Anglican Mainstream South Africa

The Torah Declaration is a public statement signed by 180 Rabbis, Community Leaders, and Mental Health Professionals

Societal Developments On Homosexuality

There has been a monumental shift in the secular world’s attitude towards homosexuality over the past few decades. In particular over the past fifteen years there has been a major public campaign to gain acceptance for homosexuality. Legalizing same-sex marriage has become the end goal of the campaign to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality.

A propaganda blitz has been sweeping the world using political tactics to persuade the public about the legitimacy of homosexuality. The media is rife with negative labels implying that one is “hateful” or “homophobic” if they do not accept the homosexual lifestyle as legitimate. This political coercion has silenced many into acquiescence. Unfortunately this attitude has seeped into the Torah community and many have become confused or have accepted the media’s portrayal of this issue.

The Torah’s Unequivocal And Eternal Message

The Torah makes a clear statement that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle or a genuine identity by severely prohibiting its conduct. Furthermore, the Torah, ever prescient about negative secular influences, warns us in Vayikra (Leviticus) 20:23 “Do not follow the traditions of the nations that I expel from before you…” Particularly the Torah writes this in regards to homosexuality and other forbidden sexual liaisons.

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Read also:  Amsterdam’s chief rabbi suspended over gay cure declaration

By Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet

It’s difficult today to say anything in favour of the intact, married family without putting somebody’s nose out of joint. Last week it was a blogger at the LBGT site ThinkProgress who took umbrage at a comment by Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton. I’ll let Mr Stanton tell you how from his post on NRO’s Home Front blog:

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The Rev. Michael Vono, Steenson’s successor as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, said that sense of betrayal is particularly strong among gay and female priests in the diocese.Perhaps part of the whole issue, no?

By Olivier Uyttebrouck,
Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/01/17/news/episcopal-church-members-betrayed.html

The Rev. Jeffrey Steenson’s announcement three years ago to step down as the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande to become a Catholic priest shocked and saddened many New Mexican Episcopalians.

Now many of those same people feel “betrayed” by Pope Benedict XVI’s recent appointment of Steenson to head a special Roman Catholic diocese for disaffected Episcopalians.

Church leaders say the announcement reopened old wounds and created new ones among Episcopalians here.

“When he left (in 2007), it was painful, but we respected his decision,” said the Rev. Daniel Gutierrez, canon to the ordinary for the 18,000-member Diocese of the Rio Grande. “But then for him to turn around and take this position and try to lure other priests is a betrayal.”

The Rev. Michael Vono, Steenson’s successor as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, said that sense of betrayal is particularly strong among gay and female priests in the diocese.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which bars women from the clergy, women can be ordained as Episcopal priests. Women comprise a “sizable” minority of the 180-member clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, he said.

Steenson “seemed to have no trouble working with women priests” during his three years as bishop, Vono said. “He was celebrating with women at the altars.”

Steenson did not respond to messages left at his office at Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church Monday in Houston.

The Pope’s Jan. 2 announcement made Steenson the head of a new nationwide ordinariate, called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, to serve former Episcopal groups and clergy in the United States who wish to become Roman Catholic. It wasn’t clear from the announcement how the new office, which is similar to a diocese, would operate.

According to the Catholic Church, more than 100 clergy have applied to be ordained Catholic for the ordinariate.

Steenson, 59, a married priest with three adult children, was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in February 2009 at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Rio Rancho.

Steenson served as bishop of the Rio Grande diocese from 2004 to 2007 at a divisive time for Episcopalians, both in New Mexico and nationally. He opposed the election of the first openly gay bishop, and he did not allow the blessing of same-sex unions in his diocese.

Steenson said in 2007 that those conflicts made it impossible for him to pursue his ultimate goal of helping the Anglican Communion unite with the Roman Catholic Church.

New Mexico Episcopalians at the time were publicly muted in their response to Steenson’s conversion.

Vono said this month that Steenson’s decision to step down just three years after taking his vows as bishop left Episcopalians “saddened” and “disillusioned.”

“He took vows, as we all do, in front of the whole church,” Vono said of Steenson’s choice to become a bishop. “It isn’t as though Jeffrey didn’t know what he was doing when he made those vows.”

Vono wrote a pastoral letter this month to members of the diocese expressing his thoughts about Steenson’s appointment to lead the new Roman Catholic diocese.

The announcement “has evoked in some a sense of disillusionment, betrayal, sadness and confusion,” Vono wrote in the Jan. 4 letter.

Vono described the new Roman Catholic diocese as “a gracious pastoral gesture” by the Pope to those uncomfortable with the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain women and gays as priests and bishops and to bless same-gender unions.

But the history of Christianity shows that “ours is neither the first nor the last age to experience disaffection among Christians over evolving contemporary controversial issues,” Vono wrote.

Rather than becoming disillusioned, “we can learn from others and continue to love, respect and live with our neighbors,” despite our differences, he wrote.

