Sixteen church-goers have been arrested and priests have been turned out of their homes in Zimbabwe’s Diocese of Harare ”“ where the Anglican Church is facing persecution at the hands of an ex-communicated bishop.

The Rt Revd Chad Gandiya, Bishop of Harare, said the arrests were illegal and that those detained ”“ including a elderly woman ”“ were traumatised.

The diocese is now trying to arrange bail and has asked for prayers for those in prison and their families.

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Religion, like politics, is often a dangerous business in this country.

As President Robert Mugabe, 87, pushes for an election this year, the harassment of independent churches seen as hostile to his government has intensified.

Truncheon-wielding riot police officers stormed a Nazarene church here in the capital last month to break up a gathering called to pray for peace. Days later, the authorities in Lupane arrested a Roman Catholic priest leading a memorial service for civilians massacred in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s decades in power.

Mr. Mugabe, a Roman Catholic, recently denounced black bishops in established churches as pawns of whites and the West, singling out for special opprobrium Catholic bishops who have “a nauseating habit of unnecessarily attacking his person,” the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported.

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The priest of the 19th century St George’s Church is grateful that the church has return to its former glory thanks to the RM1.8 million restoration project under the National Heritage Department’s Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Venerable Charles Samuel said church members were very grateful to the government’s contribution in the refurbishment of the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia. The restoration project was completed in November last year.

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The first ever international consultation for Anglican Communion theological college Principals and Deans, gathering together representatives from 27 countries, has been held in Canterbury. We celebrate and affirm the vital significance of theological education for the life and health of the Church and the whole people of God. We believe that good theological education has transforming power, and can promote a global understanding of Anglican identity. Our consultation has contributed to the unity of the Anglican Communion, as well as enabling various models of ecumenical engagement to be explored. We identified through our meeting a shared commitment to fostering active and discerning Christian discipleship which embraces holistic mission and enables the building up of the Kingdom of God.

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Anglican Lord Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, the Rt Rev Dr Alfred Reid, has questioned the moral authority of the country’s leaders as he deli-vered the charge at the recent 141st synod of the Anglican diocese at the Breezes Resort and Spa, Falmouth, Trelawny.

Bishop Reid said the country was plunging deeper and deeper into an abyss of fear and despair as it struggled to define the line separating the constituted authority and the criminal underworld.

“What is the state of our Jamaican society at this time…in a case such as ours where the lines are blurred that should have differentiated constituted authority from the criminal underworld, and the ordinary citizens is most vulnerable not knowing who to trust and who to fear, where an honest person must compete with extortionists of various types and where the underground economy is probably bigger than the official one?” he asked.

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Read it all–loved the pictures.

Archbishop Maurico José Araújo de Andrade is a genial huggy-bear of a man who has been called to the helm of the Episcopal Church of Brazil in uncertain times.

Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest country, both by mass (8.5 million square miles) and population (more than 200 million people). Most Brazilians call themselves Roman Catholic, but these days Pentecostals worship in about equal numbers. The presence of high-profile Pentecostals on the national football team is just one sign that the star of Pentecostalism continues to rise.

Roman Catholic parishes in Brazil are large, plentiful and highly visible. Most stay open all the time. Dotted all over cities and towns are tiny chapels of various Pentecostal affiliations. In the daytime they tend to be shuttered, but they come alive at night as people punctuate boisterous sermons with amens and pray fervently for promised material blessings.

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Canon Callaway, Deputy for Anglican Partnerships at Trinity Wall Street, is widely known throughout the Anglican Communion, particularly for his work in forging enduring links with the Church in Africa and establishing mutual partnerships as a model for ministry.

CUAC is a worldwide association of over 120 institutions of higher education and a network of the Anglican Communion. Its patron is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. Along with its predecessor, the Association of Episcopal Colleges, which consists mostly of the Episcopal colleges in the US, CUAC’s mission is promoting cross-cultural contacts and educational programs.

