“Benefits provide security to our society’s most vulnerable people, and people who claim them are a part of our society ‘whanau’. Also, this government is working to overcome family violence, so the idea that John Key should want to give some of the most vulnerable in society a kick in the pants is both offensive and absurd. Kicking someone in the pants always does more harm than good,” says Dr Anthony Dancer, the Anglican Church’s Social Justice Commissioner.

“We need to be clear that with the number of redundancies and rise in unemployment, particularly prominent among Maori and Polynesian people, even the most highly qualified are finding it hard to find good jobs. Just because a solo parent’s kids go to school, it doesn’t necessarily mean a good job can simply be found at the drop of a hat. Or are beneficiaries supposed to do any work that is going? The kind of work the rest of society doesn’t want to do?”

It is unclear if the Government thinks it will be easier for beneficiaries to find work because they should take whatever work they are offered, while the middle classes continue to make more discerning choices.

Read the whole thing.

(WCC News) “We need to emphasize time and again the sense of mutuality and interdependence as the basis of relationships between Christians”, said Dr Jenny Plane Te Paa, convener of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN). This is especially important at a time when “denominations are increasingly worried with internal, identity-centred issues and therefore risk a credibility crisis”, she added.

Te Paa was speaking at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, after a meeting of the APJN members with staff of the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Student Christian Federation on Monday, 15 March.

“We all tend to claim our differences in ways that prevent us from acknowledging our commonalities, so that within the churches, the fidelity to our denominations becomes more important than our higher fidelity to our oneness in Christ”, said Te Paa. “Only a theology of mutuality can help us to transcend this through a truly ecumenical attitude”, she concluded.

Read it all.

Listen to it all (a little under 40 minutes) (and, yes, it requires an audio player). There are a lot of topics covered including growing up in Uganda, his role as Archbishop of York, mutliculturalism, Zimbabwe, and the Anglican same sex union debate–KSH.

Listen to it all (a little under 40 minutes) (and, yes, it requires an audio player). There are a lot of topics covered including growing up in Uganda, his role as Archbishop of York, mutliculturalism, Zimbabwe, and the Anglican same sex union debate–KSH.

The church’s essential mission is to “proclaim the Kingdom of God”, the Right Rev Dr Kelvin Wright, the newly ordained Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Dunedin, says.

Dr Wright, who previously spent 11 years as vicar of St John’s, Rosyn, was ordained the ninth bishop of the diocese in a ceremony attended by more than 400 people who almost filled St Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday afternoon.

Some travelled from various parts of the North Island to attend and one person came from the Middle East.

“We have to proclaim the Kingdom of God,” Dr Wright said after being formally ordained as bishop.

“All of us are loved by God and accepted by God.”

Read it all.

(Please note that this response refers to the thread below on the blog on which there are currently over 50 comments. If you have not read that thread I would encourage you to do so–KSH)

This thread must be one of the best T19 has witnessed, IMHO. Thank you to the many participants: I have benefited greatly from the discussion – not least the rigour and candour of much of it. Even if I disagree with those who do not favour the Covenant Process …!

In my present little part of the Lord’s vineyard, we have a really intriguing situation developing. For New Zealand is not generally known for its conservative style Anglican ethos (ven if it does have a strong CMS history)!. Yet, as we face the run up to its General Synod in May this year, some lines are starting to be drawn which will determine our long term future, for better or ill.

The Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia runs a quarterly national magazine called [i]Taonga[/i]. The name is Maori for “prized treasure”, a reference to the Gospel of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. The latest Advent edition ran two articles on the Anglican Communion Covenant, one pro and one against. As with this Church’s official response to the RCD, it mostly wants a ‘bob-each-way’ – even as it tries to be fair in its debates! See http://www.anglicantaonga.org.nz/ and the third set of links beginning with “Dr Williams hails latest Covenant”.

I refer the T19 readership to these links especially since the article in favour reaffirms some of the stronger points made in this thread, while the one against – by a retired bishop please note – shows very starkly why the AC seriously needs such a mechanism as the Covenant, to arrest the dribbling into the sands of endless ideological pluralism. And it is clear to me at least the GS leadership has grasped this western ideological nettle very firmly, to refute it, as it seeks to bolster the Covenant Process to achieve an AC that still might be a vessel of worth in the Lord’s hands for the global mission of the Church in the 21st C. Enjoy!

The editors at the Post really needed to ask if Cardy was saying that his church (as in his parish) does not believe in the Virgin Birth or if his Church (as in the Anglican Church in New Zealand) no longer teaches this ancient doctrine.