BISHOP NAZIR ALI SPEAKS

* Mission as presence has been ascribed to St. Francis, to take the gospel to different places and use words where necessary. Be present itself is mission in some sense.

* In the Anglican world we also have mission as presence arising in two ways.

There has been an Anglican thinking on the incarnation. For the church has to be the presence of the church in different places and people. There is a theological commitment that is incarnational. Secondly and practically it arises from the parish system as it emerged in England. Two men Theodare of Tarsus in Asia and Augustine the man who became the ABC created the parish system. Also his companion Adrian the Afrikcano created the parish system of the CofE that has now existed for several hundreds of years.

* Both Roman and Celtic missionaries worked at the same time and we have much to learn from the Celtic aspect of Christianity in England. They had both freedom and spontaneity.

* What the mission of Augustine and Adrian was a structure that gave the presence of the church in every community. Christian presence not limited to the Anglican Communion.

* Anglican chaplaincies in different parts of the world. “I am familiar with the gulf. When oil was found in Gulf States Anglican chaplaincies got a new lease on life. They became a hot bed of Christian activity.

* In Abu Dhabi more than 24 congregations worship in the same building from Pentecostals to Oriental Orthodox. People had to share vestments. Chalcedon and non-Chalcedon churches who had been out of communion for over 1500 years found themselves sharing a cover. They participated in one universal church, which St. Paul described at Jerusalem.

* This is receptor-oriented revelation – revelation designed for those to receive it. When people hear the Good News of Jesus Christ there is always in their experience the belief to which the gospel latches on.

* How is this identification? The answer is dialogue. The theological basis of dialogue must be Trinitarian. We can engage with any people in dialogue because all people are made in God’s image although that image has been obscured and damaged by original sin it has not been destroyed by sin. It is still possible to evoke something in people by the evangelist engaging in dialogue with him.

* The eternal word becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ and he is the one to which every knee will bow. John 1:9 is the burden of the 4th chapter of what John is saying. Even if people are turning away from Him it can be the basis of dialogue. That the HS is at work is also Johanine…it is convincing the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Note I said convince not convict because the word use by John in Chapter 16 has a long background in Greek. It is used in the platonic dialogue. The master brings the student to truth. Presence, identification and dialogue go together. That aspect of mission is to affirm and be positive to people.

* The prophetic aspect of mission is that all share in the fallenness of human kind.

* Those who think of mission think of Christ in culture who sees man as fallen in culture. Others see Christ as beyond culture and others transcending cultural limitations. Another view is Christ who is against culture.

* Archbishop Gitari (Kenya) said at the 1988 Lambeth Conference that when gospel came to his people there was something the gospel upheld and celebrated. People’s commitment was to community to celebrate together, to support one another in adversity.

* Another example was more controversial. Polygamy. The early missionaries in Africa compelled them to give up all but one of their wives in order to be baptized. The result was the destitution of the women who were left. Some fell into prostitution. So Gitari suggested that for one-generation only polygamous men along with wives and children lived together and gradually as the gospel work took hold monogamy became the Christian standard.

* What the gospel would not tolerate was cattle rustling and the practice of killing twins. Twins were regarded as a curse and had to be killed.

* In East Africa the custom of the local ruler to use young boys for homosexual acts. The Gospel could not allow the continuation of such a practice and many of the Christian young men who refused to be used this way were among the first martyrs of the church. This gives us the background of why the African church has responded to what has happened in the US.

* Alongside the affirmation as to what is God given in nature, the gospel always is able to resist what is of sin and human rebellion and greed and the desire to satisfy our appetites.

* Another aspect of Christian mission is Christian service. The son of man came not to serve but to give his life a ransom for many. Christianity is about a self-emptying way of life. Self-giving is to the point of self-emptying. Alongside service there is also action. We have to act on behalf of people who cannot act for themselves. My work of advocacy is for the persecuted church and I speak to the governments in their own country and in international bodies in the media. Acting on behalf of them is basic to our understanding of what is mission.

* We must speak to the injustice to indigenous people of Latin America. I speak of my work with Christians in Pakistan. Without advocacy of those who suffer injustice, without working for justice without making sure that the alienation we cannot say or mission is hope. Presence, identification, dialogue as service, as action and evangelism.

* Why should we engage in evangelism? The gospel begins in remembrance about what we are supposed to be. Jesus is looking for the lost sheep. There is amnesia we don’t know who we are and where we are. The opposite of amnesia is anamuesis. It has to do with remembering who we are, what God wants us to be and to remind God of his mercies.

* Remembrance leads to repentance. Dr. Kenneth Bailey, who is an expert in this in its Middle East understanding, has the son coming to himself, but that is not full repentance. The remembering leads to the repenting and the repentance is complete when the father goes out to meet him. He wants to be a servant but the father invests in him the sonship he had lost. The gospel leads to fulfillment of authentic aspirations all human beings have. When we come to Christ all God’s purposes come to be fulfilled. I have met many who have come to Christ from many ideologies and capitulation and reassurance is basic to the gospel. When we put our trust in Christ we can be sure God will fulfill his will for us.

