A compromise to try to meet objectors’ concerns will be presented by the Manchester Diocesan Synod at a meeting of the Church’s ruling council later.
It would give a greater measure of autonomy to male bishops appointed to oversee traditionalist parishes.
But many supporters of women bishops oppose the plans, saying they would make women second-class bishops.
…the only difference between the current arrangements for “flying” bishops, who are appointed to care for traditionalists, and the new “co-ordinate” bishops proposed by Dr Williams and Dr Sentamu, would be the source of authority.
With delegate bishops, the authority to conduct confirmations and other services would come from the diocesan bishop. With the new “co-ordinate” bishops proposed by the Archbishops, it would come from Synod, giving the traditionalist male equal authority in the diocese with the female diocesan.
But Jamaica-born Ms [Rose] Hudson-Wilkin, the first black woman chaplain to the House of Commons, told The Times that this was unacceptable. “If we are going to have women as bishops then we need to have women bishops. We need to stop moving the goalposts. I am not happy with anything that only begrudgingly makes women bishops.”
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There is now no doubt that the Church of England will consecrate its first woman bishop within the next couple of years. This will happen without any statutory provision for those who in conscience cannot accept women’s episcopacy. The significant minority of clergy and laity who oppose this innovation will simply be told to like it ”“ or lump it and go elsewhere. Thus tens of thousands of traditional and faithful Anglicans will be unchurched.
This stinking fish has been a long time on the slab. Back in 1992, the church voted to admit women to the priesthood, but this was only agreed upon the intervention of the then Archbishop of York, Dr John Habgood, who insisted that there were “two integrities” within the church: the one that could accept women priests and the other that could not. Room must be made for both. If Dr Habgood’s agreeable compromise had not been accepted then there would not have been a majority in favour of the ordination of women.
The radical innovators, illiberal “liberals,” non-believing secularists and intolerant feminists who together govern the church are determined not to make the same mistake again. They are saying to the opponents of women bishops, “Well, get out then!” ”“ except this injunction is not generally put even as politely as that.
Anglican women clergy are to rally in Westminster later at a march supporting plans to introduce women bishops.
The Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, is to discuss legislation on women bishops this week.
It will consider a proposal that women bishops should accept intervention in their dioceses by male alternatives if called in by traditionalist parishes.
Progressive Anglicans fiercely oppose the plans, claiming it would make women second-class bishops.
(Please note that the above headline is mine, the paper itself has “Church split as senior bishop comes out in favour of gay marriage”–KSH).
Bishop Holtam told The Times: “We are living in a different society. If there’s a gay couple in The Archers, if there’s that form of public recognition in popular soaps, we are dealing with something which has got common currency. All of us have friends, families, relatives, neighbours who are, or who know somebody, in same-sex partnerships.”
For a long time he believed that marriage could only be between heterosexual people. But he said: “I’m no longer convinced about that. I think same-sex couples that I know who have formed a partnership have in many respects a relationship which is similar to a marriage and which I now think of as marriage. And of course now you can’t really say that a marriage is defined by the possibility of having children. Contraception created a barrier in that line of argument. Would you say that an infertile couple who were knowingly infertile when they got married, weren’t in a proper marriage? No you wouldn’t.”
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It is quite legitimate that this issue is being raised. However, the unity of the Church and our core mission particularly in these sobering and challenging economic times, must remain paramount. I hope the discussion will continue in a prayerful and respectful way, whilst not distracting from the important ministry our churches are carrying out in their communities.
The Rt Rev John Hind, the Bishop of Chichester, has led opposition to ordaining women as bishops but said that it was now certain to happen.
He spoke ahead of a key vote next week by the General Synod, the Church’s governing body, on plans to allow women to lead dioceses, which is currently not allowed.
A leading proponent of women bishops, the Bishop of Oxford, also described their ordination as “inevitable”, saying that it would “happen very soon”.
In the House of Lords this week, the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, John Packer, led a revolt by senior clergy against the Government’s welfare reforms, arguing that an annual cap on benefits of £26,000 is unfair and un-Christian.
