Bishops of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa say they are deeply disturbed by news of growing human rights abuses in Swaziland, a kingdom sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique.

The bishops, meeting in Benoni near Johannesburg from 27 to 29 September for their twice-yearly synod, challenged their church to become more involved in the quest for democracy in Swaziland.

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town, the leader of the church, said on 30 September he could not remain silent on the issue of democracy in Swaziland, “where power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, and political debate is hardly permitted”.

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In his Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, speaks of us as having ”˜not fully received the Pentecostal gift of mutual understanding for common mission’.

The differences that focus around questions of human sexuality continue to be very real, very difficult.

ACSA must contribute what we can to the painful debate, not least from our own experiences of dealing with vast diversity.

I am therefore glad that ACSA was effectively represented at the Global South 4th Encounter earlier this year, and that 10 Bishops attended the All African Anglican Bishops Conference in Uganda last month.

For us, what has mattered most is:

· being centred on Christ;

· agreeing on the central matters of who Jesus is and the salvation he brings;

· and therefore recognising one another as being united in him, and, in consequence, with each other.

In consequence, as we have found within the Synod of Bishops, when differences arise, none of us feels called to say to another ”˜I no longer consider you a Christian, a brother in Christ, a member of the body of Christ ”“ I am no longer in communion with you.’

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The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, in South Africa, Desmond Tutu arrives in Ghana on Thursday for a three-day visit. He is visiting Ghana at the instance of Anglo-Gold Ashanti. South Africa and Ghana are joint share holders in Anglo-Gold Ashanti.

Nice picture–read it all.

Millions of rands have vanished in a financial scandal that has rocked the Anglican Church in the southern Cape to its foundations.

But instead of laying criminal charges against the culprits identified by a team of forensic auditors, church elders have extended an olive branch, asking them to repay the money.

Parishioners at the George diocese are all a-twitter as details emerge about the extent of financial mismanagement and embezzlement of cash from the church.

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The abrupt resignation of the Bishop of George, Donald Harker of the Anglican Church of South Africa, George Diocese, and the forensic investigation into the R6-million missing church funds have stunned the community.

Chapel Warden of the St Aidan’s Wilderness Congregation, Hugh Pharoah said this week that the problems with the George Diocese’s finances have had a devastating impact on both the communities of George and Wilderness where charitable work is being hampered. He said the first priority is to maintain the cottage (a holiday retreat for priests) and the chapel in its existing form. “We get no financial support at all. Money left over after the charities have been supported will help to alleviate the problems that beset the diocese.”

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Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu announced Thursday he is retiring from public life later this year when he turns 79, saying “the time has now come to slow down” and spend more time with his family.

The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town said after his birthday on Oct. 7 he will limit his time in the office to one day per week until February 2011.

“Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family reading and writing and praying and thinking too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels,” Tutu said in a statement Thursday. “The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.”

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A decision by the Anglican mission society the USPG to end its funding to Latin America and the Caribbean has been criticised by bishops in the region….

When the changes were first mooted in March, the Primate of Brazil, the Most Revd Mauricio Andrade, and ten other Brazilian bishops wrote to the society’s trustees to express “surprise and disappointment”.

They had not been consulted, they said, and it was “unjustifiable” to “completely eliminate an entire con­tinent from your sphere of mission”. This demonstrated a “lack of con­cern for Latin America and the Carib­­bean within the Anglican Com­munion”, and smacked of “colonial favouritism”. The cuts would force them to “abandon” projects. They called for period of transition.

The Bishop of Peru, the Rt Revd Bill Godfrey, described the decision to “cut off this whole part of the world as extraordinary and regret­table”. He said that he had “been on USPG’s books for 25 years”. While he acknowledged that the USPG had to balance its books, he said: “I find it hard to believe the only answer is to withdraw funding. There have always been good times and more difficult times financially, but we pass through them.”

He, too, spoke of a lack of con­sultation….

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It is as if the breath of the Spirit has the capacity to translate the gospel of the Word made flesh, not only into the different languages of the first day of Pentecost, and all the languages of our twenty-first century world; the Spirit can also translate into every culture of our world ”“ and between the inculturation of the gospel in different cultures. So, when we cannot understand each other, we must be sure that we have listened carefully to the still small voice of the Spirit. Is the Spirit speaking to each of us? Can we recognise the presence of Christ, which is the touchstone, the standard, of the true Spirit of God?

