One of the senior bishops of the Church of England has cited the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale’s appointment as dean of Episcopal Divinity School as an example of the possible need for a new Anglican province in North America.

“That a promoter of abortion on demand, who describes abortionists as engaged in ”˜holy work’, might be given a senior position must call in question any possibility of normal relations with the province concerned,” wrote the Rt. Rev. Peter Robert Forster, Bishop of Chester in a letter to the Church of England Newspaper (April 9 edition). “If any right-thinking Christian has doubted the need for a new province in North America, they should ponder your astonishing report.”

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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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The next Archbishop of Westminster has attacked the heads of the Premier League and Setanta Sports for holding football fixtures on Easter Day.

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who will be enthroned at Westminster next month, has written a strong letter of complaint to Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, and Trevor East, the director of sport at Setanta, for showing disdain for the religious traditions of Britain. Two Premier League games ”” Aston Villa v Everton and Manchester City v Fulham ”” are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

Writing as Archbishop of Birmingham, along with the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, the Right Rev David Urquhart, he accused the league and the broadcaster of disregarding the importance of Easter Day and treading on the sensitivities of their employees and football supporters.

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I have resigned as Bishop of Rochester after nearly 15 years. During that time, I have watched the nation drift further and further away from its Christian moorings. Instead of the spiritual and moral framework provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we have been led to expect, and even to celebrate, mere diversity. Not surprisingly, this has had the result of loosening the ties of law, customs and values, and led to a gradual loss of identity and of cohesiveness. Every society, for its wellbeing, needs the social capital of common values and the recognition of certain virtues which contribute to personal and social flourishing. Our ideas about the sacredness of the human person at every stage of life, of equality and natural rights and, therefore, of freedom, have demonstrably arisen from the tradition rooted in the Bible.

Different faiths and traditions will not necessarily produce the values and virtues which have been so prominent in the history of this country. It is quite wrong to presume that they will, as Gordon Brown appeared to do last week in his speech calling for “value-based” rules at St Paul’s Cathedral. Some faiths may emphasise social solidarity more than personal freedom, others publicly enforce piety over a nurturing of the interior life and yet others stress honour and shame rather than humility, service and sacrifice. It may be, of course, that there is a useful overlap among these traditions in terms of values by which to live. It may also be that people of different faiths can “own” many of the values produced by a Christian framework in this nation, but this cannot take place in a vacuum.

One of the surprising aspects of what you could call our values vacuum is the historical amnesia which is so prevalent today ”“ or, rather, a selective sort of amnesia.

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One of the popular traditional hymns for Palm Sunday was written by Henry Milman, a Victorian dean of St Paul’s. He wrote dramatic poems and romantic verse dramas, as well as some of the first studies of biblical history to root Scripture in the culture of its day (he gave offence by describing Abraham as “a nomad sheikh”). In his Palm Sunday hymn, Ride on, Ride on in Majesty, he sees the Palm Sunday procession as a poignant, funeral procession ”” “in lowly pomp ride on to die”. Indeed, that is how this Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday, unfolds.

If there was an expectation among the Palm Sunday crowds that this was the beginning of a revolution in which Jesus would drive out the oppressive Roman occupiers, it was not to be. The week that begins with Palm Sunday moves inexorably through ever darker moments: the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (the garden of the pressing out of the olives), betrayal, arrest, torture, mocking, scourging and a trial that shows both religious and political leaders as utterly unconcerned with truth (as Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, asks dismissively, “what is truth?”).

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The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has announced his resignation. He is leaving to under­take a new global ministry in places where the Church is under pressure and Christians are in a minority. The Archbishop of Canter­bury has described his move as “a courageous initiative and a timely one”.

The news, which was announced in a statement on Saturday, appears to have come as a complete surprise to many.

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The outgoing Bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev Graham Dow, delivers the broadside at the non-believers in the April issue of his diocesan news. And as he sounds the triumphant note about the truth of Christianity, he asserts that over half a century of living “in touch with Jesus” has brought him “untold joy”. Bishop Dow, who will be 67 in July, makes the declaration in an article headed “Get A Life! – the Atheists’ Way or the Christian Way?”

He declares: “The notion that science has disproved – or will one daydisprove – the existence of God is one of the great lies of our generation.

“Even if it is remotely possible that the perfect conditions on earth for human existence could have happened by sheer statistical luck – in a system with many universes and with billions of billions of planets – there is no sign of any scientific explanation as to why the raw materials of the universe existed at all.”

