A seven-year effort to create a new “covenant” to hold the worldwide Anglican Church together may come close to an end at a historic meeting starting in Auckland tomorrow.
The global Anglican Consultative Council comes three months after the New Zealand and Polynesian province voted against accepting a clause that would penalise any church refusing to defer a “controversial action” such as ordaining gay priests.
Two of the other 37 provinces have also voted against the clause.
The Adelaide diocese of the Anglican Church must change radically as it faces the tough choice of closing at least a third of its parishes within the next five years.
This was the blunt message from Archbishop Jeffrey Driver to the church last night as he opened its senior decision-making forum, the diocesan synod.
Resources had been drained and the church had endured nine years of turmoil from dealing with the hurt caused by abuse perpetuated by its own ranks.
There is no excusing Armstrong’s behaviour. He shouldn’t have taken the drugs and he shouldn’t have compelled others to do the same. But the latest revelations do show how a beautiful sport had been corrupted and how anyone seeking to succeed could have been drawn into such behaviour.
But there are still reasons to admire this obviously deeply flawed man. Armstrong has done wonderful things – on and off the bike – and given me memories that I still savour.
On drugs or not, he was capable of magnificent and daring feats. On stage nine of the 2003 Tour de France, Armstrong swerved to avoid a fellow rider, Joseba Beloki, who had crashed badly on a descent. The American was forced to ride across a steep paddock, jump a drainage ditch and rejoin the race on the road below. It was dramatic, bold and impressive.
We are in a place and time of growing evangelistic opportunity and obligation….Our secure, wealthy and beautiful region is alive with people, especially new people. Many of these people know nothing about Jesus and they need to hear about the way to eternal life. We are here for them. It is as simple as that….
You could say [after looking at the statistic profile of Australia’s spiritual landscape], don’t fret: Our business is to look after the religious needs of the descendants of the English. We are a declining chaplaincy church. Christianity is a religion of consolation rather than salvation.
You had better say: The gospel itself utterly forbids us to think like that. The gospel addresses all men and women without exception in the same tone of voice, with the same demands and the same promises, the same Lord and the same Saviour. It is a matter of salvation, not consolation: of salvation, not of growing our numbers. Any gospel church is aptly described as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, universal words which embrace all nations and peoples and languages. If our denomination, will not accept the challenge posed by the new and increasingly different world which has come to us, we are not being faithful to the gospel which has formed our churches and saved our souls.
Americans live 3½ years less than citizens of the five top-ranked countries – Japan, Hong Kong, Iceland, Switzerland and Australia.
The story of American life expectancy is an alarming expression of its larger story. The US is delivering the full benefits of prosperity and modernity in an increasingly narrow way.
It was long known that richer Americans improved their life expectancy at a greater rate than poor Americans, but lifespans lengthened for all. Today, advantaged Americans live longer while the disadvantaged live shorter. That is the real import of the new findings. It is about inequality, in the most basic manifestation – the number of days of life.
Hundreds of Christians from across Australia converged on the nation’s capital this week for an event called ‘Voices for Justice’ that urged politicians to play their part in halving global poverty by 2015.
Voices for Justice is organized annually by Micah Challenge Australia. The Australian campaign is part of a global network inspired by the prophet Micah’s call to “do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).
Voices for Justice brings together participants of all ages from major denominations across Australia for worship, training and one-on-one meetings with politicians.
Perhaps it is understandable angry Muslims in the Middle East or Africa would demonstrate outside American diplomatic missions against the apparent circulation of a YouTube video mocking the Prophet Muhammad by a person based in the US. There is no such excuse for Australian Muslims.
Citizens and residents of Australia know we live in a democratic society in which the government does not, and mostly cannot, engage in acts of political and religious censorship. That’s why Americans have not been able to get the cheap film deleted from the web. And that’s why footage of beheadings of non-believers by Islamist extremists remain on the web.
Some Muslim leaders in Australia have condemned Saturday’s violent demonstration in which several members of the NSW Police were injured. Others have not. Whatever the response of Muslims, the incident provides yet more evidence that multiculturalism – after a promising start – has failed. If some Australian Muslims do not understand how democracy works, it’s time for a rethink.