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In brief:

Standing Committee: “Africa, Asia and Oceania should appoint more ACC members”
Membership of Anglican Communion now at “85,000,000”
Young Anglicans to write book on historic Edinburgh meeting
Additional Mark of Mission on peacebuilding reviewed
The Anglican Alliance “driven by the global south”
Provinces ”˜adopting’ Anglican networks should be “a way forward”.
Communion urged to mark international days against gender violence

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The second meeting of the Steering Group of TEAC 2 (Theological Education in the Anglican Communion) took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, February 17 ”“ 24 2011, at the invitation of Bishop Chad Gandiya, Anglican Bishop of Harare and a member of the Steering Group. It was chaired by Archbishop Colin Johnson of Toronto, Canada.

Although problems with obtaining a visa for Zimbabwe had prevented several members of the Steering Group from getting to Harare, and their input was missed, the fidelity and witness amidst persecution of Bishop Chad and his clergy and people offered a vital context for TEAC’s work.

The Group offered two days of ”˜Continuing Ministerial Education’ to about 80 clergy from the Diocese of Harare and other Dioceses of the Church of the Province of Central Africa. The training developed themes explored in the Signposts statement which seeks to set out the essentials of the Anglican Way, ”˜Formed by Scripture’, ”˜Shaped through Worship’, ”˜Ordered for Communion’, ”˜Directed by God’s Mission’. Members of the Steering Group gained as well as gave, honoured to meet with the courageous clergy of the diocese and learn of their experiences. The powerful Shona song, “Namata urinde” “Watch and pray” (which can be heard in the audi player below) marked the beginning and end of the teaching sessions and seemed an extraordinarily apt watchword for these Christians standing firm in their faith in spite of difficulties and dangers.

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Anglican leaders have condemned the act of burning of the Qur’an on March 20 in Florida, United States. Bishop Alexander Malik of the Diocese of Lahore, Pakistan, said that “Such acts were in flagrant contradiction to the teaching of Christianity”¦ They were the manifestations of sick minds busy in spreading hatred, bigotry and unease in society.”

In Peshawar, Pakistan, Bishop Humphrey Peters noted that this was a “shameful act” performed “only to gain cheap popularity”. Bishop Peters was speaking at a press conference alongside members of a Peshawar based inter faith group ”˜Faith Friends’ at which colleagues from the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities also expressed their anger at the action.

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Check it out–nice title: mission omission.

Sri Lanka’s Anglican Diocese of Colombo, a short while ago elected Ven. Dhiloraj Canakasabey, uncontested, as the fifteenth Bishop of Colombo.

The Diocesan Council of the Diocese of Colombo of the Church of Ceylon (Anglican Church) elected the incumbent Archdeacon of Nuwara Eliya, Ven. Dhiloraj Canakasabey as the shepherd for the Anglican Seat of Colombo.

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The Anglican Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf will now be able to ordain women as priests, appointing them to serve in churches in the region, and one of the first could be in Cyprus.

The announcement was made at the annual Synod of the diocese in Larnaca last week, and was warmly welcomed by members. Rt Rev Michael Lewis, bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, reported that his request to have permission to ordain and appoint women had been granted by the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. The other dioceses of the Province: Egypt, Iran and Jerusalem will not be affected by the change.

The first ordination of a woman priest is likely to take place in June, when the Rev Catherine Dawkins, currently serving as a deacon and assistant in the Yemen chaplaincy, will be ordained in Bahrain cathedral. The diocese has one woman training to be a priest.

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Father Satoru Kato, 56, until recently an Anglican priest working in England, is set to enter full communion with the Catholic Church and be ordained a Catholic priest.

According to Father Hiroshi Oka of the Saitama diocese, who has been helping coordinate the convert’s entry into that diocese, once he is ordained Kato will work at a welfare institute and parishes as an assistant priest in Gunma Prefecture. Since Christmas, he has been doing interim work in Gunma.

