The Church of England has jettisoned its stake in the payday lender Wonga, finally distancing itself from the firm it accused of exploiting the poor.

The move by the Church’s financial arm, the Church Commissioners, represents a victory for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby who has waged a high-profile campaign against high interest lenders.

He faced acute embarrassment last summer when, just a day after the publication of an interview in which he spoke of hoping to force Wonga out of business, it emerged that the Church’s financial arm, the Church Commissioners, had an indirect investment in the company….

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The Most Rev is on track-ish. But like many commentators and politicians, he has not done his segmentation analysis to A-grade standard. His focus is too much on the “what” and not enough on the “for whom”, which is a marketing motherhood error.

The Archbishop’s concern is mainly with the grip of poverty that forces the zero-income, deprived and desperate sections of society deeper into the darkness of debt. He is bringing his formidable intelligence and experience to bear in highlighting their plight and is contributing significantly to bringing them alternative and better support. To have an Anglican Primate showing the wit and will to do more than posture and politicise, is a refreshing novelty for the Church of England. His ideas around the Credit Champions Network and for using the churches as financial advisory centres for those in poverty are genuinely original. After all, when Jesus threw over the tables of money-changers in the temple of Jerusalem, he didn’t specifically object to advisory-only services.

But, knowingly or not, The Archbishop is nonetheless grossly over simplifying the situation by claiming that the Credit Unions’ “responsible credit and saving are real alternatives to the services currently provided by payday lenders”.

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On the final leg of his visit to Primates in Southern and Central Africa, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and his wife, Caroline, travelled from South Africa to Mauritius.

[The] Bishop of Mauritius is the Most Revd Ian Ernest, Archbishop and Primate of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean.

The Province, covering Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles, was founded in 1973. It comprises the dioceses of Antananarivo, Antsiranana, Fianarantsoa, Mahajanga, Mauritius, Seychelles, Toamasina and Toliara.

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While Wonga may not be at the most aggressive end of the payday loan spectrum, its “in-your-face” approach has made it the face of the post-crisis explosion in high-cost consumer credit. The volume of payday loans, designed to tide the borrower over to the next pay cheque, more than tripled in the UK between 2007 and 2013 as the economy soured and mainstream banks withdrew from riskier areas of consumer credit.

The growth in such lending may be a classic post-bubble phenomenon, and the less well-off do sometimes need access to short-term credit to deal with unexpected shocks, but most people are made understandably uneasy by the idea of encouraging those of slender means to borrow expensively to finance elective consumption. Against this background, calls for tighter regulation have fallen on fertile ground.

As the sector’s most visible lender, Wonga has become a focus for public disapprobation. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has condemned Wonga for usurious practices and called for it to be competed “out of existence”….

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Regarded as the father of Anglicanism in Nigeria, Bishop Crowther, who was born as Ajayi in western Nigeria in 1807, is credited with bringing many Nigerians to Christ. So great was his impact that he was ordained the first African Anglican bishop in 1864, despite great protest.

A former slave, Bishop Crowther became a great linguist, translator, scholar and mission teacher. He is also credited with producing the Yoruba Bible and greatly influenced how government’s improved their view of Africa in the 1800s.

But despite his passion and high achievements, Bishop Crowther’s mission was undermined and dismantled in the 1880s by racist white Europeans, including some of his fellow missionaries.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby arrived in Zambia today for a week of visits to fellow primates in the Anglican provinces of Central and Southern Africa.

The visits, which form part of Archbishop Justin’s commitment to visit every primate in the Anglican Communion during his first 18 months in office, will focus on spending time with church leaders and communities and seeing the work of Anglican churches in their local context. He will be accompanied throughout the visits by his wife, Caroline.

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The Anglican Communion has gone from a concept to a reality thanks to a two-week course for new clergy and seminarians run by Canterbury Cathedral.

