A discussion on the sensitive topic has been tabled for the next meeting of the Church of England’s governing body amid fears that some clergy are ignoring their traditional missionary role.

Some members of the General Synod believe Christ ordered all Christians to recruit nonbelievers and followers of other faiths, and they want to see how many bishops and vicars agree with this view.

Among the speakers is likely to be the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, who earlier this year warned that Church leaders had “gone too far” in their sensitivity towards Muslims and were not doing enough to spread the word of God.

At the end of the debate at next February’s Synod meeting in London, bishops, clergy and lay members will vote on whether bishops should report to the Synod on “their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in multi-faith Britain”, and give examples of how the gospel should be shared.

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The document has been strongly criticised by the Bishop of Swindon, Dr Lee Rayfield, the Church of England’s spokesman on ethics, for its lack of theological rigour. While expressing understanding of Roman Catholic hesi­tancy over some things, he described it as “very poor” on Wednesday, and expressed concern for the pastoral consequences of any future disen­gagement of the Roman Catholic hierarchy with the issues.

Dr Rayfield said: “From my perspective ”” and I would imagine a large number of other Christians ”” this new communication will come as a disappointment, but not a surprise.

“This instruction fails to engage adequately with the issues raised by assisted reproduction and its associated techniques at a number of levels. It worries me that there are assertions in it, for example about IVF and intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, which simply do not bear the weight of theological or ethical scrutiny, even from within the absolutist standpoint taken by the Roman Catholic Church.”

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In 1992 Bailey became the Suffragan Bishop of Dunwich in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. During that time he was chairman of the finance committee of the Church’s Advisory Board of Ministry, dealing with the funding of ordination training.

His stay in Suffolk was brief, and in 1995 he became Bishop of Derby. The diocese, as well as containing rural areas, included considerable industrial activity and a large immigrant community. He made an immediate impact and one part of his programme was to visit pubs and nightclubs in the city centre. He helped to establish the Derby multifaith centre and was a governor of Derby University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Bailey was known as a pastoral and caring bishop who remembered people’s names and mixed with all ages and faiths. On the national scene he was for three years the chairman of the Churches Main Committee, which acts as a liaison group between all the churches and government departments. During his time in Derby, he was also Clerk to the Closet, a role that involves advising the Queen about the appointment of her Honorary Chaplains. For this work he was appointed a KCVO. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1999 to 2005. He retired to Gloucestershire, where he was an assistant bishop and served on the Gloucester Police Authority.

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The deaths of young soldiers in Afghanistan and the assisted suicide of young and old that are making the headlines put dying on to the front pages of our minds.

I remember an Army Chaplain who’d served in the Falklands War telling me he’d spent the long sea voyage south preparing his troops mentally and spiritually for the possibility that some might die. And some did.

But what struck me about Jeremy Taylor’s book was the desire that we might die well and happily and that was written in an age when people did die younger and without the palliative care so available to us. By contrast today death at whatever age always seems a tragic event, almost unnatural, as if it were a failure of modern medicine. Yet even in our time we share Taylor’s hope of dying well. It’s that hope on which the whole Hospice movement has been built.

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A number of archbishops and bishops, most recently Wallace Benn, have reflected on the credit crunch and the present economic crisis, for such it most certainly is. Apart from the inability of the press to report points clearly, what also emerges is the backlash from the liberal economic establishment at interference in their domain.

Wallace Benn questions whether it is their domain. He quotes a reliable source who says you cannot serve God and Mammon. Of course, Christ’s words cut through our whole culture at many different levels, but they are intensely relevant to what is now going on. These commentators need to be held to account for their pathetic response and their failure to address the Christian point of these remarks.

The Adam Smith Institute comments: “Many people who have not worshipped materialism have seen their lives made poorer”. Precisely. Since the Bible points out a hundred times or more that the innocent suffer from evil, that point is hardly news from the Adam Smith Institute or the Daily Mail. What they fail to add is that the present suffering of those who have lost jobs or savings is not caused by the messenger, in this case Wallace Benn, but by the financial sector running on the principles of the Adam Smith Institute.

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It will be much more difficult for clergy from foreign churches to be brought into this country under new immigration laws, the Anglican Bishop of Ripon and Leeds has warned.

Bishop John Packer has criticised the Government’s new scheme, which is aimed at tightening immigration controls and allowing the implementation of the points-based system.

Under the new system immigrants from outside the European Union can enter under one of five new tiers, depending on their skills and occupation.

“The restriction on charitable and religious workers will affect how people of faith from other countries come here and experience and contribute to the life of faith in this country,” Bishop Packer during a debate on the new rules in the House of Lords.