I sat there pondering. I couldn’t help but feel I was caught up in a moment that could be somewhat farcical. If she had said she wanted to leave an area because she didn’t like that there were a group of Asian or Middle Eastern people, it would have been met with shock.
If she had said she was miserable because there were so many homosexual people she would have been heatedly challenged. If she had singled out any other group, even any other religious group, I think it would be seen as being narrow minded and intolerant, and she would have been put in her place.
In contrast, it seemed it was socially acceptable to isolate and attach negative stigma to people involved in the Christian faith. In essence, it was stereotyping and placing prejudice on a group of people without knowing or experiencing them as individuals.
Without getting into the nuts and bolts of whether the area is in fact a bible belt, I have felt uncomfortable about that conversation. It seemed to reinforce a trend, where people with a Christian faith in Australia are free game to be joked about or spoken of negatively in the paper, on the radio and in comic sketches.
The Anglican Church in Melbourne said today it welcomed the announcement by the Victorian government that it will increase its funding to tackle family violence by $16 million.
Bishop Philip Huggins, Chair of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, said: “This is a timely and compassionate response to the evidence of a growing need for services to tackle the problem. This week’s release of new statistics demonstrates that the crime rate is rising. Police are reported to attribute this largely to a rise in family violence-related crime which climbed by 39.9%!
“Tragically, more than 100,000 women in Australia experience violence by a partner or ex-partner. At least 60% of these cases are witnessed by children. We must do all we can to prevent such suffering.”
The Anglican Church also has a moratorium against the ordination of people living in openly gay relationships. Now it is tackling the issue head-on, establishing a commission to summarise the biblical and theological work done by the church on the ordination of gay priests and same-sex civil unions during the past 30 years.
The commission’s report on options and implications of change will be discussed at the 2014 Anglican general synod.
The Rev Dr James Harding, assistant priest at All Saints Anglican Church, North Dunedin, and a senior lecturer in Old Testament studies at the University of Otago, said the debate going on in Parliament was unlikely to influence the views of anyone in the church.
While most church leaders agreed that the Bible was the authority on marriage, they disagreed on how to interpret scripture, he said.
A post-adoption support group has welcomed a move by the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane to apologise for forced adoptions.
Dr Phillip Aspinall yesterday apologised to families affected by the policies used at St Mary’s Home at Toowong and The Church of England Women’s Refuge at Spring Hill.
Between 1951 and 1975 it is estimated up to 150,000 unmarried women across Australia were forced to give up their babies.
I really enjoyed this–watch it all.
A biography of Northern Territory indigenous leader and Anglican priest, Gumbuli of Ngukurr, has been chosen as Australian Christian Book of the Year from more than 40 entrants ”“ and given Melbourne publishing house Acorn Press, co-founded by the late Bishop John Wilson, its second consecutive win in the awards.
The author, Melbourne Anglican Dr Murray Seiffert, received the award at the annual awards evening organised by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia and the Australian Christian Literature Society at St Alfred’s Anglican Church, Blackburn North, on 16 August.
Australians must understand that conservative Christian lobbyists do not speak for all people of the faith, according to the Brisbane Anglican leader heading a new progressive advocacy group.
The Very Reverend Peter Catt, the Dean of St John’s Cathedral, announced yesterday the creation of the new group called A Progressive Christian Voice (Australia).
He said the aim of the group was not to be in conflict with the Australian Christian Lobby, which often argued for conservative positions on issues such as gay marriage and surrogacy, but to ensure there were several Christian voices in public debates.
Violence, video games, and sex: what effect does it have on children and adolescents? The latest contribution to this debate comes in a book recently published in Australia….
John P. Murray, who has been researching children’s social development for almost 40 years in the United States in a number of academic position, looked into the matter of the effects of media violence.
Some decades ago studies clearly demonstrate that the viewing of violence and aggressive behaviour are clearly related, but they do not establish a cause and effect relationship.
More recent studies do, however, lead to the conclusion that viewing violence does affect the attitudes and behaviour of viewers, he said.