The course is one part of the Canterbury Scholars’ programme which “provides opportunities for Anglican/Episcopalian Christians from around the Anglican Communion to pray, study and live together.”

This year’s group comprises 29 men and women from countries including Sri Lanka, Ghana, Hong Kong, the USA, India and England
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The two-week programme at Canterbury Cathedral Lodge included sessions on such topics as ”˜What is Anglicanism?’, ”˜Vocation, called and accepted’, ”˜Preaching the Word’, ”˜Being formed in the likeness of Christ’, and the ”˜Ministry of Reconciliation’.
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There was also a trip to London to visit the Anglican Communion Office (ACO), the Secretariat for the Instruments of Communion.

The international visitors were welcomed by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon. They heard about how Anglican Communion Office staff members support the Communion and work to promote the bonds of affection between Anglicans and Episcopalians around the globe.

During their time with ACO staff, the visitors identified a host of things to celebrate as common to all Anglicans/Episcopalians. These included a “supple approach to tradition”…..

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In a speech in Westminster, Welby pointed out that loan sharks sometimes turn up with baseball bats if customers do not pay. It now turns out that Wonga sends out menacing letters from non-existent solicitors if its customers miss their repayments.

And, herein lies the problem for the Church of England. Its Church Commissioners arm has a £100,000 stake in Wonga ”“ albeit less than it was but a stake nonetheless, held through the Accel Partners investment vehicle which backed one of the payday lenders’ funding rounds.

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There have been a number of what I am going to rather rudely describe as – am I? I always get into trouble when I do this – challenges, I am not going to be so rude, challenges in the regulatory system and across the process. I want to pick up on three or four particularly. First of all, leverage and capital adequacy. Leverage is the very quick and dirty calculation of the amount of equity there is to the amount of debt there is in a bank. At one point in one of the major banks, RBS in early 2008, it had 2% of capital to 98% of debt. That means you make a very small mistake and you are bust; if you make a big mistake, you are very, very, very bust.

Lehman was geared at 1% to 99% when it failed. The Banking Standards Commission recommended 4%. The banking industry pushed very hard and the Government settled on 3%.

Many of us on the Banking Standards Commission felt that was too low and continue to feel it is too low. Pressure from the banking industry in the European system within the Eurozone has overturned the recommendations in the Liikanen Report and again there has been a push back on the level of leverage. Banks in the UK at the moment are running at around 3.5%-4%. In the States they are talking about aiming for 5%-6%. The economic impact of that is obviously to restrict the banks’ appetite for lending. They have to have more capital. They can either do it by raising more capital, which is quite difficult, or by reducing their loan book. Those are the only two ways in which you do it. Reducing your loan book, if you have a fixed amount of capital that you have to have, you may as well make the most you can from it so necessarily you lend to the high-risk/high-return clients and particularly mortgages get squeezed. It is a conundrum.

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The appointment of a Church of England bishop who holds a conservative Evangelical view of “headship” could take place within months, if the Archbishops of Canterbury and York are successful in their efforts to ensure that this “aspiration” is met.

They say that they are consulting with a view to this, because they recognise that such an appointment is “important for sustaining the necessary climate of trust” around the new package of draft legislation and other provision for the consecration of women bishops in the C of E, and the safeguarding of the consciences of church people who are opposed to the change.

A note (GS Misc 1079) from the Archbishops on women in the episcopate was released at Friday’s media briefing in Church House, Westminster, before the final-approval vote that is on the agenda for next month’s General Synod meeting. For this vote to be carried, a two-thirds majority is required in every House of the Synod. The previous draft legislation for women bishops was lost when it narrowly failed to achieve two-thirds in the House of Laity in November 2012….

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…does this focus on joint action now take precedence over the two Churches seeking full, ecclesial unity by solving doctrinal disagreements?

“No,” the archbishop says when we meet at the “ceremoniale” in Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the executive lounge for visiting dignitaries, before he catches his plane back to London.