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Mugabe and his corrupt regime must go. Lord Acton said: ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ How can anyone share power in a thoroughly corrupt regime?

The sterility of the power-sharing agreement can be seen through this broken land where its people die from eating anthrax-infected cattle or from starvation. Where sewers are open and there is no running water in towns hospitals any longer. A place where there is no electricity to operate the most basic services. A land where cholera is claiming more lives by the day.

The time has come for the international community to recognise that the power-sharing deal signed in September is dead. The impasse within the South African-sponsored negotiations between the MDC and Zanu PF has been sustained by a Mugabe regime which is unwilling to give up power and refuses to recognise the rule of law.

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The Bishop of Reading urges everyone to ask themselves, ‘what do I really want for Christmas?’

The Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury launched a website for Advent encouraging people to think about the true meaning of the holiday and reflect on the birth of Christ.

In response to the website, Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading, said he thinks that rushing through Christmas without thinking about the essential meaning is a trap most Christians get caught in. Getting caught up in the traditions and festivities that come along with Christmas make it hard to focus attention on the true purpose.

“Christmas carols would be a good example,” he said. “I love singing Christmas carols but it feels like we start singing them in October and a bit of ancient Christian wisdom would be the balance between the feast and the fast.”

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The British economy should balance a free market approach to private enterprise with state control of the production of goods and services, the Bishop of Liverpool told the BCSC conference.

The “market is not God” Bishop James Jones told the 2,800 delegates attending the commercial property association meeting at the Liverpool Arena on Nov 11. “A balance between laissez-faire capitalism and the rule of the state is needed,” he said.

Bishop Jones’ questioning of the assumptions of the free market system follows statements made by bishops from across the Anglican Communion in the wake of the global financial collapse while the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have voiced strong critiques of the international financial system.

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Proponents of women bishops now face a threat as serious as any ever faced before — from those opposed to females in mitres — according to a leading campaigner for their ordination.

The claim comes from Christina Rees who heads WATCH, the Women and the Church movement, and is a prominent member of the General Synod.

Ms Rees voices the claim in a letter sent to networks of clergy and laity, a copy of which has been seen by The Church of England Newspaper.

In the letter, which takes a swipe at traditionalist Anglicans opposed to women priests and bishops, she declares: “It is our opinion that we now face a threat as serious as any we have faced before in the long journey towards women’s full inclusion in the ordained ministries of the Church of England.”

And she claims: “Even at this eleventh hour, those who oppose ordaining women are summoning all their strength to delay, distort and subvert the will of the General Synod as expressed in the debates over the past few years.”

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In a speech to conservative evangelicals, who debated proposals for a new “church within a church”, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali said that there has been a lack of discipline.

Traditionalists have been upset that the Episcopal Church escaped punishment despite consecrating Gene Robinson as Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop.

The Bishop of Rochester told clergy that the new movement was equivalent to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, which led to the establishment of the Church of England.

He said that the Church has become too “wishy-washy” and urged evangelicals to stand against the liberal agenda.

“No Church can be effective without discipline,” said Dr Nazir-Ali.

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The first invitation to the Lambeth Conference was given by Archbp. Rowan in May 07. The invitation included the bishops of TEC (except Gene Robinson or those consecrated under the jurisdiction of African provinces to serve in the US with disaffected parishes from TEC). The Windsor process set up to identify what was at stake in the Anglican communion after that consecration in 2003, and how the Communion should respond was still ongoing as TEC had been given until 30 Sept to intimate whether they would be complying with the requests made of them by the Primates meeting which had taken place in Dar es salaam in Feb. They and had not yet done so. Would an invitation to Lambeth before that date be like a letting off the hook? What would the impact of the invitation be in other parts of the Communion. The answer soon came.

The Archbishop of Uganda declared that those who consecrated Gene Robinson, and had not repented or apologised for that consecration, were just as responsible for the breach in the Communion as Gene Robinson himself, and if those TEC bishops were to attend Lambeth neither he nor the other bishops of Uganda would be coming.

Vinay Samuel in his recent address to the Reform Conference identifies this moment, this invitation given to the TEC, as being the trigger for GAFCON. I think he is right about that. At GAFCON in my conversations with African Bishops, this was the moment when they became convinced that nothing would be done to discipline TEC. From then on, other provinces declared they would not be coming to Lambeth.

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Most Reverend and Right Reverend Fathers in God,

Tomorrow [today on the time of posting] you will meet as a House of Bishops to discuss the current state of the Church of England and, particularly, the decision made at General Synod over the summer. As young people training for the ministerial priesthood in the Church of England we have attempted to put into words our concerns and anxieties about the future, and to offer you, in some small way, an insight into our hopes and fears for, potentially, forty years of ordained ministry.

