Evangelicalism, now the only other real party, has also failed badly, particularly in not developing an intellectual culture among clergy and laity in the nation to engage with secularist relativism and hedonism. During the 19th Century evangelicals transformed culture with their societies and projects to improve social conditions and reach all levels of the nation. This is hardly the case now, despite the heroic efforts of many parish clergy. The liberals have decided to place the unity of the body of Christ well behind the gay agenda, also a useful way of purging the church of evangelicals, as happened in the USA. With conservative catholic Anglicans now very rare, only the evangelicals will stand for biblical trinitarianism rather than a multi faith theism.

The success of the gay lobby will not mean ”˜inclusion’ but a real splintering of liberals and evangelicals, management and workers, into two churches in England. Newman, ever the polemicist, would be delighted at this looming catastrophe for his old church.

Read it all.

Advocates of the encyclical draw assurance from the declining fertility rates across the developed world, especially in Europe. No country in Europe has a fertility rate above 2.1, the number of children each woman needs to have by the end of her child-bearing years to keep a population stable.

Even with increasing immigration, Europe is projected to suffer a population loss in the 21st century that will rival the impact of the Black Death, leading some to talk about the continent’s “demographic suicide.”

Not coincidentally, Europe is also the most secular region of the world, where the use of artificial contraception is utterly unproblematic. Among those committed to Catholic teaching, the obvious question becomes: What more clear proof of the folly of separating sex and child-bearing could one want?

So the future of “Humanae Vitae” as the teaching of the Catholic Church seems secure, even if it will also continue to be the most widely flouted injunction of the church at the level of practice.

The encyclical’s surprising resilience is a reminder that forecasting the Catholic future in moments of crisis is always a dangerous enterprise ”” a point with relevance to a more recent Catholic predicament. Many critics believe that the church has not yet responded adequately to the recent sex-abuse scandals, leading to predictions that the church will “have to” become more accountable, more participatory and more democratic.

While those steps may appear inevitable today, it seemed unthinkable to many observers 40 years ago that “Humanae Vitae” would still be in vigor well into the 21st century.

Catholicism can and does change, but trying to guess how and when is almost always a fool’s errand.

Read it all.

Faith and Ministry. The overall theme of the month-long meeting is “The Renewal of the Church,” with particular reference to faith, ministry and church union. Subordinate topics for consideration range widely, from the proper relationship between Christianity and secularism to such purely ecclesiastical issues as Prayer Book reform. There is ample opportunity for bishops to raise new issues. Last week, for example, Archbishop Donald Coggan of York formally proposed that women be admitted to the priesthood””an idea that was shouted down by his peers.

This year’s conference has streamlined some of the more somnolent procedures of the past. Instead of doing all their business in plenary sessions, the bishops have been assigned to 33 subcommittees, which are responsible for drafting resolutions prior to debate. They have also adopted an innovation of the Second Vatican Council: 25 theological experts are available for consultation by the bishops.

Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference are not binding on the 19 member churches, but they are intended to express the consensus of the Communion.

Read it all.

Some nice background.

First topic on their agenda: THE HOLY BIBLE, ITS AUTHORITY AND MESSAGE. So far has the pendulum swung from literalist respect for the authority of the Bible, the bishops feel, that even some professing Christians are tending to look upon it as a collection of fairy stories. To combat this tendency, the bishops hope to educate the public to interpret Biblical statements and events in terms of the thought forms of the people who wrote the Scripture down. Said one bishop: “The Bible mustn’t be thought of as the Koran is thought of. It hasn’t got the personal authority of the word of Mohammed behind it, but its every word is illuminated by the Holy Spirit. This idea we must get across once again, and if we can, people may understand that the Bible can help them deal with many of today’s problems by guiding them in the way the problems should be approached.”

Ok, before you click please guess (a) what year it was and (b) how many bishops were there. Then read it all.

Perhaps some joining of Catholics and evangelicals, in morals and manners, could achieve the social unity in theological difference that characterized the old Mainline. But the vast intellectual resources of Catholicism still sound a little odd in the American ear, just as the enormous reservoir of evangelical faith has been unable, thus far, to provide a widely accepted moral rhetoric.

America was Methodist, once upon a time””or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. Protestant, in other words. What can we call it today? Those churches simply don’t mean much any more. That’s a fact of some theological significance. It’s a fact of genuine sorrow, for that matter, as the aging members of the old denominations watch their congregations dwindle away: funeral after funeral, with far too few weddings and baptisms in between. But future historians, telling the story of our age, will begin with the public effect in the United States.

