News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
8/13/2008

Despite huge and obvious divergences, the Anglican Communion is struggling to reach a new level of maturity, wrote Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, TEC Presiding Bishop, in a by-lined article in the Guardian newspaper. The recently-concluded Lambeth Conference provided an opportunity for bishops from around the Anglican Communion to discover the deeper realities of the contexts in which each seeks to spread the gospel, she said.

“One bishop from India reported a legislative requirement to obtain a magistrate’s certificate before baptizing a convert, with a prison term of several years and a significant fine as the penalty for proceeding without legal sanction.

“A bishop’s spouse from Africa reported the church’s difficulty in supporting widows who are pressured to marry the dead husband’s brother (even if already married), or else forfeit their children and property.”

VOL: Perhaps Mrs. Schori could have mentioned a Canadian Christian Pastor who is being threatened with jail for daring to say that sodomy is unbiblical and bad for your health.

Jefferts Schori: “Bishops from Madagascar told of cyclones that destroy their people’s homes and crops, often several times a year, and how they seek to build strong church buildings that can be havens from the storms as well as seats of learning.

VOL: This is a problem of natural evil which Jesus himself addressed. Wealthy churches like the Episcopal Church should be giving money to build and rebuild such structures instead of spending millions of dollars on lawsuits suing orthodox parishes for their properties.

Jefferts Schori: Western bishops spoke of the church’s pastoral role in seeking to provide sacred support for same-sex couples living in monogamous, life-long relationships.

VOL: There is no biblical evidence that the churches should be supporting any such sexual arrangements outside of heterosexual marriage. This is to denigrate and pollute “sacred” marriage and the gospel and offers a reductionist view of human sexual behavior that has no sanction in 2000 years of church history and is still not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, the great Orthodox churches of the East and West, the vast majority of Evangelicals throughout the world nor is it the overwhelming thinking of the Muslim community.

Jefferts Schori: “Bishops from Africa and Asia told of the difficulty of evangelism in majority Muslim societies. Sudanese bishops sought partnerships as they seek to resettle returning refugees and rebuild a devastated church structure.”

VOL: The Presiding Bishop missed the impromptu press conference by the Sudanese Archbishop who said Bishop Gene Robinson should resign and blamed western pansexualism for the difficulties in evangelizing Muslims. Jefferts Schori deliberately overlooks the fact that one of the great difficulties in doing Muslim evangelism is that they are pouring scorn, and, in some cases, persecuting Christians because of Western Anglican homosexual stances. How convenient of her to do this.

Jefferts Schori: “A Tanzanian bishop lamented the difficulty of biblical study without libraries or access to the scholarly tools Westerners take for granted. ”

VOL: As these brothers are orthodox, perhaps the Presiding Bishop could offer generous scholarships for their priests to study at TSM and Nashotah House. The “generous orthodoxy” of Virginian Theological Seminary is a bit too generous for African Evangelical Anglicans.

Jefferts Schori: Japanese bishops spoke of the church’s inability to address social change when Christianity is such a small part of society.

VOL: Japan’s Anglicans have never been known for their evangelical zeal. Despite a prosperous society, only 4% of Japanese people are Christians (George Gallup). Following World War II, the Japanese bought into America’s economic capitalist system, but not its gospel. This failure might be as much ours as theirs.

Jefferts Schori: “Given divergences that look interplanetary in degree and scale, what does this diverse body have in common? Certainly a recognizably common framework of worship, descended from the Church of England. A reliance on sacred scripture, in common with tradition and reason, also characteristic of roots in British Christianity. And a passion for caring for their flocks – the hungry, the sick, the aged and infirm, widows and orphans, and the forgotten, as well as those who know no good news.

“But the forms and structures of the various provinces of the Anglican Communion have diverged significantly, in ways that challenge those ancient ties to England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those provinces are the result of evangelism tied to colonial structures, whether of Britain or her former colonies, and that colonial history has still to be unpacked and assessed. The present attempts to manage conflict in the communion through a renewed focus on structural ties to old or new authorities have generated significant resistance, both from provinces who largely absented themselves from Lambeth and from dissenting voices among the attending bishops.

VOL: Correct. And the reason those provinces have absented themselves is because bishops like Jefferts Schori, Gene Robinson, Tom Shaw, et al don’t have the same gospel as the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans and they are in deep conflict over the meaning of mission and sex outside of marriage. The Episcopal Church has nobody to blame but itself for the mess it has caused and continues to cause the wider Anglican Communion.

