[Let us reflect on]…the light the mystics see when they meditate in the night hours, picking up their pens in the morning to write down their revelations. It is the light Moses saw in the darkness on Mount Sinai, where the glory of God came wrapped in dazzling darkness. Dionysius the Areopagite called it “the unapproachable light in which God dwells.”

My guess is that this idea is as incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it as it is indisputable to those who have. No one has described it better for me than Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance fighter who wrote about his experience in a memoir called And There Was Light. Lusseyran was not born blind, though his parents noticed that he was having trouble reading and fitted him with glasses while he was still quite young. Beyond that, he was an ordinary boy who did all the things that other boys do, including getting into fights at school. During one such scuffle he fell hard against the corner of his teacher’s desk, driving one arm of his glasses deep into his right eye while another part of the frame tore the retina in his left. When he woke up in the hospital he could no longer see. His right eye was gone and the left was beyond repair. At the age of seven he was completely and permanently blind.

As he wrote in a second volume, he learned from the reactions of those around him what a total disaster this was. In those days blind people were swept to the margins of society, where those who could not learn how to cane chairs or play an instrument for religious services often became beggars. Lusseyran’s doctors suggested sending him to a residential school for the blind in Paris but his parents refused, wanting their son to stay in the local public school where he could learn to function in the seeing world. His mother learned Braille with him. He learned to use a Braille typewriter. The principal of his school ordered a special desk for him that was large enough to hold his extra equipment. But the best thing his parents did for him was never to pity him. They never described him as “unfortunate.” They were not among those who spoke of the “night” into which his blindness had pushed him. Soon after his accident his father, who deeply understood the spiritual life, said, “Always tell us when you discover something.”

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Everett L. “Terry” Fullam, who served as rector of St. Paul’s, Darien, Conn., famous as tall steeple parish in the mainline Protestant renewal movement, died today. He was 82.

News of his passing came as a result of Bishop Gregory Brewer, Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, who tweeted this afternoon, “Just heard that Terry Fullam passed away. A generation ago he was a hero.”

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Holy Fire ignites fresh passion in evangelicals for the Spirit and fresh desire in charismatics for the Scriptures.

Whether you consider yourself a conservative evangelical or a charismatic/Pentecostal of some kind, R.T. Kendall’s opus, Holy Fire, will empower you to go to the next level in your journey as a well-balanced believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

By the way, balance in the kingdom is not living in some lukewarm place between boredom and passion. It is not a little bit of Bible-based theology mingled with a little bit of Holy Spirit. Balance is desiring “all of the Word” and “all of the Spirit,” as the Word of God and the Spirit of God work together, not independently of each other. Kendall reminds us of this powerful truth on every page, concluding with Smith Wigglesworth’s prophetic statement: “When the Word and Spirit come together, there will be the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed the world, has ever seen.”

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Fasting is not just physically demanding. It’s also psychologically tough, says the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend David Walker, who has drunk only tea and water one day a week during lent for the last decade.

“The night before you start, you think: ‘How am I going to get through the day?'” says Bishop Walker. But it’s never as bad as you expect, he adds.

The key thing is to make sure you’re busy at normal mealtimes, he says. The body is conditioned to want food according to a routine.

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The charismatic movement within the Church of England is a firmly established fixture. Several of the largest CoE churches are charismatic. The most well-known is Holy Trinity Brompton out of which the Alpha Course came and currently under the leadership of Nicky Gumbel. One of the newest theological colleges in London is St. Mellitus, which was formed by the bishop of London Richard Chartes, but also houses St. Paul’s Theological Centre from Holy Trinity Brompton. What is exciting about St. Mellitus is its combination of charismatic and Anglo-Catholic worship in a non-residential theological college. At St. Mellitus one will find highly liturgical services with incense and evangelical-charismatic services in which students raise hands and sing worship choruses. St. Mellitus tries to combine all the various emphases within Anglicanism rather than emphasizing one tradition over another. In a recent article for the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore suggested that St. Mellitus may be the way forward for the Church of England, no small praise.

