The Rt Revd Nigel Stock, speaking in the House of Lords yesterday, said that despite having endorsements from senior English bishops, Africa Christians responding to invitations to enter the country are failing to get the required visa.

He said, “It seems that a new economic test is being applied to them. Able, well qualified Africans are being invited to conferences in this country and endorsed even by bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but are being turned down because their personal income is low. As most African clergy live on sacrificial stipends that are intermittently paid, we are wondering whether we can ever invite anyone again from Tanzania.”

Read it all.

There are growing signs that a procedural motion will be tabled to delay the women-bishops legislation when it goes to the General Synod for final approval next month.

Under Section 94 of the Standing Orders, a motion can be moved from the floor of the Synod to send the draft Measure back to the House of Bishops for further considera­tion. Supporters of women bishops have expressed their reluctance to vote for the Measure since the Bishops added two amendments

Read it all.

Are we serious about recognising dissenters as loyal Anglicans and, in the words of the 2008 Synod resolution, making “special arrangements… within the existing structures of the Church of England, for those who as a matter of theological conviction will not be able to receive the ministry of women as bishops or priests”? If so, then saying in the Measure that provision should be consistent with those theological convictions should not be so significant as to justify abandoning the first principle – women bishops, equal with men, as soon as possible – by opposing the legislation.

Read it all.

Since we last met, there has been a meeting of the House of Bishops which voted by a majority to amend the draft legislation to ordain women to the episcopate. I supported the minor amendment about derivation and delegation. The other amendment is more controversial. I do not want to say much more than I have already written in a recent pastoral letter to the clergy which is also available on E-life. Suffice it to say that it is not just a yes/no option for the July Synod. The Convocations of York and Canterbury and the House of Laity will all meet hours before the Synod meeting and could refer the amended legislation back to the Bishops. Similarly, the debate could be adjourned at the Synod meeting and the Bishops would also be mandated to re-consider at an autumn meeting, with a fresh debate at the November Synod. Whatever we pray that the outcome will be, do contact our General Synod representatives and make your views known to them. They must vote according to their consciences, but we should all feel that we are participating in the discernment through both prayer and opinion. I have not yet decided how I shall vote at any stage and I ask for your prayers.

Read it all and please note you may find the remarks referred to in “E-life” over there.

While there is scepticism whenever those who represent Caesar in the political realm invoke God, [and there is great wisdom in the consequent reticence displayed by politicians] it has been possible for the Queen with her very different role to be steadily more explicit in her Christmas broadcasts about her own lively faith in Jesus Christ which sustains her work.

The cost of this call and way of life is so great that it is proper to regard it in sacrificial terms. As a notable republican said to me the other day ”“ “I don’t believe that we should ask anyone to do the job”

But the job has been done with conspicuous dedication over the past sixty years. The Queen embodies the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a humane society is built, yes by raw political power and programmes but also and perhaps most profoundly by the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others.

Christian monarchy today embodies not a set of policies or the pinnacle of a hierarchical social order but a life, a fully human life, lived in the presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is open to us all is the essential ingredient from which the Kingdom; God’s plan for the human race, grows.

The spectacle of such a life properly evokes loyalty.

Reread it all should you care to do so.

In a letter published in The Times on Monday, the Revd Jean Mayland, a long-time campaigner on women’s ordination, said that, given the second amendment, the Bishops “now leave us no choice but to vote this whole Measure down”.

The committee of WATCH met on Saturday. On Monday, it said in a statement that it was “unanimous in its serious concern” about the second amendment, “and is there­fore con­sulting further about how to proceed as we approach General Synod in July”.

The Group for Rescinding the Act of Synod said on Tuesday that the Bishops had pushed “the Draft Measure beyond an acceptable level of generosity and compromise”.

Read it all.

The Church of England has welcomed the news that cuts to BBC local radio are to be halved compared to original proposals, saying this is an endorsement of the importance of local communities.

The BBC Trust document published this month was its final report into cost-saving plans (known as the “Delivering Quality First” review) and confirmed that local radio savings would now be in the region of £8m compared to the original proposal of £15m.

In its submission to the BBC review in December the CofE had warned that local radio must not be ignored and challenged the proposed cuts stressing the importance of local radio to the community, both in times of crisis or seasonal emergencies, and on a daily basis,.

Read it all.