As he prepared to leave the presidency in 1796, George Washington famously warned, “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Generally speaking, however, Americans tended not to worry much about the philosophical question of religion and nation. The whole theologico-political problem, which obsessed European philosophers, was gnawed at in the United States most by those who were least churched.

We all have to worry about it, now. Without the political theory that depended on the existence of the Protestant Mainline, what does it mean to support the nation? What does it mean to criticize it? The American experiment has always needed what Alexis de ­Tocqueville called the undivided current, and now that current has finally run dry.

Read it all.

Holding a future Lambeth Conference in the south would help the Church better understand the diverse contexts that many members of the Communion emerge from and prevent over-simplified conclusions about geography and theology.

What about the host? What about the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first among equals, who this year and in years past addresses the gathered bishops from his throne in the Cathedral in Canterbury? Could he still be the first among equals if the next Lambeth were in, say, Johannesburg or Madras?

There is no reason that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t maintain his position as “first among equals” and an instrument of unity in his person while playing the role of guest rather than host.

By dislocating the Lambeth Conference from its English moorings, this important gathering could rid itself of some of its colonial vestiges and relocate closer to the heart of the current Anglican Communion. A change of this magnitude would take some imagination on the part of bishops gathered this week in Kent, but as modern leaders in a religious tradition that produced poets and artists like John Donne, William Blake, and Julian of Norwich, such vision would not be impossible.

Read it all.

A postcolonial conversation, a critique of colonialism involving patient listening and that includes everyone equally, is long overdue, yet most Anglicans tend to avoid the discussion, said the Rev. Joe Duggan, an Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Los Angeles and a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester’s Lincoln Theological Institute (LTI).

LTI, along with the Journal of Anglican Studies, co-sponsored the panel discussion, “Anglican Identities and the Postcolonial,” a Lambeth Conference “fringe event” held at the University of Kent’s Darwin Hall. Featured speakers included: Robert Young, author and a professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University; Bishop James Tengatenga of Southern Malawi; Bishop Mano Rumalshah of Pakistan; and Bishop Assistant Stephen Pickard of Adelaide in the Anglican Province of Australia.

Duggan said the panel discussion was planned for Monday, the day bishops would be addressing Anglican identity and mission. “We wanted to initiate a global conversation about what is the postcolonial in a way”¦not caught up in polarization with controversy in the debate, but a patient listening. Our hope is that you’ll take these questions back to your dioceses.

“There’s never been a Lambeth Conference that’s looked at what is the theology and ecclesiology after the colonial period,” Duggan told the gathering of about 75. “If you look at Anglican theologians around the world, the space given to colonialism is very brief and very short. So it’s not surprising we’re in the situation we are. We are trying to step back and provide resources”¦to begin asking the questions.”

Read it all.

Lambeth resolutions have acquired an influence at times “so close to authority as hardly to be distinguishable from it,” according to Cambridge University historian Owen Chadwick in his introduction to Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences.

We come now in our survey to the last of the Sunday bulletin inserts prepared by Episcopal Life from a longer series (Part IV of which is here, with links to the earlier parts) by the Reverend Christopher Webber which appeared on the former Episcopal Majority Website. In many ways, as we shall see, it is the worst of the lot….

The anonymous reductor(s) have let the prescribed Episcopal Life agenda completely dominate the historical reality of what happened at the 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences. In short, what Episcopal Life is offering churchgoers is not history, but undisguised propaganda.

Read it all.

The programme starts 23 minutes and 45 seconds in and includes interviews with Vincent Strudwick, Graham Kings, Norman Doe, Lucy Winkett, Judith Maltby, Paul Handley and Stephen Bates.

Please take the time to listen to it all.

Archbishop [automatically, by reflex]: And also with you. [Recovering] But—but why are you here, and now? And why are you in those terrible chains?

Ghost: I am the Ghost of Lambeth Past, and I am doing penance for my pride. I have come to show you how you are about to repeat the terrible mistake we made at the First Lambeth Conference.

Archbishop: Mistake? What mistake? I thought the first Lambeth Conference was a model for all the rest. There was restraint, the bishops agreed in advance—

Ghost [interrupting]: Not to call a Church council, and pass canons binding on us all? Oh, yes, we agreed to that, all right.

Archbishop: Then what is this “terrible mistake” to which you refer?

Ghost: The affair with Bishop Colenso of South Africa—you must surely know.

Archbishop: Bishop Colenso? But wasn’t he deposed by the Church of the Province of South Africa for going against the teachings of the Church? And as a result, not invited to your First Lambeth Conference?

Ghost: You are correct….

Read it all.

Chadwick was a master of the art. Unlike lesser men who attempted these skills, however, his labours were inspired by honesty of purpose and an apparently genuine conviction that the Anglican Communion had an unassailable integrity.

