The Archbishop of Canterbury has drawn attention to the fact that Christians in Peshawar were talking of forgiveness immediately after suicide bombers attacked All Saints Church on Sunday.
But he added that Christians in Peshawar are also ”˜crying out vigorously’ for justice and protection following the worst attack on Christians in Pakistan’s history.
The attack, which was launched as people were leaving Sunday Mass, killed 85 people and injured more than 120.
Speaking on Radio 4’s World at One today, the Archbishop described the bombing as ”˜an absolutely appalling attack’ and called on Pakistan’s government to ensure that minority citizens are given proper protection and that all people are treated equally under its law.

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(Please note: you can see basic information about this conference there)–KSH.

Toronto: The Archbishop of Canterbury has laid out his vision for a reformed and renewed Anglican Communion during an address delivered last week at Wycliffe College of the University of Toronto.

The Anglican way forward was through a church whose mission and message had a concrete impact on the real world of modern men and women. But this church was not merely a vehicle for good works, but one that took a wholly Christ-centered approach to theology and was grounded entirely in the New Testament.

In an unscripted address via Skype to the “Back to the Anglican Future: The Toronto Congress 1963 and the Future of Global Communion” Conference held on 18 September 2013 Archbishop Welby acknowledged the impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ideal of the Church as “Christ existing as community” as his guide.

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Writing to the Church of Pakistan last night, the Archbishop said his heart ‘goes out to all those bereaved and injured by this terrible attack….’I pray for the peace of Pakistan and the protection of Christ’s people. With the people of Peshawar I join in calling for the Pakistan Government and all people of good will to ensure that communities may go about their daily lives in safety, and that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Please be assured of my prayers and fullest support as you provide leadership and care for your people at this difficult time.’

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Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced to the House of Bishops that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will be visiting The Episcopal Church in April 2014 for personal visit with her.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury has contacted me and we are planning a private discussion next April,” Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori told the House of Bishops currently conducting its fall meeting in Nashville, TN (Diocese of TN).

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is delighted to announce the appointment of Ailsa Anderson LVO as Director of Communications at Lambeth Palace. Mrs Anderson is currently the Communications and Press Secretary to the Queen.

Mrs Anderson will be the primary spokesperson for the Archbishop, and a member of his senior team at Lambeth Palace. She will manage the Lambeth Palace communications team, overseeing day to day contact with the media as well as driving and developing strategic communications.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said in July that Wonga took advantage of poor households struggling to get by in austerity conditions, and pledged to drive the “morally wrong” company out of existence by launching the church’s own not-for-profit credit unions as an alternative for Wonga’s customers.

On Tuesday Errol Damelin, chief executive and founder of Wonga, described the challenge as “complimentary” and said he doubted it would have an impact on Wonga’s business.

“In the UK on the consumer side, we reject about two thirds of applicants we get. The market that the Church would be looking at, we think, is mostly the market for people who don’t get accepted for Wonga loans,” Damelin said.

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One of the highlights of the Rosh Hashanah service for me is the thanksgiving song of Hannah, which speaks of God’s power to change, to give all that is needed and more. It is with this song as inspiration that I wish you every blessing. May we be able to say with Hannah, ”˜There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God!’

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I don’t intend to repeat the powerful points that have been made on international law which is itself based on the Christian theory of Just War, and that has been said very eloquently. But I want to pick up a couple of points – first is, it has been said, quite rightly, that there is as much risk in inaction as there is in action. But as in a conflict in another part of the world, a civil conflict in which I was mediating some years ago, a general said to me “we have to learn that there are intermediate steps between being in barracks and opening fire”. And the reality is that until we are sure that all those intermediate steps have been pursued, Just War theory says that the step of opening fire is one that must only be taken when there is no possible alternative whatsoever, under any circumstances. Because, as the noble Lord Lord Alli just said very clearly and very eloquently, the consequences are totally out of our hands once it has started. And some consequences we can predict ”“ we’ve heard already about the Lebanon and about Iran, particularly the effect that an intervention would cause on the new government in Iran as it is humiliated by such an intervention.

But there is a further point, talking to a very senior Christian leader in the region yesterday, he said “intervention from abroad will declare open season on the Christian communities”. They have already been devastated, 2 million Christians in Iraq 12 years ago, less than half a million today. These are churches that don’t just go back to St Paul but, in the case of Damascus and Antioch, predate him. They will surely suffer terribly (as they already are) if action goes ahead.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury said on Wednesday that the Church must not become like a marriage in which a couple have drifted apart and are content with their independent lives.

