSBURGH: New Ecclesiastical Structure Announced by Common Cause Partners
PITTSBURGH: New Ecclesiastical Structure Announced by Common Cause Partners
By David W. Virtue in Pittsburgh
www.virtueonline.org
9/28/2007
Anglican bishops from ten jurisdictions and organizations took their first steps toward a "new ecclesiastical structure" in North America, it was announced by Common Cause Council of Bishops in Trinity Cathedral, Pittsburgh today.
Calling it an "historic time" in the life of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, chair of Common Cause, said that 51 bishops will act as a "college of bishops" representing more than 600 Anglican congregations that make up Common Cause Partners which also includes a dozen mission leaders.
"This is a significant step towards a new Anglican province that will be recognized by a number of Anglican provinces and primates which embraces Common Cause Partners with a separate ecclesiastical structure called for by the bishops in Kilgali, Rwanda," said Duncan.
"We have been told by the General Convention that we are to be engaged in ecumenical dialogue with various groups that have not had a link with Anglicans," said Ackerman.
"We are confronted with the reality that there are numerous people in North America who consider themselves to be Anglican and thus it would be contrary to our Lord's call for unity not to be engaged actively in the reunification," Ackerman continued.
The bishops laid out a timeline for the path ahead saying they have committed themselves to working together at local and regional levels agreeing to interchangeable deployment of clergy. The bishops gathered here included leaders from the Anglican Province of America, (the Most Rev. Walter Grundorf), the Reformed Episcopal Church, (Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches), the AMIA (Bishop Chuck Murphy), the head of the Canadian Anglican Network, and newly elected bishops from some 15 offshore jurisdictions in Africa, Asia and the Southern Cone now with ecclesiastical bases in North America, as well as Forward in Faith, NA.
Asked by VirtueOnline if the Archbishop of Canterbury would recognize the new structure, Duncan said he did not expect immediate recognition, but "we will make our case" to him.
"We need to go to our partner provinces first, and then talk with the Archbishop of Canterbury."
Asked why it was necessary to form a new jurisdiction, Duncan replied it was because of the drift of the church in the West. Duncan said, when he was briefly in New Orleans, he spoke directly to Dr. Williams describing two very different understandings of the church. One is guided by the Word of God incarnate and the Word of God written, which he said embodied standards of faithfulness, holiness and spiritual fruitfulness. The other defines the wholeness of the church as a matter of inclusion and diversity without reference to revelation.
CANA bishop Martyn Minns said the bishops are working together rather than fragmentmentally and this was a "testimony of our working together."
Quincy Bishop and FIFNA president Keith Ackerman pointed to the 1998 Lambeth resolution that called for the reunification of the various continuing church bodies, "that we all may be one." The Episcopal Church's General Convention subsequently passed this.
Questioned by VOL about the legal, judicial and pastoral implications for his diocese, if it should attempt to pull out of the Episcopal Church, Duncan said that the Diocese of Pittsburgh's 142nd convention pointed to a majority of the diocese wanting "realignment."
"The Episcopal Church has not provided the room for us," he said. Duncan said this diocese was founded before The Episcopal Church came into existence and that there was historic precedence for secession when in 1861 the diocese broke with federation.
"We'll find a way to go through this that brings honor and glory to God and as a witness to the world." The Episcopal Church has already resorted to the courts. "I don't think the innovating inclusive, diverse church doesn't think that is consistent with the gospel we are called to proclaim."
Ackerman said that as the Bishop of Quincy he had inherited a constitution that says, "We are a diocese in the Anglican Communion. As president of Forward in Faith North America we have officially asked for the reunification and realignment of Anglicanism."
Ackerman said the bishops' time here in Pittsburgh was spent largely on mission evangelism and the sharing of resources with which God has gifted us. "It was not a purely political time; only two sessions of six were devoted to documents relating to the next ecclesial structure. Virtually no time was given to discussing TEC and their recent meeting in New Orleans."
During his sermon in the cathedral, Duncan said that there hasn't been an Archbishop of Canterbury worth killing since 1645, citing Anglican historian Philip Jenkins.
END
By David W. Virtue in Pittsburgh
www.virtueonline.org
9/28/2007
Anglican bishops from ten jurisdictions and organizations took their first steps toward a "new ecclesiastical structure" in North America, it was announced by Common Cause Council of Bishops in Trinity Cathedral, Pittsburgh today.
Calling it an "historic time" in the life of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, chair of Common Cause, said that 51 bishops will act as a "college of bishops" representing more than 600 Anglican congregations that make up Common Cause Partners which also includes a dozen mission leaders.
"This is a significant step towards a new Anglican province that will be recognized by a number of Anglican provinces and primates which embraces Common Cause Partners with a separate ecclesiastical structure called for by the bishops in Kilgali, Rwanda," said Duncan.
"We have been told by the General Convention that we are to be engaged in ecumenical dialogue with various groups that have not had a link with Anglicans," said Ackerman.
"We are confronted with the reality that there are numerous people in North America who consider themselves to be Anglican and thus it would be contrary to our Lord's call for unity not to be engaged actively in the reunification," Ackerman continued.
The bishops laid out a timeline for the path ahead saying they have committed themselves to working together at local and regional levels agreeing to interchangeable deployment of clergy. The bishops gathered here included leaders from the Anglican Province of America, (the Most Rev. Walter Grundorf), the Reformed Episcopal Church, (Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches), the AMIA (Bishop Chuck Murphy), the head of the Canadian Anglican Network, and newly elected bishops from some 15 offshore jurisdictions in Africa, Asia and the Southern Cone now with ecclesiastical bases in North America, as well as Forward in Faith, NA.
Asked by VirtueOnline if the Archbishop of Canterbury would recognize the new structure, Duncan said he did not expect immediate recognition, but "we will make our case" to him.
"We need to go to our partner provinces first, and then talk with the Archbishop of Canterbury."
Asked why it was necessary to form a new jurisdiction, Duncan replied it was because of the drift of the church in the West. Duncan said, when he was briefly in New Orleans, he spoke directly to Dr. Williams describing two very different understandings of the church. One is guided by the Word of God incarnate and the Word of God written, which he said embodied standards of faithfulness, holiness and spiritual fruitfulness. The other defines the wholeness of the church as a matter of inclusion and diversity without reference to revelation.
CANA bishop Martyn Minns said the bishops are working together rather than fragmentmentally and this was a "testimony of our working together."
Quincy Bishop and FIFNA president Keith Ackerman pointed to the 1998 Lambeth resolution that called for the reunification of the various continuing church bodies, "that we all may be one." The Episcopal Church's General Convention subsequently passed this.
Questioned by VOL about the legal, judicial and pastoral implications for his diocese, if it should attempt to pull out of the Episcopal Church, Duncan said that the Diocese of Pittsburgh's 142nd convention pointed to a majority of the diocese wanting "realignment."
"The Episcopal Church has not provided the room for us," he said. Duncan said this diocese was founded before The Episcopal Church came into existence and that there was historic precedence for secession when in 1861 the diocese broke with federation.
"We'll find a way to go through this that brings honor and glory to God and as a witness to the world." The Episcopal Church has already resorted to the courts. "I don't think the innovating inclusive, diverse church doesn't think that is consistent with the gospel we are called to proclaim."
Ackerman said that as the Bishop of Quincy he had inherited a constitution that says, "We are a diocese in the Anglican Communion. As president of Forward in Faith North America we have officially asked for the reunification and realignment of Anglicanism."
Ackerman said the bishops' time here in Pittsburgh was spent largely on mission evangelism and the sharing of resources with which God has gifted us. "It was not a purely political time; only two sessions of six were devoted to documents relating to the next ecclesial structure. Virtually no time was given to discussing TEC and their recent meeting in New Orleans."
During his sermon in the cathedral, Duncan said that there hasn't been an Archbishop of Canterbury worth killing since 1645, citing Anglican historian Philip Jenkins.
END
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Episcopal Bishops Reject Anglican Church’s Orders
September 26, 2007
By NEELA BANERJEE
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 25 — Bishops of the Episcopal Church on Tuesday rejected demands by leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to roll back the church’s liberal stance on homosexuality, increasing the possibility of fracture within the communion and the Episcopal Church itself.
After nearly a week of talks at their semiannual meeting in New Orleans, the House of Bishops adopted a resolution that defied a directive by the Anglican Communion’s regional leaders, or primates, to change several church policies regarding the place of gay men and lesbians in their church. But the bishops also expressed a desire to remain part of the communion, and they appeared to be trying to stake out a middle ground that would allow them to do so.
Still, up to five American dioceses led by theologically conservative bishops may try to break with the Episcopal Church and place themselves under the oversight of a foreign primate in the coming months, said the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, a conservative Episcopal strategist.
“We’ll have the chaos here increase as more individuals, parishes and dioceses begin moving,” Mr. Harmon said. “What will happen is that we will see more of the disunity here spread to the rest of the communion.”
In a voice vote, all but one bishop supported a resolution, called “A Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by Our Anglican Communion Partners.” Several conservative bishops who are considering leaving the Episcopal Church were not in attendance.
The resolution affirmed the status quo of the Episcopal Church, both theological conservatives and liberals said.
It states, for example, that it “reconfirms” a call to bishops “to exercise restraint” by not consenting to the consecration of a partnered gay bishop. It also says the bishops promise not to authorize “any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions.” Still, some bishops allow such blessings to occur in their dioceses. Both positions have been stated in past meetings of the governing body of the church, the General Convention.
The resolution also calls for an “immediate end” to the practice of foreign bishops’ consecrating conservative Americans to minister to breakaway congregations in the United States, a trend that church leaders believe undermines their authority.
The Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a prominent conservative group supported by the Archbishop of Nigeria, responded to the bishops’ resolution: “They’re offering business as usual. The communion asked them to make a change, to embrace the teaching of the communion about homosexuality, and there’s no change at all.”
The Anglican Communion in 1998 denounced homosexuality as incompatible with Scripture. Bishop Minns spoke from a meeting in Pittsburgh where he and leaders of as many as 50 breakaway groups were discussing how to cooperate and avoid further splintering.
Contrary to recent news reports that the conservatives were close to forming a unified new structure, Bishop Minns said there were no plans to announce the formation of a new Anglican body that would consolidate all the conservative groups that have broken with the Episcopal Church under one umbrella.
The dispute over homosexuality has simmered for at least 30 years, as part of a larger clash about biblical interpretations and primacy. Tensions worsened when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
At a February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 36 primates of the Anglican Communion issued the directive on gay bishops and same-sex unions. They also demanded that the Episcopal Church create a parallel leadership structure to serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose the stance on homosexuality.
The communiqué held out the possibility of a diminished status for the Episcopal Church in the communion if it did not satisfy the primates’ demands.
In March, Episcopal bishops rejected the parallel structure, saying it would compromise church autonomy. At the time, the Episcopal bishops sent an urgent invitation to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, to meet with them in New Orleans, which he did last week, along with other Anglican leaders.
At a news conference in New Orleans on Friday, Archbishop Williams said that other Anglican leaders at this week’s meetings would be “reading and digesting what the bishops have to say” and would share their opinions with him. He said he would also talk to primates and others and then give his own opinion about what to do in the coming weeks.
Bishops in New Orleans said the Dar es Salaam communiqué galvanized them, despite their differing views on homosexuality, largely because of what they considered efforts by foreign primates to interfere in the life of the Episcopal Church.
The communiqué’s idea of outside oversight for dissident Episcopal dioceses and the recent consecrations of bishops to serve breakaway congregations violated most bishops’ notions of local authority and appropriate interactions among provinces of the communion, bishops said.
Some bishops said they have reconciled themselves to the fact that some kind of break in the Episcopal Church or the greater communion is inevitable. If several months ago, a sizable number of bishops would have argued for the unity of the communion at almost any cost, far fewer would do so now, several bishops said.
But others argued that the bishops had sought to prevent a split by agreeing not to ordain more gay bishops or to formalize rites for same-sex unions.
“I think they had a sense of what the communion needed to hear from them, and I think that they said it,” Jim Naughton, canon for communications and advancement of the Diocese of Washington, said of the bishops.
“We wanted to give the people working to hold the Anglican Communion together a useful tool to help them do that,” he added. “At the same time, we did not want to backtrack on our commitment to gay and lesbian Christians. It’s our sense that this resolution has accomplished that.”
Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.
By NEELA BANERJEE
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 25 — Bishops of the Episcopal Church on Tuesday rejected demands by leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to roll back the church’s liberal stance on homosexuality, increasing the possibility of fracture within the communion and the Episcopal Church itself.
After nearly a week of talks at their semiannual meeting in New Orleans, the House of Bishops adopted a resolution that defied a directive by the Anglican Communion’s regional leaders, or primates, to change several church policies regarding the place of gay men and lesbians in their church. But the bishops also expressed a desire to remain part of the communion, and they appeared to be trying to stake out a middle ground that would allow them to do so.
Still, up to five American dioceses led by theologically conservative bishops may try to break with the Episcopal Church and place themselves under the oversight of a foreign primate in the coming months, said the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, a conservative Episcopal strategist.
