“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

–John 15:1-11

The numerous liberal Catholic appointments in the diocese of Southwark are causing increasing concern for evangelicals, in a row that is threatening to split the diocese. The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Christopher Chessun, has appointed liberals to the last seven senior vacancies in the diocese, including the Cathedral Dean and Bishop’s Chaplain.

Attending a meeting of the Southwark Diocesan Evangelical Union (DEU) last Monday, many felt he failed to satisfy the concerns of the 100 people in attendance. The Rev Stephen Kuhrt later said: “He has been politically naïve,” and called the situation an ”˜absolute gaffe’. The vicar, who chairs Fulcrum, did not doubt Bishop Christopher’s integrity, but claimed he had been very badly advised. Fulcrum, while a more moderate evangelical Anglican group, joined Reform in the condemnation of the appointments, claiming the views of evangelicals were not being heard.

Read it all. Also, please peruse the Church Times article there as well.

Somalia’s Islamist terror group al Shabab wants to rid the Muslim country of all Christians and is specifically targeting Christian converts from Islam.

Al Shabab recently joined with al Qaeda and wants Sharia law implemented in the country.

An al Shabab video that swept the Internet in September 2008 shows the brutal beheading of 25-year-old aid worker Mansour Mohammed. His crime? Mohammed converted to Christianity in 2005.

Read it all.

While some of the highest numbers of new priests are in the Catholic-majority cities of Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia, ordinations in Washington, D.C. (18 last year) and Chicago (26) also are booming. The biggest gains are not only in traditional Catholic strongholds. In Lincoln, Neb., Catholics constitute only 16% of the population yet have some of the strongest numbers of ordinations. In 2011, there were 10 men ordained as priests in Lincoln.

What explains the trend? Nearly 20 years ago, Archbishop Elden Curtiss, then leader of the Omaha, Neb., diocese, suggested that when dioceses are unambiguous and allow a minimum of dissent about the male, celibate priesthood, more candidates answer the call to the priesthood. Our preliminary research on the correlates of priestly ordinations reveals that the dioceses with the largest numbers of new priests are led by courageous bishops with faithful and inspirational vocations offices.

Read it all.

(If you are interested, you may read a bit more about the author here–KSH.)

Dr Rowan Williams has served as head of the Anglican Communion for ten years and the world has changed markedly in that time, and not for the better. Within the UK there have been profound changes in society: the complex responses to 9/11; the rise of exaggerated political correctness; the financial crisis; an increasingly confused and vague national spirituality; and a continuing numerical decline and division within the Anglican Church. In the light of this, I suggest that the new Archbishop needs to have the following qualities[:]

1) He should be a man who knows God’s priorities….2) He should be a man of conviction, a man confident in the Christian faith as revealed by Scripture and taught by the Church over centuries….3) He should be a man who can connect, and is able to express himself in words that can be understood….He should be a man who will confront the culture….5) He should be a man of discernment, not simply intelligence or wisdom but that combination of God-given grace and human intellect that allows someone to detect problems and identify opportunities…6) He should be a man of courage. It is a long-standing rule that anyone who goes out and preaches the good news of Jesus will face opposition. As far as I’m aware the last Archbishop of Canterbury to be martyred was Thomas Cranmer, who went to the stake in 1556 but these are frankly dark days for the church in the West.

Read it all from the April 8, 2012, Church of England Newspaper on page E3 (requires subscription).

…whatever we believe in or don’t believe in, we should suspend our disbelief about the power of this Easter story that has shaped some of the greatest imaginings of our civilisation. It was Thomas, the doubter, who said that unless he could put his hands in Jesus’ wounds, he wasn’t having a bar of it. And it was Thomas, humbled, who said: ”Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.”

When it comes to the great religions, the affinities between Christianity and Judaism and Islam, the twinned spiritualities of Buddhism and Hinduism, there are a lot of people who would like to get beyond their ”unbelief”.
And there are plenty, too, who want to crow their unbelief like a creed that could move the stars. But this can’t change the power of the story of the man who was done to death and rose again.

Read it all.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds which cannot be passed. Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the LORD!