In light of this recent history, Archbishop Justin Welby’s invitation to Chemin Neuf to be part of Lambeth Palace feels like a natural development, not an eruption. This move brings together Welby’s charismatic background, his interest in monastic spirituality and prayer, and his desire to foster ecumenical relations. Chemin Neuf is not only a Catholic Charismatic community, it has an ecumenical vocation and thus has many Protestant members, some of whom are part of the team at Lambeth. Thus it is a natural bridge between the charismatic, the Anglo-Catholic, and the ecumenical impulses within the CoE. In fact, as Graham Tomlin, the dean of St. Mellitus recently told me, one of the members of Chemin Neuf living at Lambeth is also a student at St. Mellitus.

If Pentecostalism is a form of Christian mysticism, then there is a natural affinity between it and Anglo-Catholicism, which has been the bearer of mysticism within the CoE. It also suggests that the Anglican charismatic movement could become a bridge between the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical sides of Anglicanism.

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A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.

—Martin Luther:”On Christian Freedom”(1520).

“Servant” in our English New Testament usually represents the Greek doulos (bondslave). Sometimes it means diakonos (deacon or minister); this is strictly accurate, for doulos and diakonos are synonyms. Both words denote a man who is not at his own disposal, but is his master’s purchased property. Bought to serve his master’s needs, to be at his beck and call every moment, the slave’s sole business is to do as he is told. Christian service therefore means, first and foremost, living out a slave relationship to one’s Savior (1 Corinthians. 6:19-20).
What work does Christ set his servants to do? The way that they serve him, he tells them, is by becoming the slaves of their fellow-servants and being willing to do literally anything, however costly, irksome, or undignified, in order to help them. This is what love means, as he himself showed at the Last supper when he played the slave’s part and washed the disciples’ feet.

When the New Testament speaks of ministering to the saints, it means not primarily preaching to them but devoting time, trouble, and substance to giving them all the practical help possible. The essence of Christian service is loyalty to the king expressing itself in care for his servants (Matthew 25: 31-46).

Only the Holy Spirit can create in us the kind of love toward our Savior that will overflow in imaginative sympathy and practical helpfulness towards his people. Unless the spirit is training us in love, we are not fit persons to go to college or a training class to learn the know-how or particular branches of Christian work. Gifted leaders who are self-centered and loveless are a blight to the church rather than a blessing.

–J.I. Packer Your Father Loves you (Carol Stream. Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986) and quoted by yours truly in the morning sermon

When I was a small boy, I attended church every Sunday at a big Gothic Presbyterian bastion in Chicago. The preaching was powerful and the music was great. But for me, the most awesome moment in the morning service was the offertory, when twelve solemn, frock-coated ushers marched in lock-step down the main aisle to receive the brass plates for collecting the offering. These men, so serious about their business of serving the Lord in this magnificent house of worship, were the business and professional leaders of Chicago. One of the twelve ushers was a man named Frank Loesch. He was not a very imposing looking man, but in Chicago he was a living legend, for he was the man who had stood up to Al Capone. In the prohibition years, Capone’s rule was absolute. The local and state police and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation were afraid to oppose him. But singlehandedly, Frank Loesch, as a Christina layman and without any government support, organized the Chicago Crime Commission, a group of citizens who were determined to take Mr. Capone to court and put him away. During the months that the Crime Commission met, Frank Loesch’s life was in constant danger. There were threats on the lives of his family and friends. But he never wavered. Ultimately he won the case against Capone and was the instrument for removing this blight from the city of Chicago. Frank Loesch had risked his life to live out his faith. Each Sunday at this point of the service, my father, a Chicago businessman himself, never failed to poke me and silently point to Frank Loesch with pride. Sometime I’d catch a tear in my father’s eye. For my dad and for all of us this was and is what authentic living is all about.

–Bruce Larson, There’s a Lot More to Health than Not Being Sick (Garden Grove, California: Cathedral Press, 1981), pp. 55-56 and also quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

“If you aren’t seeing God at work in your life, you aren’t far enough out on the limb yet…” [Mark Lawrence said].

It’s a theme Lawrence has stuck by and modeled since, the Rev. Canon Jim Lewis says.