“We’ll have the chaos here increase as more individuals, parishes and dioceses begin moving,” Mr. Harmon said. “What will happen is that we will see more of the disunity here spread to the rest of the communion.”
In a voice vote, all but one bishop supported a resolution, called “A Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by Our Anglican Communion Partners.” Several conservative bishops who are considering leaving the Episcopal Church were not in attendance.
The resolution affirmed the status quo of the Episcopal Church, both theological conservatives and liberals said.
It states, for example, that it “reconfirms” a call to bishops “to exercise restraint” by not consenting to the consecration of a partnered gay bishop. It also says the bishops promise not to authorize “any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions.” Still, some bishops allow such blessings to occur in their dioceses. Both positions have been stated in past meetings of the governing body of the church, the General Convention.
The resolution also calls for an “immediate end” to the practice of foreign bishops’ consecrating conservative Americans to minister to breakaway congregations in the United States, a trend that church leaders believe undermines their authority.
The Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a prominent conservative group supported by the Archbishop of Nigeria, responded to the bishops’ resolution: “They’re offering business as usual. The communion asked them to make a change, to embrace the teaching of the communion about homosexuality, and there’s no change at all.”
The Anglican Communion in 1998 denounced homosexuality as incompatible with Scripture. Bishop Minns spoke from a meeting in Pittsburgh where he and leaders of as many as 50 breakaway groups were discussing how to cooperate and avoid further splintering.
Contrary to recent news reports that the conservatives were close to forming a unified new structure, Bishop Minns said there were no plans to announce the formation of a new Anglican body that would consolidate all the conservative groups that have broken with the Episcopal Church under one umbrella.
The dispute over homosexuality has simmered for at least 30 years, as part of a larger clash about biblical interpretations and primacy. Tensions worsened when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
At a February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 36 primates of the Anglican Communion issued the directive on gay bishops and same-sex unions. They also demanded that the Episcopal Church create a parallel leadership structure to serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose the stance on homosexuality.
The communiqué held out the possibility of a diminished status for the Episcopal Church in the communion if it did not satisfy the primates’ demands.
In March, Episcopal bishops rejected the parallel structure, saying it would compromise church autonomy. At the time, the Episcopal bishops sent an urgent invitation to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, to meet with them in New Orleans, which he did last week, along with other Anglican leaders.
At a news conference in New Orleans on Friday, Archbishop Williams said that other Anglican leaders at this week’s meetings would be “reading and digesting what the bishops have to say” and would share their opinions with him. He said he would also talk to primates and others and then give his own opinion about what to do in the coming weeks.
Bishops in New Orleans said the Dar es Salaam communiqué galvanized them, despite their differing views on homosexuality, largely because of what they considered efforts by foreign primates to interfere in the life of the Episcopal Church.
The communiqué’s idea of outside oversight for dissident Episcopal dioceses and the recent consecrations of bishops to serve breakaway congregations violated most bishops’ notions of local authority and appropriate interactions among provinces of the communion, bishops said.
Some bishops said they have reconciled themselves to the fact that some kind of break in the Episcopal Church or the greater communion is inevitable. If several months ago, a sizable number of bishops would have argued for the unity of the communion at almost any cost, far fewer would do so now, several bishops said.
But others argued that the bishops had sought to prevent a split by agreeing not to ordain more gay bishops or to formalize rites for same-sex unions.
“I think they had a sense of what the communion needed to hear from them, and I think that they said it,” Jim Naughton, canon for communications and advancement of the Diocese of Washington, said of the bishops.
“We wanted to give the people working to hold the Anglican Communion together a useful tool to help them do that,” he added. “At the same time, we did not want to backtrack on our commitment to gay and lesbian Christians. It’s our sense that this resolution has accomplished that.”
Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Anglican Centre in Rome - Post Open for Applications
ACNS 4318 | ROME | 18 SEPTEMBER 2007
Applications are invited for the post of Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Governors of the Anglican Centre in Rome wish to appoint a new Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome to succeed the Rt Revd John Flack who is retiring on 28 February 2008 after nearly five years in the post.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams paid tribute to Bishop
John:
"Bishop John has held this office during a crucial period of change and challenge both for Roman Catholics and for Anglicans. Throughout his time, serving with enormous energy, distinction and warmth, both as pastor and diplomat, he has built up the work of the Anglican Centre in Rome as well as developing our relationships with the Vatican. His successor will be able to build on his achievements and take forward this vital work."
Replacing Bishop Flack involves finding a person of experience and stature, an ordained Anglican, ideally a Bishop of the Anglican Communion. The post-holder acts as a two-way ambassador between the Vatican and both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the wider Anglican Communion. The post-holder is also the Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome and as a consequence the role is multi-layered, binding together ambassadorial, educational, pastoral and interpretative elements. The person needs to be theologically able with good linguistic ability. A knowledge of Italian is preferable and a willingness and ability to learn Italian is essential. Accommodation is provided at the Anglican Centre in Rome, which occupies a large apartment within Palazzo Doria Pamphilj at the heart of historic Rome.
Applications are being invited for the post, which is expected to be for a three to five year period.
Further details and an application form are available on request from: Steven Cooper Lambeth Palace London SE1 7JU United Kingdom
E-mail: steven.cooper@lambethpalace.org.uk
Fax: +44 20 7401 9886
All enquiries and applications will be treated in confidence. The closing date for applications is 15 October 2007
See the website at www.anglicancentreinrome.org
___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
Applications are invited for the post of Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Governors of the Anglican Centre in Rome wish to appoint a new Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome to succeed the Rt Revd John Flack who is retiring on 28 February 2008 after nearly five years in the post.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams paid tribute to Bishop
John:
"Bishop John has held this office during a crucial period of change and challenge both for Roman Catholics and for Anglicans. Throughout his time, serving with enormous energy, distinction and warmth, both as pastor and diplomat, he has built up the work of the Anglican Centre in Rome as well as developing our relationships with the Vatican. His successor will be able to build on his achievements and take forward this vital work."
Replacing Bishop Flack involves finding a person of experience and stature, an ordained Anglican, ideally a Bishop of the Anglican Communion. The post-holder acts as a two-way ambassador between the Vatican and both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the wider Anglican Communion. The post-holder is also the Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome and as a consequence the role is multi-layered, binding together ambassadorial, educational, pastoral and interpretative elements. The person needs to be theologically able with good linguistic ability. A knowledge of Italian is preferable and a willingness and ability to learn Italian is essential. Accommodation is provided at the Anglican Centre in Rome, which occupies a large apartment within Palazzo Doria Pamphilj at the heart of historic Rome.
Applications are being invited for the post, which is expected to be for a three to five year period.
Further details and an application form are available on request from: Steven Cooper Lambeth Palace London SE1 7JU United Kingdom
E-mail: steven.cooper@lambethpalace.org.uk
Fax: +44 20 7401 9886
All enquiries and applications will be treated in confidence. The closing date for applications is 15 October 2007
See the website at www.anglicancentreinrome.org
___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
EL PASO, TX: Largest Parish in Diocese of Rio Grande Exits The Episcopal Church
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/16/2007
The 700-member St. Clements Pro-Cathedral, the largest parish in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, voted today to leave The Episcopal Church in a $2 million property deal that they believe will allow them to keep their property.
"We are overjoyed that this was an amicable separation," said a source in a phone call to VirtueOnline. The church and the diocese will issue a joint press release next week.
The Rector and Vestry have been negotiating with the Diocese of the Rio Grande in an effort to reach an agreement to present to the congregation for its approval on September 16.
In a parish vote Sunday, 460 voted 'yea' and 41 voted 'nay' to approve an agreement with the diocese to pay the $2 million which settles the claims by the diocese and allows St. Clements to leave with its property.
The evangelical parish has experienced tremendous spiritual growth following an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1973 at a Faith Alive gathering and has continued to see remarkable growth. The staff includes four priests including the rector and two deacons.
A spokesman for the parish said that the parish had no intention of affiliating at this time with another Anglican jurisdiction, but will stay as members of the Anglican Communion Network and Anglican Partners for Global Mission.
The church has been paying its apportionment of $200,000 a year to the diocese. The spokesman said that of the $2 million, $1 million will come from a Trust Fund and the other $1 million will be borrowed.
St. Clements is the largest missionary supporting church in El Paso giving ten percent of its income directly to mission partners around the world. The church supports approximately 40 missionaries and other strategic partners. The parish is on the border of Mexico and is a home base and launching pad for many missions to Juarez and other geographic locations in Mexico, a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, could not be reached for confirmation.
The parish website can be accessed here: http://www.stclements.com/
END
www.virtueonline.org
9/16/2007
The 700-member St. Clements Pro-Cathedral, the largest parish in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, voted today to leave The Episcopal Church in a $2 million property deal that they believe will allow them to keep their property.
"We are overjoyed that this was an amicable separation," said a source in a phone call to VirtueOnline. The church and the diocese will issue a joint press release next week.
The Rector and Vestry have been negotiating with the Diocese of the Rio Grande in an effort to reach an agreement to present to the congregation for its approval on September 16.
In a parish vote Sunday, 460 voted 'yea' and 41 voted 'nay' to approve an agreement with the diocese to pay the $2 million which settles the claims by the diocese and allows St. Clements to leave with its property.
The evangelical parish has experienced tremendous spiritual growth following an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1973 at a Faith Alive gathering and has continued to see remarkable growth. The staff includes four priests including the rector and two deacons.
A spokesman for the parish said that the parish had no intention of affiliating at this time with another Anglican jurisdiction, but will stay as members of the Anglican Communion Network and Anglican Partners for Global Mission.
The church has been paying its apportionment of $200,000 a year to the diocese. The spokesman said that of the $2 million, $1 million will come from a Trust Fund and the other $1 million will be borrowed.
St. Clements is the largest missionary supporting church in El Paso giving ten percent of its income directly to mission partners around the world. The church supports approximately 40 missionaries and other strategic partners. The parish is on the border of Mexico and is a home base and launching pad for many missions to Juarez and other geographic locations in Mexico, a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, could not be reached for confirmation.
The parish website can be accessed here: http://www.stclements.com/
END
Saturday, September 15, 2007
EL PASO: Episcopal Pro-Cathedral may break national ties
By María Cortes González
El Paso Times
http://tinyurl.com/ytvcab
9/15/2007
Following a national trend of exodus, members of the Pro Cathedral Church of St. Clement in Downtown El Paso plan to meet Sunday to vote on whether to leave the Episcopal Church of the United States.
"The Episcopal Church has been gradually moving away from the historic Christian faith for decades, and in recent years has questioned such foundational doctrines as salvation through Christ alone and the authority of the Bible," the Rev. Bill Cobb said.
"We are a very vibrant, dedicated church that is extremely active in carrying out Christ's mission, and we feel that the Episcopal Church is going in a very different direction than we are," he said.
Cobb said more than 200 congregations have left the Episcopal church since 2003 because they believe the church has moved away from tradition and Scripture and because a new prayer book was adopted.
Also highly controversial was the 2003 ordination in New Hampshire of the first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson.
Cobb said the vast majority of Anglican bishops agreed that Anglican churches should not ordain those who are in same-gender unions.
"This is the official teaching for the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal Church has rejected this position. I believe that the Bible teaches that Christians should should either be married or abstain from sex, and that leaders should be an example to the church," he said.
The representative for the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque could not be reached for comment.
END
El Paso Times
http://tinyurl.com/ytvcab
9/15/2007
Following a national trend of exodus, members of the Pro Cathedral Church of St. Clement in Downtown El Paso plan to meet Sunday to vote on whether to leave the Episcopal Church of the United States.
"The Episcopal Church has been gradually moving away from the historic Christian faith for decades, and in recent years has questioned such foundational doctrines as salvation through Christ alone and the authority of the Bible," the Rev. Bill Cobb said.
"We are a very vibrant, dedicated church that is extremely active in carrying out Christ's mission, and we feel that the Episcopal Church is going in a very different direction than we are," he said.
Cobb said more than 200 congregations have left the Episcopal church since 2003 because they believe the church has moved away from tradition and Scripture and because a new prayer book was adopted.
Also highly controversial was the 2003 ordination in New Hampshire of the first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson.
Cobb said the vast majority of Anglican bishops agreed that Anglican churches should not ordain those who are in same-gender unions.
"This is the official teaching for the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal Church has rejected this position. I believe that the Bible teaches that Christians should should either be married or abstain from sex, and that leaders should be an example to the church," he said.
The representative for the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque could not be reached for comment.
END
Friday, September 14, 2007
Growing Together in Unity and Mission: Building on 40 years of Anglican - Roman Catholic Dialogue
ACNS 4316 | ACO | 14 SEPTEMBER 2007
On Friday 14 September, the Anglican Communion Office and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity's Information Service are releasing the definitive text of the report of the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). The report, entitled Growing Together in the Unity and Mission, offers to the Anglican Communion and to the Roman Catholic Church a concise summary of 40 years of Anglican-Roman Catholic theological dialogue. It sets out both areas of convergence and agreement, as well as outstanding areas of difficulty and continuing dialogue. It then proceeds to explore how Anglicans and Roman Catholics can work ecumenically towards a shared vision of Christian unity and in service of the Gospel in practical and straightforward initiatives.