The decision by General Synod in July to consider a Code of Practice, rather than structural alternatives, presents a significant problem for those who are opposed to the ordination of women. Many of this integrity have suggested that it is “too soon to give up” and that something effective can come from the next Group of Sessions. We fear this is unlikely. If the Church of England chooses not to provide appropriate structural solutions, as this resolution by General Synod would seem to indicate, it would be foolhardy – and even disingenuous – to continue to prepare for a life of ordained ministry in the Church of England.

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The Anglican Bishop of Rochester has called on the British Government to agree that marriage between men and women is the basis of society.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali raised the issue during a discussion of same-sex relationships in the House of Lords.

Liberal Democrat Lord Lester of Herne Hill, a leading light in the campaign to introduce civil partnerships in the UK, had questioned the Government’s contention, in a case before the European Court of Human Rights, that same-sex relationships “fall outside the ambit of family life”.

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What we desperately need, if we are to pursue a biblical, Christian and indeed Anglican mission in the postmodern world, is the Spirit of Truth. There is no time to develop this further, but it is vital to say this one thing. We have got so used to the postmodern sneer that any truth-claim is instantly suspect. And at that point many Christians have lurched back to the apparent safety of a modernist claim: conservative modernists claim that they can simply look up truth in the Bible, without realising what sort of book it is, while radical modernists claim they find truth in today’s science, without realising what sort of a thing that is either. But we cannot go back; we have to go on; and the Spirit of Truth, often invoked in favour of any and every innovation in the church, is actually at work when we live within the great story, the love story, God’s love-story, and become in turn agents, missional agents, of that story in the world. Truth is not something we possess and put in our pockets, because truth is grounded in the goodness of creation, the promise of redemption for that creation, and the vocation of human beings to speak God’s word both of naming the original creation and of working for new creation ”“ the word, in other words, of mission. The Spirit of Truth is given so that, living within the great biblical story, we can engage in those tasks.

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The Anglican Bishop of Southwell & Nottingham, the Rt Rev George Cassidy, is appealing to the Home Secretary to reconsider the case of a Pakistani family who are due to be sent back to the country they fled from two years ago, at the end of this week.

Mr Julian Singh, his wife Aima and 11-year-old son Jonathan were taken to Yarleswood Detention Centre for deportation to Pakistan last week, after their plea for asylum was rejected. They are due to be sent back to Pakistan on Thursday morning (October 30) when they will be put on a plane from Heathrow Airport.

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The Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, has written in a church newsletter that materialism has a “stranglehold over our lives” and that some good may therefore emerge from the crisis.

In the November 2008 newsletter the bishop said: “I believe that God ultimately has allowed this crisis for good.

“Our nation, like all the western nations, has become consumed with materialism. It has a stranglehold on our lives.

“We have found our security in ‘securities’ and have failed to grasp that nothing is permanent other than God.

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In his Oct 15 intervention, the Rt Rev N.T. Wright, the Anglican observer to the synod, said the challenges of “secularism and relativism” alongside the problems raised by “postmodernity” faced by the churches had bred an “anxiety” that the “Bible might tell us unwelcome things,” and that “its message might be stifled.” He urged a “balanced” fourfold reading of scripture founded upon the heart, (Lectio Divina, liturgical reading), mind (historical/critical study), soul (church life, tradition, teaching) and strength (mission, kingdom of God).” “In particular, we need fresh mission-oriented engagement with our own culture,” Dr Wright said, according to notes released by the VIS. As Paul confronted paganism “so must we. In particular, we must engage critically with the tools and methods of historical-critical scholarship themselves,” he said. Dr Wright said the “climax” of the canon of Scripture “is Jesus Christ, especially his cross and resurrection. These events are not only salvific, they provide a hermeneutical principle, related to the Jewish tradition of ‘critique from within’.”

Drawing upon the speech of Cardinal Ivan Dias to the Bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, Dr Wright said the church should take Mary as its model and embody “fiat (mind), magnificat (strength), conservabat (heart) — but also stabat, waiting patiently in the soul, the tradition and expectation of the church, for the new, unexpected and perhaps unwelcome, but yet saving, revelation,” he said.

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So where does that leave us?

Well, firstly there is the matter of the complainant. I am not aware as to who Richard Chartres received the formal complaint from, but he or she should by now have received a copy of the Bishop’s report. Whether the process concluded at section 11 or 12, the complainant has a right to appeal. That means that we may not have heard the last of this. If anybody knows who the formal complainant actually is, do let us know!!!!