The limits to his methods, on the other hand, became apparent at meetings of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, in its sessions between 1969 and 1981, and again from 1983 to 1990, when the Anglican penchant for resolving differences by devising accommodations based upon ambiguous verbal formulations had limited effect on the professionals of the Vatican.

Early successes at agreement were over simpler differences; when it came to ecclesiology, to the nature of religious authority, the Anglican methods proved sterile. Chadwick was personally disappointed: an important aspect of what he had correctly seen as a life’s work had driven itself into the sands. He always treasured a vestment which the Pope had given him.

Chadwick lived through huge changes in both the great institutions he served ”“ learning and the Church. He adapted with astonishing ease, especially in view of his seemingly inherent traditionalism.

Read it all.

His extraordinary contributions were wonderful for me and he will be greatly missed.

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The “senior” Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church now automatically succeeds to the office of Presiding Bishop upon the death of the former tenant of the office. But in 1925 the office will become elective””so that its duties shall not always fall to an old man.

Read the whole article.

Where did this 19th-century movement lead? Although the Pentecostal embrace of divine healing in the 20th century is outside of the scope of Curtis’ study, she suggests some of the ways that Pentecostalism both borrowed from and reshaped the 19th-century tradition of faith healing. And Curtis also pokes, gently, at some of the subtle, and subtly pernicious, effects the faith healing movement might have had on the larger American cultural imagination. She suggests, intriguingly, that perhaps one of the more worrying fruits of the movement was the stigmatizing of invalids: in the context of a God who promised health, “chronic illness or infirmity became increasingly problematic.” Thus, likely unintentionally, the faith cure movement may have “helped foster disparaging attitudes toward the body in pain that have persisted” to the present. The faith healing movement, in other words, contributed to our culture’s assumption that God prefers the able-bodied to the infirm, the vigorous to the halt and the lame.

Heather Curtis has done both the historical guild and the church a great favor in so elegantly narrating the history of a movement that challenged long-standing assumptions about the spiritual utility of corporal pain””and, in so doing, remapped our imaginations and transformed our understanding of suffering.

Read it all.

There is a technique used by good chefs to make a concentrated red wine sauce: simply take an entire bottle of red wine, and gently simmer it (with, say, some minced shallots, garlic and herbs) over low heat until the 25 ounces of wine have been reduced to about 3 ounces of rich, red sauce. It’s a marvelous sauce marchand de vin (without any butter or fat) to accompany grilled meat—but as any good chef will tell you, how the sauce turns out depends on the wine with which you started.

Episcopal Life, the national news organ of The Episcopal Church, is currently publishing a series of Sunday bulletin inserts that deals with the history of the Lambeth Conference—the decennial gathering of all the active Bishops in the Anglican Communion under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like a sauce marchand de vin, the series has been condensed from a longer series written by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber, the author of Welcome to the Episcopal Church, and Re-Inventing Marriage (as well as others described on his Web site). The parent series, entitled “Unity and Diversity in the Lambeth Conference,” was posted on the now-ended Episcopal Majority site; you can read it in four parts here, here, here and here.

By the time the longer series has been reduced to the bulletin version, what remains is chiefly the pro-American, pro-Episcopal Church bias of its author, but the theme of the longer series—“Unity and Diversity”—has been boiled down (by some anonymous editor at Episcopal Life, I must assume, for reasons shortly to appear) to a single note of “Change—It’s Healthy, Necessary, and Inevitable.” Please do not misinterpret me: there is nothing wrong with bias; we each have our own. The problem I am reacting to is the lack of balance in the resulting condensed product.

Read it all.

This new reporting of Alphabet Soup among Anglicans reinforces that, once the via media, this classification of churches is now all over the map. No longer are Anglican aligned on any middle ground, they stand at different places with respect to traditional faith and classical Anglicanism.

The question then comes, what is it that now constitutes an Anglican identity? This will be the work of these churches for decades to come. It would seem that this work would come by making some dramatic shifts in ethos and core identity.

Anglicanism, in terms of a movement, can no longer defined by communion with Canterbury, since all who lay claim to a jurisdiction are not. Further, it cannot be defined by its name alone, since Anglicanism can sweep the breadth of theological conviction, authority of Scripture, and Ecclesiology, along with many other issues.

From the eyes of this commentator, it would seem that the work of Anglicanism is to re-discover its own patrimony. One must gaze far beyond the upheavals of the 20th century, earlier Victorian cultures, or even the Reformation-enhanced antics of Henry VIII and look upon the heritage that is theirs. The English church existed much earlier than any of those epochs in church history and much was established prior to those times.