Accompanying the publication of the text are two commentaries. The Anglican Communion Office is publishing a commentary by Bishop Paul Richardson, Assistant Bishop in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, and the PCPCU's Information Service, a commentary by Bishop Bernard Longley, Auxiliary Bishop in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster. These commentaries aim to offer a first appraisal of the report from the perspectives of each of the traditions.
The report "Growing Together in Unity and Mission" has been written with the ecumenical ministry of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops around the world in mind. It will form a central text for consideration at next year's Lambeth Conference. The electronic release of the text follows its publication in printed format by SPCK for Anglican audiences at the time of the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam in February this year, but at this stage the report is commended for study by both the Anglican Consultative Council and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The Publication and accompanying commentaries are available here: http://www.aco.org/ecumenical/dialogues/rc/index.cfm
___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
On Friday 14 September, the Anglican Communion Office and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity's Information Service are releasing the definitive text of the report of the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). The report, entitled Growing Together in the Unity and Mission, offers to the Anglican Communion and to the Roman Catholic Church a concise summary of 40 years of Anglican-Roman Catholic theological dialogue. It sets out both areas of convergence and agreement, as well as outstanding areas of difficulty and continuing dialogue. It then proceeds to explore how Anglicans and Roman Catholics can work ecumenically towards a shared vision of Christian unity and in service of the Gospel in practical and straightforward initiatives.
Accompanying the publication of the text are two commentaries. The Anglican Communion Office is publishing a commentary by Bishop Paul Richardson, Assistant Bishop in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, and the PCPCU's Information Service, a commentary by Bishop Bernard Longley, Auxiliary Bishop in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster. These commentaries aim to offer a first appraisal of the report from the perspectives of each of the traditions.
The report "Growing Together in Unity and Mission" has been written with the ecumenical ministry of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops around the world in mind. It will form a central text for consideration at next year's Lambeth Conference. The electronic release of the text follows its publication in printed format by SPCK for Anglican audiences at the time of the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam in February this year, but at this stage the report is commended for study by both the Anglican Consultative Council and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The Publication and accompanying commentaries are available here: http://www.aco.org/ecumenical/dialogues/rc/index.cfm
___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Pro-Life Group Wants Anglican Church to Have Stronger Abortion Stance
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 13, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life group working within the Anglican Church has launched a petition drive to ask the archbishops and bishops of the Anglican Communion to take a stronger stance against abortion. The group says the church has always enunciated a pro-life position but never an official one.
Georgette Forney, the president of Anglicans for Life, tells LifeNews.com that her group hopes the Anglican Communion will proclaim that the Anglican Church affirms the sacredness of every life, including unborn children.
The petition drive is asking for that official statement during the June 2008 Lambeth Conference, a meeting of all bishops and archbishops of the Anglican Communion held once every decade.
The worldwide petition for both laity and ordained members of the church says the Lambeth Conference resolutions passed since 1930 show that the Anglican Communion has consistently upheld the biblical view of the sanctity of life.
Forney says the conference has expressed concern about abortion but never officially declared itself to be pro-life.
"We need our Archbishops and Bishops to state unequivocally what the Anglican Communion believes regarding life, abortion and euthanasia," she told LifeNews.com.
Forney also wants to see pro-life language make it into the Anglican Covenant the church is formulating.
"Anglicans for Life believes that it is time for the Anglican Communion to take a stand concerning the dignity of life," Forney explained.
Her group will collect signatures from now through March 2008 and will present them to the bishops at the Lambeth Conference along with a proposed resolution to affirm the sanctity of life. Anglicans for Life is circulating the petition through its 75 chapters throughout the US, the UK and Africa and online at its web site.
Anglicans for Life, formerly the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, hopes to collect at least 100,000 signatures before the conference begins.
Related web sites:
Anglicans for Life - http://www.AnglicansforLife.org
LifeNews.com Editor
September 13, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life group working within the Anglican Church has launched a petition drive to ask the archbishops and bishops of the Anglican Communion to take a stronger stance against abortion. The group says the church has always enunciated a pro-life position but never an official one.
Georgette Forney, the president of Anglicans for Life, tells LifeNews.com that her group hopes the Anglican Communion will proclaim that the Anglican Church affirms the sacredness of every life, including unborn children.
The petition drive is asking for that official statement during the June 2008 Lambeth Conference, a meeting of all bishops and archbishops of the Anglican Communion held once every decade.
The worldwide petition for both laity and ordained members of the church says the Lambeth Conference resolutions passed since 1930 show that the Anglican Communion has consistently upheld the biblical view of the sanctity of life.
Forney says the conference has expressed concern about abortion but never officially declared itself to be pro-life.
"We need our Archbishops and Bishops to state unequivocally what the Anglican Communion believes regarding life, abortion and euthanasia," she told LifeNews.com.
Forney also wants to see pro-life language make it into the Anglican Covenant the church is formulating.
"Anglicans for Life believes that it is time for the Anglican Communion to take a stand concerning the dignity of life," Forney explained.
Her group will collect signatures from now through March 2008 and will present them to the bishops at the Lambeth Conference along with a proposed resolution to affirm the sanctity of life. Anglicans for Life is circulating the petition through its 75 chapters throughout the US, the UK and Africa and online at its web site.
Anglicans for Life, formerly the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, hopes to collect at least 100,000 signatures before the conference begins.
Related web sites:
Anglicans for Life - http://www.AnglicansforLife.org
Monday, September 10, 2007
Archbishop of Canterbury: Sept 11th - lessons from history for faith and civil society
ACNS 4314 | LAMBETH | 10 SEPTEMBER 2007
Tonight in a lecture to the Christian Muslim Forum Conference in Cambridge Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury will consider the events and consequences of two events in history sharing the date of September 11th.
Dr Williams compares "the act of nightmare violence" of September 11th 2001 and the chain of retaliation, fear and misery" it unleashed with the public meeting in Johannesburg on September 11th in 1906 (attended by people of Muslim, Hindu and Christian faiths) at which Gandhi's non-violent protest movement - the Satyagraha movement - was born.
It was a movement which put principles into action but which rejected violence; a sort of "'soul force' whose central principle was that our behaviour must witness to truth whatever the cost - and that this witness to truth can never, of its very nature, involve violence or a response to oppression that simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor."
Dr Williams says that it must be part of the work of the Christian Muslim Forum "to recover that sense of a convergent belief in the possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle, in a way that genuinely opens doors in our world."
He recounts Gandhi's words to his audience, who were angered by the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for Indians in South Africa, reminding them that their resistance was not about power:
"We do not resist [Gandhi said] in such a way that we appear to be seeking the same kind of power as is now injuring or frustrating us. We do not imitate anything except the truth: our model is the divine communication of what is good".
He was underlining, in Dr Williams' words, that "commitment to God in their work for justice involved them in an act of renunciation in the name of truth, the renunciation of any style of living and acting that simply reproduced the ordinary anxieties and exchanges of force that constitute the routine of human society".
Reflecting on the lessons of both anniversaries Dr Williams argues for the place of authentic religion in society - religion which does not compete for influence or power or resort to violence. In fact the claims of religion must be the reverse:
"The nature of an authentically religious community is made visible in its admission of dependence on God - which means both that it does not fight for position for position and power and that it will not see itself existing just by the license of human society. It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict".
Dr Williams argues that the Church's place in civil society is at its most unique when it encourages the human vision of responsibility and justice for a common good, beyond the constraints of conventional political power:
The Church "... needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share of ordinary political power ... the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment."
The strength of the Church's contribution to civil society is, he says, the commitment of Christians to their belief, as 'trustees' of God's truth and authority in human society;
"The Church is ..... the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it one where each recognizes their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all. The Church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him."
He goes on to insist that this vision is found and worked out at the level of the individual:
"The dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them. This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies."
Finally Dr Williams addresses the question of jihad and the possible convergence of the Christian and Muslim approach to religious witness in
society: "Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift". "They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy."
ENDS
Notes for editors:
The Archbishop will be giving the lecture tonight at 6.30pm at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, as part of the annual conference for the Christian Muslim Forum.
Further details about the conference are available from Simon Cohen 0845 054 0064, 0774 574 0013, simon@globaltolerance.com
Enquiries about the lecture should be made to Marie Papworth at Lambeth Palace 020 7898 1280
Please find full text below.
Faith Communities in a Civil Society - Christian Perspectives
On September 11th, 1906, Mohandas Gandhi addressed a meeting of some 3,000 people in the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg to protest against the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for all Indians in South Africa - part of the first wave in the terrible history of legal racism in South Africa which ended at last in the final decade of the last century. It was a Muslim in the audience, Haji Habib, who first proposed that the decision for non-violent resistance to the legislation should be taken 'in the name of God'. Gandhi stressed the great solemnity of such a form of words, but the meeting rose to affirm this as their will. The satyagraha movement was born, the movement of 'soul force' whose central principle was that our behaviour must witness to truth whatever the cost - and that this witness to truth can never, of its very nature, involve violence or a response to oppression that simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor. In Gandhi's vision, Christ's prohibition against retaliation came together with his own Hindu heritage to inspire a lifetime of absolutely consistent labour on behalf of this 'soul power'; and on that day in Johannesburg, as at many other points in his life, Gandhi was wholeheartedly supported by his Muslim allies.
The ironies don't need to be spelled out today. It is also the anniversary of an act of nightmare violence which has set in motion a further chain of retaliation, fear and misery. In 1906, the convergence of traditions and disciplines of faith signalled the possibility of escaping from the calculations of ordinary political struggle, the world in which we simply go on imitating the behaviour that has damaged us in the insane hope that we might somehow arrive at a point where someone has a sufficient monopoly of the power to generate fear to guarantee stability. A hundred and one years on, that system of political calculation seems stronger than ever in much of our world; and worse still, religious communities are regularly blamed for its persistence and power. If we ask whether the coming together of religious groups works today as a sign of hope, the response from a good part of the educated public is not very encouraging. Part of our agenda, then, both in the working of the Christian-Muslim Forum and in the discussions of this meeting, has to be to recover that sense of a convergent belief in the possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle, in a way that genuinely opens doors in our world.
Gandhi's own conversion to a consistent philosophy of non-violence was, he tells us in My Experiments with Truth (p.195), greatly assisted by an insight that brought together legal training with his study of the Gita: 'I understood the Gita teaching of non-possession to mean that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee, who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.' This offers a very useful way in to the question of what it is that makes or ought to make the perspective of religious faith liberatingly distinctive in human society - both in the sense Gandhi intended and in a much wider and more radical sense. Gandhi is reflecting on the emphasis in the Bhagavad-Gita on detachment: our natural or instinctive way of operating in the world is to imagine ourselves as controlling both our own destiny and the conditions in which we live, so that we struggle for the conditions that promise us such control. But the divine imperative is that our actions should be determined not by this but by the fixed resolve to act in accordance with the truth - that is, with the truth of who and what he actually are both in society and in the universe itself. When we have learned to act in this way, we are free from fear; we give up the anxious effort to master our circumstances by force. Who we are and what we have come to us from God, and what they communicate to us of God's goodness can never be lost; so it is possible for us to see both who we are and what we have as given for the sake of others. Hence we are trustees: we own nothing absolutely, but are commissioned to communicate to others in spiritual and in directly practical ways the assurance that God has given us.
Gandhian satyagraha is thus rooted in an attitude which, in his eyes, should be fundamental to all religious practice and belief worth the name, an attitude that relativizes the claim of the self to absolute possession or absolute control. But it does not entail - as the superficial observer might think - absolute passivity or the acceptance of injustice; as Gandhi's witness so consistently shows, it is rather that it dictates the way in which we resist. We do not resist in such a way that we appear to be seeking the same kind of power as is now injuring or frustrating us. We do not imitate anything except the
truth: our model is the divine communication of what is good. But beyond this obvious principle is the further point which Gandhi implies but does not fully state: belief itself is not a possession, something acquired by the ego that will henceforth satisfy the ego's needs for security and control. To believe in God is to be a 'trustee' of God's truth. My belief is not a thing I own; I might say, truthfully enough, that it 'owns' me, that I am at its service, not that it is at mine. When I claim truth for my religious convictions, it is not a claim that my opinion or belief is superior, but a confession that I have resolved to be unreservedly at the service of the reality that has changed my world and set me free from the enslavement of struggle and rivalry. To witness to this in the hope that others will share it is not an exercise in conquest, in signing up more adherents to my party, but simply the offer of a liberation and absolution that has been gratuitously offered to me. When Gandhi reminded his Johannesburg audience that a promise made in the name of God was a serious matter, he was underlining for them the fact that commitment to God in their work for justice involved them in an act of renunciation in the name of truth, the renunciation of any style of living and acting that simply reproduced the ordinary anxieties and exchanges of force that constitute the routine of human society.
Now not all of us are going to agree about how far the claims of Gandhi's legacy extend, how far he was able to see their full implications within his own Indian context or how they are to be implemented in our contemporary setting. But if we are asking about the place of religious commitment in modern civil society, it seems to me that these aspects of his vision of satyagraha are a very suggestive starting-point. What he is asserting is that the religious witness is at its most clearly distinctive in society when it most plainly declares itself answerable to an order quite beyond the balances and negotiations of social conflict and its containments; and when it thus renounces the claim to have a place among others in the social complex.