“The new arrangements are being tested at a time when the Church is more polarised now than at any time in its recent history,” says Andrew Carey, a columnist in the Church of England Newspaper and son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury. “The controversy around the appointment of [the openly gay] Jeffrey John as a bishop in 2003, and his subsequent withdrawal, and then the decision to go ahead with women bishops, have only deepened the divisions during Rowan’s time as Archbishop. These issues now hang over the Church like a stalactite.”

Carey is broadly on the Low Church or Evangelical wing of the Church of England. At the other end of the spectrum, the novelist and churchgoer Kate Saunders shares his pessimism about any “unity” candidate emerging. “We sometimes pride ourselves as Anglicans on being a broad church, and that does have many benefits, but the downside is that we can never agree with each other, even on the most basic questions, such as whether we are essentially a Protestant church or a reformed Catholic church. And that debate goes all the way back to the Reformation.”

In more recent times, the chosen method for keeping the various factions of the Church content when selecting an Archbishop of Canterbury has been to alternate High Church and Low Church appointments. Or Catholic and Evangelical, if you prefer those terms (labels are another thing Anglicans disagree on)….

Read it all.

The panel chosen to appoint the next Archbishop of Canterbury is facing claims that it is dominated by clerics who reject orthodox teaching.

The committee is unfairly balanced in favour of liberals who support “revisionist” moves such as the appointment of [non-celibate] homosexual bishops, traditionalists have warned.

Their intervention came as the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) met behind closed doors last week for the first in a series of meetings to decide the successor to Dr Rowan Williams.

Read it all.

There has already been a lot of discussion about the amendments agreed this week by the House of Bishops to the draft Measure concerning the ordination of women as bishops. Although the senior officers of the Synod (the ‘Group of Six’) have determined by a majority that these amendments do not alter the substance of the proposals embodied in the Measure, much anxiety has been expressed as to their implications, and it may be helpful to set out what the House attempted and intended.

The House fully and wholeheartedly accepts that the draft legislation voted on by the dioceses represents the will of an undoubted and significant majority in the Church of England. They did not intend to make any change in any principle of that legislation or to create any new powers or privileges for anyone. They believed that, if certain clarifications and expansions of the wording were made, the Measure might be carried with more confidence, and, out of that conviction, agreed the new wording, which affects two questions….

Read it all.

The Church of England paved the way on Thursday for a final vote on women bishops to go ahead in July, but supporters angry at last-minute concessions to traditionalists who favour an all-male clergy immediately threatened to scupper it.

After more than a decade of bitter wrangling, traditionalists and liberals appeared no closer to finding a workable blueprint this week with the opposing sides predicting future chaos or departures from the Anglican mother church.

Read it all and there are a lot of other stories there as well.

The Bishops’ amendment asserts that the diocesan bishop will retain full authority over all parishes, even when he or she has delegated cer­tain functions to an alternate bishop. At the same time, it makes clear that this alternate bishop functions in his own right, and not merely with delegated powers.

The Bishops’ second amendment concerns the Code of Con­duct, which bishops will need to abide by when drawing up a scheme for any parish that makes a formal request for alternate pro­vision in their diocese. The wording of the code cannot be finalised until after the draft Measure be­comes law; but the amendment requires the code to ensure that “the exercise of ministry by those bishops and priests will be con­sistent with the theological con­vic-tions as to the consecration or ordination of women which prompted the issuing of the Letter of Request”….

A statement issued after the House of Bishops’ deliberations was unusual in making clear what they didn’t do as much as what they did. “The House rejected more far- reaching amendments that would have changed the legal basis on which bishops would exercise auth­ority when ministering to parishes unable to receive the ministry of female bishops.”

Read it all.

From here:

Forward in Faith welcomes the amendments to the draft legislation on women bishops passed by the House of Bishops on Monday.

The first amendment secures the provision of bishops for traditional catholics and conservative evangelicals who are not simply male, but who share the theological convictions of those to whom they will minister. For traditional catholics, that means bishops ordained into the historic episcopate as we understand it. The draft Measure now recognises that our position is one of legitimate theological conviction for which the Church of England must provide. This principle will be enshrined in law.

The second amendment helpfully clarifies that the charism of episcopal ministry derives from the fact of a bishop’s ordination, and is not by delegation from another bishop.

It was disappointing that the amendment which would have implemented co-ordinate jurisdiction was not passed. The draft Measure stills fails, therefore, to address questions of jurisdiction and authority in the way we need.