Since Kato is married, Oka began to educate lay Catholics last December, explaining that priests are frequently married in Eastern Rite communities of the Catholic Church. “At first, there was a general feeling of displeasure among the laity,” Oka explained, “but I think that has mostly dissipated.”

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It can be a challenge for a person to uproot their entire family and move to a new country and culture, but for Anthony Pettit and his family, the newest vicar at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, the move has proved to be a blessing.

Dressed in a typical clerical collar, but with the addition of a cross earring, Rev Pettit, along with wife Ruth, and sons, Ben, 9, and Sam, 7, arrived in Bermuda in the early autumn of last year, and have settled in well within the church and the community.

“The warmth of their welcome they’re lovely people,” Mrs Pettit shared of their new church family at St. Paul’s.

“They are such faithful people,” Mr Pettit added.

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(By Cheri Wetzel).

The Rev. Jeffrey Miller of St. Helena’s, Beaufort South Carolina delivered the homily. Here are my notes from this homily, which was excellent.

Tertullian, a Roman theologian, said, “We are but of yesterday, yet we have felled every spot you occupied. We have left nothing to you but empty broken tokens of your gods.”In the short span of 200 years, a formerly persecuted sect filled the whole earth and even invaded Caesar’s palace.
How? Edward Gibbon wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that Christians felt it was the sacred duty of each person to share their faith. Why is Christianity struggling and shrinking across the West and Islam growing? Because you and I have failed. We have become convinced that it is impolite, impolitic and rude to discuss in public our faith. We believe that our faith is a private matter and is best kept to the self. This is decidedly not how the disciples or the early Church felt.
Remember that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem? Jesus was walking down the street and the people were ripping palm branches off the trees and shouting. It was pandemonium. The disciples ran to Jesus and begged him to make the people stop. He replied, “If they are silent, even the rocks will cry out.”
His last words to his disciples before his ascension into heaven were, “Go ye into all the world and make disciples”¦”
So let me ask you. Is it impolite, impolitic and rude to warn someone about a speed truck that is heading their way? Is it impolite, impolitic and rude to tell someone about a cure for cancer?

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You may find the agenda here; we appreciate your prayers.

Please note the William Mckeachie piece on the Conference here also. It begins as follows:

Mere Anglicanism is all about witnessing to the God who, amidst all the ups and downs of church history, has called us — whether as laity or clergy, whether as Episcopalians or members of some other Anglican entity, whether locally or globally — to renew our witness to the One who gave us the Gospel and who across the centuries has providentially provided for the Anglican Way of faithfulness to that Gospel….

The Reverend Professor Robert Darwin Crouse died in his sleep at his home in Crousetown, Lunenburg, Friday night. He had been very ill for several years but he played the organ for the Liturgy at St Mary’s Crousetown the Sunday before last.

It is a passing so momentous for so many, including all of us in the Department, that I can say nothing more at present than to express my thanks to God as Professor Crouse’s perpetual student for all He did for us through this great scholar, spiritual father, saintly exemplar, and unsurpassable teacher.

A student of James Doull, with him he refounded the Classics Department, giving it the character which it now has and which has made it so exceptionally successful. No student of his ever ceases to hear him and so
to walk in the presence of the Logos.

Dr Wayne J. Hankey
Carnegie Professor and Chairman
Department of Classics with Religious Studies
Dalhousie University and Kings College

In its 100-plus years Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of English Catholicism, will have seen few stranger sights than Saturday’s procession of three Anglican bishops’ wives, in matching beige coats, one with an outsized brown hat, going up on to the high altar to embrace their husbands, all newly ordained as Catholic priests. Catholicism isn’t that keen on women on the altar ”“ to the pain of the demonstrators from the Catholic Women’s Ordination movement protesting outside the cathedral’s doors ”“ and it doesn’t usually countenance priests having wives.

But this was no ordinary ceremony. Almost everyone who spoke during it used the word “historic” to describe the ordination as Catholic priests of John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton, all formerly Anglican bishops.

