Consider the following scenario. A group of IRA terrorists carry out a bombing raid in London. People are killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then to the United States, where they disappear into the sympathetic hinterland of a country where IRA leaders have in the past been welcomed at the White House. Britain cannot extradite them, because of the gross imbalance of the relevant treaty. So far, this is not far from the truth.

But now imagine that the British government, seeing the murderers escape justice, sends an aircraft carrier (always supposing we’ve still got any) to the Nova Scotia coast. From there, unannounced, two helicopters fly in under the radar to the Boston suburb where the terrorists are holed up. They carry out a daring raid, killing the (unarmed) leaders and making their escape. Westminster celebrates; Washington is furious.

What’s the difference between this and the recent events in Pakistan? Answer: American exceptionalism. America is allowed to do it, but the rest of us are not. By what right? Who says?…

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Speaking to The Church of England Newspaper about his retirement, announced last October, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt said that more work needed be done in encouraging young men and women away from well-paid City jobs to roles which society really needs, such as being a priest, teacher or nurse.

In addition, the Bishop said that in looking back on his years in General Synod and in the House of Lords he said he regretted much of the arguing about gender and sexuality issues but believed he was there for a purpose to defend a conservative position.

He also said the Church of England should not “slither off” and become like the majority of the US Episcopal Church, which would be the end of the Church of England.

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Go here then click on the “Latest programme in full” link to launch the audio player. It starts at about 1:49 in, and lasts about 2 minutes. Bishop James references Augustine, the challenge of understanding evil, and the Easter season.

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive, we need mutual forgiveness, to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can practise and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today, will do everything in our power to support and uphold you in your new life. And I pray that God will bless you in the way of life that you have chosen….

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The reality which is the resurrection cannot simply be “known” from within the old world of decay and denial, of tyrants and torture, of disobedience and death. But that’s the point. The resurrection is not, as it were, a highly peculiar event within the present world, though it is that as well; it is the defining, central event of the new creation, the world which is being born with Jesus.

If we are even to glimpse this new world, let alone enter it, we will need a different kind of knowing, a knowing which involves us in new ways, an epistemology which draws out from us not just the cool appraisal of detached quasi-historical or scientific research, but the whole-person engagement for which the best shorthand is “love.”

That is why, although the historical arguments for Jesus’s bodily resurrection are truly strong, we must never suppose that they will do more than bring people to the very questions faced by Peter, or Thomas, or Paul: the questions of faith, hope and love.

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Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.

The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.

Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.

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Jesus dies. His lifeless body is taken down from the cross. Painters and sculptors have strained their every nerve to portray the sorrow of Mary holding her lifeless son in her arms, as mothers today in Baghdad hold with the same anguish the bodies of their children. On Holy Saturday, or Easter Eve, God is dead, entering into the nothingness of human dying. The source of all being, the One who framed the vastness and the microscopic patterning of the Universe, the delicacy of petals and the scent of thyme, the musician’s melodies and the lover’s heart, is one with us in our mortality. In Jesus, God knows our dying from the inside.

–”“The Rt. Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Rowell

Thousands of families who attend church to secure places at popular Church of England schools face being denied entry under radical plans revealed today to overhaul admissions.

The C of E is drastically revising its guidelines to limit the number of places offered to those from church backgrounds….

The Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev John Pritchard, chairman of the C of E’s board of education, said schools should end the bias towards children from religious homes even if it lowers academic results. He said: “Every school will have a policy that [it] has a proportion of places for church youngsters … what I would be saying is that number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community.

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This week, the plots hatched behind closed doors in the Vatican last year will be played out in the open as the former bishops lead dozens of clergy and hundreds of worshippers in taking up this historic offer.

They will be confirmed in services that will mark a significant watershed in the Anglican Church’s long-running battle over moves to allow women to become bishops.

It represents a new beginning for those entering the Catholic Church, but their departure has deeply wounded the Church of England, which is already riven by bitter rows over gay clergy, and now faces an exodus of traditionalists.