I am convinced that in our current situation within the Communion neither have we done, nor are we continuing to do, enough of this sort of listening to one another. We do not understand one another and one another’s contexts well enough, and we are not sufficiently sensitive to one another in the way we act. Autonomy has gone too far. I do not mean that we should seek a greater uniformity ”“ I hope it is clear I am saying nothing of the sort. But we risk acting in ways that are so independent of one another that it becomes hard for us, and for outsiders, to recognise either a committed interdependent mutuality or a common Christian, Anglican, DNA running through our appropriately contextualised and differentiated ways of being.

Bishop Katharine, what I am going to say next is painful to me, and I fear it may also be to you ”“ but I would rather say it to your face, than behind your back. And I shall be ready to hear from you also, for I cannot preach listening without doing listening. It sometimes seems to me that, though many have failed to listen adequately to the Spirit at work within The Episcopal Church, at the same time within your Province there has not been enough listening to the rest of the Anglican Communion. I had hoped that those of your Bishops who were at the Lambeth Conference would have grasped how sore and tender our common life is. I had hoped that even those who, after long reflection, are convinced that there is a case for the consecration of individuals in same sex partnerships, might nonetheless have seen how unhelpful it would be to the rest of us, for you to proceed as you have done.

There are times when it seems that your Province, or some within it, despite voicing concern for the rest of us, can nonetheless act in ways that communicate a measure of uncaring at the consequent difficulties for us. And such apparent lack of care for us increases the distress we feel. Much as we understand that you are in all sincerity attempting to discern the best way forward within your own mission context, the plea is: be sensitive to the rest of who are still drinking spiritual milk and are not yet eating solids.

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Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town proposes prayer for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

”˜Let us all pray that God will bless the World Cup!’ said Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Monday as he launched a special prayer for the tournament.

”˜It is a short and simple prayer which is easy to learn, and I hope many people, of many backgrounds, will join me in praying it daily in the coming weeks’ added the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. ”˜We are asking for the well-being of everyone who is in any way associated with the FIFA 2010 World Cup: players, spectators, South Africans as host nation, and everyone who travels here. Apart from the Olympics, this is the most widely supported sports event in the world ”“ countless millions, even billions, love “the beautiful game” and we want to share this love with one another, for the good of the world.’

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ANGLICAN Archbishop Thabo Makgoba has joined the fray to retain the seat of the High Court in Grahamstown. Makgoba, who was formerly the Bishop of Grahamstown, this week wrote dozens of letters to powerful religious, political, and business leaders imploring them to assist in preventing the passing of the Superior Courts Bill in its current form.

The letters have been written on behalf of the Grahamstown High Court Action Committee, which consists of dozens of organisations, businesses, schools, Rhodes University, churches, NGOs and foundations.

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[Desmond] Tutu, who helped lead opposition to apartheid in South Africa and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, delivered a passionate but humorous sermon about the importance of unity.

“We don’t choose who is going to be my brother or my sister ”” though I wish I could,” he told the audience. “They are God’s gift to me, as I am God’s gift to them.”

Tutu, who spoke with his eyes closed and arms outstretched, urged the audience to embrace everyone, including tea party activists, Democrats, Republicans, gays and lesbians and George Bush, a name that drew a booming belly laugh.

He spoke directly to Douglas.

“Ian, please tell the children of God each one of them is precious,” he said. “Each one of them is held in this cosmic embrace.”

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The state will be the shining star of the Anglican Communion today when the Rev. Ian T. Douglas is consecrated the 15th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

Douglas sits on the Anglican Consultative Council, which represents Anglicans worldwide, so he is well known outside the Episcopal Church. He asked a friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to be the preacher today.

Douglas, formerly professor of world mission at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., said his connections will benefit the diocese, and vice versa.

“I’m not afraid to call in favors around the world to help us in Connecticut,” he said recently. “I have a pretty good Rolodex that I would hope to utilize.”

Read it all.

Everywhere the salvation of Jesus Christ brings new life and new beginnings: for humanity, and for all creation. This is the hallmark of the kingdom of God ”“ the kingdom that both is, and is to come. And though we know we shall see such redemption in all its fulness at the end of time, we are also to be part of the coming of the kingdom here and now ”“ partners with Christ in his good news for all creation.