This is, I grant, a startling way of putting it; surely what any religious believer wants is to have the voice of faith heard within the pluralist debate, to have a guaranteed place at the table? Surely that's why we are discussing the whole question of faith and civil society and why we want to answer once and for all the reproach that religion is a dangerous and destabilizing presence in our culture? Well, yes; but the point which Gandhi invites us to consider is that we shall persuade our culture about this only when religion ceases to appear as yet another human group hungry for security, privilege and the liberty to enforce its convictions. To have faith, Gandhi might say, is to hold something in trust for humanity - a vision of who and what humanity is in relation to a truth that does not depend on worldly victory. And to witness to a truth that does not depend on worldly victory - a truth that, in Plato's terms, is not just the interest of the strong or successful - implies that we do not battle for its survival or triumph in the way that interests and parties do in the world around us. In a paradox that never ceases to challenge and puzzle both believers and unbelievers, it is when we are free from the passion to be taken seriously, to be protected or indeed to be obeyed that we are most likely to be heard. The convincing witness to faith is one for whom safety and success are immaterial, and one for whom therefore the exercise of violent force against another of different conviction is ruled out. And the nature of an authentically religious community is made visible in its admission of dependence on God - which means both that it does not fight for position and power and that it will not see itself as existing just by the license of human society. It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict.
All this is, for the Christian believer, rooted in the gospel narrative and in the reflections of the first Christians. Jesus himself in his trial before Pilate says that his royal authority does not derive from anything except the eternal truth which he himself embodies as the incarnate Word of God; only if his authority depended on some other source would his servants fight (Jn 18.36-7). Earthly authority needs to reinforce itself in conflict and dominance; if the community of Jesus' followers reinforced itself in such a way, it would be admitting that its claims were derived from this human order. The realm, the basileia, of God, to which Jesus' acts and words point is not a region within human society any more than it is a region within human geography; it is that condition of human relationships, public and private, where the purpose of God is determinative for men and women and so becomes visible in our history - a condition that can be partially realised in the life of the community around Jesus but waits for its full embodiment in a future only God knows. And for the first and second generations of believers, the community in which relation with the Risen Jesus transforms all relationships into the exchange of the gifts given by Jesus' Spirit has come to be seen as the historical foretaste of this future, as it is here and now the embodiment of Jesus' own identity - the Body of Christ - to the extent it shows this new quality of relation.
The Church is, in this perspective, the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression , the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it is one where each recognizes their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all. The Church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on its unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non-violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him. Within the volatile and plural context of a society that has no single frame of moral or religious reference, it makes two fundamental contributions to the common imagination and moral climate. The first is that it declares that, in virtue of everyone's primordial relation to God (made in God's image), the dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them. This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies.
But the point of this first contribution, as it affects civil society, is this: the presence of the Church, not as a clamorous interest group but as a community confident of its rootedness in something beyond the merely political, expresses a vision of human dignity and mutual human obligation which, because of its indifference to popular success or official legitimation, poses to every other community a special sort of challenge. 'Civil society' is the recognized shorthand description for all those varieties of human association that rest on willing co-operation for the sake of social goods that belong to the whole group, not just to any individual or faction, and which are not created or wholly controlled by state authority. As such, their very existence presupposes persons who are able to take responsibility for themselves and to trust one another in this enterprise. The presence of the Christian community puts to civil society the question of where we look for the foundation of such confidence about responsibility and
trustworthiness: does this set of assumptions about humanity rest on a fragile human agreement, on the decision of human beings to behave as if they were responsible, or on something deeper and less contingent, something to which any and every human society is finally answerable? Is the social creativity which civil society takes for granted part of a human 'birthright'?
The second major contribution made by the presence of the Church is what we might in shorthand call universalism - not in the technical theological sense, but simply meaning the conviction that every human agent is involved in either creating or frustrating a common good that relates to the whole human race. In plainer terms, we cannot as Christians settle down with the conclusion that what is lastingly and truly good for any one individual or group is completely different from what is lastingly and truly good for any other. Justice is not local in an exclusive sense or limited by circumstances; there are no classes or subgroups of humanity who are entitled to less of God's love; and so there are no classes entitled to lower levels of human respect or compassion or service. And since an important aspect of civil society is the assumption that human welfare is not achieved by utilitarian generalities imposed from above but requires active and particularized labour, the fact of the Christian community' presence once again puts the question of how human society holds together the need for action appropriate to specific and local conditions with the lively awareness of what is due to all people everywhere. This is not only about a vision of universal human justice as we normally think of it, but also applies to how we act justly towards those who are not yet born - how we
create a just understanding of our relation to the environment.
In short, the significance of the Church for civil society is in keeping alive a concern both to honour and to justify the absolute and non-negotiable character of the human vision of responsibility and justice that is at work in all human association for the common good. It is about connecting the life of civil society with its deepest roots, acknowledged or not. The conviction of being answerable to God for how we serve and respect God's human and non-human creation at the very least serves to ensure that the human search for shared welfare and responsible liberty will not be reduced to a matter of human consensus alone. And if the Church - or any other community of faith - asks of society the respect that will allow it to be itself, it does so not because it is anxious about its survival (which is in God's hands), but because it asks the freedom to remind the society or societies in which it lives of their own vulnerability and their need to stay close to some fundamental questions about the nature of the humanity they seek to nourish. Such a request from Church to society will be heard and responded to, of course, only if the Church genuinely looks as though it were speaking for more than a self-protecting set of 'religious' concerns; if it appears as concerned for something more than self-defence. To return to what was said earlier, it needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share in ordinary political power. To put it in severely condensed form, the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment; and to say 'credible' here is not to say 'popular', since engagement with this human health may run sharply against a prevailing consensus. Recent debates on euthanasia offer a case in point; and even here, it is surprisingly often claimed that the churches are concerned here only to sustain their control of human lives
- which sadly illustrates what all too many in our society have come to expect of the Church.
I have spoken so far, as I was invited to do, about the Christian understanding of the role of faith in civil society, and have attempted to connect it with some of the most fundamental elements of the Christian revelation - the absolute difference of the power and action of God as against human power (embodied in the fact of Jesus' crucifixion as the climax of God's incarnate work), and the universal promise offered in the Resurrection (embodied in the mission of the Church as mediating Christ's living presence). In doing this, of course, it is impossible not to be aware of the distinct ways in which other religious traditions understand their role in relation to the ambient society. As many have observed, Islam takes as central the conviction that the law and public practice of a society ought ideally to conform to revealed law; Muslims are often puzzled by the Christian insistence on separation between the religious and the political, and it might well be thought that the vision outlined here is so antithetical to the Islamic frame of reference that there is no possible convergence. Yet there are three considerations that should make us hesitate before settling for this conclusion. The first is that, in understanding divine law as universal and equally applicable to all, Islam, like Christianity, refuses to make faith either subservient to the social order or simply an aspect among others of social life: it is something that offers transformation to the entire range of human activity. The second is that Islam itself recognizes the reality of potential conflict between political power and faithful obedience to revealed law; nothing in Islamic tradition suggests that there could be a guarantee of fidelity to God simply through formal allegiance to Islam by the ruling authority, and the legitimacy of passive resistance to unjust authority is acknowledged. And third, the Qur'anic dictum that there is no compulsion in religion is the foundation for any Muslim account of the imperative of non-violence. This stands, of course, alongside the no less significant tradition of the imperative to jihad as the duty to defend the Muslim community wherever its integrity and survival are at risk; but the question which is bound to arise in our day is whether, given the complex realities of today's world, there would ever now be the kind of situation which would justify the same sort of defensive jihad that was envisaged in the earliest days of Islam - or whether those commentators are right who insist that the only jihad now justifiable is the struggle against evil in the heart and the resistance to a culture of cruelty and indifference to suffering, a struggle which of its nature must be non-violent.
I look forward to hearing reflection on this and related issues; but my chief point is that the convergence that occurred on this day in Johannesburg in 1906 was not an illusory or opportunistic affair. Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift. Yet for those very reasons, they carry in them the seeds of a non-violent and non-possessive witness. They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy. Because both our traditions have a history scarred by terrible betrayals of this, we have to approach our civil society and its institutions with humility and repentance. But I hope that this does not mean we shall surrender what is most important - that we have a gift to offer immeasurably greater than our own words or records, the gift of a divine calling and a renewal of all that is possible form human beings.
(c) Rowan Williams
___________________________________________________________________
ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
Tonight in a lecture to the Christian Muslim Forum Conference in Cambridge Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury will consider the events and consequences of two events in history sharing the date of September 11th.
Dr Williams compares "the act of nightmare violence" of September 11th 2001 and the chain of retaliation, fear and misery" it unleashed with the public meeting in Johannesburg on September 11th in 1906 (attended by people of Muslim, Hindu and Christian faiths) at which Gandhi's non-violent protest movement - the Satyagraha movement - was born.
It was a movement which put principles into action but which rejected violence; a sort of "'soul force' whose central principle was that our behaviour must witness to truth whatever the cost - and that this witness to truth can never, of its very nature, involve violence or a response to oppression that simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor."
Dr Williams says that it must be part of the work of the Christian Muslim Forum "to recover that sense of a convergent belief in the possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle, in a way that genuinely opens doors in our world."
He recounts Gandhi's words to his audience, who were angered by the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for Indians in South Africa, reminding them that their resistance was not about power:
"We do not resist [Gandhi said] in such a way that we appear to be seeking the same kind of power as is now injuring or frustrating us. We do not imitate anything except the truth: our model is the divine communication of what is good".
He was underlining, in Dr Williams' words, that "commitment to God in their work for justice involved them in an act of renunciation in the name of truth, the renunciation of any style of living and acting that simply reproduced the ordinary anxieties and exchanges of force that constitute the routine of human society".
Reflecting on the lessons of both anniversaries Dr Williams argues for the place of authentic religion in society - religion which does not compete for influence or power or resort to violence. In fact the claims of religion must be the reverse:
"The nature of an authentically religious community is made visible in its admission of dependence on God - which means both that it does not fight for position for position and power and that it will not see itself existing just by the license of human society. It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict".
Dr Williams argues that the Church's place in civil society is at its most unique when it encourages the human vision of responsibility and justice for a common good, beyond the constraints of conventional political power:
The Church "... needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share of ordinary political power ... the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment."
The strength of the Church's contribution to civil society is, he says, the commitment of Christians to their belief, as 'trustees' of God's truth and authority in human society;
"The Church is ..... the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it one where each recognizes their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all. The Church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him."
He goes on to insist that this vision is found and worked out at the level of the individual:
"The dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them. This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies."
Finally Dr Williams addresses the question of jihad and the possible convergence of the Christian and Muslim approach to religious witness in
society: "Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift". "They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy."
ENDS
Notes for editors:
The Archbishop will be giving the lecture tonight at 6.30pm at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, as part of the annual conference for the Christian Muslim Forum.
Further details about the conference are available from Simon Cohen 0845 054 0064, 0774 574 0013, simon@globaltolerance.com
Enquiries about the lecture should be made to Marie Papworth at Lambeth Palace 020 7898 1280
Please find full text below.
Faith Communities in a Civil Society - Christian Perspectives
On September 11th, 1906, Mohandas Gandhi addressed a meeting of some 3,000 people in the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg to protest against the introduction of registration and fingerprinting for all Indians in South Africa - part of the first wave in the terrible history of legal racism in South Africa which ended at last in the final decade of the last century. It was a Muslim in the audience, Haji Habib, who first proposed that the decision for non-violent resistance to the legislation should be taken 'in the name of God'. Gandhi stressed the great solemnity of such a form of words, but the meeting rose to affirm this as their will. The satyagraha movement was born, the movement of 'soul force' whose central principle was that our behaviour must witness to truth whatever the cost - and that this witness to truth can never, of its very nature, involve violence or a response to oppression that simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor. In Gandhi's vision, Christ's prohibition against retaliation came together with his own Hindu heritage to inspire a lifetime of absolutely consistent labour on behalf of this 'soul power'; and on that day in Johannesburg, as at many other points in his life, Gandhi was wholeheartedly supported by his Muslim allies.
The ironies don't need to be spelled out today. It is also the anniversary of an act of nightmare violence which has set in motion a further chain of retaliation, fear and misery. In 1906, the convergence of traditions and disciplines of faith signalled the possibility of escaping from the calculations of ordinary political struggle, the world in which we simply go on imitating the behaviour that has damaged us in the insane hope that we might somehow arrive at a point where someone has a sufficient monopoly of the power to generate fear to guarantee stability. A hundred and one years on, that system of political calculation seems stronger than ever in much of our world; and worse still, religious communities are regularly blamed for its persistence and power. If we ask whether the coming together of religious groups works today as a sign of hope, the response from a good part of the educated public is not very encouraging. Part of our agenda, then, both in the working of the Christian-Muslim Forum and in the discussions of this meeting, has to be to recover that sense of a convergent belief in the possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle, in a way that genuinely opens doors in our world.