Speaking at the opening of the Evangelical Alliance’s (EA) new headquarters in King’s Cross, London, Archbishop Welby said: “It is too easy for the Church to be comfortable in separation, like a bad marriage where the couple has drifted apart, but not to the point where they’ll divorce. They just sort of somehow live separate lives in the same house; they don’t talk much except what’s necessary to keep things running along. And they may not even notice that the separation is growing and deepening, but they live with it. And the Church can fall into that trap – in fact, over many years, has fallen into that trap.”

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The Most Rev Justin Welby told an audience of traditional born-again Christians that they must “repent” over the way gay and lesbian people have been treated in the past and said most young people viewed Christians as no better than racists on the issue.

Archbishop Welby, who as a young priest once opposed allowing gay couples to adopt children, said the church now had to face up to what amounted to one of the most rapid changes in public attitudes ever.

While insisting that he did not regret voting against same-sex marriage in the House of Lords, he admitted that his own mind was not yet “clear” on the wider issues which he was continuing to think about.

Read it all. Also, there is an article in The Independent on this there.

It seems that strange and dramatic events of this kind happen year after year in the global Anglican Communion ”” truly one of God’s gifts to headline writers.

It appears unlikely this trend will change anytime soon. Recently, in a burst of candor in Mexico, the current Archbishop of Canterbury harkened back to the English Civil War and quoted sobering advice from Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who was executed in 1645 by the Puritan parliament.

The Most Rev. Justin Welby noted that Taylor warned: “It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. … Force in matters of opinion can do no good, but is very apt to do hurt.”

These are hard words in an era in which England’s shrinking flock of Anglicans is still fighting over female bishops and, across the Atlantic, the shrinking flock of Episcopalians continues to fight over non-celibate gay bishops. Meanwhile, leaders in the growing Global South churches of Africa and Asia are calling for repentance and doctrinal discipline.

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The Most Rev Justin Welby insisted that MPs must ask themselves whether they are “sure” about the facts on the ground before acting amid a “really delicate and dangerous situation”.

Archbishop Welby, who spent several years promoting reconciliation in war zones in Africa and the Middle East, insisted that there were “numerous intermediate steps” between doing nothing and full regime change in Syria which could be considered.

But speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he acknowledged that there was no “good answer” to the crisis in Syria and that a simple solution “just doesn’t exist”.

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It is deeply unhelpful of the Archbishop to use language which appears to suggest that the risk that those who wish to affirm gay people present is one of a lack or loss of core beliefs. That just isn’t true and is a nasty slur against fellow Anglicans. The US and Canadian churches are not places where God is absent and if the Archbishop needs to find that out, he needs to go there and meet them, something that his predecessor seemed to find impossible to do.

People will read the sermon in the US and Canadian churches and take immediate offence. (I find it offensive here in Scotland, but there it will appear to be a judgement on their national churches). Those who wish to affirm the place of LGBT people do so because of their core beliefs as Christians and as Anglicans, not because of any lack of belief or loss of God.

Does the Archbishop of Canterbury not have anyone on staff from the US or Canada or someone who knows those churches who could look at this kind of stuff and say, “hang on a minute, Father, that might not go down too well?”

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…It is our vocation as Communion Partners to navigate this narrow path between two dangerous extremes as we pursue the mission of the Church “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”To that end, six Communion Partner bishops (Greg Brewer, Paul Lambert, Ed Little, Dan Martins, Ed Salmon and Michael Smith) made a visit to Archbishop Justin Welby at his residence in Canterbury, England last week.

There we prayed together and discussed a range of issues concerning the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church. Also present was the Archbishop’s Director of Reconciliation, Canon David Porter.

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In his most stark comments yet about divisions over issues such as homosexuality, the Most Rev Justin Welby said the Church is coming perilously close to plunging into a “ravine of intolerance”.

He even drew parallels between the crisis afflicting the 77 million-strong network of Anglican churches and the atmosphere during the English Civil War.

And he likened the collective behaviour of the church to a “drunk man” staggering ever closer to edge of a cliff.

Read it all and the sermon text being cited is there.

A friend of mine was recently preparing to leave the army, and began a training course for a debt recovery agency. He was horrified that the trainees were taught not to waste too much time on people who could stick up for themselves, but to concentrate on the vulnerable who could easily be intimidated, such as the elderly or single mums, from whom far more money could easily be found. He left the course, disgusted.