“I think we’re layering one thing on top of the other. There’s a very good theological foundation and there’s now joint action around what the Holy Father described as the three Ps: prayer, peace and poverty.”

He describes his meeting with the Pope, which included a 40-minute private discussion with just a translator present besides the two church leaders, as “a real engagement of love and not just a business connection”.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that the impetus for reforming the banking system is fading, even though taxpayers risk having to bail out the biggest banks ”“ six years after the financial crisis.

“The elephant in the room is that banks are still too big to fail,” Justin Welby said in a speech to the New City Agenda group at the House of Lords on Tuesday. “It is going to take some time to fix this and I hope it will stay front and centre of people’s minds.”

Mr Welby, who was an outspoken member of the parliamentary commission on banking standards, was asked by a JPMorgan Chase banker in the audience if the wave of banking regulation since the crisis had removed the risk of a taxpayer bailout.

The archbishop resisted this idea. “If JPMorgan had to go into insolvency, are we seriously saying it would not cause a systemic crisis? Do we really think the US government would say: ”˜No, we are not going to put a penny into this’?”

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“The Church, though, is a suffering church in this century. It is growing and in growing it suffers. It carries a cross. That is as true today as ever, and the last few years have demonstrated the truth and cost of that reality. A couple of weeks ago, Caroline and I were in Lahore in Pakistan. Just incidentally. . . just remember in your prayers our diplomatic service around the world. We’ve seen a lot of them in the last year; they are unbelievably good and they get absolutely no credit, anywhere, for the extraordinary work they do [applause]. . . But in Lahore two weeks ago we met some of the clergy and the Bishop of Peshawar who were involved in the bomb explosion last September at All Saints Church, an Anglican church, in which over 200 people were killed. And you ask them: “How are things recovering? Are people still going to church?” “Oh,” they said. “The congregation has tripled.” It is a suffering church and a church of courage.

“In the routine list of dioceses around the world that we pray for, last week was Damaturu, which almost none of you probably would have heard of, in north-east Nigeria. I know the bishop there; that the people of that diocese have been scattered to the four winds by Boko Haram. Its bishop is in hiding and danger is all around for those few Christians who remain. The girls of Chibok kidnapped and still held were from a part of that region, which is a Christian part. The global Church is a profoundly suffering church.

“It is cross-shaped. It carries a cross of suffering, but also it carries a cross for the salvation of the world. That has always been a scandal since the first few centuries. Early doubters, attackers of the Christian Church said: “How can you worship someone who died on a cross?” But it is a scandal of which we should be proud. We boast in the cross of Christ.

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[Lord Carey’s] apprehension is reinforced by the change of personalities at the head of the two communions: the theologians Pope Benedict and Rowan Williams have been replaced by leaders whose overarching concern is social, for issues of justice and reconciliation. Accordingly, the visit to Rome by Archbishop Welby this Sunday and Monday will have, at its focus, the shared initiative on human trafficking and slavery, raised a year ago at his first meeting with Pope Francis, and formally launched in March this year with messages of support from both Pope and Archbishop.

Yet any shift in emphasis has to be understood within a broader context of the ecumenical situation. The Catholic partners in dialogue are mindful of the warning given by Pope Benedict in 2012 against reducing ecumenism “to a kind of social contract to be joined for a common interest, a praxeology for creating a better world.” The theology, no matter how difficult, has to be done. But theological dialogue has never been seen as an end in itself, an intellectual endeavour apart from real life. It is an axiom of ecumenical dialogue, going back to the origins of the ecumenical movement, that acting more like Christ together draws Christians together in belief. Archbishop Justin underlined this in his message at the launch of the human trafficking initiative: “The more we share the pain and oppression of the poor and suffering in the name of God, the more God will draw us closer to each other, because we will need each other’s strength and support to make the kind of difference that is needed.”

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Although they have not yet reached full unity, Roman Catholics and Anglicans continue their dialogue, come together in prayer and work side by side, including on a new project to combat human trafficking around the world.