Gandhi's own conversion to a consistent philosophy of non-violence was, he tells us in My Experiments with Truth (p.195), greatly assisted by an insight that brought together legal training with his study of the Gita: 'I understood the Gita teaching of non-possession to mean that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee, who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.' This offers a very useful way in to the question of what it is that makes or ought to make the perspective of religious faith liberatingly distinctive in human society - both in the sense Gandhi intended and in a much wider and more radical sense. Gandhi is reflecting on the emphasis in the Bhagavad-Gita on detachment: our natural or instinctive way of operating in the world is to imagine ourselves as controlling both our own destiny and the conditions in which we live, so that we struggle for the conditions that promise us such control. But the divine imperative is that our actions should be determined not by this but by the fixed resolve to act in accordance with the truth - that is, with the truth of who and what he actually are both in society and in the universe itself. When we have learned to act in this way, we are free from fear; we give up the anxious effort to master our circumstances by force. Who we are and what we have come to us from God, and what they communicate to us of God's goodness can never be lost; so it is possible for us to see both who we are and what we have as given for the sake of others. Hence we are trustees: we own nothing absolutely, but are commissioned to communicate to others in spiritual and in directly practical ways the assurance that God has given us.
Gandhian satyagraha is thus rooted in an attitude which, in his eyes, should be fundamental to all religious practice and belief worth the name, an attitude that relativizes the claim of the self to absolute possession or absolute control. But it does not entail - as the superficial observer might think - absolute passivity or the acceptance of injustice; as Gandhi's witness so consistently shows, it is rather that it dictates the way in which we resist. We do not resist in such a way that we appear to be seeking the same kind of power as is now injuring or frustrating us. We do not imitate anything except the
truth: our model is the divine communication of what is good. But beyond this obvious principle is the further point which Gandhi implies but does not fully state: belief itself is not a possession, something acquired by the ego that will henceforth satisfy the ego's needs for security and control. To believe in God is to be a 'trustee' of God's truth. My belief is not a thing I own; I might say, truthfully enough, that it 'owns' me, that I am at its service, not that it is at mine. When I claim truth for my religious convictions, it is not a claim that my opinion or belief is superior, but a confession that I have resolved to be unreservedly at the service of the reality that has changed my world and set me free from the enslavement of struggle and rivalry. To witness to this in the hope that others will share it is not an exercise in conquest, in signing up more adherents to my party, but simply the offer of a liberation and absolution that has been gratuitously offered to me. When Gandhi reminded his Johannesburg audience that a promise made in the name of God was a serious matter, he was underlining for them the fact that commitment to God in their work for justice involved them in an act of renunciation in the name of truth, the renunciation of any style of living and acting that simply reproduced the ordinary anxieties and exchanges of force that constitute the routine of human society.
Now not all of us are going to agree about how far the claims of Gandhi's legacy extend, how far he was able to see their full implications within his own Indian context or how they are to be implemented in our contemporary setting. But if we are asking about the place of religious commitment in modern civil society, it seems to me that these aspects of his vision of satyagraha are a very suggestive starting-point. What he is asserting is that the religious witness is at its most clearly distinctive in society when it most plainly declares itself answerable to an order quite beyond the balances and negotiations of social conflict and its containments; and when it thus renounces the claim to have a place among others in the social complex.
This is, I grant, a startling way of putting it; surely what any religious believer wants is to have the voice of faith heard within the pluralist debate, to have a guaranteed place at the table? Surely that's why we are discussing the whole question of faith and civil society and why we want to answer once and for all the reproach that religion is a dangerous and destabilizing presence in our culture? Well, yes; but the point which Gandhi invites us to consider is that we shall persuade our culture about this only when religion ceases to appear as yet another human group hungry for security, privilege and the liberty to enforce its convictions. To have faith, Gandhi might say, is to hold something in trust for humanity - a vision of who and what humanity is in relation to a truth that does not depend on worldly victory. And to witness to a truth that does not depend on worldly victory - a truth that, in Plato's terms, is not just the interest of the strong or successful - implies that we do not battle for its survival or triumph in the way that interests and parties do in the world around us. In a paradox that never ceases to challenge and puzzle both believers and unbelievers, it is when we are free from the passion to be taken seriously, to be protected or indeed to be obeyed that we are most likely to be heard. The convincing witness to faith is one for whom safety and success are immaterial, and one for whom therefore the exercise of violent force against another of different conviction is ruled out. And the nature of an authentically religious community is made visible in its admission of dependence on God - which means both that it does not fight for position and power and that it will not see itself as existing just by the license of human society. It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict.
All this is, for the Christian believer, rooted in the gospel narrative and in the reflections of the first Christians. Jesus himself in his trial before Pilate says that his royal authority does not derive from anything except the eternal truth which he himself embodies as the incarnate Word of God; only if his authority depended on some other source would his servants fight (Jn 18.36-7). Earthly authority needs to reinforce itself in conflict and dominance; if the community of Jesus' followers reinforced itself in such a way, it would be admitting that its claims were derived from this human order. The realm, the basileia, of God, to which Jesus' acts and words point is not a region within human society any more than it is a region within human geography; it is that condition of human relationships, public and private, where the purpose of God is determinative for men and women and so becomes visible in our history - a condition that can be partially realised in the life of the community around Jesus but waits for its full embodiment in a future only God knows. And for the first and second generations of believers, the community in which relation with the Risen Jesus transforms all relationships into the exchange of the gifts given by Jesus' Spirit has come to be seen as the historical foretaste of this future, as it is here and now the embodiment of Jesus' own identity - the Body of Christ - to the extent it shows this new quality of relation.
The Church is, in this perspective, the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression , the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it is one where each recognizes their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all. The Church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on its unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non-violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him. Within the volatile and plural context of a society that has no single frame of moral or religious reference, it makes two fundamental contributions to the common imagination and moral climate. The first is that it declares that, in virtue of everyone's primordial relation to God (made in God's image), the dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them. This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies.
But the point of this first contribution, as it affects civil society, is this: the presence of the Church, not as a clamorous interest group but as a community confident of its rootedness in something beyond the merely political, expresses a vision of human dignity and mutual human obligation which, because of its indifference to popular success or official legitimation, poses to every other community a special sort of challenge. 'Civil society' is the recognized shorthand description for all those varieties of human association that rest on willing co-operation for the sake of social goods that belong to the whole group, not just to any individual or faction, and which are not created or wholly controlled by state authority. As such, their very existence presupposes persons who are able to take responsibility for themselves and to trust one another in this enterprise. The presence of the Christian community puts to civil society the question of where we look for the foundation of such confidence about responsibility and
trustworthiness: does this set of assumptions about humanity rest on a fragile human agreement, on the decision of human beings to behave as if they were responsible, or on something deeper and less contingent, something to which any and every human society is finally answerable? Is the social creativity which civil society takes for granted part of a human 'birthright'?
The second major contribution made by the presence of the Church is what we might in shorthand call universalism - not in the technical theological sense, but simply meaning the conviction that every human agent is involved in either creating or frustrating a common good that relates to the whole human race. In plainer terms, we cannot as Christians settle down with the conclusion that what is lastingly and truly good for any one individual or group is completely different from what is lastingly and truly good for any other. Justice is not local in an exclusive sense or limited by circumstances; there are no classes or subgroups of humanity who are entitled to less of God's love; and so there are no classes entitled to lower levels of human respect or compassion or service. And since an important aspect of civil society is the assumption that human welfare is not achieved by utilitarian generalities imposed from above but requires active and particularized labour, the fact of the Christian community' presence once again puts the question of how human society holds together the need for action appropriate to specific and local conditions with the lively awareness of what is due to all people everywhere. This is not only about a vision of universal human justice as we normally think of it, but also applies to how we act justly towards those who are not yet born - how we
create a just understanding of our relation to the environment.
In short, the significance of the Church for civil society is in keeping alive a concern both to honour and to justify the absolute and non-negotiable character of the human vision of responsibility and justice that is at work in all human association for the common good. It is about connecting the life of civil society with its deepest roots, acknowledged or not. The conviction of being answerable to God for how we serve and respect God's human and non-human creation at the very least serves to ensure that the human search for shared welfare and responsible liberty will not be reduced to a matter of human consensus alone. And if the Church - or any other community of faith - asks of society the respect that will allow it to be itself, it does so not because it is anxious about its survival (which is in God's hands), but because it asks the freedom to remind the society or societies in which it lives of their own vulnerability and their need to stay close to some fundamental questions about the nature of the humanity they seek to nourish. Such a request from Church to society will be heard and responded to, of course, only if the Church genuinely looks as though it were speaking for more than a self-protecting set of 'religious' concerns; if it appears as concerned for something more than self-defence. To return to what was said earlier, it needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share in ordinary political power. To put it in severely condensed form, the Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment; and to say 'credible' here is not to say 'popular', since engagement with this human health may run sharply against a prevailing consensus. Recent debates on euthanasia offer a case in point; and even here, it is surprisingly often claimed that the churches are concerned here only to sustain their control of human lives
- which sadly illustrates what all too many in our society have come to expect of the Church.
I have spoken so far, as I was invited to do, about the Christian understanding of the role of faith in civil society, and have attempted to connect it with some of the most fundamental elements of the Christian revelation - the absolute difference of the power and action of God as against human power (embodied in the fact of Jesus' crucifixion as the climax of God's incarnate work), and the universal promise offered in the Resurrection (embodied in the mission of the Church as mediating Christ's living presence). In doing this, of course, it is impossible not to be aware of the distinct ways in which other religious traditions understand their role in relation to the ambient society. As many have observed, Islam takes as central the conviction that the law and public practice of a society ought ideally to conform to revealed law; Muslims are often puzzled by the Christian insistence on separation between the religious and the political, and it might well be thought that the vision outlined here is so antithetical to the Islamic frame of reference that there is no possible convergence. Yet there are three considerations that should make us hesitate before settling for this conclusion. The first is that, in understanding divine law as universal and equally applicable to all, Islam, like Christianity, refuses to make faith either subservient to the social order or simply an aspect among others of social life: it is something that offers transformation to the entire range of human activity. The second is that Islam itself recognizes the reality of potential conflict between political power and faithful obedience to revealed law; nothing in Islamic tradition suggests that there could be a guarantee of fidelity to God simply through formal allegiance to Islam by the ruling authority, and the legitimacy of passive resistance to unjust authority is acknowledged. And third, the Qur'anic dictum that there is no compulsion in religion is the foundation for any Muslim account of the imperative of non-violence. This stands, of course, alongside the no less significant tradition of the imperative to jihad as the duty to defend the Muslim community wherever its integrity and survival are at risk; but the question which is bound to arise in our day is whether, given the complex realities of today's world, there would ever now be the kind of situation which would justify the same sort of defensive jihad that was envisaged in the earliest days of Islam - or whether those commentators are right who insist that the only jihad now justifiable is the struggle against evil in the heart and the resistance to a culture of cruelty and indifference to suffering, a struggle which of its nature must be non-violent.
I look forward to hearing reflection on this and related issues; but my chief point is that the convergence that occurred on this day in Johannesburg in 1906 was not an illusory or opportunistic affair. Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift. Yet for those very reasons, they carry in them the seeds of a non-violent and non-possessive witness. They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy. Because both our traditions have a history scarred by terrible betrayals of this, we have to approach our civil society and its institutions with humility and repentance. But I hope that this does not mean we shall surrender what is most important - that we have a gift to offer immeasurably greater than our own words or records, the gift of a divine calling and a renewal of all that is possible form human beings.
(c) Rowan Williams
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ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London, is distributed to more than 8,000 journalists and other readers around the world.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Sunday Mass Is a Necessity, Says Pontiff
Adds That It's Not Just a Rule
VIENNA, Austria, SEPT. 9, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Going to Sunday Mass is not just a rule to follow, but rather an "inner necessity," says Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this today during the Mass he celebrated at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, on the last day of his three-day apostolic trip to Austria.
About 40,000 people followed the Mass on large screens placed in St. Stephen's Square, since not all of the participants were able to be accommodated inside.
Rain in the morning prompted organizers to distribute plastic raincoats to the faithful.
The Holy Father's homily centered on the mantra of the early Christian martyrs of Abitene: "Without Sunday we cannot live."
The Pontiff said: "Sunday has been transformed in our Western societies into the weekend, into leisure time.
"Leisure time is certainly something good and necessary, especially amid the mad rush of the modern world. Yet if leisure time lacks an inner focus, an overall sense of direction, then ultimately it becomes wasted time that neither strengthens nor builds us up.
"Free time requires a focus -- the encounter with him who is our origin and goal."
Meaning
In the opening greeting, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, explained that there had been a movement in Austria to defend "Sunday from tendencies to empty this day of its meaning."
Recalling the example of the early Christians, Benedict XVI explained that for them Sunday Mass was not a "precept," but rather "an inner necessity."
"Does this attitude of the Christians of that time apply also to us who are Christians today?" the Pope asked.
The Holy Father answered: "Yes, it does, we too need a relationship that sustains us, that gives direction and content to our lives.