* Jesus said all that the father has given me, I have lost nothing We can have confidence in Christ for our final destiny. This is unique to the gospel.

* Other religions have no such assurance. I had an uncle who became a pious Muslim. He had been a distinguished civil servant. I asked him what the practice of his religion was leading too. All he could say is I hope God accepts me. That is not so with us. We know in putting our trust in Christ and what he has done for us he has opened the way of friendship with God and how in Christ we find God in Christ finds us and we find ourselves.

* Anglicans always try to escape intentional evangelism. Just because we have a service there is no sharing the gospel in words and we need to find ways to invite them to put their trust in Jesus Christ. The evangelistic dimension should not be used as an excuse to duck out of personal witness and also ecclesial witness.

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From Cranmer

[...]  His Grace may have got this very slightly wrong. Silly him.

If Chris Bryant thinks the Church of England is being ‘silly’ over this issue, what on earth does he think about the Roman Catholic Church, which is rather more robust on the issue?

Or Islam, which he might find even more robust?

It is astonishing that an MP attacks the Established Church on this matter, not least because it is one of the few expressions of faith in this country which has bothered to commission and convene endless debates, committees and reports on the issue, tearing itself apart and driving it to schism and not-quite-schism over the last decade and more.

The Church of England has been adapting, compromising and perpetually ‘modernising’ along via media after via media since 1534. The genius of Anglicanism is that it seeks to reconcile opposed systems, rejecting them as exclusive systems, but showing that the principle for which each stands has its place within the total orbit of Christian truth.

The Church of England is not a political party that may be recreated in the image of man. It is no-one’s private fiefdom (though it may once have been). Her Majesty the Queen is the Supreme Governor, and Jesus Christ is the Head.

It is acutely concerned with many pressing prioritries: the persecution abroad of homosexuals; the adoption of children by suitable parents irrespective of sexuality; the provision of services for the poor and marginalised; the expression of compassion to the alienated, outcast, oppressed and persecuted, irrespective of their gender, skin colour, sexuality or religion. The doors of the Church of England are open to everyone in the land. For centuries before the Labour Party even existed, it has possessed the capacity for the via media which was never in its essence compromise or an intellectual expedient but a quality of thinking, an approach in which elements usually regarded as mutually exclusive were seen to be in fact complementary. These things were held in ‘living tension’, not in order to walk the tightrope of compromise, but because they were seen to be mutually illuminating and to fertilise each other.

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British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks visited with Pope Benedict XVI last month in Rome and defended Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage, including the “religious roots of the market economy and of democratic capitalism.”   In a speech there, he urged that Jews and Christians to work together to “help Europe recover its soul.”

Separately, in a speech to the British House of Lords, Sacks denounced increasing persecution of Christians by radical Islam, warning that the “fate of Christians in the Middle East today is the litmus test of the Arab Spring.”  In Rome and in London, he was more outspoken than are many of Europe’s often muted church officials, who typically fear to defend their faith, their culture, or their persecuted brethren.

“If Europe loses the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave it its historic identity and its greatest achievements in literature, art, music, education, politics, and economics, it will lose its identity and its greatness,” Sacks warned during his Rome speech.  “When a civilization loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children … we – Jews and Christians, side-by-side – must renew our faith and its prophetic voice.”

Sacks admired and was encouraged by the warm response the Pope received during his 2010 visit to mostly non-religious Britain, when “everyone was amazed that the interest was so acute and so widespread.” The Chief Rabbi’s visit to Rome clearly was an attempt to strengthen Jewish and Christian voices in defense of historic Western cultural, political and economic principles.

Unlike left-leaning church officials in the West who simplistically equate free markets with sterile materialism, Sacks offered a more balanced perspective.  He critiqued Europe’s secularism and materialism while pointing out that biblical religion created the foundations of prosperous market economies.  “When Europe recovers its soul, it will recover its wealth-creating energies,” he said.  “But first it must remember: humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind.”   In contrast, the Religious Left, both in Europe and America, prefers to believe that markets are innately wicked and must be usurped by coercive national and international regulation.

Of course, much of the Religious Left is itself deeply materialist, preoccupied by the redistribution of wealth but unconcerned about the transcendence and timeless principles that facilitate justice and prosperity.  But appropriately for a spiritual leader, Sacks pointed to the primacy of the “soul” of Europe.

“We are very concerned obviously with the soul of Europe, I mean Europe was built on Judeo-Christian foundations, even the market was built on Judeo-Christian foundations,” Sacks told Vatican Radio.  In his Rome speech, he described the West’s democracy and prosperity relying on biblical understandings of “dignity of the human individual,” respect for property rights and labor, job creation over charity, and creation of wealth so as to become “partners with God in the work of creation.”   He noted that ancient rabbis “favored markets and competition because they generate wealth, lower prices, increase choice, reduced absolute levels of poverty, and extend humanity’s control over the environment, narrowing the extent to which we are the passive victims of circumstance and fate.”

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