“As our bishop, he has consistently modeled a kind of faith that is prepared, when called to do so, to step out of the boat and trust in God’s loving provision,” Lewis says. “Consequently we continue, I believe, to see God at work among us in amazing ways.”

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The biggest issue is, what does it mean to be obedient to Christ? Before any specific issue is really the posture of the heart toward Christ, and how we encourage a spirit of obedience among 18-year-olds who perhaps up until this point, their experience of faith has been youth group.

All of the language of serious, committed faith is obedience language””take up the cross and follow. It’s the cost of discipleship. It’s not pretty stuff that you can make nice. It’s pretty rugged stuff, but that’s the gospel. Theologically, how do we convey that truth in a graceful way and not water it down? Then that has implications for all the other issues.

Of course every Christian college president is worried about this, but homosexuality is a very real issue for campuses. We have gay and lesbian students here. I have met with them. I have talked with them. They are Christians and they are trying to figure out, “What does this mean? How do I live?”

The Scripture that I need to be obedient to leads me to the conclusion that marriage is a relationship between man and woman, and sexuality is to be used in that context.

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Listen here if you wish.

For decades Kathy and I have profited immensely from the pastoral wisdom of the converted slave trader John Newton. As an 18th century Anglican minister, Newton was a good preacher, but it was as a pastor, counselor, and advisor that he excelled. His pastoral letters are a treasure chest. In one of his letters (entitled “Some Blemishes on Christian Character”) Newton points out that while most Christians succeed in avoiding more gross sins, many do not actually experience much in the way of actual spiritual growth.

Newton lays out a very convicting and specific example of the kinds of Christian people who coast on their strengths but do nothing about their weaknesses and so rob themselves and others of joy and God of his glory. These blemishes are often seen by their bearers as mere “foibles.” Newton says they “may not seem to violate any express command of Scripture” and yet, they are “properly sinful” because they are the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit that believers are supposed to exhibit.

These “small faults” mean that large swaths of the Christian population have little influence on others for Christ….

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In those few paragraphs, John Calvin succinctly sums up election and holiness for the Christian. While there are several themes that come out of this quote and this passage, the one theme that I think springs from this text is holiness. Holiness is the consequence and evidence of our election. We are not holy to be accepted by God, but because Jesus is holy we are holy. God says, “you shall be holy, for I am holy”.

The idea of holiness is almost a peculiar doctrine for the new Reformed movement. I know many young and old in this tradition who feel no obligation to actively and passionately with their entire being, to pursue a life of holiness. They wouldn’t explicitly say this, but their lives wouldn’t reflect otherwise.

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At our convention last March I stressed two dimensions of our diocesan calling: Our vocation to make Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age working in relationship with Anglican Provinces and dioceses around the world; and secondly our calling to make disciples by planting new congregations as well as growing and strengthening our existing parishes and missions in an era of sweeping institutional decline among almost all of the mainline denominations. These remain two constants for us today even while so much around us is in flux. You will be relieved to hear that it is not my intention in this address to retrace the road we have traveled in these intervening months since our Special Convention on November 17th. Suffice it to say that since these two dimensions of our common life and vocation remained unshaken when the tectonic plates of the diocese shifted, I remain convinced that they were God’s mandate for us then and they are God’s mandate for us now. The reason for this is two-fold: What is at stake in this theological and moral crisis that has swallowed up the Anglican Communion since the latter years of the 20th Century is first and foremost, “What is the Gospel of Jesus Christ as this Church has received it?” We did not create it and we cannot change what we have received. So what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Anglicans have received it? There is nothing in Anglicanism that cannot be found elsewhere among the churches of Christendom. What is unique is how we have blended certain aspects of what other churches hold together. But we have received a Gospel. What is it?