The Church must also re-engage with the things held in common through Holy Scripture, the Historic Creeds, and Apostolic roots.

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst call thy faithful servant Boniface to be a witness and martyr in the lands of Germany and Friesland, and by his labor and suffering didst raise up a people for thine own possession: Pour forth thy Holy Spirit upon thy Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many thy holy Name may be glorified and thy kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

For Oden, and for “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind,” the “Africa” he speaks of is anything that happened on the African continent and anyone who lived and ministered on that continent. This avoids the endless debate, for instance, about which Church Father was or was not “African.” How does one define that? By skin color? And by what amount of pigmentation? By nationality? Why wouldn’t any nation in Africa be by definition African? By ancestry?

The ancestry issue coupled with geographical/cultural impact is Oden’s most important contribution. In sum, he argues that even if Augustine, for instance, had a father whose ancestry was Greco-Roman, would that mean that Augustine, living his entire life in Africa was not African? Additionally, given that his famous mother, Monica, was almost definitely of Berber (north African) descent, would that not make Augustine African? And just as important to Oden, can we wipe out the impact on Augustine’s parents and on Augustine of living in the African geography and partaking of the African culture?

So, for Oden, “African Christianity” is the Christianity of any person who was born and/or lived on the African continent. Thus, for Europeans to claim Augustine, Origen, Tertullian, and others is a robbery of immense proportion in Oden’s thinking.

Given this perspective, Oden’s entire book is actually a call for others to build upon his small start. It is a call to take seriously the oral and written tradition of material spoken and penned on the African continent. It is then a call to explore the past, present, and future impact of that legacy.

Read it all.

Today this stadium has resounded with passages from Holy Scripture bearing on the reality of the family. We have heard the plea and promise made by the young widow Ruth: “Wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die I will die and there be buried” (Ro 1:16-17). To hear these words is to be moved with a deep feeling for the strength of family ties: stronger than the fear of hardships to be faced; stronger than the fear of exile in an unfamiliar land; stronger than the fear of possible rejection. The bond that unites a family is not only a matter of natural kinship or of shared life and experience. It is essentially a holy and religious bond. Marriage and the family are sacred realities.

The sacredness of Christian marriage consists in the fact that in God’s plan the marriage covenant between a man and a woman becomes the image and symbol of the covenant which unites God and his people (cf. Hos 2:21; Jer 3:6-13; Is 54:5-10). It is the sign of Christ’s love for his Church (cf. Eph 5:32). Because God’s love is faithful and irrevocable, so those who have been married in Christ are called to remain faithful to each other forever. Did not Jesus himself say to us: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (cf. Mt 19:6)?

Contemporary society has a special need of the witness of couples who persevere in their union as an eloquent, even if sometimes suffering, sign in our human condition of the steadfastness of God’s love. Day after day Christian married couples are called to open their hearts ever more to the Holy Spirit, whose power never fails and who enables them to love each other as Christ has loved us. And, as St. Paul writes to the Galatians, “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and chastity” (Gal 5:22-23). All of this constitutes the rule of life and the program of personal development of Christian couples. And each Christian community has a great responsibility to sustain couples in their love.

—Pope John Paul II in Columbia, South Carolina, during his U.S. Visit; Elizabeth and I were there together in the stands of William Brice Stadium on that day and remember it as a powerful witness to Christian unity. I did not note until this week that it was September 11–KSH.

Update: There is more on the then Pope’s South Carolina visit in 1987 here.

TEC’s Bishops who are taking these extreme actions maintain they are simply defending their diocesan territories. The problem, they say, is that when a priest withdraws from their jurisdiction to join, say, the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, he or she does not leave and go to Argentina, but stays and conducts services (say) in the Diocese of Los Angeles, just as before. Pardon my impertinence, but so what? They cannot prevent that from happening, can they, with all of their thunderbolts? How do their threats and depositions change the situation by one whit for the better? It is the souls of fellow Christians that are at stake here, not medieval concepts of territoriality. (Depositions do not prevent the breakup of diocesan territory; they most likely exacerbate it.) Given that realization, one might think that TEC’s bishops could take the Christian route, and issue letters dimissory . . . .

In all of these inhibitions and subsequent depositions, we see the results of treating the joining of other provinces of the Anglican Communion as equivalent to “abandoning the communion of the Episcopal Church.” What TEC and her bishops are saying by these actions is that the only communion that matters to TEC is a communion subject to TEC’s Constitution and Canons—the rest of the Anglican Communion can go hang, for all the comity that TEC cares to show to it. And as for the care of souls—the less said, the better.