Either way, the story is that a congregation or a national church in the Anglican Communion put up a rather shocking billboard ”” at Christmas ”” attacking ancient doctrines about the Virgin Birth. The heart of the story should consist of Cardy and other members of his parish explaining why they believe what they believe and why they did what they did.

In other words, don’t bury the lede.

Read it all.

AN INNER-CITY Auckland church, trying to promote debate over Christianity, has given up on a controversial billboard which made international headlines.

The billboard, featuring a dejected Joseph and a quizzical Mary in bed, with the message, ”Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow”, has been attacked four times since it was erected outside the Anglican church on Thursday.

After the latest attack, by an elderly woman with a knife, the church said the billboard would not be replaced.

Read it all.

An unholy row has broken out in New Zealand over a church billboard aimed at “challenging stereotypes” about the birth of Jesus Christ.

A dejected-looking Joseph lies in bed next to Mary under the caption, “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow”.

St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, which erected the billboard, said it had intended to provoke debate.

But the Catholic Church, among others, has condemned it as “inappropriate” and “disrespectful”.

Read it all.

A period overseas included postgraduate study before he returned as the Vicar of Ellerslie. He was commissioned as Archdeacon of Auckland in 2006 and in 2007 was appointed Dean and Vicar General.

As Dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral Ross was thrust into the international spotlight when Sir Edmund Hillary died and the Cathedral was chosen for his state funeral.

“We’re not just this little group in this particular parish. We also belong to something much wider than that: the diocese, the three Tikanga church here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the worldwide Anglican Communion.”

Read it all.

Dr. Te Paa served on the Windsor Commission. I started trying to type what she was saying, but I had to stop and simply listen. Her word were incredible and moving. (After we adjourned I ran to the Media Center to see if they had the text of her speech, but it was hand written. Someone is typing it. When the text is posted, I’ll send the part of it that was so captivating.)

She said that as she worked on the Windsor Commission, “We were never fully apprised of your policy.” She said that they didn’t understand the policy of shared leadership that is so core to the Episcopal Church’s decision making. She regrets the vilification of the Episcopal Church, especially its leadership, within the Windsor process. She thanked us for “Your generosity of spirit, despite what you have suffered through these years.” “I am a little surprised and saddened that too many Episcopalians are being affected by their sense of loss of face or vulnerability in belonging to the Anglican Communion,” she said. “I am dismayed at the extent to which that seems to be prevalent.”

As the others nodded in agreement, Te Paa said, “I don’t believe that that is so ”¦ it is not how I perceive the rest of the communion regarding the Episcopal Church to be honest.” This is another perspective of the Anglican Global South she said of the group on the platform.

Read it all.

Unsurprisingly, it is where there is a continuing practice of spirituality that the church has flourished. Where there has been prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, meditation, social responsibility and almsgiving the Church of England has thrived. It has also thrived where there has been disciplined, holy, fearless leadership. To see the marks of the Church’s history and to hear the stories has been to encounter this deep vein of spirituality and to feel again the influence of her sainted leaders. Where this rich seam is refound, as on Iona and in Mother Julian’s cell, the 21st Century church has risen, seemingly invincible, from the ashes. It is this, the great treasure of our church, that I have glimpsed, and which I know to be the only hope of my own diocese and of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I was raised a Methodist and chose to be an Anglican. After this month in England, I choose still to be an Anglican, but I know that much of what occupies our church and seems so important in our councils is froth and bubble: the detritus rising to the surface from the ongoing struggle with our wider culture. I choose to be an Anglican, but know that the only way for my own faith and my own parish to be viable is if I try to dive deeper and find the cool streams beneath. This seeking the depths must be what forms my ministry in this, the last decade of my life as a stipended Anglican priest. Which brings me to reflect on the third thread of my own journey: that inward one of my own soul.

Read it all.

It’s the putting right that counts”¦

The Anglican-Methodist Covenant, to be signed this Sunday, May 24, is a significant step towards the healing of a broken relationship.

Read it all.

While they might seem like odd bedfellows, [Richard] Holloway actually has much in common with [Richard] Dawkins, who is famous for his outspoken views about the non-existence of a supreme being and the irrational nature of religious faith. Holloway has written 12 books, including Godless Morality, which was controversially denounced by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey after its publication in 1999 for daring to suggest it is not necessary to be religious to be moral.

Holloway left the church in 2000 after suffering a crisis of conscience. Although he now refers to himself as a “Christian agnostic”, he still keeps some ties with his erstwhile profession.