Jefferts Schori: “The Anglican communion’s present reality reflects a struggle to grow into a new level of maturity, like that of adult siblings in a much-conflicted family. As we continue to wrestle, sufficient space and respect for the differing gifts of the siblings just might lead to greater maturity in relationship. This will require greater self-definition as well as decreased reactivity. Jesus’ own example in relationships with his opponents and with his disciples will be instructive.”

VOL: The truth is that the Anglican Communion’s “present reality” is one of apostasy and heresy in the West verses orthodoxy in faith and morals among the majority of the world’s Anglicans. The Global South rejects any notion that the new “maturity” leads to pansexual acceptance. It is Jefferts Schori and her ilk that want to change the doctrine and discipline of the church, and by doing so have brought the whole communion to the brink of schism.

The Anglican Communion is de facto split with the birth of GAFCON and it will not go backwards in the name of “maturity”. The so-called “dithering gifts” have fractured the Anglican Communion and, like Humpty Dumpty, will not be put back together again. “Greater self-definition” means being accountable to nobody including the Archbishop of Canterbury and “decreased reactivity” isn’t going to happen. The Internet will see to that. Asking Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola not to be “reactive” to Western apostasy is a bit like asking a caged lion not to eat a half dead cow being handed to it.

Anglican unity is over. The Lambeth Conference is finished. All that remains to be seen is who speaks for Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion as we move into the 21st Century. It surely isn’t a dying Western Anglican Church.

From Global South Anglican

By Matt Cresswell

THE ANGLICAN Communion must prepare for “an orderly” separation if differences cannot be healed, claims the Bishop of Winchester (pictured). In a report addressed to his diocese relaying his reflections on the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt said that the Archbishop of Canterbury had three realistic options ahead of him after the next Primates meeting in 2009.

Firstly, Dr Williams will need to judge “whether there is a will for the Anglican Communion to go forward together in our Lord’s service,” claimed the Bishop. Secondly there existed the “terrifyingly difficult decision” of negotiating “an orderly separation”. And finally there is the looming possibility of watching a “more destructive separation take place around him.”

During the Lambeth Conference the Bishop told The Sunday Telegraph that the Archbishop’s plan to maintain unity was unlikely to work. “The Lambeth Conference is required to do something rather than live down to the worst expectations of the bishops who stayed away,” he said. “We need to negotiate a separation in the Communion sooner rather than later, to leave the strongest possibility of remaining in some kind of fellowship.”

Following the Conference, his document this week has confirmed to him the likely option of separation. Ideally the separation would mean one large “orthodox” majority which stayed faithful to the See of Canterbury. The church would then maintain “some defined relationship with a ‘separated’ and more ‘liberal’ Communion of Churches centred on The Episcopal Church.”

He added that much depended on “the Gafcon Primates and the rest of the ‘Global South’ quickly mending the relationships between them that have been put at risk.”

He said it was therefore important for the Gafcon primates, who boycotted Lambeth, to ensure that they attended the forthcoming Primates’ Meeting.

But Fr Geoffrey Kirk, of Forward in Faith, was sceptical of that approach. He said that the idea that the opposing factions in the communion might talk at the next Primates’ Meeting was highly improbable.

“The thing that shocked me most while at Gafcon was just how angry some of the African bishops are,” Fr Kirk said.

He added: “Bishop Scott-Joynt is rapidly moving into a position where he will be regarded as an extremist. The fact is he is an absolute centralist.”

Meanwhile, the Rev Rod Thomas of Reform said: “I would hope there is a growing desire in the Communion for churches to align themselves with the Gafcon statement, so that those who can’t subscribe separate themselves from the Communion.”

Sir, The Bishop of Durham in his articulate letter (Aug 9) regarding the leaking of the Williams letters makes some useful clarifications and I am grateful for his statements regarding Dr Williams’s closing address at the Lambeth Conference.

As for why I decided to offer his letters to the public arena, I have written to Dr Wright at length, but suffice it to say that as events moved from GAFCon to Lambeth I became almost sure for various reasons that the liberals knew far more about Dr Williams’s personal views than the traditionalists did and, if so, the balance should be redressed.

Over the years I have shared the letters with only a few; I had no desire to embarrass Dr Williams over his statements, and I hoped that his personal views would change. Now that the issue of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion has become such a big issue I judged it was time to override my misgivings about making his views known. Anglicans can make up their own minds what to do with the information.