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He was, as a number of you know, the retired part-time Professor of Classics at the University of King’s College and at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, among many other things. His health in recent years has been, alas, steadily declining.

There is a wonderful page where some of his writings are collected here.

I found a picture of him there.

An American staff member with the CMJ UK, the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people, has been murdered while on vacation in Israel.

Kristine Luken (44) an administrator with the CMJ in Nottingham was hiking in a forest southwest of Jerusalem on Dec 18 with fellow CJM staffer, Kay Wilson, a British-born Israeli, when they were approached by two Arab men asking for water. The men attacked the two women, stabbing each repeatedly. Ms. Wilson feigned death and survived the attack, but Ms. Luken bled to death.

“They came to kill,” Ms. Wilson said, telling the Israeli media that one of the attackers ripped a Star of David from around her neck and stabbed her where in the place where the star had lain.

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Bishop Neufville was a product of Cuttington College and Divinity School (now Cuttington University), where he took his undergraduate degree and later his Bachelor’s in Sacred Theology.
He served as priest of St. Martin on the Mountain in Yekepa, Nimba County. During his tenure in Yekepa, he had oversight for the construction of St. Valentine Episcopal Church in Sanniquellie, the Nimba capital.
He was later appointed archdeacon of the church’s Northern Archdeaconry, serving Bong, Lofa and Nimba Counties.

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The Anglican Bishop of Kumasi, Right Reverend Dr Daniel Yinkah Sarfo, has asked Ghanaians to put their trust in God and depend on Him for their needs.

“God knows the beginning and the end of life and we can face tomorrow if we live in Christ Jesus,” he said. He was delivering a New Year message at a watch night service held at the Saint Cyprian’s Anglican Cathedral in Kumasi on Friday….

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Christians in Iraq face a sombre and fearful Christmas, as the prospects for 2011 look, at best, uncertain.

“There’s been great fear, and there’s been a lot of anxiety,” Canon Andrew White, Chaplain of St George’s, Baghdad, told the BBC at the weekend. “We lost many of our families who have disappeared or been killed.” Some 500 of the formerly 4000-strong congregation were no longer present, he said.

The string of attacks on Christian targets this year, culminating in the siege in October of a cathedral in Baghdad in which more than 50 people were killed…, prompted the Iraqi government to erect concrete walls around churches and increase security in other ways. Despite the introduction of these new precau­tions, most churches in Iraq have decided not to risk the lives of members of the congregation, and have cancelled Christmas services and celebrations.

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Sri Lanka’s Anglican Bishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev. Duleep Kamil De Chickera, yesterday (December 19, 2010) announced that he will step down from the mantle of the ”˜See of Colombo’.

Bishop Chickera who is learnt to step down effective from December 31, 2010 had also said that he would leave the country once a successor is found for his office.

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The former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the UK’s Department of International Development, Sally Keeble has been appointed as the Director of a new cross-Communion Alliance set up to connect and strengthen the development, relief and advocacy activities of the Anglican Communion.

Ms Keeble, who has degrees in Theology and Sociology from the University of Oxford, UK and the University of South Africa respectively, will oversee the work of the Alliance (full title The Anglican Alliance: Development, Relief, Advocacy). The Alliance is made up of churches and agencies collaborating and sharing knowledge and skills to add value to the range of development, relief and advocacy activities already undertaken by Anglicans around the world.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has welcomed the key contribution that Ms Keeble will play in the development of this new initiative: “I am delighted at Sally’s appointment. She will bring a well-tried level of skill and profound commitment to the role, and I believe she is ideally suited to the task of drawing together the diverse hopes and enterprises of Anglicans around the world in our work of holistic mission.”

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(ACNS) In a spirit of fraternity, The Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan and the Catholic Archbishop of Juba registered together at Hai Jalaba referendum registration centre today. But registering, they now qualify for voting on Referendum Polling Day scheduled for 9 January 2011. Accompanying them was the presidential advisor on Religious Affairs, H E Tijwok Adheaguer.

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