"We too need access to the Risen One, who sustains us through and beyond death. We need this encounter which brings us together, which gives us space for freedom, which lets us see beyond the bustle of everyday life to God's creative love, from which we come and toward which we are traveling."
But Sunday, said the Pontiff, also calls to mind the "the day of the dawning of creation."
He said: "Therefore Sunday is also the Church's weekly feast of creation -- the feast of thanksgiving and joy over God's creation.
"At a time when creation seems to be endangered in so many ways through human activity, we should consciously advert to this dimension of Sunday too."
After the Mass, the Pope recited the Angelus in St. Stephen's Square.
As he was leaving, the pilgrims waved yellow handkerchiefs and banners from countries such as Germany, Israel, Austria and even Iran, chanting the Pope's name in Italian, "Be-ne-de-tto! Be-ne-de-tto!"
VIENNA, Austria, SEPT. 9, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Going to Sunday Mass is not just a rule to follow, but rather an "inner necessity," says Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this today during the Mass he celebrated at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, on the last day of his three-day apostolic trip to Austria.
About 40,000 people followed the Mass on large screens placed in St. Stephen's Square, since not all of the participants were able to be accommodated inside.
Rain in the morning prompted organizers to distribute plastic raincoats to the faithful.
The Holy Father's homily centered on the mantra of the early Christian martyrs of Abitene: "Without Sunday we cannot live."
The Pontiff said: "Sunday has been transformed in our Western societies into the weekend, into leisure time.
"Leisure time is certainly something good and necessary, especially amid the mad rush of the modern world. Yet if leisure time lacks an inner focus, an overall sense of direction, then ultimately it becomes wasted time that neither strengthens nor builds us up.
"Free time requires a focus -- the encounter with him who is our origin and goal."
Meaning
In the opening greeting, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, explained that there had been a movement in Austria to defend "Sunday from tendencies to empty this day of its meaning."
Recalling the example of the early Christians, Benedict XVI explained that for them Sunday Mass was not a "precept," but rather "an inner necessity."
"Does this attitude of the Christians of that time apply also to us who are Christians today?" the Pope asked.
The Holy Father answered: "Yes, it does, we too need a relationship that sustains us, that gives direction and content to our lives.
"We too need access to the Risen One, who sustains us through and beyond death. We need this encounter which brings us together, which gives us space for freedom, which lets us see beyond the bustle of everyday life to God's creative love, from which we come and toward which we are traveling."
But Sunday, said the Pontiff, also calls to mind the "the day of the dawning of creation."
He said: "Therefore Sunday is also the Church's weekly feast of creation -- the feast of thanksgiving and joy over God's creation.
"At a time when creation seems to be endangered in so many ways through human activity, we should consciously advert to this dimension of Sunday too."
After the Mass, the Pope recited the Angelus in St. Stephen's Square.
As he was leaving, the pilgrims waved yellow handkerchiefs and banners from countries such as Germany, Israel, Austria and even Iran, chanting the Pope's name in Italian, "Be-ne-de-tto! Be-ne-de-tto!"
Saturday, September 08, 2007
SPONG'S "POISONOUS" LETTER WILL BLIGHT EPISCOPAL CHURCH HOB'S MEETING
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.episcopalian.org
9/8/2007
He may be retired, but John Shelby Spong, the 8th Bishop of Newark, liveth and reigneth, spitting his bile upon the Episcopal Church's frail House of Bishops (HOB) - a mostly male enclave - who may well find themselves ostracized from the Anglican Communion by month's end.
A letter Spong wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury could not have been timed worse. Within two weeks of the Archbishop of Canterbury appearing in New Orleans for what could be a showdown with the HOB, Spong blasted Dr. Rowan Williams accusing him of having "a breathtaking display of ineptitude and moral weakness," and effectively abdicating his leadership role. "The message you communicated [to the Anglican Communion] was that in the service of unity you would surrender to whoever had the loudest public voice."
Spong went on to berate the archbishop saying, "a leader gets only one chance to make a good first impression and you totally failed that chance. Unity is surely a virtue, but it must be weighed against truth, the Church's primary virtue."
Spong accused Williams of collapsing in the face of pressure over the failed Jeffrey John appointment, said his predecessor George Carey was homophobic, that the Bible was being used as a "weapon to justify prejudice," and then ripped Williams by saying that he seemed incapable of functioning as the leader the Church wanted and needed.
He blasted Williams over Jeffrey John saying that naming Jeffrey Dean of St. Alban's Cathedral was a "guilt" appointment because he was made to withdraw the bishopric he sought in Reading. "Your credibility suffered once again," snarled Spong.
The former Newark bishop then tore into Williams over Gene Robinson, the homoerotic Bishop of New Hampshire, for his failure to invite him to the Lambeth Conference of 2008. "All of the closeted homosexual bishops are invited; the honest one is not invited. I can name the gay bishops who have, during my active career, served in both the Episcopal Church and in the Church of England? I bet you can too. Are you suggesting that dishonesty is a virtue?"
In his tirade, Spong said the church had been wrong about women, slavery, evolution and apartheid and it will lose the present battle "over the oppression and rejection of homosexual people."
"The Bible has lost each of those battles. It will lose the present battle and you, my friend, will end up on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of morality and the wrong side of truth. It is a genuine tragedy that you, the most intellectually-gifted Archbishop of Canterbury in almost a century, have become so miserable a failure in so short a period of time," Spong raged.
"You were appointed to lead, Rowan, not to capitulate to the hysterical anger of those who are locked in the past. For the sake of God and this Church, the time has come for you to do so. I hope you still have that capability."
When the letter hit the air and cyber waves, liberals winced. Jim Naughton, the ultra-liberal Communications Director for the revisionist Diocese of Washington writing in his blog episcopalcafe.com, called Spong's tear, "an unfortunate letter."
He accused Spong of rehashing old complaints that have been extensively aired elsewhere and seems calculated to give offense. "It is perhaps best seen as an act of unconscious self-marginalization (not to mention bad manners.) Spong, like N. T. Wright, has become one of those figures whose public utterances frequently do more to bolster the cause of his adversaries than his allies."
"If one were attempting to poison the atmosphere when the archbishop and the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops gather in New Orleans on September 20-21, this is the letter one would write. Its publication places a burden on Episcopal bishops who favor the full inclusion of the baptized in all ministries of the Church, and continued membership in the Anglican Communion. They now must make it clear that Archbishop Rowan will receive a warmer welcome than this letter suggests."
The equally sad truth is that The Episcopal Church, by its refusal to reprimand or discipline Jack Spong when he was Bishop of Newark, has in the eyes of many endorsed his twisted beliefs. Years ago a group of bishops circulated a "statement of disassociation" with Spong. It was about as mild a condemnation as one could ask for. No more than a small minority of the House of Bishops joined on and signed it. To this day, the House of Bishops has never taken any action against Spong.
At one point in time, when she was Bishop of Nevada, Mrs. Schori invited Spong to lead a retreat.
The bald truth is that the vast majority of the HOB is much closer in spirit and theology to Spong than they are to Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh.
Even those who believe Spong has gone too far must face the logical conclusions of his position. Once you start down the rocky road of liberal theological belief, including changing sexual practices to suit the times, you must over time, end up where he has ended up. Is it any wonder that no liberal or revisionist bishop has publicly repudiated Spong's 12 Theses!
If you don't believe in the atonement, why not call it child abuse? If Jesus never rose bodily from the grave, why bother talking about the resurrection in any meaningful salvific way except as an "Easter event" that is more in tune with nature than super nature.
If miracles never happened then Jesus' divinity and deity are questionable.
If the Bible cannot be trusted to provide absolutes about how we should behave sexually then why not change or drop the texts that speak definitively about human sexual behavior?
If the Bible cannot be trusted to tell us who God is, His plan of salvation and what sort of moral behavior He expects from us, then why not consult Sufi the Rumi, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Kama Sutra or even the Koran!
If God is doing a new thing, as liberal bishops like Gene Robinson and Tom Shaw constantly tell us, then why should we not all become Mormons? The Mormons can make a brilliant case for a new revelation complete with prophets, a new book, successful businesses, good families, clean living and much more. Mitt Romney is the poster boy for America's fastest growing religion and the American Dream, however heretical we might view Mormonism. The list is endless.
The sad truth is the vast majority of America's Episcopal bishops are ashamed of the Gospel, ashamed of the Bible's prohibition on certain sexual behaviors, and ashamed of miracles. They want desperately to be seen as being ecumenical with absolutely everybody. The irony is that the more they talk about inclusion and diversity, the faster the Episcopal Church empties.
It is irony stacked upon irony. Is it any wonder then that St. John wrote to the Church in Laodicea, "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:15)
Spong's letter, certainly to be read by all the House of Bishops, may force Dr. Williams into declaring that if Spong's views truly represent the mind of the Episcopal Church then he has no option but to call the Primates together for final call on what to do with the American Episcopal Church. If they say that TEC should be cut loose from the Communion then Williams would have no choice but to do so.
If Williams perceives that Spong's views are little more than the prepubescent ravings of a childish sixth former (12th grader), then he can simply brush him off. On the other hand, it might just galvanize the ABC into declaring that the truth about The Episcopal Church lies with the Network bishops. If that should happen then we have a whole new ball game.
END
By David W. Virtue
www.episcopalian.org
9/8/2007
He may be retired, but John Shelby Spong, the 8th Bishop of Newark, liveth and reigneth, spitting his bile upon the Episcopal Church's frail House of Bishops (HOB) - a mostly male enclave - who may well find themselves ostracized from the Anglican Communion by month's end.
A letter Spong wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury could not have been timed worse. Within two weeks of the Archbishop of Canterbury appearing in New Orleans for what could be a showdown with the HOB, Spong blasted Dr. Rowan Williams accusing him of having "a breathtaking display of ineptitude and moral weakness," and effectively abdicating his leadership role. "The message you communicated [to the Anglican Communion] was that in the service of unity you would surrender to whoever had the loudest public voice."
Spong went on to berate the archbishop saying, "a leader gets only one chance to make a good first impression and you totally failed that chance. Unity is surely a virtue, but it must be weighed against truth, the Church's primary virtue."
Spong accused Williams of collapsing in the face of pressure over the failed Jeffrey John appointment, said his predecessor George Carey was homophobic, that the Bible was being used as a "weapon to justify prejudice," and then ripped Williams by saying that he seemed incapable of functioning as the leader the Church wanted and needed.
He blasted Williams over Jeffrey John saying that naming Jeffrey Dean of St. Alban's Cathedral was a "guilt" appointment because he was made to withdraw the bishopric he sought in Reading. "Your credibility suffered once again," snarled Spong.
The former Newark bishop then tore into Williams over Gene Robinson, the homoerotic Bishop of New Hampshire, for his failure to invite him to the Lambeth Conference of 2008. "All of the closeted homosexual bishops are invited; the honest one is not invited. I can name the gay bishops who have, during my active career, served in both the Episcopal Church and in the Church of England? I bet you can too. Are you suggesting that dishonesty is a virtue?"
In his tirade, Spong said the church had been wrong about women, slavery, evolution and apartheid and it will lose the present battle "over the oppression and rejection of homosexual people."
"The Bible has lost each of those battles. It will lose the present battle and you, my friend, will end up on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of morality and the wrong side of truth. It is a genuine tragedy that you, the most intellectually-gifted Archbishop of Canterbury in almost a century, have become so miserable a failure in so short a period of time," Spong raged.
"You were appointed to lead, Rowan, not to capitulate to the hysterical anger of those who are locked in the past. For the sake of God and this Church, the time has come for you to do so. I hope you still have that capability."
When the letter hit the air and cyber waves, liberals winced. Jim Naughton, the ultra-liberal Communications Director for the revisionist Diocese of Washington writing in his blog episcopalcafe.com, called Spong's tear, "an unfortunate letter."
He accused Spong of rehashing old complaints that have been extensively aired elsewhere and seems calculated to give offense. "It is perhaps best seen as an act of unconscious self-marginalization (not to mention bad manners.) Spong, like N. T. Wright, has become one of those figures whose public utterances frequently do more to bolster the cause of his adversaries than his allies."
"If one were attempting to poison the atmosphere when the archbishop and the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops gather in New Orleans on September 20-21, this is the letter one would write. Its publication places a burden on Episcopal bishops who favor the full inclusion of the baptized in all ministries of the Church, and continued membership in the Anglican Communion. They now must make it clear that Archbishop Rowan will receive a warmer welcome than this letter suggests."
The equally sad truth is that The Episcopal Church, by its refusal to reprimand or discipline Jack Spong when he was Bishop of Newark, has in the eyes of many endorsed his twisted beliefs. Years ago a group of bishops circulated a "statement of disassociation" with Spong. It was about as mild a condemnation as one could ask for. No more than a small minority of the House of Bishops joined on and signed it. To this day, the House of Bishops has never taken any action against Spong.
At one point in time, when she was Bishop of Nevada, Mrs. Schori invited Spong to lead a retreat.
The bald truth is that the vast majority of the HOB is much closer in spirit and theology to Spong than they are to Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh.