The second thing is “What will Anglicanism in the 21st Century look like?” While the former is the more important, the latter is the more complex. Put another way, proclaiming the Good News, “the whole counsel of God” as St. Paul declared in his parting address to the presbyters of Ephesus in Acts 20:27, that should be our first concern. Proclaiming the good news ”“ the whole counsel of God. But the charge to “care for the Church of God, which he obtained with his blood” (Acts 20:28) or as our text last evening put it, “which he obtained with the blood of his son.” was also part of St. Paul’s charge to the bishop-presbyters. If we apply this second charge to take care of the church of God, which he obtained, with the blood of his son, if we apply this charge to ourselves ”“ those of us whose leadership is in this vineyard where the Lord has placed us ”“ I believe this means caring for emerging Anglicanism in the 21st Century. Frankly, this caring for Anglicanism in the 21st century gets wearisome at times, painful almost daily, exhausting, but it is a charge we cannot relinquish without abandoning our vocation. What does this mean specifically for us here in this Diocese of South Carolina? Let me take up three aspects of this charge as it I believe it applies to us.

Read it all and a pdf version is available top right of the page.

We were having lunch together and I was praying like mad. My friend had been in a committed same-sex relationship for about 15 years. He was interested in Jesus; attracted to his teaching and message. But he wanted to know what implications becoming a Christian might have on his practicing gay lifestyle.

I had explained, as carefully and graciously as I could, that Jesus upheld and expanded the wider biblical stance on sexuality: that the only context for sexual activity was heterosexual marriage. Following Jesus would mean seeking to live under his word, in this area as in any other.

He had been quiet for a moment, and then looked me in the eye and asked the billion-dollar question: ”˜What could possibly be worth giving up my partner for?’

I held his gaze for a moment while my brain raced for the answer. There was eternity, of course. There was heaven and hell. But I was conscious that these realities would seem other-worldly and intangible to him. In any case, surely following Jesus is worth it even for this life. He was asking about life here-and-now, so I prayed for a here-and-now Bible verse to point to. I wanted him to know that following Jesus really is worth it ”“ worth it in the life to come, but also worth it in this life now, no less so for those who have homosexual feelings. Yes, there would be a host of hardships and difficulties: unfulfilled longings, the distress of unwanted temptation, the struggles of long-term singleness.

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MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

You seem to be doing very little good at present. The use of his “love” to distract his mind from the Enemy is, of course, obvious, but you reveal what poor use you are making of it when you say that the whole question of distraction and the wandering mind has now become one of the chief subjects of his prayers. That means you have largely failed. When this, or any other distraction, crosses his mind you ought to encourage him to thrust it away by sheer will power and to try to continue the normal prayer as if nothing had
happened; once he accepts the distraction as his present problem and lays that before the Enemy and makes it the main theme of his prayers and his endeavours, then, so far from doing good, you have done harm. Anything, even a sin, which has the total effect of moving him close up to the Enemy, makes against us in the long run….

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter XXVII (emphasis mine), also quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

A young boy was chosen, brought forward to the alter, then blindfolded. He then picked one of three pieces of paper from a jar. The paper was shown to the congregation. On it was the name of Bishop Tawadros, who will be the new Coptic pope. The congregation broke into spontaneous applause.

It might seem a strange way to choose a new leader for Egypt’s eight to ten million Coptic Christians – and many more worldwide.

Yet Copts believe this is the way the hand of God was revealed. That is the view of Youssef Sidhom, editor of the Coptic Watani newspaper:

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God always makes the first move. To know the God of the Bible is to trust the God who created everything out of nothing, not because more was needed to somehow complete the circle, but simply because it pleased God. There’s nothing necessary about our existence, just as there’s nothing we can do to force God’s movement in the world. God always makes the first move. Faithful action, then, is always a response.

So, if you’re a bishop of the church in the turmoil of the fourth century, there’s nothing you can do to guarantee the future of the church. And if you’re a passionate, thoughtful person at the beginning of the twenty-first century, eager to sort out the big questions about God and life, there’s nowhere you can go to start figuring everything out for sure. However strong our desire, however fervent our initiative, it’s never enough. God always makes the first move. The Spirit blows where it will. When it does, it often blows our minds.

But after you’ve been knocked off your feet””after the Spirit has hovered over the chaos of your life and hurled you forward into a future beyond the limits of your vision””the questions are still there. God’s interruption doesn’t answer our questions. It doesn’t erase them either. It leaves us, rather, with a photo album full of pictures of hope.

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The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) met for its Standing Committee Meeting (SCM) at Cathedral Church of Emmanuel, Okesa, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, September 11-15, 2012.