In a more rational light, [Jennifer] Aniston’s marriage news is great news for her. If she’s happy, and presumably she is, that’s wonderful. But the reaction to this news, and her life before it, is bad news for us as a group.
What the treatment of the film star reveals is our determination to stick to old-school ideas about sex and gender. The worth of a woman has long been judged by her ability to keep a man. Aniston was supposedly diminished by her failure to keep Pitt and further damaged by her inability to replace him with a shiny new man.
Because she’s female, the idea that she might be content being single, dating and living on her own wasn’t taken seriously.
The disciplinary processes for dealing with rogue priests in almost every Anglican diocese in Australia are in doubt because of a landmark court challenge to their validity.
The head of the Anglican Church in Australia, Dr Phillip Aspinall, has asked to be heard in the legal action, which could open the floodgates for civil claims against the Church by priests who have been sacked or disciplined.
The application filed on behalf of Dr Aspinall warns that if the challenge to the standards ordinance succeeds, “it may have widespread and adverse consequences for all of the dioceses that make up the Anglican Church of Australia”.
Prostitutes have been using a Woodville Gardens church garage to solicit men.
Father Graham Head said the St Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Church was aware for some time that women had been using the grounds surrounding the church for the illegal activity.
Father Head said the tenant, who is now being evicted, denied all knowledge of the activity. He did not suggest she was involved but said she was given an eviction notice in April so the house can be used by the church.
Anglican Bishop Stuart Robinson fears changes to the ACT Discrimination Act could lead to religious disputes ending up in court and increase tension between faiths.
The head of the Canberra and Goulburn Archdiocese has also criticised the ACT government for not consulting religious leaders about the proposed changes, which will make religious vilification in the territory illegal….
Bishop Robinson said he supported improving basic human rights, especially the freedom to choose and practise a religion. But he said open societies also gave citizens the right to disagree on religious beliefs and practices.
Contrary to Fr Christopher Seton’s reported comments (“New world order as Anglican priests move to a Catholic environment”, The Age, 8/8), the Anglican Church respects those who cannot accept, in good conscience, the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate….Moreover, Fr Seton’s reported assertion “that you’ve got to believe in same-sex marriage” to remain in the Anglican Church is inaccurate and misplaced.
When psychology academic Bronwyn Harman, from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, set out to uncover the truth about childlessness in Australia, she did what many researchers do to get a sample these days. She hit social media in a big way….
Harman’s initial results were released last week – she thinks we are seeing explicit trends that society may not have accepted decades ago.
Of the 330 respondents, a little more than three-quarters said they were childless by choice. About one-third of that number (about 70 of those surveyed) said they might have children later. Another third declared they did not feel parental – not maternal, not paternal (men were invited to respond to the survey, too). Of the remaining 70-odd participants, 40 thought children would ruin their lifestyle.
Growing numbers of women in desperate financial straits cannot afford abortions, say women’s health advocates who are running out of funds to help them. They say women on Centrelink benefits cannot afford fees at private abortion clinics, and public hospitals must play a bigger role in providing a free service.
”Women who are really poor are finding it hard to get bulk-billed abortion services,” said Denele Crozier, the executive officer of Women’s Health NSW, the peak body for women’s community health centres. ”Either public hospitals must provide an abortion service or governments must further subsidise poor women to use the free-standing clinics.”
Women receive a Medicare rebate for terminations but out-of-pocket costs are high for many.
It was the church of George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush Sr and seven other United States presidents. The Episcopal Church is the US branch of the Anglican Church and it was once very influential. More than a third of Supreme Court justices have been Episcopalians. It was one of the first mainstream churches to ordain women; the first to consecrate an openly gay bishop. But over the past 20 years, the church has lost more than a third of its members, falling from 3.4 million in 1992 to 2.3 million in 2012. Now, following its convention in Indianapolis, the Episcopal Church appears on the brink of collapse. Beliefnet.com reports 46 members of the synod have spoken out in support of seceding from the Episcopal Church; six bishops have petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury for permission to leave the Church but remain part of the worldwide Anglican communion. Not all the tension is over liberal policies on sexuality. There’s also deep disagreement on fundamental matters of Christian doctrine. Author, journalist, and Episcopal minister from Florida, George Conger, explains the developments at the convention that sparked the latest crisis.