Secondly, the fact that the process appears to have concluded at section 12 and 13, and given that the Bishop threatened to take further action against Dudley were he not to permit his letter to be published, implies that despite the paucity of an apology in Dudley’s letter (regret rather than repent – where have we heard that before) it is very clear from the disciplinary procedure that what Dudley did was wrong. The key to the interpretation of the letter is this sentence:

I undertake not to provide any form of blessing for same sex couples registering civil partnerships

.

The implication is clear. What Chartres is threatening is not just action against Dudley, but action against anybody who now performs any form of blessing of a civil partnership (i.e. to equivilate it in any way to a marriage).

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From here:

The Assistant Bishop of London has issued the following statement regarding the service that took place at St Bartholomew the Great on 31 May.
Dear Colleagues,

I am contacting you all on Bishop Richard’s behalf since, as you know, he is currently away on holiday.

Earlier this year, the Bishop wrote to you regarding a service held at St Bartholomew the Great on May 31st, which had generated considerable publicity and consternation.

Since this time, under the Bishop’s instructions, the Archdeacon of London has carried out an investigation into the matter, alongside the Chancellor of the Diocese. This has involved a series of frank discussions with the Rector, Revd Dr Martin Dudley.

As a consequence, the Rector has made expressly clear his regret over what happened at St Bartholomew the Great and accepted the service should not have taken place. Bishop Richard has considered the matter and has decided to accept the Rector’s apology in full. The matter is therefore now closed.
To avoid any uncertainty over what has been said, I have enclosed below, with the Rector’s permission, his statement of apology to the Bishop:

“I can now appreciate that the service held at St Bartholomew the Great on 31 May 2008 was inconsistent with the terms of the Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops issued in 2005. Whilst the precise status of this pastoral document within the Church of England generally and the Diocese of London in particular may be a matter of differing interpretations, I ought to have afforded it far greater weight. I regret the embarrassment caused to you by this event and by its subsequent portrayal in the media. I now recognise that I should not have responded positively to the request for this service, even though it was made by another incumbent of your Diocese, who is a colleague, neighbour and friend of us both nor should I have adopted uncritically the Order of Service prepared by him and his partner. I had not appreciated that the event would have been attended by so many nor that it would have attracted the publicity and notoriety which it did.

“I share your abhorrence of homophobia in all its forms. I am profoundly uneasy with much of the content of the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Statement which anecdotal evidence suggests is being widely, though discretely, disregarded in this Diocese and elsewhere. Nonetheless, I am willing to abide by its content in the future, until such time as it is rescinded or amended, and I undertake not to provide any form of blessing for same sex couples registering civil partnerships.”

As I say, following the Rector’s full and frank apology, the Bishop considers the matter now closed.

With best wishes and prayers

Pete Broadbent
Assistant Bishop of London

The real cause of the violence against Christians in Orissa, and now elsewhere in India, is the fear among extremist Hindu movements that many “untouchable” and “tribal” people will turn to the Christian faith because of the appalling treatment they receive from their caste-ridden communities and the love and care they are shown by Christian humanitarian organisations. Some of those who receive such care, but by no means all, become Christians of their own free will. Is this so unacceptable in secular and democratic India?

Scores of Christians have been murdered. Their homes, churches, presbyteries, convents and charitable institutions have been destroyed, allegedly in retaliation for the murder of a Hindu swami and some of his followers, probably by Maoist insurgents. During this time, it seems that the state authorities have not allowed Christians from other parts of India, let alone elsewhere, even to bring relief to fellow believers. The Federal Government also appears to have been paralysed and ineffective.

There is an outcry when a single Hindu is killed, and Christian leaders have strongly condemned any such incident. Christians in Orissa are, however, rapidly running out of cheeks to turn.

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At this synod on the Bible, however, one of the “fraternal delegates,” meaning a representative of another Christian confession, has more star power than most Catholic prelates in the hall: Anglican Bishop N.T. “Tom” Wright, the bishop of Durham in England, and one of the world’s best-known New Testament scholars.

In a room full of people who devour Biblical commentaries the way others churn through spy novels, heads turn when Wright walks in the room.

Though a committed member of the Church of England, Wright belongs to that wing of the Anglican Communion that stresses the grand tradition of Christian orthodoxy shared with Rome. He’s known for respectful, but firm, clashes with liberal Biblical scholars such as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan on matters such as the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.

Especially among English-speaking bishops and experts at the synod, Wright has been one fraternal delegate who needs no introduction. Several bishops who know Wright only by name have asked to have him pointed out, or to be introduced to him, because of their esteem for his work. In some cases, bishops have said that meeting Wright has been a highlight of the synod.