But the stark truth is that creation itself is a battle-ground for God’s kingdom ”“ at the hands of the most destructive elements of selfish, greedy, short-sighted, sinful humanity. Pollution, environmental degradation, global warming, climate change ”¦ We are complicit in the varying weather patterns that bring worse floods, harsher droughts. We see this happening within Southern Africa. Even more seriously, across the Indian Ocean ”“ which laps so pleasantly on Durban’s beaches ”“ the entire nation of the Maldives is threatened with being wiped off the map, as the sea rises and covers their islands.

God calls us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem ”“ part of the coming of the kingdom, partners in his working of redemption and salvation.

”˜Seek the Lord and live ”¦’ says the prophet Amos, condemning greed and corruption in the exploitation of the earth’s resources and its people. The same choice lies before us. Will we seek the Lord and the ways of life ”“ as individuals, and also as members of the communities, society, nation, and global human family of which we are a part?

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In the era of apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu railed against the injustice and inhumanity of South Africa’s government, and his passionate advocacy helped make the change that came to that country in the 1990s.

Now 78, in a magenta habit with a crucifix around his neck, he is the picture of a holy man. But looking back on his boyhood in one of South Africa’s black townships, Tutu remembers an urchin with a fondness for marbles and comic books. And even in church, “we had fun,” the archbishop tells NPR’s Renee Montagne.

The memories linger even now. There’s joy in Tutu’s voice as he recalls a song he sang as a child: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” the verse asked.

“It was a fantastic thing to have much, much later,” Tutu says ”” “to remember, ‘Yes, if God be for us in our struggle against injustice and oppression, who can be against us?’ ”

Read or listen to it all.

As an Anglican archbishop who spent decades working to defeat apartheid and is widely considered the moral conscience of South Africa, what do you make of your country’s current president, Jacob Zuma, who is in the headlines again for fathering a child out of wedlock?

I think we are at a bad place in South Africa, and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamt were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world. We have far too many of our people living in a poverty that is debilitating, inhumane and unacceptable.

But why is Zuma still president? He sets such a poor example ”” a polygamist with three wives who just fathered a 20th child with yet another woman. Why is that tolerated?

It’s not. Two of the major churches have spoken out very strongly. The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church have said that he’s undermining his own government’s campaign to deal with the H.I.V. pandemic. That campaign speaks about being loyal to one partner, practicing safe sex and generally using condoms, and he hasn’t done that.

Read it all.

As we sought to hear what the Scriptures are saying to us at this present moment, at the same time we listened to stories both from the Bishops and from civil society about what is happening in the nations within our Province. There are clear signs of spiritual growth and much that is happening for which we give thanks to God.

However, we have also been disturbed by some of the reports we have received, that suggest that there are common threads running through all the countries within our Province, threads that appear to be unravelling in worrying ways.

We believe that those in power are called by God to wise leadership and exemplary lifestyle, exercised on behalf of all God’s people and for their upliftment and betterment ”“ as St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans. Of particular importance within God’s economy are the poor, and those who live on the margins of society. It is our observation that, though lip-service is widely paid to the notion of social upliftment, the reality is that most of the leaders of our respective nations seem more committed to self enrichment than poverty eradication.

We have listened to accounts of unbridled greed, a greed that is not simply limited to those in political power. Nevertheless, we are especially concerned at the levels of greed of those in power, and at the manner in which political processes are manipulated and co-opted in the pursuit of self enrichment. This has resulted in a serious undermining of democratic values to the point where, in some places, such values are non-existent. We were distressed to hear of people living below the poverty datum line in the oil rich country of Angola, and of the huge number of people struggling to exist on less than $2 a day in Swaziland, where the average per capita income is over $5,000 per annum. In some of the nations within our Province, this quest for self enrichment has given rise to blatant abuses of power to the point where, in Swaziland, for example, political leaders stifle all attempts at dialogue and silence opposition, preferring instead to rule by threats and intimidation.

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Promiscuity, unfaithfulness and unprotected sex are an offence against the sanctity of life, according to the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa.

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba made the remarks in a “moral state of the nation address” delivered at an interfaith function in Johannesburg on Wednesday night, and released on Thursday.

Although he did not mention President Jacob Zuma, his comments come amid controversy over the news that Zuma has fathered his 20th child with a woman who is not one of his wives.

Makgoba said it would be easy just to preach “no sex outside marriage”, which was what Christians and others upheld because it made for strong families and healthy societies.

Read the whole thing.

Check it out (77 page pdf). Note especially the essays by Archbishop Rowan Williams, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and South African Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.