“I thank God that, as disciples sent to heal a wounded world, we stand together with perseverance and determination in opposing this grave evil,” Pope Francis told Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury June 16 during a meeting at the Vatican.

Archbishop Welby, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, was in Rome to hold his second meeting with Pope Francis, to visit Anglican communities in the city and to participate in a meeting of the Global Freedom Network, which they and other faith leaders founded to combat human trafficking and modern slavery.

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The leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada and TEC not only split the church in their own land with their heterodox doctrines and aggressive litigation against their fellow Christians, but caused schism in the worldwide communion, costing incalculable time, money and effort and a terrible stain on the church’s witness. Yet it is they who now claim to be the messengers of reconciliation, as if they have done nothing wrong, as if all the conflict in the Anglican Communion comes from the GAFCON side. If they were able to articulate repentance for what they have done there would surely be a case for a new listening. But instead, we see these architects of schism coming to Britain to lecture on how to bridge divides and bring together parties who disagree.

The official report of the conference can be found here.

The liberal Canadian-American axis have brought to this conference delegates from different parts of the world, especially Africa. We know that most African Anglicans are conservative in their theology and would be suspicious of the revisionism of their fellow Anglicans in the West. Why did these participants come?

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby arrives in Rome on Saturday for a two day visit that will culminate on Monday in a meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. On Sunday the Anglican leader will preach at Vespers at the church of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill, visit the two Anglican churches here in Rome and take part in a prayer service with the St Egidio community at St Bartholomew’s on the Tiber Island. During his packed programme, the Archbishop will also launch a new website for the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), showcasing ways in which members of the two communions are increasingly worshipping, working and witnessing side by side.

To find out more, Philippa Hitchen spoke with Canadian bishop Donald Bolen, co-chair of IARCCUM and Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, director of Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion office in London and co-secretary of IARCCUM”¦

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Update: You may find a nice picture about this there.

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In their second meeting within eighteen months Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby today recommitted themselves resolutely to the struggle against modern slavery and human trafficking.

Following their first meeting last year the two global leaders have continually spoken out to challenge this crime against humanity, and have acted decisively to support the foundation of the new faith based global freedom network. They both endorsed this network as a crucial force in the struggle to rid the world of a global evil.

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The summit was opened by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the Hollywood star Angelina Jolie. It ran from Tuesday to Friday, and brought together hundreds of politicians, activists, and survivors to discuss how to tackle the scourge and stigma of sexual violence.

Speaking at the opening to the summit, Ms Jolie, a special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that she wanted to dedicate the summit to one rape victim she had met in Bosnia. “She felt that having had no justice for her particular crime . . . and having seen the actual man who raped her on the streets free, she really felt abandoned by the world. This day is for her.”

Mr Hague announced a further £6 million in government funding for programmes to combat sexual violence, and said that he hoped other nations would pledge more money.

“We began campaigning two years ago, because we believe the time has come to end the use of rape in war, once and for all,” he said.

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From a Christian point of view, within the context of the church, this drive that we feel to engage 16,000 parish churches and 8,500 full-time stipendiary clergy in this springs from our sense of our faith. There’s a story that Jesus tells of two debtors, one who owes a huge sum of money, one who owes a little. The one who owes a huge sum of money is summoned by his creditor, who says, ‘You’re going to pay or you’re going to prison.’ The guy begs for forgiveness and gets it, and goes away and beats up the guy who owes him a little sum of money in order to get repaid, and Jesus points out the injustice of that.

There are a lot of meanings to that parable, but one of them is that debt is a form of slavery – and debt to a bad lender is a particularly unendurable form of slavery. The credit unions are trying to be the merciful lender, the one who has a clear system of values and ethics, and builds what they do around a value of the common good.