But the gap which the payday lenders exploit isn’t just a gap in the market. It’s a gap in our collective self discipline. We’re still a society hopelessly hooked on a spendthrift lifestyle. We see something glitzy, we want it, and we want it now, really not paying close enough attention to how on earth we’re going to pay the borrowed money back. The financial crisis that is crushing us at the moment wasn’t simply caused by the banks being feckless lenders: we were all too happy to be feckless borrowers. The banks are now being more careful ”“ perhaps overly so with business ventures ”“ but payday lending still lets people get stuff they can’t afford. Even if one has paid back a loan, there remains the constant text pestering for another: “There is £££ ready for you, just call 0800 XXX XXX and it will be in your account in 15 minutes.” As another friend told me, if you’re struggling, it can be just too hard to resist.

So, Justin Welby, the recently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, has decided to do something about it….

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In an area of much killing where I was supporting reconciliation some years ago, I spent time with a group of Anglican priests. Several thousand people had been killed in heavy fighting during the previous week. It was the second outburst of fighting in less than ten years. The priests were bitter, mourning families, friends and church members. One gave up preaching and used the time for the sermon explaining how to strip, clean and reassemble an automatic rifle. Over a few months we worked together, thinking and praying about the situation, about the very real threats they faced, about the history of battle, and about the teaching of scripture, especially in Jonah. Slowly they learned afresh that they were loved, and learned to love and began to reach out to their enemies. The reconciliation remains fragile, but continues to this day.

We change our conflicted communities when we rediscover reconciliation in Christ for ourselves. Paul reminds the divided Ephesians that God breaks down all barriers. They are reconciled through the cross to God and are to be reconciled to others. It is costly. Reconciliation is cross-shaped. Justice is cross shaped. Churches that seek justice will find a cross, and will need to bear it. So many of you have done that. So many not only here in Guatemala, but elsewhere in the Province, know the pain of conflict. And yet we have the answer ”“ and that answer is us, says Paul. It is extraordinary, because again he was speaking to a small church in a very pagan society, and yet he was right, and history proved it over the centuries.

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During a trip which will also include visits to Guatemala and Mexico, he praised the Anglican church in the West Indies for its “imaginative” contributions to the “unity and well-being” of the Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Justin and his wife, Caroline, arrived yesterday in Bardados for a two-day visit at the invitation of the Most Revd Dr John Holder, Archbishop of the Church of the Province of the West Indies and Bishop of Barbados.

The trip is part of a series of visits to Anglican Primates which the Archbishop is making during his first eighteen months in post.

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A consortium backed by the Church of England to bid for 315 Royal Bank of Scotland branches has lined up the ex-United Utilities boss Philip Green to front its bid.

Green is to replace John Tiner, the former Financial Services Authority chief executive who stepped down as chairman in the wake of the controversy caused by the parliamentary commission on banking standards investigation into HBOS.

Green is to chair the bid vehicle ”“ one of three that have submitted bids for the RBS branches this week ”“ working alongside former Lloyds Banking Group banker John Maltby who has been lined up as chief executive.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury said this week that he felt “encouraged and uplifted by all traditions” in the Church. He was speaking after a week-long tour of the country, during which he spoke to Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Anglo-Catholic gatherings.

Archbishop Welby spoke at Hillsong, a Pentecostal Church, at the O2 Arena, in London; HTB Focus, a week away for members of Holy Trinity, Brompton, and its plants, in Lincolnshire; New Wine, a Charismatic Evangelical festival in Somerset…and the Youth Pilgrimage to the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Writing on his blog on Sunday, Archbishop Welby admitted that, during mass and Benediction at Walsingham, on Wednesday of last week, “My first thought was ‘What a contrast with the past few days.’ But my next thought was: ‘What’s the problem?'”

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Archbishop Justin has spoken of the “joyful” work of building Christian-Muslim relationships in his first annual message to Muslims on Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan.

He encouraged the “hard” but also “joyful” work of building “deep and long-lasting relationships” between the two faith communities, which he said he had experienced during his time working in Nigeria.
– See more at: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5117/archbishop-on-eid-al-fitr-let-us-build-deep-and-lasting-ties-with-each-other#sthash.NfFu4T7M.dpuf

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Anglicans and Catholics alike, said Pope Francis, should give “a voice to the cry of the poor, so that they are not abandoned to the laws of an economy that seems at times to treat people as mere consumers.”

This well-intentioned statement could have also come from his counterpart, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, since March the head of the Church of England and supreme spiritual leader of about 80 million Anglicans worldwide. Welby, 57, has addressed issues of justice in capitalism ever since he was a theology student, and he rewrote his doctoral thesis into a treatise that poses the question: “Can Companies Sin?”