The story of `God with us´ is better understood when we go through the pages of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The story of the Lectio Divina (the Bible) is not just another reading, desensitized to the sacred, but the savouring of the text lingering leisurely in the divine revelation. (Thomas Keating: Intimacy with God). The liberal theology tends to forget this. The Bible is not just a primary source of Christian theology; it is the Word of God – Lectio Divina, as we have said. The remarkable thing, as Keating puts it, reading about Jesus´ story develops into friendship with him. Like the people of God in ages past, we walk with God in a personal relationship as he challenges our moral life and takes it to an upper level of godly character and integrity.

As this literal historical message of Scripture challenges us to a level of good morality, then we are taken to new levels of our faith beyond the moral sense, into the allegorical sense of the Holy Writ. As we grow in the grace of God in our spiritual life, a character of godly life is built in us `to make us a kingdom of priests´ who stand and serve before our God. (APB: canticle 15/ Rev.5). It is at this higher spiritual inter action with God that we begin not only `to hear, read, mark, learn but inwardly digest them´, but to allow ourselves to be wholly immersed in Scripture. They are no longer historical documents anymore, but stories of closer walk with God in obedience and trust in our spiritual journey since the day we first believed and were baptised. Once this takes place, the unitive level of our experience of Scripture takes place. This is called anagogical. The Word wells up from us as a continuing revelation to influence others and our life situation.

This is how we look at Scripture. What ever kind of behaviour or thinking we encounter, we test it against the moral demands of the Holy Writ (Article XX). In our diocese therefore, we align ourselves with all Bible believing Christians in informing our theological thinking. Reason cannot just be for its sake since we are all fallen human beings, and have come short of the glory of God (Rom.3:23). Together with the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA) we up hold the authority of Scripture as an integral part of our fellowship with all the children of God. We affirm the reality of Incarnation and the mighty glorious Resurrection of Jesus Christ as true essential occurrences forming integral part of our faith, and never just a “myth”. The historical Jesus remains “unique” from the ages past into the unknown future. He is with us `always, even to the end of the age.´

Read it all.

The audio link is here (about 39 minutes):

The Press conference’s subject: Beyond politics and business -Climate change from a religious and ethical perspective. Christian leaders urge world leaders to agree on a fair, effective and binding climate deal that put the needs of the poor first.

The Speakers:

– The Rev. Samuel Kobia (moderator)
General secretary, World Council of Churches, Switzerland
– Archbishop (emeritus) Desmond Tutu
Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1984 and anti-apartheid champion
– Bishop Sofie Petersen
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, Greenland
– The Rev. Tofiga Falani
President, Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, Tuvalu

THE Grahamstown community is reeling in shock at the mystery murder of an Anglican priest who survived a gruesome attack by two men on a countrywide killing spree in 1991.

Clive Newman, 45, a lecturer at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown for the past four years, was found murdered in his room at the college residence yesterday morning.

Newman was attacked in his car in Bluewater Bay 18 years ago. His throat was slit and one of his vocal chords was severed. His testimony helped convict Antonie Wessels, 31, and his 16-year-old homosexual lover, Jean Havenga. Newman was the fourth and final victim of the pair and the only one to survive.

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Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba inaugurated a new Anglican diocese at a ceremony in Queenstown at the weekend.

The new diocese has been named Ukhahlamba Diocese, and lies north of Grahamstown.

Diocesan spokesperson Maggy Clarke said it was named after the Drakensburg mountain range.

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[Martin Luther] King…had this to say in 1968 about anti-Zionism at Harvard University: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism.”

Today, Gandhi’s influence is still keenly felt globally. Yet it is interesting to note that India today rejects its spiritual founder’s worldview. A nuclear power, it has adopted Israel’s approach to threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists.

So with all due respect to Tutu, Israel and the Jewish people are clear about the lesson of the Holocaust: that never again will the destiny of our people be placed in the hands of others. For 2,000 years, Jews depended on pity; they had no land and no army, and what they got in return were inquisitions, pogroms and the Nazi genocide. The Holocaust also taught us that freedom and justice come to those who are prepared to fight for them.