The well-attended event had the theme: ”˜Resist The Devil And He Will Flee From You’ (James 4v7)….

At the formal opening of the SCM on Thursday, September 14, while delivering his opening address to delegates, the Primate of All Nigeria, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, described the Devil as a spiritual being. Quoting John Piper, the Primate said: “Satan lies, and is the Father of lies (John 8:44); Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4); Satan masquerades in costumes of light and righteousness (II Cor. 11:13-15), and has disciples within the Church through whom he teaches doctrines of demons (I Tim. 4:1).

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The Holy Spirit’s distinctive new covenant role, then, is to fulfill what we may call a floodlight ministry in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. So far as this role was concerned, the Spirit “was not yet” (John 7:29, literal Greek) while Jesus was on earth; only when the Father had glorified him (John 17:1, 5) could the Spirit’s work of making men aware of Jesus’ glory begin.

I remember walking to church one winter evening to preach on the words, “He will glorify me” (John 16:14), seeing the building floodlit as I turned a corner, and realizing that this was exactly the illustration my message needed. When floodlighting is well done, the floodlights are placed so thatyou do not see them; in fact, you are not supposed to see where the light is coming from; what you are meant to see is just the building on which the floodlights are trained. The intended effect is to make it visible when otherwise it would not be seen for the darkness, and tomaximize its dignity by throwing all its details into relief so that you can see it properly. This perfectly illustrated the Spirit’s new covenant role. He is, so to speak, the hidden floodlight shining on the Savior.

Or think of it this way. It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder on to Jesus who stands facing us. The Spirit’s message to us is never, ”˜Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me’, but always, ”˜Look at him, and see his glory; listen to him and hear his word; go to him and have life; get to know him and taste his gift of joy and peace.’ The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together.”

–J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd rev. ed. 2005), pp. 57-58, quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

A Marine is a best-practice warrior who models the highest levels of what military training can accomplish.

The Marines are by no means the only people who take such transformative experiences seriously. Colleges and seminaries talk a lot about this process, each claiming that it turns out world class leaders. There are businesses (Starbucks comes to mind) that believe that their profitability depends on turning employees into best-practice sales representatives.

How about churches and their goal of making of devoted followers of Jesus? What does the difference look like there?

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Regrettably, “incarnational ministry” approaches fail to recognize key New Testament passages about union with Christ. The New Testament makes strong claims about the “missions” of the Son and Spirit in the world. This makes the “sending” of the church fundamentally derivative and subordinate. We are adopted into Christ by the Spirit; we do not have a divine nature, like the incarnate Christ, but only a human nature. The Spirit brings us into the benefits of Christ as ones who belong to him; fundamentally, the church is sent as witnesses to Christ and ambassadors of reconciliation in him. We are always to point beyond ourselves, as witnesses.

Christ lives in us by the Spirit. But a biblical account of union with Christ is clear that we are not Christ; we are not an “ongoing incarnation” in the world. While John’s gospel speaks about how we are sent into the world (John 20:21), the gospel uses different language for the sending of the Son. As New Testament scholar Andreas Köstenberger points out, terms such as ” ‘coming into the world’ or ‘descending’ or ‘ascending’ ” are “reserved for Jesus.” The way we are sent, he writes, is “not the way in which Jesus came into the world (i.e. the Incarnation), but the nature of Jesus’ relationship with his sender (i.e., one of obedience and utter dependence).” We are not sent into the world to perform another incarnation, but as disciples who bear witness to Christ and his reign by the Spirit.

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Right mission depends on power, and that power comes from the Holy Spirit.

At the Transfiguration they saw it. And they lived with it, in Jesus. And that power would be proclaimed, and lived. The mission of the church, from beginning to end, when done the way God wants it done, is accomplished through the power of God.

Lord God, empower our missionaries in the Holy Spirit as they go, and as they point to and proclaim Jesus. May each of us be open to the invitation to go ourselves. We pray that all of us may be empowered and living in the Holy Spirit that we will all live the mission no matter where we are, to the Glory of God and the building up of Your Kingdom. Amen.

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The spirit blows where he wills, Jesus said, which means you cannot box God in.