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The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, has agreed that the relationship between Synod and the episcopacy needs to be clarified. He said: “Synodical government served us well in the early days but it’s been a kind of juggernaut. I think it’s got totally out of control.”

Bishop Reade spoke against the Synod becoming parliamentary with two competing sides: “Ideally I think the House of Bishops should be there, and we should be listening to the debate, and we should go away and make the decisions.”

He said the clergy and laity should vote, but that it should simply be used as information for the bishops. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, had also spoken in July against using General Synod as a parliament, emphasising that the Church was managed by synod, rather than governed by it.

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However, in a typically Anglican effort to find a compromise, the group responsible for drafting the crucial legislation is now suggesting that traditionalist clergy should be given their own “flying bishops”.

This is being proposed as a potential solution to avert a mass exodus of clergy despite the General Synod rejecting this option.

While traditionalists may not be getting the separate areas for male-clergy only that they wanted, this nevertheless represents a remarkable about-turn.

If the bishops meeting this week decide to back this proposal, many of those who had celebrated only three months ago that the prospect of the Church’s first woman bishop was drawing nearer will feel betrayed.

Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Anglican Provinces, Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops

It seems to me that’s also near the point the Prince of Wales was making over the summer with his intervention about GM crops – it’s time we learned to work with nature as our teacher rather than against her. What’s happening at the moment both to honey and to money speaks of a world that’s out of kilter.

The poem by George Herbert is called Providence – all 38 verses flow from a faith that everything is a gift, that all is connected and exists for the praise of God. When that particular thread is pulled the whole fabric eventually unravels

One of the ironies of the present money crisis is that printed on the back of an American 10 dollar bill are the words “In God we Trust”. But all the talk is about ‘lack of confidence’ and everything being ‘out of control’. Maybe it’s time for politicians to listen to poets, for our leaders to learn from nature and for the managers of money to learn from those apian makers of honey about how to create wealth without others having to suffer loss.

Read the whole thing.

Beleaguered Christians in India have “run out of cheeks to be struck” a senior Anglican bishop declared yesterday, on hearing reports that a Christian mob had hacked a Hindu to death in the troubled state of Orissa.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, called for peace, and said that the murder, conducted by a knive-wielding mob of 50 Christians, could not be condoned. But he told The Times: “For months now, scores of Christians have been killed, homes, convents and presbyteries have been burnt down to the ground.”

He said: “Now one Hindu has been killed, allegedly by Christians. We do not know under what circumstances but it suggests that the worm has turned and the Christian community has run out of cheeks to be struck.”

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Have we come so far from our Catholic tradition that we have forgotten the power of martyrdom, on which the Western church is built? Does no-one in TEC understand any more the meaning of sacrifice?

Because a martyr is what Bob Duncan now is. The Episcopal Church should not need a heretically catholic Anglican such as me to tell it that the next step up from martyrdom is sainthood. Bishop Duncan’s office has been inundated with emails, phonecalls and letters of supportm since the ill-advised deposition. Since Friday, he has had personal messages from six primates, including ++Anis and ++Chew, indicating their intention not to recognise the deposition and to support the Pittsburgh “remnant”. There have been all kinds of other ones as well from various bishops, clergy and laity all over the world. They are being catalogued on a new site, set up specially to venerate the deposed bishop.

And now in England, six bishops are pledging their support and saying they will continue to recognise him. Surely that is momentous enough to warrant an archiepiscopal comment? Or perhaps all pretence of episcopal collegiality has been abandoned.

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Forward in Faith deplores the deposition by the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church of the Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert William Duncan. Bishop Duncan is a faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and a respected leader of faithful Anglicans both in and beyond The Episcopal Church. His summary deposition shows scant respect for due process and calls into question both the political wisdom and Christian charity of the Presiding Bishop. We welcome Bishop Duncan’s admission to the College of Bishops of the Southern Cone, and call upon all other orthodox bishops to assert their solidarity with him as a bishop in good standing in the Communion.

–(The Rt. Rev.) John Fulham

Chairman

Forward in Faith International

David Say, former Anglican Bishop of Rochester for 27 years from 1961, and who died in 2006, is to have a stone monument in his honour.

The memorial stone is to be dedicated at Rochester Cathedral, England’s second oldest, having been founded in 604AD by Bishop Justus, in memory of the town’s long-serving former bishop, David Say.

The member of the House of Lords until his retirement in 1988 will have a dedication of his memorial stone in a service at the cathedral, at 3.15pm on Saturday.

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