Deborah Pitt
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan

LAMBETH: Psychiatrist Pinpoints Sexuality Struggles in Church & Family

By Lisa Guinness

Thank you for your attention; because this afternoon is not fringe at all but a vital part of the listening and dialogue said to be the essence of the Lambeth Conference.

A Revolution Ecclesiastes 4 v 1 Again I saw all the oppressions that are practised under the sun: And behold the tears of the oppressed, And they had no one to comfort them On the side of their oppressors there was power, And there was no one to comfort them.

So a revolution is always to cast off a restraint – real or perceived. The purpose is to bring down an institution and create a new freedom in its place.

But in the fall out, there are always casualties and prisoners and the infrastructure, necessary for ordinary life, often gets damaged or destroyed.

The full cost and the supposed benefits only become apparent later.

The institutions in question here were the family and the church.

The Family Sadly in the western world this had been reduced to the nuclear variety without the ancient possibilities of community, rites of passage, a host of relationships and mentoring that were present in a tribal or extended family model. As the social fragmentation started to bite and the walls closed in on the 2.4 children at home alone; so the new possibilities of sexual freedom due to contraception and social freedom of new job opportunities kicked in. A generation of confident independent under 30s did not need God and were proud of their ability to cast off restraint.

Ephesians 3 speaks of all the families on earth emanating from God the Father so what are some of the key elements of family that we have lost in the revolution. They may have seemed confining then, but were in fact the necessary order from which real freedom could flow.

God’s original intention is that two adults should have been mature enough to leave their father and mother and cleave to each other in a covenant relationship.

1. Leaving : father and mother being mature enough both sides
2. Cleaving: covenant commitment that gives the security for dynamic evolving personhood c.f. moving on when the going gets tough
3. Procreation: with even more possibilities for evolving personhood with the opportunities to mature into motherhood and fatherhood
4. The family circle bringing more and more possibilities of relationship and becoming.
5. Undergirding this is the presence of the creator, redeemer God so in casting off the restraint of the family, we secured our absolute independence, becoming as god, but without His wisdom

Then the fall out starts to happen as we inflict primal wounds on our children and relationships become uncommitted and therefore indulgent with less and less possibility of being intimate or stable.

This Revolution and The Church One effect of this independence, felt by the church, was a desire also to be allowed to do what was right in one’s own eyes.

Another was, as the church presumed that because it felt powerless and contaminated by the sexual revolution that God was too. Best to pretend that nothing is happening. The challenge is too great and too messy. Another strand was a crisis of confidence in power of the Cross and a sense of shame at needing a Saviour.

Which is odd when I am not ashamed to call in a plumber for a dodgy ball cock or take my car to the garage for a service. I have never yet been told by the mechanic that I should have been able to fix the brake pads myself – rather I have been commended for dealing with such a potentially dangerous defect. What havoc am I reeking in my relationships from all my unhealed places! Owning issues of sexuality became very difficult to do in some areas of the church – especially if the church felt it had nothing meaningful to offer.

So what of The Cross Does it have any power? Does it effect any real salvation for the personal and domestic issues in our lives? the hurts and losses, the shame, the confusion, any freedom from the people we need to forgive? Is there any justice or restoration of our full personhood this side of heaven?

Or is the Cross just a symbol or impotent theological concept and there is no hope of change or peace or honour in this the mortal phase of our eternal life?

Because if the Cross has no power then there is no hope of effective pastoral care or salvation, in its true sense of healing, and we are of all people to be pitied. **

And in our hopelessness we will be very tempted to reinterpret Scripture or leave it behind completely and become those with the appearance of godliness but denying its power. (2 Tim 3 v 5)

Hebrews 12: describes a key progression See to it that: who knows where this is happening in a fragmented and values personal privacy above true fellowship and accountability. no one misses out on the grace of God -> no root of bitterness grows up in you and causes you trouble ( and we know how much of our behaviours are to assuage the pressure and frustration of disappointment and bitterness) – > no one is sexually immoral -> no one goes for instant gratification like Esau who sold the blessing of his sonship for a bowl of soup.

How many of us have anyone close enough to know if this is happening? Especially where we value of privacy above true fellowship.

Read More………..

August 11th, 2008 Posted in News |

A Message from Bishop David Anderson
Dearly Beloved in Christ,

Lambeth is now over. Many of us are studying not only the documents of Lambeth, but the detailed analyses that are being produced by various sources, and then sitting back and saying, “OK, what is really going on, and how does this play out in the next year?”