From here:

A Statement has been released this evening from the meeting of the House of Bishops taking place in York….

A considered reaction from Forward in Faith will follow in approximately thirty-six hours’ time.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND ISSUES WORST-WRITTEN PRESS RELEASE SINCE THE REFORMATION

Heh–take a look.

The House also accepted an amendment to express in the Measure one of the three principles which the House had agreed in December (see notes). This amendment adds to the list of matters on which guidance will need to be given in the Code of Practice that the House of Bishops will be required to draw up and promulgate under the Measure. It will now need to include guidance on the selection by the diocesan bishop of the male bishops and priests who will minister in parishes whose parochial church council (PCC) has issued a Letter of Request under the Measure. That guidance will be directed at ensuring that the exercise of ministry by those bishops and priests will be consistent with the theological convictions as to the consecration or ordination of women which prompted the issuing of the Letter of Request. Thus, the legislation now addresses the fact that for some parishes a male bishop or male priest is necessary but not sufficient.
The House rejected more far- reaching amendments that would have changed the legal basis on which bishops would exercise authority when ministering to parishes unable to receive the ministry of female bishops.

Read it all.

On retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972 he spent a year as chaplain of St Andrew’s Church in Tangier before becoming Dean of Gibraltar, whose cathedral still had strong naval links.

In 1977 he was appointed as the first suffragan Bishop of Gibraltar. This Anglican diocese, later renamed Europe, had grown quickly as a result of the expansion of tourism and of English-speaking communities in many towns on the continent. Additional episcopal leadership was urgently needed, and Weekes, who had every gift for this, was soon travelling widely and making an impact on the chaplaincies, including those still in the Soviet empire. He was based in Brussels, where he was Dean of Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral.

Read it all.

Canon Anthony Kane has monitored the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts and said her personal faith remained strong.

“The fact that she speaks with a personal faith is in itself a significant action and the way that she links world events to that faith is something a preacher would want to do,” he said.

The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, who gave the sermon at the wedding of the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge, warned of the danger of doing away with the Queen’s title.

Read it all.

I want to say thanks to all the folks who came out and helped us welcome Bishop Wright to Nashville. As the Square Pegs sang their songs last night, I couldn’t help but get a little misty-eyed. It was as if each of the songs was an offering, a gift given to a guest in welcome; a gift given to one who’s given to many. I was proud of my friends, proud of my community, proud of my church. And after Bishop Wright gave us his address, I was inspired to awe when he responded to the gifts of the community with songs of his own. He sang three songs: “Friday Morning” by Sydney Carter; a rewrite of the Beatles “Yesterday” entitled “Genesis” that he co-wrote with Francis Collins (leader of the Human Genome Project); and a rousing, passionate, show-stopping rendition of Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In.”

Read it all and do not miss the Vimeo video of Tom Wright singing Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In.”

The Lord Bishop of Chichester: My Lords, I strongly support the noble and learned Baroness in everything that she has just said. She has very starkly set out the figures and the likely impact of not sending this back to the Commons. She has quite rightly said that people could die as a result.

It is hard to engage in this discussion without having a rerun of the long debate that we have just had about the non-pursued Pannick amendment. It seems to me that we are in considerable confusion-and I have to say, with all due respect, that I do not think that the Minister helped us at all in this-about whether what is really at stake is the focus, orientation and purpose of the Bill, or whether it is a genuinely financial provision.We are really-I nearly used the expression “having the wool pulled over our eyes”. I feel profoundly unsatisfied and unpersuaded by what we heard earlier this afternoon.

This boils down to the question of what kind of society we want to live in…

Read it all.

The Prayer Book in English was the centrepiece of an audacious cultural revolution. Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, was one of those critical of the scheme to introduce an English liturgy. He dismissed the argument that it was desirable for the language to be “understanded of the people” and the mode of conducting the services such as to render them audible. The bishop protested that “it was never meant that the people should indeed hear the matins or hear the mass but be present there and pray themselves in silence.” The barriers of language and audibility were actually conducive to genuine devotion.

This protest from one of the most intelligent conservatives of the day illuminates the radicalism of what was published as the First Book of Common Prayer. It was an audacious attempt to re-shape the culture of England by collapsing the distinction between private personal devotion and public liturgical worship in order to create a godly community in which all and not just the clergy had access to the “pure milk of the gospel”. The result would be a sense of English nationhood crystallising around the biblical narrative of God’s dealings with the children of Israel.