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Details of Bishop Nazir Ali’s new work have not been finalized, the diocese noted, leading to speculation that the 59 year old bishop might be preparing for another role in the Anglican Communion in light of his high profile stance within the conservative wing of the church.

However, the General Secretary of the Church of Pakistan, Humphrey Peters tells The Church of England Newspaper the news of the resignation came as a surprise. “So far we have no idea nor have we heard anything from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali. But, in case he feels like working for Church in Pakistan in these most critical times, the Church will be more than happy to welcome him.”

A spokesman for the Gafcon movement, stated while its leaders were generally aware of Dr. Nazir Ali’s wish to move on, they had no specific knowledge about his Saturday announcement.

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Whatever your views about Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, he is hard to ignore. After his announcement this weekend that he is to retire early, the Church of England will be the poorer for it. The inference is that he felt stifled and decided that he could do more worthwhile work elsewhere, mostly outside Britain. Sadly, he is probably right.

Born in Karachi to parents who converted to Christianity from Islam, the first non-white diocesan bishop in Britain emerged as an outspoken critic of multiculturalism. Nobody, given his background and race, was better placed to do so. More than his Anglican colleagues, he knew about fighting for your faith. His criticisms were well made. Immigrants, he said, needed to do more to integrate into British life. He warned last year that Islamic extremism had turned “already separate communities into ”˜no-go’ areas”. For this he received death threats and required police protection.

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Dr Michael Nazir-Ali is only 59 and could have stayed for another decade in his post, one of the most senior in the Church, but has chosen instead to devote the rest of his career to working in communities where Christians are in a minority.

While this is likely to see him involved in the Middle East and Pakistan, the bishop revealed that he also plans to work with Muslim converts to Christianity in Britain.

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So I give three cheers to the idea of removing the priority of male succession.

What about marrying a Catholic? Here the situation is a bit like admission to Holy Communion. The Church of England welcomes Roman Catholic’s to its altar rails, but the Roman Catholic Church does not reciprocate and will not let married couples kneel together to receive the sacrament if one is a non-catholic.

I would welcome an heir to the throne marrying a Roman Catholic – it is much more important that a royal couple is united in its Christian faith than what denomination the spouse is from.

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One of the Church of England’s most outspoken bishops has announced that he is to resign a decade early to devote the rest of his life to work with Christians in Islamic areas.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church’s only Asian bishop, who is just 59 and could have stayed at Rochester until his 70th birthday, intends to use his expertise as an Islamic scholar to work in Pakistan where he was born and in the Middle East to build bridges between Christians and Muslims.

A conservative evangelical, he will step down in September after nearly 15 years in the diocese.

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I have already noted the threats, that are well-known to exist, to the future of the Anglican Communion. From a careful reading of the Communiqué following the recent meeting in Alexandria of the Primates of the Communion, and on the basis of what some of them have written and said since, it would be foolishly optimistic to imagine that the existing difficulties were on the point of being overcome. One commentator seems to me to have summed up the situation well when he wrote: “(the communiqué) seemed to mark the acceptance, finally, of the unbridgeability of the Communion’s divide over sexuality and biblical authority, while leaving the outworking of this conclusion still undetermined.”

It may well be the case that only a proportion even of ‘active’ members of the Church of England are much concerned about the Anglican Communion. But even those less concerned would, I think, be faced with questions both within their churches, and from their friends and in the Media, if the Communion were explicitly, by decisions of responsible bodies, to divide. This too would suggest that things were not as they had been ”“ and the more so, if there came (as I think that there would quickly come) pressures upon the General Synod, or upon individual Dioceses, to make choices between the (by then) divided parts of the Anglican Communion.

Many fewer people, I think, are aware of the growing head of steam, in the ‘Global South’ and more accurately among the ‘GAFCON’ elements of the Communion, for a early Review of the processes for the appointment, and of the role, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, on account of the post-holder’s responsibilities as the senior Primate of the Anglican Communion, and as one (arguably, and certainly at present, the most significant and effective) of its four ‘Instruments of Communion’. Specifically, should these roles and responsibilities in and for the contemporary Anglican Communion be located in the See of Canterbury, whose occupant is an appointee of the British Crown (and to date a Briton though today not an Englishman), rather than in an (Arch)bishop elected, like every other Primate, by his peers.