Of course they can. Unlike his predecessors, Welby can draw on his own experience to answer such questions. Before beginning his church career, Welby worked for 11 years as a financial manager in the oil industry: five years at Elf Aquitaine in France, followed by six years in London and, most recently, with Enterprise Oil, a production company that is now part of the Shell conglomerate.

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There is something endearingly audacious about Justin Welby’s expressed desire to compete the titans of Britain’s payday loan industry out of existence. But the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks raise two connected questions. Can he do it, and should he want to?

The first point is easier to deal with….

There are better ways for the archbishop to help the poor than for the church to dish Wonga. Those on the margins of society will always need occasional access to loans to help tide them over unscheduled expenses or interruptions in income. That these should be appropriately priced goes without saying.

The real challenge, however, is not simply to shave the interest rate by a few points, but to ensure that those who take out loans do so in the full knowledge of the risks and with a realistic plan for managing them. This means two things: first, offering genuine advice to potential borrowers; and second, real assistance should things go wrong….

Read it all (or if necessary another link is there).

The Church should be a “movement of prayer” which creates “collateral blessing”, the Archbishop of Canterbury (above) said on Monday night. He was speaking at New Wine, a Charismatic Evangelical festival in Somerset, which he and his family attended for 12 years when he was a parish priest.

“The US Army gave us the expression ‘collateral damage’, which means killing people you did not mean to target,” he said. “People seeking Christ create collateral blessing. That means changing the world for the better, in ways you could not have predicted.”

Archbishop Welby continued: “There has never been a renewal of the Church in Western Europe without a renewal of prayer and the life of religious communities. Never. And if we want to see things changed, it starts with prayer.”

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A credit unions expert has praised the Church of England for its plan to out-compete payday lending company Wonga.

Dr Peter Davis, of the University of Leicester’s School of Management, has worked as a consultant on credit unions and other forms of co-operative around the world – including for the United Nations Anti-Poverty Unit.

He welcomed the Archbishop of Canterbury Rev Justin Welby’s plan to build up credit unions as an alternative to payday loans that charge astronomical interest rates.

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Justin Welby, the 57-year old former oil executive who quit the world of high finance in 1992 to become a priest, was enthroned in March as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. And now the spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, has revealed that he speaks “in tongues”.

During an interview with Charles Moore of The Daily Telegraph at Lambeth Palace, London, he was asked by Moore that since he was an evangelical, could he speak “in tongues” which the journalist said is the “charismatic” spiritual gift recorded in the New Testament.

Moore said that Welby answered “Oh yes”, as if he had been asked if he plays tennis.

“It’s just a routine part of spiritual discipline – you choose to speak and you speak a language that you don’t know. It just comes,” the Archbishop said.

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It was not the ideal start to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s grand initiative to bring a new morality to Britain’s banking sector….

But despite the stumble out of the gate, Welby appears committed to taking on payday loans ”“ small, high-interest, short-term loans to those who can’t get credit elsewhere ”“ as a means of “speaking for the poor.” And his plan raises questions about just how much clout the Church of England wields through its portfolio of investments and through the influence the church has over its flock ”“ how it ought to wield it.

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The Most Reverend Justin Welby joined 650 young people and their leaders at the annual youth pilgrimage to the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

He took part in a torchlight procession along the ”˜Holy Mile’ which extends from the Roman Catholic slipper chapel to the village of Walsingham and the Anglican Shrine.

Before the destruction of the shrine in the 16th century medieval pilgrims would walk the last mile of their pilgrimage barefoot from the chapel and the tradition continues today.

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As the scriptures tell it, Jesus expelled the money changers from the temple to cleanse it of a “den of thieves.” With some discernible echoes, the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury has initiated a comparable crusade against newer financiers charging enormous interest on what are called payday loans.

Unlike the biblical showdown, though, the outcome of this newest confrontation seems freighted with moral ambiguity, risk and potential ridicule.

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…in this process of liberalisation over the centuries, it seems we have forgotten a couple of key principles. If I lend money, the borrower makes a promise to repay. If I lend money to borrowers I believe will probably default, I am inducing people to make promises they will break. Inducing promise-breaking is straightforwardly unethical.

Again, although short-term high-interest loans may (as Eck and Melanchthon claimed) help people through temporary difficulties without their being forced to liquidate assets (e.g. sell the family car) unnecessarily, if I lend money very short term and at high interest to someone that is already insolvent and that person defaults on other creditors shortly after repaying me, I have profited at the expense of those other creditors. That could be seen as akin to theft ”” capturing assets that should rightly be used to repay other loans.

It could be difficult to regulate lending that induces promise-breaking or that extorts the assets of other creditors without preventing more innocent lending that helps with liquidity or business launching.

Read it all.