Transcendent grace enables us to hold both to the necessary project of pursuing God’s justice in the face of any and all injustice even as it simultaneously enables us to participate in the immediate and desparately urgent pastoral work of healing and of reconciling.

And so my sisters and brothers what is it that we are to do? Are we to continue to draw our lines in the shifting sands of ecclesial aggression and blaming, of accusing and judging? Or are we to shift our emphasis to embrace simultaneously and in sufficient measure, grace filled mutual affection and uplift of one another, together with boldly reconciling behaviour? Can we exemplify the very best of God’s grace even as we continue to name decisively and to act boldly and courageously against all of those things, which we know to be unacceptable in God’s sight? Can we stand more confidently together as members of the family of Christ, on the common ground of God’s world, on the basis of a newly apprehended indigenous model of unconditionally inclusive relationality?

Can we do all of this as people connected as adversaries and as friends, across the villages, towns, cities and nations into which we are blessed to be born ”“ a people who know and are known by the ancestors; who know the rivers and lakes and mountains which shelter and nurture us all; a people committed to the full participation and flourishing of all in God’s world; a people unafraid of simplicity or of suffering, a people instinctively attuned to heartfelt wisdom, to forgiveness, to unconditional belonging, to God’s grace and peace with and for us all? I am confident that we will, we can and we must . . . in Christ’s name. Amen.

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Update: A related article to this address is here.

Ways of increasing the church’s involvement in the community are likely to be addressed at this year’s Anglican Diocese of Nelson synod.

Starting today in St Christopher’s parish hall, Blenheim, the three-day meeting will be led by the Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena, former parish priest of the Nativity Church.

Fifteen years in that role helped him appreciate how the church can be a visible symbol of the life of Christ. He and media officer Rev Peter Carrell took a break from yesterday’s pre-Synod conference to outline the programme.

Time will be made to discuss issues affecting the church and its congregations as well as all the administrative tasks like measuring accounts, assessing budgets and appointing officers to keep the region’s 26 parishes operating smoothly.

Read it all.

New Zealand’s two Anglican Archbishops have asked for mercy for Ali Panah, who is now in the 35th day of a fast he began in a last-ditch bid to avoid deportation to Iran.

And the Archbishops, Brown Turei and David Moxon, have endorsed the work of Anthony Dancer, the Anglican Church’s Social Justice Commissioner, and others who are campaigning on Mr Panah’s behalf.

Ali Panah, who is Christian, and who had been a member of the Anglican parish of St James, Orakei for two years before his arrest, started his fast following the Minister of Immigration’s refusal to grant him refugee status.

He has been held in Mt Eden Prison for 18 months, having refused to sign documents that would lead to his deportation to Iran.

As a Christian, he faces grave risks if he returns to his homeland.

Read the whole press release.

“He’s young,” says Bishop John, “he’s enthusiastic, and he’s a highly respected parish priest. Not only does he have my full confidence, he has the trust and confidence of his colleagues. I am very pleased.”

Ross Bay was born and raised in Papatoetoe, and went to Papatoetoe High School before starting his working life at the Bank of New Zealand. After his theological training, he served a stint as an assistant priest at the Cathedral from 1990 to 1992, under Dean John Rymer.

That experience gave him a glimpse of the role the Cathedral can play as the mother church to Anglicans in this city, and to Anglicans in the wider Auckland diocese.

Fifteen years later, Ross sees that task as more important than ever.

“There’s an increasing trend,” he says, “towards ”˜congregationalism’ in the Anglican Church ”“ that is, for individual parishes to do their own thing without a sense of being part of something much bigger. The Cathedral can really draw the Church together, and be the heart of the diocese.”

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Later, in his rather spartan office, the bishop says that despite his many scholarly articles people still do not understand his position on faith. Sitting there in a brown v-necked Rodd & Gunn jersey over his purple cassock, and wearing a pair of shoes cleaned so many times the black leather wrinkles like parchment, Bishop Randerson explains he used the word “agnostic” only when debating the theories of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He was asked if he could scientifically prove that God exists. And he says, “you can’t prove God by science.”

On the other hand, the bishop believes passionately in God “as in the person known as Jesus Christ. I endorse that 100 per cent. That’s what my whole life has been about.”

It is Bishop Randerson’s careful theology, his dedication to truth and bridging the gap between science and religion that has led him into controversy over and over again. He does not accept the literal meaning of the virgin birth – and many of the other stories of the Old Testament.

“It can be very upsetting for people who think, ‘well that’s the truth: it’s a gynaecological miracle that I believe in’,” explains Bishop Randerson. “Yet often in the process of that [belief] they are missing what that story is about – which is that the divine and the human meet perfectly in Jesus. The miracle can distract people from the deeper understanding.”

Similarly with the story of Adam and Eve, which he explains away as one of many “symbolic stories” attached to the Bible. “Adam in Hebrew means humankind,” he says. “Eve means life. When we’re talking about Adam and Eve, we’re talking about the generic meaning of life. They’re generic stories about the truths of human life.”

He has also stuck his neck on the chopping block over gay marriage (he would welcome it if the church did).

The bishop’s modern ideas may have an appeal. Holy Trinity still draws 150 to Sunday communion and around 80 to evensong. Although the controversy over their leader’s agnosticism may have upset some of his flock, many more “on the margins” got engaged in the argument.

Bishop Randerson’s attitudes, delivered in a warm, measured voice, may make the Anglican Church far more acceptable to the educated than insistence on literal, blind faith. As he says, bringing the church into the scientific era has been his life’s work. “That’s what it’s all about – that’s what I’ve had a passion to do … There are many people who’ll say ‘if I’ve got to believe that Jesus was literally born from a virgin I have to rubbish the whole Christian thing just on the basis of that’.”

Read the whole thing.