And what English!

Read it all.

Downing Street have announced that The Right Reverend Dr Martin Warner, currently Suffragan Bishop of Whitby in the Diocese of York, is to be the next Bishop of Chichester.

Dr Warner, 53, succeeds The Right Reverend John Hind who retired last month.

Dr Warner studied at St Chad’s College in Durham before completing his theological training at St Stephen’s House, Oxford. He was ordained deacon (1984) and priest (1985) in Exeter Cathedral whilst working as Curate of St Peter’s Plymouth.

Read it all.

The Rt Rev Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, called for the Church to stand up for the world’s poor, when he addressed the Anglican Alliance for Development at Bishopthorpe, York, in a keynote speech called ‘Good News for the Poor – at home and in the wider world’ on Monday 30th April.

During his keynote address, Bishop Justin said: “The question that faces the church both domestically and internationally, is that of what is human flourishing, good news, amidst the deep poverty that still grips many parts of the world and the utter spiritual bankruptcy and increasing material poverty in slump hit Britain?

“Our good news must be unique, because the radicality of the gospel calls us to a sense of what we are doing and saying utterly different from all other groups. The language of our good news is not GDP, output and so forth, though they are part of the means, it is human flourishing in a context of love. The tools of our good news is the unique ones of reconciliation and peace, with its fellow travellers of generosity, community and self-giving love.

Read it all.

Herewith the BBC description of this section:

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, meeting in London, say they’ll offer alternative spiritual leadership to dissaffected members of the Church of England. They also want an alternative to the Archbishop of Canterbury as chairman of the Anglican primates meeting. Is this a way of keeping the Anglican communion together or splitting it asunder?

It consists of a report by Gavin Drake in which the following people are quoted: John Ellison, retired bishop of Paraguay, Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, and Gregory Cameron, bishop of St. Asaph. Listen to it all (starts about 4:25 in and last about 6 minutes).

The Christian church based its approach to marriage and the family, as it found it to be in different places, on the one-flesh union of man and woman. They were not only given a common mission (known as the cultural mandate in the world) and created and ordered towards one another for the birth and nurture of children, but also for their own fulfilment and security. It is very important to understand this.

Throughout the course of Christian history there have been many expressions of this view of marriage and the family, but I want to examine just one. His is a name difficult to avoid on the topic: St Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Augustine saw marriage first of all as the coming together of man and woman for the sake of children, but also for the sake of the security of the partners. This is what you might call the contractual view of marriage. It needed to be understood in a lifelong sense because, apart from anything else, the human child takes a long time to grow up.

But Augustine didn’t stop there. He went on to speak of the commitment that is necessary ”” contract is not enough ”” so that we do not use one another simply as a means to our own selfish ends, but commit ourselves to the other as a person.

Read it all.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, has written to the European Court of Human Rights in support of Christians who claim they suffered discrimination at work when they were banned from displaying the symbol.

He has been granted the status of an “intervener”, meaning the Strasbourg court will take account of his 11-page submission when it hears the case in September.

Read it all.

From here:

I am at the GAFCON/FCA gathering in Battersea this week. We’ve been asked not to indulge in too much personal blogging, tweeting, etc, so I’ve not posted anything before, but below is an official release of the opening address.

The mood is good — positive and outward looking, and it has been good to meet so many people from Africa in particular.

Yesterday we had a welcome from the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered by the Bishop of Southwark (in whose diocese we are meeting). That felt odd!

Check it out.

(The story about this letter was first posted on the blog yesterday).

Read it all.

Senior bishops and clergy call today on the Church of England to “rejoice” at the prospect of gay marriage, rather than to condemn or disdain it.

In a challenge to the next Archbishop of Canterbury, influential Anglicans say in a [Saturday] letter to The Times that “God’s grace” is at work in same-sex partnerships.

The signatories include members of the General Synod ”” the governing body of the Church ”” and significant clergy from across its doctrines. The move is headed by Dr Jeffrey John, the openly gay Dean of St Albans, but is also supported by Canon Giles Goddard, chairman of the progressive Anglican group Inclusive Church, five former bishops and the serving Deans of Portsmouth, Norwich and Guildford.

Read it all (requires subscription).