Here are complex questions (explored already in the Hurd Commission’s Review of the See of Canterbury published in 2001): of the relationships of the Provinces of the Communion, and so of Anglicanism itself, to the See, and to the Cathedral, of Canterbury; of the future of the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury (and so of other English Bishops) by the Crown; and of the possibility of an Archbishop of Canterbury who was not British ”“ but could such a person fulfil the roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of England and of the Church of England? (Could we imagine an English bishop today as Archbishop of Nigeria, or of Australia?) These questions have the potential to cause a good deal of unsettled-ness in the Church of England, and to divert a good deal of energy, if the Global South presses them as I believe that it will.

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The Bishop of Manchester has been forced to take a vow of email silence after his computer was crippled by a virus.

The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch has been unable to send or receive messages for nearly 10 days, it has emerged.

And a `significant’ number of the 6,000 emails he thought he had sent during the past 10 months probably never found their mark, a Church of England spokesman admitted.

Computer experts are now frantically trying to restore his computer, which was hit by the virus on March 3.

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The Christian church in its homelands in the Middle East is undergoing a “rapid attrition”, the Anglican Bishop of Chichester has warned.

Bishop John Hind, in a House of Lords debate on religious persecution, pointed to the “extreme deprivation” suffered by Christians in Iraq.

“In places where different faiths have coexisted for centuries we see the rapid attrition of the Christian church in its ancestral homelands,” he said.

“In Iraq, Christians have suffered extreme deprivation, sometimes due to sheer religious hatred, sometimes just caught in the cross-fire, sometimes because, amazingly and quite wrongly, they are regarded as representatives of a western faith.

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The General Synod of the Church of England might not sound like a spiritual theme, for it, like all human assemblies, has its own share of politics and inevitably falls short of the Christian assembly it is supposed to be.

But the Christian faith is an incarnational religion, with at its heart the belief that the Universe is God’s creation, that human beings are created in the image of God, and that in Jesus God took our human nature and knew His creation and our human need from the inside. God did not stand aside from the sin and evil of the world, and therefore from the political and religious organisations that shape human history and human society.

The Church on which the Risen Christ breathed out his life-giving Spirit is not an abstract idea, but a visible society, called in its life and witness to point to God’s kingdom of justice, love and peace. A Church therefore needs, in responding to that call and to that mission, to meet, to pray and to wrestle with how that calling and mission is to be taken forward.

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On behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, The Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester and Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews, hosted a reception at Lambeth Palace on 17 February 2009 for the participants in the first Inter Parliamentary Conference on anti-Semitism.

The Conference which is the first of a series, follows the work of the ‘All Party Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism’ which produced a major report in 2007 and is chaired by Mr John Mann MP. Since then, the Committee has engaged with Parliamentarians concerned with anti-Semitism around the world to create a network and now an agreement to hold regular conferences under the auspices of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition on Combating anti-Semitism.

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As Chair of the House of Bishops Theological Group, I am glad to reaffirm the biblical teaching on the utter uniqueness of the God who reveals himself to Israel but also on the universal significance of this one God, the source and ground of all that exists, for all peoples and the whole world. The New Testament tells us, and the Catholic Creeds declare, that, in Jesus Christ, God himself has entered into human history and we encounter him in this human person. But because it is God who is encountered, the particular becomes full of universal significance.

Of course, it can be shown from Scripture that God reveals something of himself through the created order, in conscience and in the spiritual awareness of which everyone is capable. But we should note that such knowledge cannot save of itself not least because it is affected by human sinfulness and rebellion. The early Apologists for the faith believed that, even in midst of falsehood and superstition, people could know something of God because they were made in the divine image, because the Logos, the Eternal Word, incarnate in Jesus Christ, illuminates the minds and hearts of all (John 1:9), even if they turn away from this illumination, and because the Holy Spirit is everywhere and always convincing people of sin and righteousness and judgement (John 16:8-11). For the Apologists, however, such knowledge pointed to and was fulfilled in Jesus Christ; his Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection.

We recognise God’s presence and work in our world precisely and authentically only because of his revelation in the call, liberation and history of his Chosen People and supremely, of course, in Jesus Christ. This history of salvation and judgement is the touchstone, or canon, by which we are able to recognise God’s providence anywhere.