Fine, but if we take Bishop Packer and his fellow bishops at their word over what constitutes a fair income, there are going to have to be some enormous pay rises in the Church of England.
It would be fascinating for example to listen to the bishops explain to their curates ”“ paid about £16,000 a year regardless of the number of dependent children ”“ why they have a duty to support through their taxes a benefit claimant pulling in the pre-tax equivalent of £35,000.
…I disagree profoundly with the Government’s and Lord Carey’s view that our action in the Lords was about prolonging a culture of welfare dependency, or the implication that increased material poverty for some is a price worth paying to alleviate what some have described as the poverty of aspiration….
The Bishops’ amendment simply sought to exclude Child Benefit from the cap, to ensure that some financial support is still provided for each of the estimated 220,000 children who might otherwise be adversely affected.
Exempting Child Benefit will help prevent many children falling into serious poverty and could protect against family break up, or even homelessness.
…these five bishops ”” led by the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds ”” cannot lay claim to the moral high-ground.
The sheer scale of our public debt, which hit £1trillion yesterday, is the greatest moral scandal facing Britain today.
If we can’t get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt, we will be mortgaging the futures of our children and grandchildren.
In order to do this, we desperately need to reform our welfare system.
Bishops led the House of Lords on Monday evening to vote in favour of an amendment excluding child benefit from the proposed cap on benefits in the Welfare Reform Bill.
Children’s charities welcomed the amendment, proposed by the Bishop of Ripon & Leeds, the Rt Revd John Packer, as a safeguard for those ”” about a quarter of a million children ”” who are exÂpected to bear the impact of the cap.
“The Government must not ignore the fact that the Lords have spoken out to defend the plight of some of the country’s most disadÂvantaged children,” the Children’s Society’s policy director, Enver Solomon, said.
Conference participants were enthusiastic about both the speaker’s talks’ content and their tone.
“This conference has been first rate,” said the Rt. Rev. Alden Hathaway. “I’m so encouraged. I was really moved by the Bishop of London yesterday and John McCardell brought it into an American context. All of the speakers have been just fine. The Saturday morning talk, by Justyn Terry, outlining the whole of Christian Education ”“ we’re so enthusiastic about that. He hit all of the levels, from elementary school to college and university formation to theological institutions to continuing education. That’s where it’s at. Mere Anglicanism is really at the heart of it. I’m very, very pleased to be a part of this conference.”
The Rt. Rev. Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, who was one of the presenters, said of the conference, “It’s been a treat to be here in Charleston and I’ve learned a very great deal. One of the things about the Anglican Communion is that you can have all sorts of theories about structures and theological foundations, but if we don’t know one another and if we’re not friends and we don’t spend time actually listening to one another then of course we’re going to have broils and factions. One of the worst things in life I find at the moment is going from place to place and hearing many monologues about the importance of dialogue and I think that this conference has been an example of really deep listening and exchange ”“ genuine dialogue and I appreciate it very much indeed.”
Please go here and click the launch media player link and you will see the sermon at the top of the list.
“This is our big, grand celebration to kick off all the other things that will be happening throughout the year,” explained Jan Pringle, tricentennial standing committee co-chairwoman with Bob Barrett. “There is a tremendous amount of excitement among our parishioners, and I personally am overjoyed because this is just an incredible opportunity to glorify God for the 300 years our church has withstood so many things.”
“I have never been to a church that seems to be so full of the Holy Spirit with teachers and preachers that lift you up every time you are there,” Pringle said.
It is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the country and is the oldest public building in Beaufort with the original building completed in 1724.
Since its establishment in 1712 as a colonial parish of the Church of England, the church has withstood the 1715 Yemassee Indian War, Civil War encampment by federal soldiers, service as a hospital, the Great Depression and even hurricanes.
Four churchwardens have resigned from a small rural parish in Kent in a long-running saga in which the diocesan bishop was forced to intervene.