We’ve seen a huge increase in people’s knowledge about the existence of credit unions. In the past there have been three significant areas of challenge. First of all, as you know the regulatory system was virtually impossible for a credit union to make any money in in other words to pay its cost of capital and therefore to survive. They all needed subsidy ”“ that can’t work, it’s not sustainable. Secondly, credit unions needed a lot of help and support in some of their systems and the way they worked. And thirdly, they weren’t known.

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“A few weeks back I was with my wife in the eastern DRC and seeing what ”“ funded by the British government ”“ churches and NGOs are doing to combat sexual violence. And when you see what happens to people, it is breathtakingly terrible; and when you see what targeted, careful work does it is extraordinary in what can be achieved.

“Let me give you an example. On both visits over the last few years I’ve gone to see churches working with women who had been raped. The society of the eastern DRC is being progressively more brutalised by war, by rampaging militias, by extractive industries misbehaving, and that brutalisation is slipping into the general population. The churches are the main bulwark against this brutalisation. They love the women who come to them for help. They show them love and human dignity ”“ that is extraordinary in itself.

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In his message Archbishop Justin hails the conference, which is organised by Fairfield University, USA, and Durham University, as “a sign of a rediscovery of the ecumenical spirit, which remains an important element for participation in the life of world Christianity.”
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It is difficult to imagine a more brutal way for a teenager to be confronted by the reality of life and death.

But as an 18-year-old gap year student, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, found himself having to cut down the body of a fellow teenager who had hanged himself.

A new biography of the Archbishop singles out the moment in the early summer of 1974, while he was volunteering as a teacher at a boys’ school in Kenya, as marking the beginning of an unlikely journey to becoming one of the world’s most influential spiritual leaders.

Within days of the tragedy, about which he is not believed to have spoken previously in public, the future leader of the 80 million-strong worldwide Anglican Church told a close friend how he had begun to find faith in God.

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Evangelism is the discipline of not keeping the good news to ourselves. There is no better news for anybody, anywhere, than who God is for us in Jesus Christ – in whom God has chosen to be for all people. In his life, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection, God has chosen to love, call, suffer, die, rise, and open the Kingdom of God for each person. God desires each one to live in the joy of this grace.

So many people are living with no knowledge of what God has done for them. And yet the difference would be transformative if this “took”; if this was effectual in human lives. The beauty of this gospel captivates our lives and sets us free.

Evangelism is not a recruitment drive. It is not done for fear that nobody will be in the Church in a generation’s time, or as a solution to financing crumbling buildings or crumbling clergy. It is our response to what God has done.

This message is about the person of Jesus Christ: so it is always personal, always loving, always gracious, and always particular.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby made a last minute visit to Nigeria today to offer his heartfelt sympathy for the recent events affecting the country, including the recent bombings in Jos and the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls who have now been missing for almost two months.

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Read it all and note the Archbishop’s tweet about it here:

The results of good disagreement: this report draws to Christ while not confining to unanimity – http://t.co/z1qtVMVJMK

— Justin Welby (@JustinWelby) June 2, 2014

“There is a considerable sense of anxiety, of being under siege,” Justin Welby, a former oil executive, told Reuters outside a church in the eastern city of Lahore.

“There was a very clear sense that people were nervous about the misuse of the blasphemy law, as a sort of a tool of politics, a way of gaining attention, or as a mob thing,” he added, flanked by two Pakistani bishops.

He earlier told reporters: “Equality under the law is very important.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has said the Christians of Pakistan are a people under siege and joined calls for their churches to be protected and for them to be able to worship in safety.

“Freedom of worship is a universal human right around the world, and all countries need to pay attention to that,” he said.

Meanwhile, condemning the “revolting lynching” of a pregnant Pakistani woman who was stoned to death by her family in front of hundreds of people outside the Lahore high court, the Archbishop told the Times: “I was utterly horrified and every Pakistani I have spoken to is also horrified. It (the stoning) was in no sense a punishment, but but a revolting lynching.”

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