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”˜Acceptance’ in modern parlance has been the favourite mushily sentimental and superficial term which has come to replace the deeply theological term ”˜justification’ In a recent interview3 Bishop FitzSimmons Allison points out how ”˜acceptance’ is used as a watered down secular version of ”˜justification’. He notes that we all have a notion of what is just and right built into us. If we reject the standards our transcendent creator God has set for us to live by, and choose rather to trust our instincts and desires in formulating our behaviour, we are in effect suppressing the truth, and choosing to live by our own standards of righteousness. We have rejected the standard of God’s transcendent righteousness revealed to us in scripture, and thus only have ourselves as reference points with a resulting individualism and subjectivity.

Christian philosopher Prof. Jack Budziszewski points to certain realities about the created order, realities which continue to operate despite our rebellion. For example, knowledge of guilt (even if suppressed) produces certain objective needs, needs which have to be satisfied. These include confession, reconciliation, atonement and justification. Out of our need for justification, the need to be ”˜right’ before God, we develop mechanisms to ”˜be righteous’ ”“ such as thinking well of ourselves, or ”˜self esteem’. “God accepts us as we are ”“ so we should accept ourselves and others”. ”˜Inclusion’ is the term commonly used for this and we are told that ”˜Jesus was inclusive in all his dealings with people ”“he included the outcasts and the sinners’. So basically what the doctrine of ”˜inclusion’ means is that God accepts me as I am. The idea that God accepts us as we are is not a biblical idea. God loves us unconditionally, no matter what state we are in, but that is not the same. God calls us as we are, in the state of rebellion we are in. If we then turn to him in repentance and faith he accepts us in Christ, but if we do not turn to him, we are still lost in sin. Kummel says, “That man must turn around if he wishes to stand before God is one of the basic views of Judaism in Jesus’ time, and thus Jesus also explicitly named conversion as a condition for entrance into, the kingdom of God.”5 So, in Mark 1:15, Jesus’ message of the good news begins with the call to turn around, and from that moment all gospel preaching is based on Jesus’ commission to his disciples to call all men to repentance (Mark 6:12) (Acts 3:19, 8:22)

Read it all.

From here:

The Synod of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) met in Midrand, Gauteng, from 7 to 9 September 2009, to share in prayer, fellowship and breaking bread together. We reflected on passages from the Gospel according to St Luke, guided by homilies from His Grace, the Archbishop of Cape Town. Conscious of the call to uphold our faith with justice and mercy, and in dependence upon Christ’s example, his leading, and his sustaining, we discussed a breadth of issues currently before our Church.

The Synod was disturbed by various recent reports in the media to the effect that the world-wide Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church in Southern Africa are on the brink of schism. We want to assure the faithful that these reports are grossly exaggerated and, in some cases, a misrepresentation.
Our worldwide Anglican Communion has for a number of years been struggling with the issue of human sexuality without, as yet, having reached any significant consensus. There are, indeed, broken and damaged relationships within the Communion, but there is still a deep desire among the bishops throughout the world to maintain the bonds of unity in obedience to the High Priestly prayer of our Lord that “they may be one as we are one” (Jn 17:21).

To this end ACSA is committed to the Communion’s exploration of an Anglican Covenant, as a means of providing a basic statement of the common faith and mission that holds the Anglican Churches together in visible community. It is hoped this will make explicit what it means to live in interdependence, and will articulate more clearly the basis of the “bonds of affection” between us that we now enjoy.

We, the Bishops and the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, have, on a number of occasions, spelt out our common mind at this stage of our journey with the world-wide Communion. We believe that we are called to love others with God’s unconditional, sacrificial love and do not believe sexual orientation is a barrier to leadership within the church. However, maintaining as we do, that Christian marriage is a lifelong union between one man and one woman, we hold that clergy unable to commit to another in a Christian marriage partnership are called to a life of celibacy.

We have also received the resolution of the Diocese of Cape Town requesting us to provide guidelines for the pastoral care of those in committed same sex relationships. Despite the misconceptions created by media reports that Cape Town Diocese is intending to proceed with the blessing of same sex unions, we recognise the request to be pastoral in nature (reflecting the new situation created by the South African Government’s legislation allowing for civil unions between same sex couples) and not in any way in conflict with Resolution 1.10 of the Lambeth Conference of 1998. The task of responding to this request has been referred to a task team, which will prepare a preliminary paper building upon the resolutions and statements made thus far by ACSA.

We remain committed to upholding the bonds of unity with one another, as we journey together through the difficult questions that confront the worldwide Anglican Communion. Differences of opinion are inevitable, schism is not.