Reports came in from Lambeth that a number of TEC revisionist bishops were spreading misinformation in their Indaba groups about the state of litigation in the United States. Their claim was that the orthodox churches and dioceses “were suing them,” and the blame was really to be put on the orthodox. This is untrue, but it has been proven that if a lie is told often enough, people begin to believe there is something to it. Let us look at a few examples of lawsuits in the US.

In California, the bishop of Los Angeles is suing the orthodox churches, as is also the case in the diocese of San Diego. The Los Angeles orthodox churches won in the lower court and were reversed in a Court of Appeals, and the case is now before the California Supreme Court. The point to take away is that Bishop J. Jon Bruno initiated the lawsuit, demanding even the children’s Sunday School crayons (no, I am not joking, you can read it in the public record), and for anyone, especially a California bishop, to assert that they were sued first is a deliberate untruth.

In Virginia, Bishop Peter Lee had worked out an arbitration procedure that would have allowed the churches and the diocese to negotiate an agreed-upon settlement and avoid litigation. The churches proceeded with their parish votes and the registration of the vote tallies with the local Court Houses, as per the 1867 Virginia law that applied to church splits. When the TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori heard about it, she advised Bishop Lee that “there is a new sheriff in town.” Lee was told that if he didn’t sue the churches, TEC would sue him. Bishop Lee uncharacteristically buckled under the pressure, and without advance notice, launched the lawsuits. For him to say that the Virginia churches sued him would be a gross violation of the truth also.

Somewhere in the United States, a parish may have asked for a declaratory judgment to settle issues of property title, or may have, once they were sued, filed a counter suit in defense, but it has been the model of the orthodox churches not to use the courts to attack bishops, dioceses, or TEC. The very aggressive stance that TEC has taken was first formulated by leadership within the Presbyterian Church in the US, and it appears that TEC Chancellor David Booth Beers is following the Presbyterian game plan to a “P.”

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‘Rwanda is coming under the fire of the Spirit’
The Archbishop of Rwanda talks about the genocide and his optimism for the future

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

The Archbishop of Rwanda

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (ANS) – Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, the head of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, has one of the most difficult jobs in the world.

For he has pledged himself to bringing healing to a country that in 1994 experienced the Rwandan Genocide, which saw the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis and the moderates of its Hutu majority.

The genocide was primarily perpetrated by two Hutu militias, the Interahamwe, the militant wing of the MRND, and the Impuzamugambi, the militant wing of the CDR. It was an eruption of the ethnic and economic pressures ultimately consequential after Rwanda’s colonial era and the fractious culture of Hutu power.

The Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime with support from Francophone nations of Africa, as well as France itself, and rebel Tutsi exiles with support from Uganda, after their invasion in 1990, was its catalyst. With outside assistance, in 1993, the Hutu regime and Tutsi rebels were able to agree to a cease-fire, and the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords.

The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the RPF, the political wing of the RPA, and the government in talks, elites among the Akazu were against any agreement for cooperation between the regime and the rebels to solve the ethnic and economic problems of Rwanda and progress towards a stable nationhood.

Now, thankfully, a relative piece has settled into the country and who better to talk about the situation but the Archbishop of Rwanda.

I caught up with him at the recent 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, where he was a speaker at an event put during the conference by Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, who moderated a panel of Rwandan government and church leaders; business and medical experts; and Saddleback HIV/AIDS Initiative directors, to address the issue of global partnership ventures to help people living with HIV/AIDS.

I began by asking Archbishop Kolini to talk about the Rwandan genocide that so shocked the world.

“Well, let me say first of all I was not there at that time,” he began. “I was a bishop in the Congo, where I was born, but I was following the terrible events because I was a part of what was called the Francophone province which was comprised of three countries — Rwanda, Burundi and Congo. We had several meetings and I knew what was going on in Rwanda. It was terrible to me; it was a spiritual challenge.”

He then made the shocking admission that much of the killing was done by “nominal Christians.”

“Yes, they were nominal Christians,” he said. “When the war broke out, the church in Rwanda was at its infancy level. So they were busy baptizing, but discipleship was a challenge, which we are now doing.

“Much of the killings took place within families. Uncles killed a nephew, nephew killed an uncle. The aunties and even parents killed their own children and even children killed their parents.”

So it wasn’t just the Tutsis and Hutu who were fighting?

“Of course, there was much killing between the two groups, but there was also many mixed marriages and mixed blood, for a number of years,” he said. “To me, we all blame each other, but we forget that it was the devil behind it. So unless the devil is blamed and is challenged, genocide can take place in another form anywhere.”

I then asked the Archbishop how big the population was before the killings began.

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