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The appointment of the Revd Nicholas Holtam as the next Bishop of Salisbury is a regrettable and retrograde step. In his public ministry Mr Holtam has actively promoted erroneous teaching on the issue of human sexuality, which puts him at odds with the declared mind of the House of Bishops, the General Synod of the Church of England and the 1998 Lambeth Conference, makes him unfit for ministry in the Church of England let alone as a Bishop. In particular, like many in the Church, he has been unwilling to accept the clear teaching of Scripture on the proper place of sexual union.

He has likewise supported those in this country and elsewhere seeking to undermine what is collectively recognized as Biblical teaching on sexual morality….

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New guidance aimed at preventing sham marriages in the Church of England is being sent to clergy and legal officers by the House of Bishops. The guidance has been agreed with the UK Border Agency and was today approved by Immigration Minister Damian Green.

“The House of Bishops is clear,” said the Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, “that the office of Holy Matrimony must not be misused by those who have no intention of contracting a genuine marriage but merely a sham marriage. The purpose of this guidance and direction from the Bishops to the clergy and to those responsible for the grant of common licences is, therefore, to prevent the contracting of sham marriages in the Church of England.”

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Despite the obvious difficulties this entailed, therefore, the Church of England sought until recently to adhere strictly to Jesus teaching, as regards both its members generally and its ministers in particular ”” a stance reflected precisely in the absence until now of specific guidance regarding the appointment of bishops.

For some people, therefore, the proposed consecration of Nicholas Holtam is a serious challenge to Church order. And indeed it may be ”” but the extent to which this is so clearly depends on the circumstances of his wife’s divorce….

However, there is another, and just as pressing, reason why the nomination of Mr Holtam causes difficulty for traditionalists. In 2005, at the height of the controversy over his consecration, Mr Holtam invited Bishop Gene Robinson to St Martin-in-the-Fields…

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A vicar described as a “rising star” in the Church of England is to become the first clergyman married to a divorcee to be made a bishop, it was announced today.

The Rev Nicholas Holtam, vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, central London, has been approved by the Queen to take up the post of Bishop of Salisbury.

The clergyman was strongly tipped for promotion after the General Synod of the Church of England paved the way earlier this year for the first divorced and remarried clergy to be consecrated as bishops.

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All ecclesiology is about our belonging together, and our belonging together in Christ. The great images of the Church in the New Testament ”” the people of God, the vine and the branches, the living temple, the Body of Christ ”” all point in their different ways to the fact that to share in the redeemed life of the new creation is not something anyone of us can do alone, either as an individual or as a group or province. To be in Christ is to be bound together in mutual responsibility and interdependence.

That mutual responsibility and interdependence is expressed through the structures of the Church which flow from our common baptism and our common participation in the Eucharist. We belong to each other and what one does affects all. The four marks or notes of the Church ”” unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity ”” are all outworkings of this “belonging together.” They are expressions of the “belonging togetherness” ”” the communion, the fellowship, the koinonia, of the Holy Spirit, or, to use an image from today’s world, the internet of the Holy Spirit. In a divided Church seeking unity we have learned to be sensitive to how we tell our history, and how we can go back behind statements and understandings coming from past battles and entrenched positions, to learn what we share in common. The ecumenical dialogues have produced remarkable convergences and agreements in the statements of the ARCIC dialogues and the recent report of the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue, The Church of the Triune God.

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Herewith the BBC description of this section:

After 24 people died following two days of protests in Afghanistan in the wake of the burning of a copy of the Koran by a fundamentalist Christian church in Florida, William talks to Joel C Hunter, a pastor in Florida and a leader within the National Association of Evangelicals, to ask him how he reacted to the news that a pastor had burned a Koran.

William also reflects on the violence in Afghanistan which resulted from the Koran burning with the former bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, and he is joined by historian and analyst Professor Iftikhar Malik from Bath Spa University, to discuss what role the Taliban is thought to have played in these events.

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The Bishop of Burnley wants to increase the number of churches in Lancashire taking part in Back to Church Sunday.

Last year only 33 of the 250 churches in the Blackburn Diocese took part in the initiative, aimed at getting former parishioners back into the pews.

The Right Reverend John Goddard also called for more of the Christian denominations to join the celebration.