TEC’s Bishops have now rewritten Canons IV.9 and IV.10 so that they equate “abandonment of communion” not only with joining the Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox Church, but also with joining the Anglican Church of Uganda, or the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. This turns the canons into measures like those of the Anglican Church of Canada, which do not differentiate between joining another religious body that is in communion with the Canadian Church, and one that is not—both acts are equally subject to inhibition and deposition for “abandonment”. (Most recently, the Canadian canons were used in this way to threaten the 82-year-old evangelist Dr. J. I. Packer with inhibition.)

We should truly be cautious before proceeding down Canada’s path. What is happening in front of our eyes with all of the inhibitions and depositions is the balkanization of the Anglican Communion, in violation of the very principles of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral which lie at its heart. Soon, each province of the Communion will have two classes of clergy: those who are licensed to practice in that province, and those who cannot, but who are licensed elsewhere, even though they live and minister in the province in question. Once that happens, what can one say is left of the Anglican Communion? It will have become a tradition, in Hamlet’s sad words, that is “more honor’d in the breach than the observance . . .”.

Read it all.

Once again, because of the need to deal with historical and expository details, I will divide this post into a further two parts. This one explains how the abuses of the Abandonment Canons (Canons IV.9 and IV. 10) came about; the next post (after a short hiatus while I am away) will chronicle the instances of abuse that have so damaged the polity of The Episcopal Church in recent years. (Since these abuses are well known to all, I hope that this post, by providing the canonical background, will allow others to draw the appropriate conclusions for themselves, without waiting for the details in the next post.)

Read it all.

I was stunned and very disappointed to see an article on CNN.com with the blaring headline, “Modern black church shuns King’s message.”

Even more disturbing to me than the headline was the article’s depiction and generalization that I, through my church The Potter’s House of Dallas, had shunned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message.

The article’s author asserts that “I declined to talk to him” about the subject, which is only partially true. I am sorry if my unavailability has caused him angst. I declined to speak with him because I already had conducted a very lengthy interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on the very same topic for a piece that will air on CNN later this year.

Oddly, my picture was used to drive the article in spite of the fact that I was not interviewed for the story. I feel that this style of journalism is far beneath the standards that I have always known and respected from CNN, and while I traditionally do not respond or reply to such statements as were written, this time was different.

Read it all and follow the link to the piece to which Bishop Jakes is responding.

“I’m looking forward to the special celebration of the Holy Eucharist and seeing new and old faces,” Whiting said. “The whole day will be kind of fun.”

As the congregation looks back on its long history, Whiting said it also looks to the future and potential outreach programs. The church is currently working towards various projects including a literacy education program and a community closet.

“The Episcopal church, I think, is a wonderful blend of Catholicism and Protestant,” Whiting said. “We allow people to make up their own minds about just about everything.”

“The Episcopal church is very inclusive in terms of color, sexual identity and alternative lifestyles. One of the things we are going to work on is making this a safe haven for GLBT people.”

Read it all.

Bonheoffer’s life and death belong to the annals of Christian martyrdom”¦his life and death have given us great hope for the future. He has set a model for a new type of true leadership inspired by the gospel, daily ready for martyrdom and imbued by a new spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty. The victory which he has won for us all, a conquest never to be undone, of love, light and liberty.

–Gerhard Leibholz (1901-1982), Bonhoeffer’s brother in law

Precisely because of our attitude to the state, the conversation here must be completely honest, for the sake of Jesus Christ and the ecumenical cause. We must make it clear””fearful as it is””that the time is very near when we shall have to decide between National Socialism and Christianity. It may be fearfully hard and difficult for us all, but we must get right to the root of things, with open Christian speaking and no diplomacy. And in prayer together we will find the way. I feel that a resolution ought to be framed””all evasion is useless. And if the World Alliance in Germany is then dissolved””well and good, at least we will have borne witness that we were at fault. Better that than to go on vegetating in this untruthful way. Only complete truth and truthfulness will help us now.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer as quoted in No Rusty Swords, my emphasis

PRESENTER: Should Bonhoeffer be regarded as a Protestant Saint?

ARCHBISHOP: What makes it an interesting question is that he himself says in one of his very last letters to survive, that he doesn’t want to be a saint; he wants to be a believer. In other words he doesn’t want to be some kind of, as he might put it, detached holy person. He wants to show what faith means in every day life. So I think in the wider sense, yes he’s a saint; he’s a person who seeks to lead an integrated life, loyal to God, showing God’s life in the world. A saint in the conventional sense? Well, he wouldn’t have wanted to be seen in that way.

—Archbishop Rowan Williams on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, speaking in 2006

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a final letter to Rienhold Niebuhr before departing America for Germany in 1939