–Psalm 148

“[Hans Urs von] Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday is probably one of his most intriguing contributions since he interprets it as moving beyond the active self-surrender of Good Friday into the absolute helplessness of sin and the abandonment and lostness of death.

In the Old Testament one of the greatest threats of God’s wrath was His threat of abandonment, to leave His people desolate, to be utterly rejected of God. It is this that Jesus experienced upon the Cross and in His descent into the lifeless passivity and God-forsakenness of the grave. By His free entrance into the helplessness of sin, Christ was reduced to what Balthasar calls a “cadaver-obedience” revealing and experience the full horror of sin.
As Peter himself preached at Pentecost (Acts 2:23-24; 32-33):

”˜[Jesus] being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you, by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death; who God raised up, having abolished the birth pangs of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it”¦This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, He pour out this which you now see and hear.’

We ought to pause and note the passivity that is expressed here. Christ experienced what God was doing through Him by His purpose and foreknowledge. Jesus was truly dead and fully encompassed within and held by the pains of death and needed God to abolish them. He was freed from death by God, not simply by God’s whim, but because for God it was impossible that death should hold Christ. Christ Himself receives the Holy Spirit from the Father in order that He might pour out that Spirit. Balthasar writes:
”˜Jesus was truly dead, because he really became a man as we are, a son of Adam, and therefore, despite what one can sometimes read in certain theological works, he did not use the so-called “brief” time of his death for all manner of “activities” in the world beyond. In the same way that, upon earth, he was in solidarity with the living, so, in the tomb, he is in solidarity with the dead”¦Each human being lies in his own tomb. And with this condition Jesus is in complete solidarity.’

According to Balthasar, this death was also the experience, for a time, of utter God-forsakenness””that is hell. Hell, then, is a Christological concept which is defined in terms of Christ’s experience on the Cross. This is also the assurance that we never need fear rejection by the Father if we are in Christ, since Christ has experienced hell in our place.”

”“S. Joel Garver on Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

“Here the hangman stops his cart:
Now the best of friends must part.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live, lads, and I will die.

“Oh, at home had I but stayed
”˜Prenticed to my father’s trade,
Had I stuck to plane and adze,
I had not been lost, my lads.

“Then I might have built perhaps
Gallows-trees for other chaps,
Never dangled on my own,
Had I left but ill alone.
“Now, you see, they hang me high,
And the people passing by
Stop to shake their fists and curse;
So ’tis come from ill to worse.

“Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same’s the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love.

“Comrades all, that stand and gaze,
Walk henceforth in other ways;
See my neck and save your own:
Comrades all, leave ill alone.

“Make some day a decent end,
Shrewder fellows than your friend.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live lads, and I will die.”

”“A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

For much of the 20th century, the model of medical care was paternalism: A doctor dictated what was to be done and the patient complied. This model has largely been abandoned, but now Democrats and Republicans are offering a new form of paternalism, based on the assumption that Americans are not receiving “quality” care. A lucrative industry has grown up to generate ever more medical metrics, to give report cards to doctors and hospitals, and to base payments on compliance with “best practices.” Yet beyond safety protocols, there is scant evidence that such measures improve our health.

Patients and doctors can differ with experts and not be ignorant or irrational. Policy makers need to abandon the idea that experts know what is best. In medical care, the “right” clinical decisions turn out to be those that are based on a patient’s goals and values.

Read it all.

At first, it was thought that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, was the aggressor because he followed Martin, got into a physical scuffle with him and shot him. But then, some witnesses claim that Martin attacked Zimmerman first, and the initial police report said that Zimmerman had blood on his nose and the back of his head after the incident. However, surveillance video footage that surfaced from the police station is leading to questions about the extent of Zimmerman’s injuries.

To make matters more complex, we found out that in the past several months, Martin was suspended from school three times, once for the possession of drug paraphernalia.

The Miami Herald reported that in the gated community in which Zimmerman patrolled, there were eight burglaries, nine thefts and one shooting in the past year.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

It was the day when panic really set in: figures released this morning showed that sales of petrol were up by 172 per cent yesterday as motorists heeded ministers’ advice to top up in case of a strike by tanker drivers….