The Anglican formularies affirm such an understanding of salvation history. No-one can be saved by any ”˜natural’ knowledge of God, nor by religious observance but only by God’s graciousness, fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

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Church of England members who disagree on whether women bishops should be ordained must find a way to co-exist because neither group “will go away”, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said on Tuesday.

Some members may join another church, but many wanted to remain and the Anglican Church must find a way to accommodate them, he added.

Speaking at the General Synod meeting in London, the Church’s spiritual head said traditionalists and liberals recognised they had to tackle the issue.

“We may have imperfect communion, but we unmistakeably want to find a way of holding on to what we have and ‘intensifying’ it,” he said.

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Bishop John Gladwin, a former chairman of Christian Aid, used a debate on the Gaza situation in the House of Lords to call for a political process involving all parties.

He told peers: “Those of us who have been to the Holy Land will know the experience of passing through checkpoints on the West Bank that are staffed by young Israeli men and women who are barely out of school and controlling people old enough to be their grandparents.

“It makes you wonder what we are doing to the next generation of people and what people are thinking who have been involved in firing from tanks into Gaza, which has left young children and women dead or injured for life. There is a brutalising effect in all this.

“Then I think of the 1.5 million people on the Gaza Strip, half of whom are under the age of 21, I guess. What has happened to them now that thousands of their children have been traumatised by violence and brutality?”

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The Church of England is the broadest of churches. It has a reputation for carrying out an exhaustive search for compromise even if that means fudging difficult issues.

That’s what made the Synod’s substantial vote last summer to press ahead with the ordination of women bishops seem all the more decisive.

Traditionalists were left disappointed and angry when they were denied the legal right they had wanted to opt out of the control of women bishops.

The Synod clearly felt that ordaining women to the most senior posts was too important a principle to allow the pain of a minority of traditionalists to send it off course.

But when the Synod met this week for a passionate debate about the exact circumstances under which women were to be made bishops, determination seemed to have given way once again to an anxious search for the middle ground – and pessimism about the likelihood of finding it.

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In the past, the Anglican Communion “has been held together by a common history, similar ”¦ ways of worship and the so-called ‘bonds of affection,'” he said. “In a rapidly globalizing world and a fast-developing communion, these are no longer enough.”

Nazir-Ali was introducing a motion that synod “do take note” of a Church of England report that responds to the latest draft (St. Andrew’s Draft) of the Anglican covenant.

“The main purpose of the covenant is inclusion rather than exclusion,” Nazir-Ali said. “We cannot forget, nevertheless, that these questions have arisen for us because of the need for adequate discipline in the communion on matters which affect everyone.”

During a one-hour synod debate, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams disagreed with Nazir-Ali’s position on the covenant. “We mustn’t have excessive expectations of the covenant,” Williams said, cautioning against it being a legal instrument. “It’s part of an ongoing inquiry of what a global communion might look like. At every stage it is something which churches voluntarily are invited to enter into.”

However, the Rev. Canon Chris Sugden of the Diocese of Oxford said he believes that the covenant should be “far more than an expression of fellowship,” and instead be “a matter of legislation and a basis for governance.”

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So the Church of England opted for safety when it met to discuss the next stage in the ordination of women bishops, avoiding the cataclysmic result of a ”˜no’ vote.

More than 280 members of the General Synod, or governing body, voted in favour of sending draft legislation and a code of practice to a revision committee, ensuring its continued progress.

The church will still take its time over the legislation, with no woman bishop likely to be installed before 2014.

But as Jonathan Gledhill, Bishop of Lichfield, said: “I believe we must go forward today however slowly the progress may be.”

Failure to have voted in favour would not have killed off the prospect of women bishops – as the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said on Tuesday, the issue will not go away – but it could have delayed ordination for many years.

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Senior bishops have burst into song in protest at the plans of some English water companies to impose huge bills on churches and other community groups.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was among those who joined in a chorus of “the rains came down and the tax went up” at the Church’s annual general synod.

The synod voted to back campaigners who say the new “rain tax” has seen church drainage bills rise by up to 1,300%.

Water watchdog Ofwat says the charges are environmentally responsible.

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The ordination of women bishops has moved a step nearer after the Church of England’s General Synod voted to send draft legislation and a code of practice for further discussion.

But the two-hour debate yesterday once again revealed deep rifts in the church.

Anglicans opposed to women bishops have threatened to leave the church if adequate safeguards are not put in place to cater for them.