We Anglicans have a particularly hard time with this since we are told to expect worship to be “decent and in order.” But””have you noticed–things don’t always work like that. Life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be lived. When God is in charge patterns can be broken, expectations can be shifted, and all heaven can break loose.

One biblical story which speaks to this is the tale of Eldad and Medad in Numbers 11. Moses and the people of God are in a dispute about misfortune and food and Moses is getting blamed and feeling burdened. God asks Moses to gather seventy men among Israel’s elders who would be enabled to share the burdens of the people. It had to be done, however, outside the camp at the tent of meeting.

Moses did his part, and God came through also: “the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to ”¦[Moses], and took some of the spirit that was upon him and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied (Numbers 11:25).” So far, so good.

But there was a problem. Two other men named Eldad and Medad who were not chosen by Moses and not at the tent of meeting also prophesied. Wrong people, wrong place. Uh oh.

Joshua the son of Nun objected. This isn’t according to Hoyle! It isn’t in the Vestry handbook! Moses, put a stop to it, he says.

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29)

Moses is commendably open to letting God be God in a surprising way. Please note, too, that it is the younger Joshua who is unduly limited by the script and the older Moses who is willing to ad lib and go with the flow of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that all of us will learn to be less like Joshua and more like Moses in the days and years ahead, if our Lord doesn’t return first.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and the convenor of this blog

What is the deepest and surest assurance and intimation that the Holy Spirit is present in our world and Church today? The answer is: joy. If there is joy present you can bet that the Holy Spirit has something to do with this precious gift.

St. Augustine who was the most musically passionate of the Fathers of the Church memorably evokes the experience of this joy with these words: “Whenever people must labor hard they begin with songs whose words express their joy. But when joy brims over and words are not enough they abandon even this coherence and give themselves to the sheer sound of singing.

“What is this jubilation? What is this exultant song? It is the melody that means our hearts are bursting with feelings that cannot express themselves. And to whom does this jubilation most surely belong? Truly to God who is unutterable, if words will not come and may not remain silent what else can you do but let the melody soar? This is the song of the Holy Spirit.”

On this great feast of the birth of the Church, let us ponder anew the whole reality of the Church, from the wide-angle view of its vastness and beauty, to the sometimes turbulent and complex surface, zooming in finally on hope, one of the deepest manifestations of the Spirit alive in the Church. In doing so, we can marvel once again at the mercy and generosity of God and give thanks to the Lord who continues to call us to fidelity and joy.

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A 400-page book on pneumatology (theology of the Holy Spirit) by a systematic theologian may sound like an unlikely candidate for international acclaim. But the Rev. Dr. Robert D. Hughes III, author of Beloved Dust: Tales of the Spirit in the Christian Life (Continuum, 2008), has already won the inaugural des Places-Libermann Award in Pneumatology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and the book has been shortlisted for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize.

Hughes is professor of systematic theology and Norma and Olan Mills Professor of Divinity at the University of the South’s School of Theology.

“I was very grateful for that kind of recognition,” Hughes said in an interview with The Living Church. “It meant someone was reading the book and getting it.”

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The point is that the Presiding Bishop begins with the tendentious claim that TEC’s action accords with Scripture and represents a new work of the Holy Spirit. Here is the tail (TEC’s action) that she then uses in an attempt to wag the dog (the weight of Communion teaching, procedure, and opinion).

…What I mean is this. To sustain her position she launches an attack on the Archbishop’s response. She seeks to show not only that the Archbishop is acting to quench the Spirit, but also that he has taken a morally dubious course that violates longstanding Anglican tradition. A hallmark of Anglicanism, she says, is a form of “diversity in community” that manifests “willingness to live in tension.” This tolerance of diversity “recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree.”

I have already noted that her view of the Spirit’s leading seems incoherent. I will leave it to the historians among us to assess her claims about the tolerant character of the Elizabethan Settlement, but it has never seemed to me that the Act of Uniformity was meant to put up a big tent, or that the treatment of Anabaptists (they were burned) showed great openness to contrary views of the Christian’s relation to the state. The fact of the matter is that “Anglican inclusiveness” serves more as a charter myth for legitimizing contested issues than a solid historical precedent for innovation. Anglican history, though not overly confessional when it comes to doctrine, manifests extraordinary caution when it comes to changing practice. If anything, caution in respect to changing practice is a “hallmark of Anglicanism.”