In their extraordinary joint letter of resignation the four churchwardens accuse their rector, Dr David Attwood, of “poor personal relationships with several leading parishioners” and of being “extremely verbally aggressive” on a visit to one former churchwarden.
The four ”” Penelope Bell, Trevor Champ, Roger Flint and Michael Moore ”” say that when he arrived in 2002, having overcome an original rejection, the three parishes of Sundridge, Ide Hill and Toys Hill near Sevenoaks were thriving, with growing congregations and healthy finances.
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The present moratorium on openly gay bishops, formally imposed last year by the House of Bishops, is facing a legal challenge….
The first stage of a challenge under employment legislation is the issuing of a questionnaire. It is unÂderstood that this took place some time in the autumn of 2010. The church authorities reacted deÂfensively: in December of that year, a briefing was issued to the Bishops by the Church House legal office giving a retrospective list of reasons why a priest in a civil partnership, as Dr John is, could be barred from the episcopate without falling foul of employment laws.
The list includes such questions as whether the candidate has expressed repentance for past sexual activity, and whether the appointment “would cause division and disunity within the diocese”.
You can find the speakers and agenda here. You all know enough about a conference like this to know that there is much more to it than simply the presentations. Please pray for the speakers travel and ministry here (a number are serving in Sunday worship after the conference locally), the time to develop new friendships and renew old ones, for the Bishop and his wife Allison in their hosting capacity, and especially for the the Rev. Jeffrey Miller of Beaufort, who has the huge responsibility of coordinating it all–KSH.
The Very Rev Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, has instructed an eminent employment lawyer to complain to Church officials after being rejected for the role of Bishop of Southwark.
Sources say the dean, one of the most contentious figures in the Church, believes he could sue officials under the Equality Act 2010, which bans discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Such a case could create a damaging new rift within the CoE.
Too many criminals are sent to prison and punishing them in public instead could be more effective, the Bishop of Liverpool said today.
The Right Reverend James Jones, the Anglican bishop for prisons, said it was simply not enough to lock up criminals.
He added that community payback schemes could act as a deterrent for others and help to reduce reoffending.
The ‘Commission on Assisted Dying’ is a self-appointed group that excluded from its membership anyone with a known objection to assisted suicide. In contrast, the majority of commissioners, appointed personally by Lord Falconer, were already in favour of changing the law to legitimise assisted suicide. Lord Falconer has, himself, been a leading proponent for legitimising assisted suicide, for some years.
The commission undertook a quest to find effective safeguards that could be put in place to avoid abuse of any new law legitimising assisted suicide. Unsurprisingly, given the commission’s composition, it has claimed to have found such safeguards.
Unlike the commissioners, we are unconvinced that the commission has been successful in its quest….
Out of the thousand things which follow directly from this reading of John, I choose three as particularly urgent.
First, John’s view of the incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, strikes at the very root of that liberal denial which characterised mainstream theology thirty years ago and whose long-term effects are with us still. I grew up hearing lectures and sermons which declared that the idea of God becoming human was a category mistake. No human being could actually be divine; Jesus must therefore have been simply a human being, albeit no doubt (the wonderful patronizing pat on the head of the headmaster to the little boy) a very brilliant one. Phew; that’s all right then; he points to God but he isn’t actually God. And a generation later, but growing straight out of that school of thought, I have had a clergyman writing to me this week to say that the church doesn’t know anything for certain, so what’s all the fuss about? Remove the enfleshed and speaking Word from the centre of your theology, and gradually the whole thing will unravel until all you’re left with is the theological equivalent of the grin on the Cheshire Cat, a relativism whose only moral principle is that there are no moral principles; no words of judgment because nothing is really wrong except saying that things are wrong, no words of mercy because, if you’re all right as you are, you don’t need mercy, merely ”˜affirmation’….
The challenge of contemporary politicians was enormous. Bishop Redfern said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s task, just like the Emperor Augustus in Jesus’ day, was to hold all those different tribes together: “Modern politics is about the challenge of creating a kind of public space which brings together many disparate elements.”