The compromise package being proposed is understood to include so-called “complementary bishops” who would minister to parishes which object to women bishops.

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The Church of England’s General Synod voted to a continue its work towards consecrating women bishops with an accompanying Code of Practice, as it voted on Wednesday to take the relevant Measure to revision in committee.

Despite being an unpopular middle ground at last July’s Synod, the Code of Practice Measure received 281 votes of support, against 114 with 13 registered abstentions. The Draft Amending Canon then received 309 votes of support against 79, with 14 registered abstentions.

This was after the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, the chair of the Steering Committee for the draft legislation, had assured many of the options remained open. He also made clear the alternative, which would likely see the rescinding of the Act of Synod, would leave opponents of women in the episcopate even more vulnerable.

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Defenders of the Presiding Bishop claim that by her actions she has merely deprived him of a licence in the Episcopal Church. But surely the whole point is that after the deposition of Bob Duncan last September, Bishop Scriven’s ”˜licence’ was revoked. No, in fact it looks like Presiding Bishop Schori is attempting something much more sweeping here.

The Anglican Communion Institute again comments: “The Presiding Bishop’s action has profound consequences for TEC’s status as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and its communion with the Church of England.” Her Declaration of Removal touches upon the ”˜ordinations’ conferred on him by the Church of England, not by The Episcopal Church, and therefore she is going down a very dangerous road by pretending to have the authority to pronounce on them. Furthermore, by prohibiting a bishop in good standing within the Church of England from ministering in The Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Schori is opening up the way for a diplomatic row.

Bishop Scriven, no doubt, will be laughing about this bizarre overstep by the Presiding Bishop, but the ramifications of this move should be examined further by English canon lawyers. It seems that The Episcopal Church is claiming to have an authority that it does not. And that, after all, is the root of the problem in the Anglican Communion.

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Bishop Scriven remained as a bishop in good standing in the Episcopal Church after Pittsburgh diocese realigned with the Southern Cone in November last year. He believed the diocese had democratically made its decision and ”” in a response to the Church Times which came too late for publication ”” described the Convention’s vote as conducted “in a very fair and grace-filled way”. He made himself available as a bishop to all congregations who invited him, regardless of how they had voted.

He said at that time: “We still pray sincerely that further lawsuits can be avoided, and I certainly intend to maintain all my close friendships with the vast majority of those who have chosen not to stay with the diocese.”

Bishop Scriven described the letter he received in November releasing him from his orders as “really weird”. He retained it but did not respond to it. The promised certificate releasing Bishop Scriven from his orders did not reach him personally, “though, to be fair, she might have tried as I was wandering round the world,” he said on Wednesday.

The correspondence is now in the public domain. “I had no desire to publish these letters until the thing was announced but was then very happy for them to be released,” Bishop Scriven said. “Hers was a very gracious letter but I was kind of boggled by the language really….”

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Defenders of the Presiding Bishop are scrambling to re-interpret her extraordinary action of depriving a bishop of the Church of England of the gifts and authority conferred in his ordination and removing him from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church. For example, the group supporting the Presiding Bishop in Pittsburgh stated that “[t]his is a routine way of permitting Bishop Scriven to continue his ministry.” In the strange world of TEC, renunciation of orders has become a routine way of continuing one’s ministry.

But it is not routine. Indeed, it has not been used for those transferring from TEC to another province in the Anglican Communion until the Presiding Bishop began what resembles a scorched-earth approach to her opponents within TEC. Not surprisingly, in the past such matters have been handled by letter. One can see the evolution of the Presiding Bishop’s “routine” policy in the treatment of Bishop David Bena, who was transferred by letter by his diocesan bishop to the Church of Nigeria in February 2007. A month later, the Presiding Bishop wrote Bishop Bena and informed him that “by this action you are no longer a member of the House of Bishops” and that she had informed the Secretary of the House to remove him from the list of members. That was all that needed to be done. A year later, however, as her current strategy emerged, she suddenly declared in January 2008 that she had accepted Bishop Bena’s renunciation of orders using the canon she now uses against Bishop Scriven. In other words, if this is now sadly routine, it has only become routine in the past year.

Not only is this not routine, it was not necessary.

“This action reflects profound confusion” say the authors. Is there a better phrase to describe the common life of TEC at present? Doctrinal and Structural incoherence abound. Read it all–KSH