The real issue, however, is not the claim about “diversity in community” or “willingness to live in tension.” The real issue is what Anglican’s are to do when the action of one Province, diocese, or person within the Communion takes an official action that others do not “recognize” as consonant with Christian belief and practice. The issue of “recognition” stands in the background of the first Lambeth Conference. There, the question of recognition centered on Bishop Colenso’s interpretation of Holy Scripture. Latterly, the question of recognition surfaced with the consecration by TEC of a partnered gay man. Now it has surfaced once more with the consecration of the Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles.

Read it carefully and read it all.

* As always, there are hints that the fight is about more than sex. In the case of this showdown, it is clear that Williams is frantically trying to hold the communion together on a wide range of doctrinal issues, with sex as the issue that, alas, always grabs the headlines. Jefferts Schori, meanwhile, sees this through the lens of Romeaphobia and claims that Canterbury is trying to enforce an anti-Anglican form of creedal orthodoxy, with Williams playing the role of pope.

The irony, of course, is that Williams has already established himself as a progressive on sexuality. Williams knows, however, that there are other doctrinal issues at play that matter far more to traditionalists around the world. What might those issues be?

* So, if this ongoing spirit of Pentecost is leading the Episcopal Church to edit and update centuries of Christian doctrine on sex and marriage, what other doctrines are being affected by these Winds Of Change? That’s the big question.

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We are grateful that the Presiding Bishop has sought to ground her appeal to diversity and new truth in a public message available for the Church’s evaluation and testing. It explains what kind of vision for the Episcopal Church she is seeking to defend. On the one hand, she believes the Holy Spirit has spoken in truthful and special (timely) ways to those who share this view in TEC. On the other hand, she believes diversity on this matter is equally a gifting warranted by the pentecostal event, explaining why the majority of the Anglican Communion and the vast preponderance of Christians worldwide (including the saints numbered on another shore) attended and attend to different Holy Spirit guidance and a different confession of God the Holy Spirit, “who spake by the prophets”¦who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” Her remarks help frame the matter in clear ways, which we can only pray is itself a gift of God the Holy Spirit, whose vocation is to glorify Christ and convict the world in respect of him. St Paul reveals that appeals to the Spirit and the Spirit’s manifestation required testing in the earliest Christian Churches, especially those with large gentile numbers. Discerning the work and person of God the Holy Spirit was necessary and was an evangelical challenge.

John and Acts provide the record given to the church so that the Holy Spirit’s work might be recognised, adjudicated, and confessed. The Holy Spirit’s deliverances are those of the Risen and Ascended Christ, in agreement with the providential will of the Father as expressed in the Law and the Prophets, whose subject matter is Christ, latent and now patent (St Augustine). The Presiding Bishop’s account of the Spirit as bringing a truth without prior testimony or dominical warrant, which at the same time gives rise to diversity as a pentecostal gift, diverges in extreme ways from the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles. It is a teaching lacking continuity and agreement with the witness of Christians in our present day, in the worldwide body, and because without biblical warrant, it is also nowhere attested in the history of the church’s teaching.

We conclude this teaching comes from a conviction already held, independently of what is customarily sought in respect of a warrant of God the Holy Spirit (see the Catechism of the BCP), because of cultural assumptions about the intentions of sexual activity in our age and because TEC has already acted on these.

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I realize I may be expressing latent colonialist tendencies and committing spiritual violence by imposing a singular understanding of basic logic on Bishop [Jefferts] Schori, but it appears that she is forcing us to choose between two alternatives:

#1. The Holy Spirit is telling some people that gays and lesbians can be ordained ministers while telling other people that such a move is contrary to God’s will. Ergo, the Spirit is a relativist who imposes moral requirements based on cultural norms rather than on a fixed, knowable standard.

#2. The Holy Spirit is consistent and has expressed his will on this issue to one group; the other group is mistaken in believing that the Spirit has spoken to them. The group that he has spoken to are therefore justified in attempting to apply this standard consistently throughout the communion.

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