Here, said Dr Redfern, the Church also had a mammoth role to play: “Remember that Jesus was born in the public space. The Innkeeper took them in and he made them part of his family.
He added: “Jesus, of course, was to continue this work of taking people in from all families, tribes and the sense of a family identity was expanded. “The Church is there to serve all people, we are there for everyone. That is the reminder which the story of Jesus’ birth brings.”
Read it all and take the time to see the video (just under nine minutes).
This is a time of great anxiety about what lies ahead. The global balance of power is changing and here at home at a time of financial stringency there is an urgent search for how human beings and communities can flourish at a time when having and consuming more and more things no longer seems a plausible road to happiness.
Today’s good news is that God so loved the world that he was generous and gave himself to wean us away from our obsession with power over things and people. The way of Herod the Great and the way of the Emperor who decrees that “all the world should be taxed” is contrasted with the future opened up by the infant king born into a poor family. He comes to initiate us into a way of generous living; in love with God and his world which involves loving ourselves and our neighbours equally.
A few years ago the former President of the Royal Society published a book about the prospects for the human race worryingly entitled “Our Final Century” ”“ without a question mark ”“ although he has ascribed this to a publisher’s error. There is a question about whether we shall develop the wisdom to channel the power we have acquired from the scientific knowledge and discoveries of the 20th century? Where indeed, to quote T.S.Eliot, is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and the knowledge we have lost in information.
The challenge of the Christmas story is to sing this same song of peace and good will amidst the sorrows, trials, inequalities and injustices of today’s world. It means caring about those who are without a job, or without a home. It means trying to build a different world and trying to live by a different set of values. It means remembering those who are worse off, and doing something about it. It means providing jobs and homes and meals. It also means ensuring that people have jobs and homes and meals for life.
None of this will be easy. But the biggest danger of all is starting to believe that nothing can change and that our own contribution makes no difference. It does. Things can change.
And if the Christian faith teaches us anything, it is that one person can make a difference. That person is Christ. He shows us a different way of living. He gives us a different set of values. What he brings is what the world so desperately needs. And he begins that life in solidarity with the poorest of the poor.
The regular suggestion that baling out countries will lead them to misbehave again won’t work, either. That might be true of some banks and businesses. It isn’t true of countries like Tanzania, who, after debt remission, have experienced the joy of developing education, medicine and other essentials ”“ in fact, of building a new home.
We don’t just need, in other words, to ”˜turn the economy round’, and get it back to where it was before. We need to turn it inside out. The Christmas message suggests that it’s time for a major, global rethink about the multiple, interlocking problems we can no longer ignore. And about the many-sided, but essentially coherent, proposals that flow directly from the Baby at Bethlehem, demanding to be worked out at street level.
The God who became homeless at Christmas longs to transform this muddled old world into a place where all can be at home at last. That’s what Jesus taught us to pray for.
…the [New Testament] birth stories have become a test case in various controversies. If you believe in miracles, you believe in Jesus’ miraculous birth; if you don’t, you don’t. Both sides turn the question into a shibboleth, not for its own sake but to find out who’s in and who’s out.
The problem is that “miracle,” as used in these controversies, is not a biblical category. The God of the Bible is not a normally absent God who sometimes “intervenes.” This God is always present and active, often surprisingly so.
Just over a century ago, in 1918, Eric Milner-White, the Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, devised the service of Nine Lessons and Carols, which has since become the most widely known of all Anglican services. The ”˜carols’ which were and are so much part of this are now closely linked with Christmas, but were originally what was sung as joyful dancing songs, so perhaps the mediaeval carol ”˜Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’ in which Jesus tells of his life as a dance in which we are invited to share reaches back to the original meaning. An early Christian hymn also echoes this theme, speaking of divine grace dancing; and Greek Christian thinkers spoke of the communion of love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity as perichoresis – one of the meanings of which is a round dance….