People professing to have no religion have moved past Anglicans to become the second-largest grouping after Catholics in the 2011 Census.
Almost 4.8 million people said they had no religion, up 29 per cent from 2006, but the number of people not answering the question dropped by 2 per cent. This suggested that more people were claiming a religious identity (including no religion), said Monash University sociology professor Gary Bouma.
Those who, like me, grew up in ”Bible-believing” churches are likely to think they have little choice but to accept what the Bible says (or implies) on same-sex marriage. They may secretly wish it were otherwise. They might acknowledge the strength of arguments in favour of honouring and encouraging long-term homosexual unions. However, they are also likely to believe they have no room to move.
I once thought that way until some surprising implications of the story of Noah’s flood began to dawn on me. I discovered that, as a Christian, it is possible to go back to the relevant biblical texts, to understand again what they are saying in context, and to rethink them in the light of contemporary knowledge and experience.
Indeed, in failing to do this, those Christians who refuse to budge on homosexuality also find themselves locked into unsustainable ways of reading the Bible. Let me explain.
Church heavyweights have been spurred into action by the bills, with the heads of the Catholic, Anglican and Greek Orthodox churches issuing strong statements to their congregations yesterday urging them to oppose any move towards same-sex marriage.
The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, wrote a letter to parishioners that was then distributed to the rectors of every Anglican church within the diocese. It was up to individual church leaders to decide whether to read the letter to congregations or simply make a copy available to them.
”It is likely that some time in the near future our parliamentary representatives will be asked to vote on a proposal to change the legal definition of marriage,” the letter reads.
The NSW Teachers Federation and public school advocates such as Trevor Cobbold argue that there is little, if any, evidence to support the benefits of increased school autonomy.
If true, their claims undermine the argument that choice and diversity in education, represented by autonomous government and non-government schools, is a good thing and suggest that moves around Australia to empower schools at the local level are misdirected.
But there is increasing international evidence that freeing schools from centralised and bureaucratic control is beneficial.
The Catholic Church is under attack “partly because of the sins of some of its leaders, but mainly because of its uncompromising teachings” on marriage, said an Australian archbishop.
“Faced with this, the church can either compromise and face irrelevance, or continue to teach Christ’s truth about marriage, life and love, and pray that the world will listen,” Archbishop Barry Hickey, retired archbishop of Perth, told pilgrims at the International Eucharistic Congress June 12.
The archbishop told a packed conference hall that “only a few years ago one could safely assume that our understanding of marriage was generally accepted,” but this is no longer the case.
I’ve tried to understand what matters most to those who want ”˜marriage equality’. The arguments go like this. Current law affects gay and lesbian mental health because it discriminates against them, and so denies them basic human rights (to marry whomever they want and to not experience discrimination). ”˜Marriage equality’ affirms gays and lesbians in their identity and ends the ”˜state-sanctioned bullying’ they take to be inherent to marriage law. ”˜Marriage equality’ celebrates love and gives people what they want ”“ so extending the freedom of choice that we demand of a liberal society.
Let’s observe the assumptions in these claims.
Firstly, love is the sole defining element of marriage. Second, any assertion that gay and lesbian people are different psychologically damages them. Third, it is the state’s responsibility to limit such damage. Finally, every society and generation can renegotiate marriage as it sees fit. A deep attachment to ”“ and ”˜love’ for ”“ this cluster of ideas drives the quest for marriage revision.
Anglican Archbishop Jeffrey Driver has accused the Commonwealth government of gambling with the future of young Australians as it considers changes to gambling regulations.
Proposed changes to online betting laws outlined in the government’s interim report on the Review of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 include the legalisation of new forms of online gambling that the Archbishop believes could create a new wave of problem gamblers.
“The proposed changes to online betting have the potential to open up more opportunities for Australians, especially young Australians, to gamble online,” Archbishop Driver said. “Young people are the most attuned to the digital revolution but also the most vulnerable to its disadvantages or dangers.”