I’m still a member of the Christian community as it carries many beautiful values, tropes, metaphors and narratives. I’ve changed my mind so many times in the past that I now handle what I say with a certain provisionality. I’m not done yet – who knows where I’ll end up? – but one of the things I have learned is the virtue of uncertainty. If you absolutely know the mind of that mystery you call God then it leads you to do terrible things because, of course, God is on your side.

Read the whole article.

St Paul’s Cathedral in Dunedin has elected a new dean, the Ven Dr Trevor James, of Waitotara, Taranaki.

The announcement Dr James would be the 12th dean was made at a 10am service at the cathedral yesterday.

The dean’s warden, Hugh Campbell, said Dr James (62) would move to the city with his wife Christine, and would be installed as the dean on March 15.

Read it all.

From here:

That this Synod: noting (1) the deposition of Bishop Bob Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in The Episcopal Church, by the assembled bishops of that church, on 18 September 2008; (2) the good standing and high reputation Bishop Bob Duncan has as an orthodox Anglican bishop, as represented by statements of support being expressed in recent days by the Archbishops of Sydney, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southern Cone, West Indies, Kenya, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Singapore, numerous bishops within The Episcopal Church itself, and the Bishops of Winchester, Rochester, Chester, Exeter, Blackburn and Chichester; (3) various developments in The Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada in recent years which place increasing pressure on faithful orthodox Anglicans to conform to changes in theology, liturgy and ethics rather than to uphold and maintain the 2000 year old teaching of the church; offers its support to Bishop Bob Duncan, to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and to all bishops and dioceses in The Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada as they seek to find a way forward which embodies the true spirit of orthodox Anglicanism.

(ACNS) When last Saturday afternoon’s installation service for Bishop Victoria Matthews as the eighth Bishop of Christchurch was finished, the woman who’s taken her place as the new Bishop of Edmonton reflected on Canada’s loss and Christchurch’s gain.

Bishop Jane Alexander spoke soflty of a loss that feels personal, as well as provincial: “It was very hard,” she said, “to give Victoria away.

“But I will leave here with my heart lightened. So many have told me that they will love her and take care of her.

“The installation service was beautiful. There was such a strong sense of family. So much welcome. Victoria is not coming home: she is home.”

While none but the three Canadian bishops present could truly know about the loss Bishop Jane spoke of, there were close on 1000 people ”“ it was a full house at the Cathedral on a sunny, still, late winter’s afternoon ”“ who saw signs, right from the start of the service, of where their gains might lie.

Read it all.

Saturday, Aug. 30, National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald…[preached] at the installation service of Victoria Matthews as diocesan bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand. Bishop MacDonald and Bishop Matthews are friends and former colleagues in the Anglican Church of Canada. Bishop Matthews served as bishop of Edmonton for ten years and was a candidate for Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada at General Synod 2007. She was named the eighth bishop of Christchurch in March 2008.

Indigenous culture and faith will be an important part of the Aug. 30 installation service, explained Bishop MacDonald in an email. The structure of the Anglican Church in New Zealand recognizes three “tikanga” (cultures or strands): the Maori, Pakeha (European) and Pasifika (Pacific). A formal Maori welcome will be extended to Bishop Matthews during the service.

Read it all

But the quest for theological coherency in the case is a quest for something more from a church which normally acts with, and not against, the grain of Scripture and its interpretation worked out and received as the church’s tradition. Questions I do not see being answered, in TEC or in ACANZP, include:

– what Scriptural basis authorises the church to bless a sexual relationship apart from a marriage between a man and a woman?
– where, in the long history of Israel and the church, both as written down in Scripture, and recorded through Christian history, does the tension between faithful marriage and committed singleness of leaders of Israel and of the church extend to the possibility that God calls leaders who are in committed same sex partnerships?
– given the fact that the situation in Western society now is such that the quest for ‘acceptance’ of homosexuality includes a growing agenda (gay, lesbian and bisexual and transgender; same sex couples rearing children with the aid of a third person as biological father or mother), where is the ‘positive’ basis in Scripture and the tradition of the church for acceptance of the whole agenda being advanced?
– how is the church to theologically sustain either of the following situations: being a church in which ministers may teach that the blessing of same sex partnerships is wrong and ministers may live in a blessed same sex partnership OR being a church in which both ministers may live in a blessed same sex partnership and ministers may not teach that such blessings are wrong?

Read it all.

The news of her appointment as the eighth bishop of Christchurch was heralded by a phone call at 4.30 one morning in February and was greeted with “excitement and delight, and a firm prayer to God that `we’re in this together You made this happen so don’t leave me now’.”