Panic buying was reported yesterday across the UK, leading to long queues outside some garages and “sold out” or “food only” signs greeting car drivers.

Halfords, the car parts chain, reported “high” sales of fuel cans. Sales of all cans have soared by 225 per cent compared with this time last year, with motorists buying in “the thousands”, while sales of jerry cans are up by more than 500 per cent.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

–2 Corinthians 4:1-2

I have been a priest for 40 years and I am now witnessing something I have not seen before. There is no longer in English society that easy juxtaposition of the old and the new. Rather, there is a strident emphasis on doctrinal purity met by an equally intransigent and aggressive secularism.

The ongoing “debate” between Christians and secularists resembles an attritional slanging match, with not much give and take on either side. It is to Rowan’s credit that he conducted his recent public conversation with Richard Dawkins with such courtesy and lack of rancour. But there is an aggressive secularism abroad, and there are powerful voices in public life who wish to see Christianity expelled from the res publica.
The question, therefore, is what can the poor fellow who accepts the throne of Canterbury do about this? Almost certainly, the answer is very little. I am afraid that we are at one of those, thankfully rare, crisis moments in our history. The benign combination of ancient and modern will no longer suffice. The next leader of the Church of England must come down from that most uncomfortable fence and declare whether the institution is to be ruled according to the diversified mods or the old and traditionalist rockers.

Read it all.

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

–Psalm 131

The rejection of the covenant by the Archbishop’s own province and the continued disregard for the moratoria in North America creates a new and very serious situation. It means that the Anglican via media advocated by Rowan Williams ”“ creating a framework to enable conversation and communion within agreed boundaries almost universally accepted across the Communion – looks like it has become a cul-de-sac.

The “holding together and keep talking while upholding Windsor and I.10 and covenant” approach that Archbishop Rowan fought so hard for is in need of major restructuring if it is to survive now that the covenant has been defeated in the Church of England. He, in his final months in office, or his successor on taking office, need to find a way forward given key elements of this vision of the Communion have been rejected by the Church of England….

Read it all.

We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that we who have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given us, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, now and for evermore.

–St. Richard of Chichester

“This is a very risky moment,” Father Betancourt said of the church’s need to balance its roles as diplomat and guardian of the people’s rights, “because it is the moment on which the future of our mission with the Cuban people will depend.”

Benedict faces an odd paradox in what is the first visit by a pope since John Paul II’s in 1998. The church’s profile as an institution has risen sharply in recent years amid a burst of religious tolerance not seen since the 1959 revolution, with church leaders advocating for political and economic freedoms, negotiating the release of dozens of political prisoners in 2010 and counseling the government on plans for re-engineering the economy.

At the same time, the church has struggled to attract more worshipers and faces criticism that it has grown too cozy with Cuba’s tight circle of decision makers.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will step down at the end of the year, Lambeth Palace announced last Friday. Dr Williams is to become the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, from January 2013.

Rumours began to circulate early on Friday morning that an announcement from Lambeth Palace was imminent. A statement was issued shortly before 10.30 a.m. by Dr Williams’s press officer. It said that Dr Williams’s intentions had been conveyed to the Queen, and that he would continue to carry out duties until the end of the year….

Read it all.

Congratulations to Lehigh

Lambeth Palace said the Queen, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, had been informed. A successor has not yet been appointed but the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, could be a candidate, which would make him the first black Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Williams has not been afraid to criticise senior politicians arguing that “nobody voted for” the policies of the Conservative-led coalition government.

Read it all (requires subscription).

The key claim and insight in the C4M petition is that what is being proposed is the redefinition of marriage. Supporters of the change express it in terms of extending rights or equality or permitting same-sex marriage. However, what it is, at heart, is a question of how, in and through law, we as a community should recognise, categorise and name the different patterns of human relationships in our society. It is not creating “same-sex marriage” but redefining marriage to include both same-sex and opposite-sex couples within it without distinction. There will, in other words, be no legal category or term for what we now ”“ and have for centuries ”“ called “marriage”: “the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others”.