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While most Christian ministers’ earliest influences are religious mentors and the Bible, Michael Hill’s involved rock music.

That’s what first impressed the Rev. Dr. Frank Larisey, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Orangeburg, about the current Bishop of Bristol, England.
“When he was about 17 or 18, he was in a band that opened for The Who,” Larisey said. “He was a good lead guitarist.”

The man who Larisey calls “one of the best speakers I’ve heard in my life” will bring his message, “What Happens When You Get It?” to the Church of the Redeemer beginning with a potluck dinner at 7 p.m. Friday, April 1. Hill will also give the sermon during the 8 and 10:30 a.m. worship services Sunday, April 3.

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The Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, has warned that interfaith relations may be harmed by the “unfolding events” in Libya.

Speaking in the House of Lords on Monday, the Bishop asked whether the Leader of the Lords, Lord Strath­clyde, shared his “concern that in an increasingly volatile region there are already those who for their own ends are using somewhat inflammatory language and trying to construct a reli­gious narrative around these un­folding events.

“In this account, a vulnerable Is­lamic population is being subjected to an opportunistic attack by a power­ful Christian West. Not only does such a narrative have the power to destab­il­ise the wider Middle East region, but it could impact very negatively on community relations in this country.”

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Archbishop Bernard Longley and Bishop David Urquhart, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham held a dialogue last night to inaugurate the five 2011 Edward Cadbury Lectures on the topical theme “Parables for the City”, under the auspices of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, at the University of Birmingham.

There was standing room only with students and others sitting on the floor in the lecture room at the Department of Theology and Religion in the European Research Institute Building, yesterday at the start of the open and free admission lecture series.

The Anglican Bishop of Lahore, Pakistan, was among those present for the hour-long lecture. Bishop Alexander John Malik is on a visit to England at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to take part in special services for the Pakistan Cabinet Minister of Religious Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, who was brutally murdered for his Catholic faith on 2 March 2011.

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… I have had one churchwarden who tells me he is definitely going to leave. We wish them well but I hope most people will wait until the final vote in Synod before making up their mind because there is still everything to play for and pray for.

Of course there is also two-way traffic between us and Rome. We regularly receive Roman Catholics into our congregations and ministry. Maybe we should set up our own Ordinariat for people coming in the opposite direction!

My other hope is that clergy or groups of laity who are seriously thinking of making a move to Rome should contact a member of the Bishop’s Staff and arrange a visit to the PCC by one of us; because not everything you read in the press is quite true or accurate and some congregations have not been well advised on this topic.

Certainly now is not the time to weaken the place of the Christian faith, and the Church of England in particular in our nation. It is quite moving to realise, as I did again this week, that our parliament does nothing without prayer, and that getting on for half the members turning up for prayer each day particularly in the House of Lords; is quite something.

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The Pope has honoured three former Anglican bishops, the first members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, with the title of monsignor.

Fr Keith Newton, the leader of the Ordinariate who has most of the functions of a bishop, and Fr John Broadhurst, the former Bishop of Fulham, have been granted the papal award of Apostolic Pronotary, the highest ecclesial title for non-bishops. Fr Andrew Burnham, the former Bishop of Ebbsfleet, has been granted the papal award of Prelate of Honour, and is therefore also a monsignor.

The three men became the first clergy of the world’s first personal ordinariate set up for groups of former Anglicans as a result of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in January.

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A parish shaken by the departure of its vicar following his defection to the Catholic Church has been told to rally round and pray by the Bishop of Plymouth.

Parishioners filing into the Parish Church of St Mary The Virgin in St Marychurch were visited by the Right Rev Canon John Ford…a week after vicar David Lashbrooke told his congregation he was unhappy with the way the Anglican Church was going and he had decided to convert to the Catholic faith, taking part of the congregation with him.

Bishop John, who conducted the parish mass on Sunday, told the congregation that despite the ‘hurt, incomprehension, and shifting plates of the Church’, it was best to ‘pray and reflect’ rather than become angry.