[Victoria] Matthews has just returned from the Lambeth Conference, the once-in-a-decade worldwide gathering of the Anglican Church which the Bishop of Nelson, Richard Ellena, described as the “most expensive exercise in futility” he had ever been to.

The 20-day conference was attended by 650 bishops and cost around $15 million to stage but seemed to do little to heal the schism over the appointment of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.

“I couldn’t disagree more,” Matthews said of Ellena’s comments. “It was a profound gathering. We went in with our differences… but as time went on people began to see they needed to set aside their differences and stay together for the sake of the Church. That’s not an exercise in futility.”

Matthews is part of the Anglican Communion that agreed at the conference not to go ahead with the blessing of same-sex unions but is open to further discussion on it.

“As I understand it the Anglican Church, in this province, recognises two ways of life. One is marriage, which is between a man and a woman. And the other is celibacy. But if you think I’m going to be the sexual police, you’re wrong. I’m not going to be out with my torch peering into people’s bedrooms to see what they’re up to.”

Read it all.

My concluding comment to both the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops at Lambeth is this. “Holding paradoxes in appropriate tension” – which is the call from Lambeth 2008 – may be a useful process in certain domains. Our understanding of the behaviour of light in contemporary physics is one such. But to ask Athanasius or the Cappadocians of the 4th C, and now the Anglican Communion of the 21st C, to stay in formal fellowship with those whose beliefs and practices are “essentially” contradictory and not merely complementary (as are the two contemporary models regarding light) is itself anathema – as many a Church Council canon has affirmed. At root, the traditional logic that undergirded the idea of comprehensiveness is no longer the contemporary logic that is driving the call for inclusivity, in all manner of spheres. It is therefore a “catastrophic failure of leadership” (Nelson Mandela), I submit, to permit, let alone to foster, the continuation of such an incoherent form of Communion as is now the result of Lambeth 2008.

This comment is not born of frustration or fear. Nor does it try to preempt what may or may not happen at the next ACC meeting in May 2009 re the proposed Covenant, nor the extended probable scenarios beforehand via the Primates or thereafter via all the provinces. On the contrary, it has grown itself from a fellowship that is quintessentially Anglican, a process of broad conversation and engagement, pastoral and intellectual, local and international, with the living and the dead, over 25 years, coram Deo. It comes, as with Archbishop Orombi, out of “love [of] the Lord Jesus Christ, and … love [of] the Anglican Communion”. Such love comes too with a final concern: “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31).

Read it all.

We are now in the last couple of days of Lambeth and I am feeling deeply sad.

I don’t know why at the moment ”“ everything I came here hoping for looks set to be agreed to:
It is very likely that the Windsor continuation report will be approved ”“ which means that a moratoria on gay bishops will continue etc”¦.

And it seems likely that a covenant process will be endorsed and a draft agreed to.

All this seems good to me and yet I can’t help this overwhelming sadness.

Because I am more convinced than ever that none of this will help us. Those who have stayed away will not agree to it and will continue their ministry in the States. And TEC will continue to bleat that they won’t follow the moratoria while these Africans continue to ignore it.

I believe (at this stage ”“ and there are still two days to go) that this has been the most expensive exercise in futility that I have every been to.

The Indaba groups have been a joke. I can’t believe that no zulu has stood up and taken us to account for our abuse of this process. ”˜Indaba’ is supposed to be very similar to the process our Maori use when they go onto a marae to achieve a consensus. We, on the other hand, arrived in our indaba groups only to be divided off into even smaller groups with little tasks to do ”“ little questions to answer….

Read it all.

The New Zealand priest whose gay wedding ceremony has fuelled a row that threatens to split the Anglican Church in Britain has surrendered his own licence to officiate.

The Reverend David Lord ”“ a former Hamilton emergency room doctor ordained as a deacon in December 2005 ”“ angered conservative Christians by exchanging rings and vows with his partner in a church ceremony for his civil partnership in London last month.

But Dr Lord, who tied the knot with English clergyman Peter Cowell, a hospital chaplain, “felt it appropriate to lay down his clergy licence”, according to a statement jointly released with the Bishop of Waikato, Rt Rev David Moxon.

His decision will bar him from officiating as a priest.

Read the whole article.

Representatives from the seven dioceses of New Zealand offered a cross section of views on the issues of human sexuality, which an official report described as having “varied considerably in their commitment to the Lambeth resolution on sexuality and the proposed covenant.”

However, there was consensus among the New Zealand dioceses that it should remain united in structure while divided over doctrine and discipline. Archbishop [Paul] Reeves noted the debates, which at times elicited strong language, were a symbol of the church’s health. A “sign of our bond of affection is the confidence to argue with each other,” he concluded.