Even those who believe Spong has gone too far must face the logical conclusions of his position. Once you start down the rocky road of liberal theological belief, including changing sexual practices to suit the times, you must over time, end up where he has ended up. Is it any wonder that no liberal or revisionist bishop has publicly repudiated Spong's 12 Theses!
If you don't believe in the atonement, why not call it child abuse? If Jesus never rose bodily from the grave, why bother talking about the resurrection in any meaningful salvific way except as an "Easter event" that is more in tune with nature than super nature.
If miracles never happened then Jesus' divinity and deity are questionable.
If the Bible cannot be trusted to provide absolutes about how we should behave sexually then why not change or drop the texts that speak definitively about human sexual behavior?
If the Bible cannot be trusted to tell us who God is, His plan of salvation and what sort of moral behavior He expects from us, then why not consult Sufi the Rumi, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Kama Sutra or even the Koran!
If God is doing a new thing, as liberal bishops like Gene Robinson and Tom Shaw constantly tell us, then why should we not all become Mormons? The Mormons can make a brilliant case for a new revelation complete with prophets, a new book, successful businesses, good families, clean living and much more. Mitt Romney is the poster boy for America's fastest growing religion and the American Dream, however heretical we might view Mormonism. The list is endless.
The sad truth is the vast majority of America's Episcopal bishops are ashamed of the Gospel, ashamed of the Bible's prohibition on certain sexual behaviors, and ashamed of miracles. They want desperately to be seen as being ecumenical with absolutely everybody. The irony is that the more they talk about inclusion and diversity, the faster the Episcopal Church empties.
It is irony stacked upon irony. Is it any wonder then that St. John wrote to the Church in Laodicea, "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:15)
Spong's letter, certainly to be read by all the House of Bishops, may force Dr. Williams into declaring that if Spong's views truly represent the mind of the Episcopal Church then he has no option but to call the Primates together for final call on what to do with the American Episcopal Church. If they say that TEC should be cut loose from the Communion then Williams would have no choice but to do so.
If Williams perceives that Spong's views are little more than the prepubescent ravings of a childish sixth former (12th grader), then he can simply brush him off. On the other hand, it might just galvanize the ABC into declaring that the truth about The Episcopal Church lies with the Network bishops. If that should happen then we have a whole new ball game.
END
Friday, September 07, 2007
African Anglicans' speak of 'duty' to consecrate dissident US clerics
Nairobi (ENI). Anglican leaders in East Africa have defended the consecration as bishops of priests from the U.S. Episcopal Church, who are opposed to the ordination of homosexual clergy in North America. "We have a pastoral duty," Bishop Gideon Ireri, who heads the Anglican Church of Kenya's Justice and Peace Commission, told Ecumenical News International from his Mbeere diocese in eastern Kenya. "We are one Anglican Communion, and we cannot let the American flock that is faithful to their sexuality scatter. It is a lesser evil to provide them with pastoral care." [420 words, ENI-07-0696]
ENI Online - www.eni.ch
Ecumenical News International
ENI Online - www.eni.ch
Ecumenical News International
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
COLOMBIAN BISHOP BLASTS EPISCOPAL PRESIDING BISHOP SCHORI'S VISIT
Posted by David Virtue on 2007/9/5 12:30:00 (3390 reads)
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/5/2007
The Retired Bishop of Colombia, the Rt. Rev. Bernardo Merino Botero, has written a scathing letter to Bishop Stacy F. Sauls, the Bishop of Lexington, blasting the recent visit of Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church to his country.
In his "My dear brother Bishop Stacy" letter, Botero ripped Schori's visit, saying that what was reported in "The Episcopal News [Service]" and "The Episcopal Life" did not fit the facts of her actual visit.
"She was here four weeks ago and went back to New York, maybe thinking: "'Veni, vidi, vixi', I came, I saw, I wined', the words of Cesar regarding his victory in Zela."
Botero condemned Mrs. Schori's activities on her visit to Colombia saying they were "very exclusive". The Eucharist at Saint Paul's was not an open service for the people of the Diocese. He also condemned her sermon as "very short and weak."
Botero ripped official Episcopal "newscasters" who said she spent 45 minutes meeting with President Uribe Velez; had an ecumenical encounter in the Episcopal Conference with Roman Catholics, protestant and mussulman leaders; and had a meeting with diocesan clergyman. Botero, an inhibited and former bishop was "excluded" from visits to two missions in the city; and the Eucharist at Saint Paul's Cathedral.
"All of these events were very exclusive. The dates of arrival and leaving to and from Colombia were one State secret to Bishop Francisco Duque (Presiding Bishop of Columbia) and his assistants. An environment of clandestineness and espionage characterized your President Bishop's visit. Did she realize that?
"The Holy Eucharist held at Saint Paul's was not an open service for people of the Diocese, as [is] usual in a pastoral visit. In some way was a private one: The main entrance to the church was closed, and the only way to go in, was the garage door and an invitation card was required. Exclusion was the keynote of participation in this holy service. The Eucharist started half an hour later, and when we, the excluded, entered the Cathedral, the uneasiness invaded the environment. As the main entrance was closed to prevent the entrance of the excluded, the door was opened when they saw us inside."
Concerning the homily: "The Presiding Bishop addressed the congregation no longer than seven minutes. I was surprised with this very short and weak sermon on occasion of a pastoral visit to one overseas diocese full of expectations, in a terrible crisis of divisions, resentments and lies. She started emphasizing: 'I am here to [make] a pastoral visit to the Diocese of Colombia' and quoted Luke's Gospel, 10- 30-35: 'There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. "Take care of him", he told the innkeeper, "and when I come back this way, I will pay you what ever else you spend on him".'
"When the Primate stopped reading the parable, I thought about my Church in Colombia, traveling from this earthly Jerusalem to this Jericho of eternal life, amid many tribulations: Attacked by robbers that stripped her money, her honor, her identity, her spirituality, her peace. Then, the robbers beat and left her, half dead in the way. Immediately when I saw our sister Katharine, the Presiding Bishop, I thought: maybe she is the Good Samaritan. She was sent by Jesus to heal, to advice, to reconcile, to pacify and to restore justice.
"When [the] Eucharistic service was over, the congregation was invited by Bishop Duque to share the coffee time with the Presiding Bishop and her staff in the cathedral yard. Many of us stayed in their chairs waiting for her to shake hands and have a word of courtesy. But she never appeared. "The people went to the yard and continued waiting for her. A typical choreographic group from one of our congregations was waiting to dance and sing honoring Bishop Jefferts, but she never appeared. This was a long time of suspense and disappointment. One hour later the people knew the truth.
"The doors of the Cathedral were closed by the bodyguards and nobody was allowed to enter and to see Bishop Jefferts [Schori]. Then one of the shows prepared to finalize the Eucharist took place in clandestineness: the presentation of a memorial marble stone honoring the Presiding Bishop and Bishop Duque. This stone was placed in memory of the 23 years of Episcopal ministry of the predecessor of Bishop Duque.
"The epilogue of this drama was that Bishop Jefferts [Schori] left the cathedral through the back door inside a diplomatic car, with her staff and Bishop Duque. The congregation left, half angry, half discouraged, half scandalized. The Good Samaritan Katharine left without healing, without advising, without reconciling, without restoring the justice and peace. "She was not able to leave her horse and to go to the people of this Church and pour oil and wine on her wounds and bandage them and to take care of us.
"Is this the profile of a pastoral visit, or was it more a politic strategy, designed by Bishop Duque and allowed by the Presiding Bishop?" Who has the answer? Somebody.
"Listen what the Lord said to the rulers of Israel: 'You have not taken care of the weak ones, healed the ones that are sick, bandaged the ones that are hurt, brought back the ones that wandered of, or looked for the ones that were lost. Instead, you treated them cruelly' (Ezekiel - 34 - 4).
"We are wondering: Who decided this afternoon to kidnap the Presiding Bishop and to preserve her from any personal contact with the congregation? And, why was Bishop Jefferts [Schori] allowed to become so isolated from her people, if she was practicing a pastoral visit to the Diocese of Colombia? This was in contradiction to her homily, inviting to the unity in diversity. The divisions and diversity were waiting for her at the cathedral yard, and she disappeared to heavens into a fire-car, like Elijah the Prophet. If she believes that the Diocese of Colombia is Bishop Duque with his family, his staff and his favorites, I am sorry: She is mistaken. Yours, is a very strain[ed] ecclesiology, against St. Paul's mystic body doctrine.
"I am responsible that nobody among the attendants to this Eucharist, about two hundred people, had criminal records as kidnappers or assassins. However Bishop Duque went with Bishop Jefferts [Schori] to a mission in one of the more dangerous suburbs in Bogotá, to show her a social work, as his star program, supported with money from the Roman Catholic Church.
"Dear Stacy, if you consider impartially these events, do you think that it is possible for you to find serious arguments on sustentation of your assertions on behalf of our two brothers? We need to find more appropriate justifications to these questionable and reprehensible behaviors. Maybe the words of Saint Paul to Corinthians fit here very well: 'What do you expect me to say to you about this? Shall I praise you? Of course I don't.'
The letter was signed:
Respectfully but frankly Yours in Christ,
Bishop Bernardo Merino Botero (retired)
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/5/2007
The Retired Bishop of Colombia, the Rt. Rev. Bernardo Merino Botero, has written a scathing letter to Bishop Stacy F. Sauls, the Bishop of Lexington, blasting the recent visit of Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church to his country.
In his "My dear brother Bishop Stacy" letter, Botero ripped Schori's visit, saying that what was reported in "The Episcopal News [Service]" and "The Episcopal Life" did not fit the facts of her actual visit.
"She was here four weeks ago and went back to New York, maybe thinking: "'Veni, vidi, vixi', I came, I saw, I wined', the words of Cesar regarding his victory in Zela."
Botero condemned Mrs. Schori's activities on her visit to Colombia saying they were "very exclusive". The Eucharist at Saint Paul's was not an open service for the people of the Diocese. He also condemned her sermon as "very short and weak."
Botero ripped official Episcopal "newscasters" who said she spent 45 minutes meeting with President Uribe Velez; had an ecumenical encounter in the Episcopal Conference with Roman Catholics, protestant and mussulman leaders; and had a meeting with diocesan clergyman. Botero, an inhibited and former bishop was "excluded" from visits to two missions in the city; and the Eucharist at Saint Paul's Cathedral.
"All of these events were very exclusive. The dates of arrival and leaving to and from Colombia were one State secret to Bishop Francisco Duque (Presiding Bishop of Columbia) and his assistants. An environment of clandestineness and espionage characterized your President Bishop's visit. Did she realize that?
"The Holy Eucharist held at Saint Paul's was not an open service for people of the Diocese, as [is] usual in a pastoral visit. In some way was a private one: The main entrance to the church was closed, and the only way to go in, was the garage door and an invitation card was required. Exclusion was the keynote of participation in this holy service. The Eucharist started half an hour later, and when we, the excluded, entered the Cathedral, the uneasiness invaded the environment. As the main entrance was closed to prevent the entrance of the excluded, the door was opened when they saw us inside."
Concerning the homily: "The Presiding Bishop addressed the congregation no longer than seven minutes. I was surprised with this very short and weak sermon on occasion of a pastoral visit to one overseas diocese full of expectations, in a terrible crisis of divisions, resentments and lies. She started emphasizing: 'I am here to [make] a pastoral visit to the Diocese of Colombia' and quoted Luke's Gospel, 10- 30-35: 'There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. "Take care of him", he told the innkeeper, "and when I come back this way, I will pay you what ever else you spend on him".'
"When the Primate stopped reading the parable, I thought about my Church in Colombia, traveling from this earthly Jerusalem to this Jericho of eternal life, amid many tribulations: Attacked by robbers that stripped her money, her honor, her identity, her spirituality, her peace. Then, the robbers beat and left her, half dead in the way. Immediately when I saw our sister Katharine, the Presiding Bishop, I thought: maybe she is the Good Samaritan. She was sent by Jesus to heal, to advice, to reconcile, to pacify and to restore justice.
"When [the] Eucharistic service was over, the congregation was invited by Bishop Duque to share the coffee time with the Presiding Bishop and her staff in the cathedral yard. Many of us stayed in their chairs waiting for her to shake hands and have a word of courtesy. But she never appeared. "The people went to the yard and continued waiting for her. A typical choreographic group from one of our congregations was waiting to dance and sing honoring Bishop Jefferts, but she never appeared. This was a long time of suspense and disappointment. One hour later the people knew the truth.
"The doors of the Cathedral were closed by the bodyguards and nobody was allowed to enter and to see Bishop Jefferts [Schori]. Then one of the shows prepared to finalize the Eucharist took place in clandestineness: the presentation of a memorial marble stone honoring the Presiding Bishop and Bishop Duque. This stone was placed in memory of the 23 years of Episcopal ministry of the predecessor of Bishop Duque.
"The epilogue of this drama was that Bishop Jefferts [Schori] left the cathedral through the back door inside a diplomatic car, with her staff and Bishop Duque. The congregation left, half angry, half discouraged, half scandalized. The Good Samaritan Katharine left without healing, without advising, without reconciling, without restoring the justice and peace. "She was not able to leave her horse and to go to the people of this Church and pour oil and wine on her wounds and bandage them and to take care of us.