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In his appeal letter, Jonathan Gledhill writes…:

“One new and exciting way this care for others is being provided right here in the streets of our diocese is through the Street Pastors scheme which is rapidly growing. Ordinary Christians are putting denominational differences aside to work together from late at night to the early hours of the morning to provide a caring presence on the streets of our towns and cities. Street Pastors are operating or being planned in areas as diverse as Walsall, Stoke on Trent, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Leek and Lichfield.

“Street Pastors are a visible and accessible Christian pastoral presence, ministering mainly to young people who are vulnerable, lonely and, quite often, frightened.”

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Bible-reading, knitting, Twitter, and atheism are among the activities Christians are being encouraged to take up for Lent, starting on Ash Wednesday next week.

The Bishop of Huntingdon, Dr David Thomson, this week issued a challenge to Christians to join him in reading the whole of the Bible during Lent, as part of the challenge, “Round the Bible in 40 Days”.

“Most people have their favourite Bible passages, but they usually read it in small chunks and often without much sense of continuity,” Dr Thom­son said. “So it’s good from time to time to get to grips with the whole of its architecture and soak ourselves in its big story of creation, redemption, and the coming of the Kingdom.”

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An Anglican Bishop has spoken out against government spending cuts, saying they will affect the “most vulnerable and poorest” in society.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Right Reverend Peter Price, said attention should be drawn to cuts which caused “suffering, hardship or deprivation”.

Bishop Price also said people should join protests against the cuts.

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Education is about the whole person not just the economy and should be more than just learning facts, say the Archbishop of Canterbury and church leaders in the run up to Education Sunday – February 20 – which this year takes the theme of ‘Firm Foundations’.

“Education is not just a process of learning facts or even skills. It should be a joyful and rich passing-on of the treasures God has given. Education Sunday is a wonderful opportunity to give thanks for this responsibility to enrich lives, and to renew our commitment to it, “said Dr Rowan Williams.

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The Ordinariate Portal, the self described “one-stop site for news of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham” reported the good news on Friday of the ordination to the Order of Deacon of the highly respected former Anglican Bishop Edwin Barnes.

In former Bishop Barnes own words, “Today was very good. Bishop Crispian of Portmouth made us very welcome, and although there was only a handful of us in his private chapel for my ordination to the diaconate, we had some good music. For Our Lady of Lourdes, we’d chosen a bit of the Anglican Patrimony. We sang as an introit: Bishop Ken’s “Her Virgin Eyes saw God Incarnate born”, to Lawes’ tune ‘Farley Castle’. I was not the solitary deacon on parade; Stephen (good name for a Deacon) Morgan, who is finance secretary to the Diocese, propped me up and ensured I did not fall over my feet…”

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The pioneers who are going forward at this early stage are, for the sake of the goal, taking a brave step into the unknown. I find it entirely understandable the many Anglo-Catholics baulk at the prospect. Those who, despite having pictures of the Pope in their clergy-houses, sacristies or even churches, cannot imagine ever moving into another ”˜part of the Lord’s vineyard’ (as Pusey put it) need to be clear, however, that achieving tolerated status within the Church of England (a.k.a. The Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda) is not what the Oxford Movement was about….

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The Church of England did not abandon the historic apostolic ministry but sought to reform it. Ever since Anglicans have held that those ordained as bishops, priests and deacons, are ordained as bishops, priests and deacons of the Church of God. Change in that ordering of ministry is therefore a matter not just for the Church of England or the Anglican Communion but for all those Churches who claim to share that ministry. Developments in faith and order need this wider reference.

At the end of November I was privileged to have an audience with Pope Benedict, and was able to say to him that, as an Anglican bishop, standing in the catholic Anglican tradition, I ”” with others ”” wished to continue to witness to the catholic identity of Anglicanism, and received his encouragement to do so. The Anglican patrimony is not just a matter of hymn books and liturgy, of evensong and the English choral tradition, important as those things are. It is a sacramental way of living out a catholic identity, expressed in relation to the community and in a wise application of moral ideals to personal and pastoral realities. It is what the Churches of the East have sometimes recognised as a Western Orthodoxy. Above all it is about a faithfulness in a way of Christian living that expresses the beauty of holiness, which is about transfiguration into the likeness of Christ, living out… [Marco Antonio De Dominis’] maxim: “In essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, and in all things charity.”

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