Read it all.

A Member of the Lambeth Commission that first proposed an Anglican Covenant has changed her mind.

Speaking at a conference in New York last week, the Dean of St John’s College, in Auckland, New Zealand, Dr Jenny Plane Te Paa, said that events since the launch of the commission’s report had “caused me to reconsider my initial support for the development of covenant”.

Among the events she cited was the behaviour at the Primates’ Meetings, which had gone from being a gathering for “leisurely thought [and] prayer” to being a “quasi-governance body universally perceived as inappropriate, unbidden, and unhelpful”.

Covenant drafts served to “protect and enhance . . . dominant male leadership, privilege, and power”, she said. In her view, the “fussing with and about one another” needed to stop, in order to reaffirm the bonds that already exist within the Communion.

Read it all.

In the end, a belief in Easter is a Holy Spirit-inspired faith decision of the mind and the heart. It is a choice. You can believe the witnesses who say that a unique and remarkable liberation occurred that has gone on recreating the world ever since, by the triumph of life over death, of love over hate, of light over darkness.

Or you can believe that the witnesses were mistaken and that life and death, love and hate, light and darkness are evenly matched: there is no ultimate power for good that is stronger than the grave.

As Luke says in his Gospel, the only people to whom the Risen Christ appeared were people who loved him, witnesses that God had already chosen. The Resurrection, therefore, is made visible and possible for those who experience it because of the love that is in them – because God is love and because God loved the world so much that God gives Christ to people in a new and living way. With them, if you believe that the divine love is stronger than death, then you can believe in Easter.

Christ did not raise himself from the death-dealing hatred that killed him; God raised Christ by divine love, in and through the heart love of the disciples, so that the Spirit of God that raised Jesus from death, may be divine love alive in us.

Read it all.

Canadian Bishop who is part of a high-level advisory group to the worldwide Anglican Communion has been elected Bishop of Christchurch.

The Rt Revd Victoria Matthews is currently bishop-in-residence at Wycliffe College in Toronto. She was Bishop of Edmonton for 10 years from 1997 to late last year, and Suffragan (Assistant) Bishop of Toronto from 1994-97.

She narrowly missed being elected Primate of Canada last year.

Announcing the appointment today, the Primate of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia, Archbishop Brown Turei, said he looked forward to welcoming Bishop Matthews into the church of these islands. “I’m sure that, with all her experience, she will make a good contribution to our life and witness,” he said.

Bishop Matthews, 54 and unmarried, is only the second woman to become a diocesan bishop in New Zealand. The first was the Rt Revd Dr Penny Jamieson, Bishop of Dunedin from 1989-2004.

Bishop Matthews chairs the Canadian Primate’s Theological Commission, and has just been appointed to the Windsor Continuation Group, which will look at crucial questions about the shape of Anglican common life around the world.

Read it all.

The new Anglican Bishop of Waiapu is American David Rice, the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Dunedin.

Bishop-elect Rice was born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, and he won an athletic scholarship to Lenior Rhyne College, where he played tennis and gridiron – he’s 193cm tall – and he took degrees in history and religion.

He later won a place at the Duke University’s Divinity School, gained a Master’s Degree in Divinity, trained for ministry in the Methodist Church.

In 1991 David and his wife Tracy came to New Zealand, and for two years he served as minister to the Thames Uniting Parish, before returning to another five-year posting at a Methodist church in his home town of Lexington.

Read it all.

A controversial Canadian woman is tipped to be Christchurch’s next Anglican bishop.

Church sources confirmed to The Press yesterday that Bishop Victoria Matthews was two-thirds of the way through the ratification process.

The paper said the former bishop of Edmonton, Canada, had signalled support for blessing gay marriages, but was not expected to break with tradition.

News of her election was leaked by London’s The Guardian newspaper on Friday.

Read it all.

The responses show that our Church has at least three different attitudes to the Covenant as a solution to the Communion’s difficulties:

1. The Anglican Communion does not have machinery that allows us to discern the validity or otherwise of differing points of view and the Covenant may be a way of creating such a mechanism. We should be able to trust the international process to resolve any detailed difficulties we may have.

2. The nature of this Draft Covenant, and the underlying assumptions make it an unsatisfactory solution to our difficulties as a Communion, and runs the danger of exacerbating them. We therefore need to keep searching for a different way forward.

3. For Tikanga Maori tino rangatiratanga (self determination), Christian and ethnic identity are of foundational importance. Tangata whenua (the indigenous people) have a rootedness that precedes the Anglican Communion, and would not lightly cede their autonomy.

Read it all.