"Is this the profile of a pastoral visit, or was it more a politic strategy, designed by Bishop Duque and allowed by the Presiding Bishop?" Who has the answer? Somebody.
"Listen what the Lord said to the rulers of Israel: 'You have not taken care of the weak ones, healed the ones that are sick, bandaged the ones that are hurt, brought back the ones that wandered of, or looked for the ones that were lost. Instead, you treated them cruelly' (Ezekiel - 34 - 4).
"We are wondering: Who decided this afternoon to kidnap the Presiding Bishop and to preserve her from any personal contact with the congregation? And, why was Bishop Jefferts [Schori] allowed to become so isolated from her people, if she was practicing a pastoral visit to the Diocese of Colombia? This was in contradiction to her homily, inviting to the unity in diversity. The divisions and diversity were waiting for her at the cathedral yard, and she disappeared to heavens into a fire-car, like Elijah the Prophet. If she believes that the Diocese of Colombia is Bishop Duque with his family, his staff and his favorites, I am sorry: She is mistaken. Yours, is a very strain[ed] ecclesiology, against St. Paul's mystic body doctrine.
"I am responsible that nobody among the attendants to this Eucharist, about two hundred people, had criminal records as kidnappers or assassins. However Bishop Duque went with Bishop Jefferts [Schori] to a mission in one of the more dangerous suburbs in Bogotá, to show her a social work, as his star program, supported with money from the Roman Catholic Church.
"Dear Stacy, if you consider impartially these events, do you think that it is possible for you to find serious arguments on sustentation of your assertions on behalf of our two brothers? We need to find more appropriate justifications to these questionable and reprehensible behaviors. Maybe the words of Saint Paul to Corinthians fit here very well: 'What do you expect me to say to you about this? Shall I praise you? Of course I don't.'
The letter was signed:
Respectfully but frankly Yours in Christ,
Bishop Bernardo Merino Botero (retired)
END
Rwanda appoints more bishops for USA
Wednesday, 5th September 2007. 6:40pm
By: George Conger.
Almost half of the Church of Rwanda’s bishops will be former priests of the American Episcopal Church by the year’s end, the church announced today.
Three more American bishops will be added to the roster of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA), the Church of Rwanda announced on Sept 5; increasing the size of the Rwanda House of Bishops to 16: seven missionary American bishops and nine Rwandan diocesan bishops.
The House of Bishops of the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda (PEER) on Sept 4 elected the Rev Terrell Glenn, the Rev Philip Jones and the Rev John Miller as missionary bishops to the United States under the jurisdiction of Rwandan Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini.
The election of the three comes as a result of the “the significant growth of the missionary outreach initiated” by the Rwandan church in the United States, a statement released by the Church’s provincial secretary read.
The three former Episcopal priests will be consecrated on Jan 26 in Dallas, TX, during the AMiA’s annual winter conference.
A former member of the standing committee of the Diocese of Central Florida, the Rev John Miller, III was rector of St John’s Episcopal Church in Melbourne, before seceding with a portion of his congregation to form Prince of Peace Anglican Church in 2004. The Rev Terrell L. Glenn, Jr., a one-time deputy to General Convention from South Carolina and former rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Mt Pleasant, has served as rector of the AMiA’s flagship congregation, All Saints, Pawleys Island, since 2005. The Rev Philip Jones has served as rector of St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Little Rock since 2005 after serving seven years as Dean of St Clement’s Episcopal pro-cathedral Church in El Paso, Texas.
By: George Conger.
Almost half of the Church of Rwanda’s bishops will be former priests of the American Episcopal Church by the year’s end, the church announced today.
Three more American bishops will be added to the roster of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA), the Church of Rwanda announced on Sept 5; increasing the size of the Rwanda House of Bishops to 16: seven missionary American bishops and nine Rwandan diocesan bishops.
The House of Bishops of the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda (PEER) on Sept 4 elected the Rev Terrell Glenn, the Rev Philip Jones and the Rev John Miller as missionary bishops to the United States under the jurisdiction of Rwandan Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini.
The election of the three comes as a result of the “the significant growth of the missionary outreach initiated” by the Rwandan church in the United States, a statement released by the Church’s provincial secretary read.
The three former Episcopal priests will be consecrated on Jan 26 in Dallas, TX, during the AMiA’s annual winter conference.
A former member of the standing committee of the Diocese of Central Florida, the Rev John Miller, III was rector of St John’s Episcopal Church in Melbourne, before seceding with a portion of his congregation to form Prince of Peace Anglican Church in 2004. The Rev Terrell L. Glenn, Jr., a one-time deputy to General Convention from South Carolina and former rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Mt Pleasant, has served as rector of the AMiA’s flagship congregation, All Saints, Pawleys Island, since 2005. The Rev Philip Jones has served as rector of St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Little Rock since 2005 after serving seven years as Dean of St Clement’s Episcopal pro-cathedral Church in El Paso, Texas.
Pope remembers Mother Teresa, “true disciple of Christ”
VATICAN
Benedict XVI encourages the Missionaries of Charity and the entire Church to follow her example. He sends his best wishes to the conference on the environment in the Arctic promoted by Bartholomew I. He talks about Gregory of Nyssa on how to be Christian and on love for God and the poor. Today’s catechesis is about Gregory of Nyssa who believed that man’s perfection lies in imitating God in love.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – In today’s audience, the Pope could not but remember Mother Teresa, on the tenth anniversary of her death and on the Blessed’s liturgical feast day.
“Dear friends, the life and witness of this true disciple of Christ, whose liturgical memory we celebrate today, are an invitation to you and the entire Church to always serve Christ in the poor and the needy. Keep following her example and always be the instrument of Divine Mercy,” Benedict XVI said as he greeted a large group of missionaries, both men and women, and their collaborators.
In a hoarse or as he put it “a bit damaged” voice, for which the Pontiff apologised and for which he received an applause, the Pope mentioned the conference on the environment in the Arctic that Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, is promoting and which he will open tomorrow.
In English he said: “I wish to greet all the participants, the various religious leaders and scientists. I pledge to them my support for their efforts. Protecting water resources and paying attention to climate change are important issues for the entire human family. Encouraged by the growing concern for the needs of the environment and the necessity to preserve it, I urge all of you to join me in prayer and in the commitment to better respect the wonders of God’s creation.”
In the catechesis, in which the Pope presented some of the Fathers of the Church, Benedict XVI today focused on some of the teachings of Gregory of Nyssa and his “high” view of man, whose purpose, according to Gregory, was “to make himself similar to God through love.”
“When man loves he works with God to shape himself in the divine image,” he explained.
This love is addressed to God, but also to the poor.
“Gregory said that Christ is also present in the poor and for this reason they should never be offended,” he noted.
As he quoted from the Father of the Church, the Holy Father said: “Do not despise those who lay down . . . . Keep in mind who they are, and you shall discover what their dignity is. They represent the person of the Saviour.”
Benedict XVI also underscored the meaning of the word “Christian” in Gregory of Nyssa’s thoughts. “A Christian is someone who bears the name of Christ and thus should conform himself or herself to Christ. In [carrying] the name Christian we bear a great responsibility.”
“Christians must always closely examine their thoughts, words, actions to see if they are addressed to Christ or if they move away from him.”
“In order to move towards perfection and carry God’s love in oneself, man must turn to God confidently, and find inspiration in the Lord’s Prayer,” he added.
Benedict XVI encourages the Missionaries of Charity and the entire Church to follow her example. He sends his best wishes to the conference on the environment in the Arctic promoted by Bartholomew I. He talks about Gregory of Nyssa on how to be Christian and on love for God and the poor. Today’s catechesis is about Gregory of Nyssa who believed that man’s perfection lies in imitating God in love.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – In today’s audience, the Pope could not but remember Mother Teresa, on the tenth anniversary of her death and on the Blessed’s liturgical feast day.
“Dear friends, the life and witness of this true disciple of Christ, whose liturgical memory we celebrate today, are an invitation to you and the entire Church to always serve Christ in the poor and the needy. Keep following her example and always be the instrument of Divine Mercy,” Benedict XVI said as he greeted a large group of missionaries, both men and women, and their collaborators.
In a hoarse or as he put it “a bit damaged” voice, for which the Pontiff apologised and for which he received an applause, the Pope mentioned the conference on the environment in the Arctic that Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, is promoting and which he will open tomorrow.
In English he said: “I wish to greet all the participants, the various religious leaders and scientists. I pledge to them my support for their efforts. Protecting water resources and paying attention to climate change are important issues for the entire human family. Encouraged by the growing concern for the needs of the environment and the necessity to preserve it, I urge all of you to join me in prayer and in the commitment to better respect the wonders of God’s creation.”
In the catechesis, in which the Pope presented some of the Fathers of the Church, Benedict XVI today focused on some of the teachings of Gregory of Nyssa and his “high” view of man, whose purpose, according to Gregory, was “to make himself similar to God through love.”
“When man loves he works with God to shape himself in the divine image,” he explained.
This love is addressed to God, but also to the poor.
“Gregory said that Christ is also present in the poor and for this reason they should never be offended,” he noted.
As he quoted from the Father of the Church, the Holy Father said: “Do not despise those who lay down . . . . Keep in mind who they are, and you shall discover what their dignity is. They represent the person of the Saviour.”
Benedict XVI also underscored the meaning of the word “Christian” in Gregory of Nyssa’s thoughts. “A Christian is someone who bears the name of Christ and thus should conform himself or herself to Christ. In [carrying] the name Christian we bear a great responsibility.”
“Christians must always closely examine their thoughts, words, actions to see if they are addressed to Christ or if they move away from him.”
“In order to move towards perfection and carry God’s love in oneself, man must turn to God confidently, and find inspiration in the Lord’s Prayer,” he added.
Monday, September 03, 2007
African Anglican bishop consecrates Americans
Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya consecrated two Americans. Rev Bill Murdoch and Rev Bill Atwood will serve parishes under Kenyan jurisdiction in the US. They join other dissident Episcopalians consecrated by Africans.
Two Episcopal priests, who split from the Episcopal Church over its acceptance of homosexual bishops, have been consecrated bishops for several breakaway congregations by an Anglican archbishop who is renowned for his conservatism.
Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya consecrated Bill Atwood of Texas and Bill Murdoch of Massachusetts at a service in Nairobi on Thursday, reported the AFP. The two men vowed to serve the international interests of the Anglican Church of Kenya and of the congregations in North America "under Kenyan jurisdiction."
Bishops Atwood and Murdoch will have about 30 Anglican congregations under their charge. These congregations had previously approached the Kenyan province for leadership.
During the service, Archbishop Nzimbi urged congregations to pray for homosexuals, but renewed his opposition for their consecration.
After the consecration, Bishop Atwood reportedly said the ceremony was not a political statement, but rather an act rooted in the Gospel.
Ten primates from Asia, Africa and Latin America attended the service.
Archbishop Drexel Gomez from the West Indies told AFP that the Gospel has to take precedence over culture.
"The issue is not primarily one of sexuality,” he was quoted as saying. “But one which seeks to answer the following question: Which relationship corresponds to God's ordering of life? Homosexual practice violates the order of life given by God in Holy Scripture.”
These are not the first episcopal appointments for breakaway churches in the United States.
In May, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria consecrated Martyn Minns of Virginia as bishop for an outreach program, called Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda consecrated John Guernsey yesterday to oversee 26 congregations that have left the Episcopal Church in Virginia.
Copyright © 2007 Spero
Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya consecrated two Americans. Rev Bill Murdoch and Rev Bill Atwood will serve parishes under Kenyan jurisdiction in the US. They join other dissident Episcopalians consecrated by Africans.
Two Episcopal priests, who split from the Episcopal Church over its acceptance of homosexual bishops, have been consecrated bishops for several breakaway congregations by an Anglican archbishop who is renowned for his conservatism.
Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya consecrated Bill Atwood of Texas and Bill Murdoch of Massachusetts at a service in Nairobi on Thursday, reported the AFP. The two men vowed to serve the international interests of the Anglican Church of Kenya and of the congregations in North America "under Kenyan jurisdiction."
Bishops Atwood and Murdoch will have about 30 Anglican congregations under their charge. These congregations had previously approached the Kenyan province for leadership.
During the service, Archbishop Nzimbi urged congregations to pray for homosexuals, but renewed his opposition for their consecration.
After the consecration, Bishop Atwood reportedly said the ceremony was not a political statement, but rather an act rooted in the Gospel.
Ten primates from Asia, Africa and Latin America attended the service.
Archbishop Drexel Gomez from the West Indies told AFP that the Gospel has to take precedence over culture.
"The issue is not primarily one of sexuality,” he was quoted as saying. “But one which seeks to answer the following question: Which relationship corresponds to God's ordering of life? Homosexual practice violates the order of life given by God in Holy Scripture.”
These are not the first episcopal appointments for breakaway churches in the United States.
In May, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria consecrated Martyn Minns of Virginia as bishop for an outreach program, called Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda consecrated John Guernsey yesterday to oversee 26 congregations that have left the Episcopal Church in Virginia.
Copyright © 2007 Spero
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