The question that needs to be thought through is, therefore, whether we as a society believe such a redefinition of our terminology is one that offers us a better description of reality and serves the good of society. The initial evidence suggests that what is being done is at best highly paradoxical and perhaps even incoherent. The government are proposing that what we still consistently compare and contrast with terms that are mutually exclusive ”“ same-sex (homo-) and opposite-sex (hetero-) patterns of relationship – should no longer be distinguished in the law of our land as “civil partnerships” and “marriage”. Rather, both should be classed as an undifferentiated whole and given the same generic name ”“ marriage. Not a new name but the name which has always been used for the more common heterosexual relationship pattern. It is rarely helpful to eliminate existing categories by subsuming two (or more) quite specific, different and previously distinguished phenomena under the same term, particularly when that term was one previously used for one of those more specific categories. Recognition of differences as well as similarities is vital ”“ we would not wish all motor vehicles to be identified as “cars” or all colours to be classed as “blue”.

Read it all.

A growing number of Afghans say they have come to see a quick U.S. pullout as the best of bad options, a shift in line with Americans’ growing disapproval of the decade-long war.

The sentiment follows a rampage Sunday allegedly by a U.S. soldier and an attack Tuesday in which an Afghan government delegation visiting the same village came under fire from suspected Taliban fighters.

“When the Americans first came, it was people like me who welcomed them,” said Abdul Jabar, 28, a truck driver from Kandahar. “Now they are killing our women and children.”

Read it all.

Click here to see a pictorial representation of some of the statistics for the parish mentioned in the previous posting.

A vote Sunday by the largest Presbyterian church in Colorado Springs to split from the denomination’s main governing body in the United States may just be the beginning of a growing divide.

Eight churches in the region have expressed an interest in splitting from Presbyterian Church (USA), said Ronald Anderson, executive presbyter for the region that is based in Pueblo and spans much of southern Colorado. Those eight churches account for almost a fourth of the total churches in the Presbytery of Pueblo and make up more than half of the region’s total members.

On Sunday afternoon, 88 percent of First Presbyterian Church members voted in an informal poll to split with the mainline Presbyterian church and join a newly created, and more conservative, group called the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians. The vote was the culmination of several months of work by church leaders who sought to distance themselves from the main governing body after it voted in May that congregations could appoint openly gay ministers.

Read it all and you may also find a Greeley Gazette article there.

O God, who through thy Son Jesus Christ hast promised help to man according to his faith: Grant us the freedom of the children to taste the food of eternal life, and to share with others what we ourselves receive; through the merits of the same thy Son, our Lord.

–Gordon Hewitt

O Blessed Saviour, who art full of mercy and compassion, and wilt not cast out any that come to thee: Help us, we beseech thee, who are grievously vexed with the burden of our sins; and so increase in us the power of thy Holy Spirit that we may prevail against the enemy of our souls; for thy name’s sake.

–Henry Alford

A little over a year after their establishment as the first Ordinariate, pilgrims from the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham journeyed to Rome for a Lenten visit and to say “Thank you ” to the Holy Father for this new work. The group included approximately 100 people including a dozen priests.

The highlight of their weeklong visit was the celebration of an Anglican Use Mass at St. Joseph’s Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica. Complete with hymns, liturgies and prayers familiar to Anglicans, the Mass was led by Msgr. Keith Newton, Ordinary for the Ordinariate that covers England, Wales and Scotland.

Read it all.

First, you can find the diocesan announcement here.

Then you may read the whole letter about it from the Bishop here. It includes the following:

Given the number of relatively healthy congregations and the appeal of our location, the Diocese of Washington has far more people interested in pursuing ordination than can reasonably hope to find employment in the Church. There are currently almost 30 people in the ordination process, a number that well surpasses the diocese’s current need for clergy for traditional parish positions. In addition, there is a significant number of unemployed and underemployed priests in the diocese who are seeking to be called to stipendiary ministries.

A Roman Catholic colleague once asked me if the Episcopal Church was also experiencing a clergy shortage. “No,” I said. “What we have is a shortage of lay people.” The work before us is to rebuild our congregations into the vital centers of Christian community, discipleship formation, and mission that Christ needs us to be. The ordination process, as with all other aspects of our diocesan life, is ultimately in service to that work.