Alongside our consideration of matters of human sexuality and the life of the Anglican Communion, we were also mindful of the many urgent socio-political and economic needs that face the countries and people of our Province. It is these that are paramount in our hearts and minds, as we strive to fulfil our calling to mission and ministry, as God’s faithful people in this time and place.

Now to him, who by the power at work within us
is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,
to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen
(Ephesians 3:20-21)

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, 68, is divorcing his estranged wife of 22 years.

Nomahlubi Vokwana-Ndungane, 69, was served with divorce papers this week.

The summons arrived just days after the Sunday Times revealed that Vokwana-Ndungane had turned to the courts in a bid to force the archbishop ”” who no longer lives with her ”” to support her financially.

The archbishop’s lawyer, Kaamilah Paulse, said this week that the couple had been in divorce talks for “over a year and a half”.

“It was quite obvious that neither of them wanted to remain in the marriage, but the terms of the divorce could not be agreed upon,” she said.

Read the whole article.

After the 2006 vote, Archbishop Makgoba — then the Bishop of Grahamstown — urged all sides to continue talking. “We agree that we have to dialogue, and listen to the experiences of all people around this issue, so that when the conclusion is arrived at, all of us understand and appreciate the challenges that all people feel,” he said.

The then Archbishop of Cape Town Njogonkulu Ndungane welcomed the expansion of civil rights for gay couples, but stated the “Anglican Church’s position is clear. We have repeatedly affirmed that we do not regard partnership between two persons of the same sex as a marriage in the eyes of God.”

However, Dean [Rowan] Smith said after the vote in Parliament that he hoped the new law would prompt the Anglican Church to allow congregations a local option whether or not to bless same-sex couples. The Province presently allows gay clergy to serve in the ministry but requires that they be celibate, and requires all clergy to abstain from sexual relations outside of marriage.

After the vote, Archbishop Makgoba said the resolution was “an important first step to saying: ‘Lord, how do we do ministry in this context?’” of changing sexual mores.

Read it all.

On Sunday, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba said the synod’s resolution might be seen as tame, but he saw it as “an important first step to saying: ‘Lord, how do we do ministry in this context?'”
“I’m a developmental person. I don’t believe in big bangs. If you throw a little pebble into water, it sends out concentric circles and hopefully that way change comes from that,” he said.

He said the issue of same-sex partnerships has led to a schism in the Anglican Church in the United States. He wanted to avoid the issue becoming a source of division in the Anglican Church in southern Africa.

“In South Africa we have laws that approve a civil union in this context, but not in the other countries within our province. In central Africa and north Africa, both the Anglican Church and the state say ‘no’.

Read the whole article.

In a meeting earlier this year, the Anglican Consultative Council, which represents Anglican churches around the world, reaffirmed a moratorium on what it called “authorization of public rites of blessing for same-sex unions.”

The original text of the synod resolution included language which some members of the Synod said would lead to the blessings of same-sex unions. This, said the Revd Dr James Harris, “will bring us into conflict with the wider Anglican Communion.” The language was later dropped.

The Revd Sarah Rowland Jones successfully proposed an amendment to the resolution which provided that the pastoral guidelines which the Synod requested should take “due regard of the mind of the Anglican Communion.”

Speaking after the Synod ended, the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba said:

“In Bible studies and discernment sessions during the Synod, I felt the people of the Diocese were committed really to wrestling with the Scriptures and with what they meant in our context.

“I was very encouraged by the way in which the Synod was sensitive both to the pastoral needs of gay and lesbian couples and at the same time affirmed the stance of the wider Anglican Communion, not charging ahead and doing our own thing but rather committing ourselves to a process of listening and dialogue on how to move forward.”

Read it all.

The Episcopal Church’s protestation that it has not ended the ban on gay bishops or blessings has not found support outside its borders.

After strong international reaction against the decisions of the recent General Convention, US Church leaders moved quickly to claim that the Church had not changed its position.

But critics said that this was the inevitable outcome when the Episcopal Church opened the discernment process for new bishops to gay clergy and permitted dioceses to compile and develop rites for the blessings of same-sex unions None of the American church’s allies among the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion have publicly spoken up in support of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s claims that nothing has changed, while several sharp statements have been released by overseas provinces and dioceses charging that the Episcopal Church had walked away from the Anglican Communion.

On July 18 Bishop Jefferts Schori stated that “in 2009” there are “more and deeper relationships with parts of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion than five or 10 years ago.”

Read it all.