Two contract extensions in spite of the fact that the City councillors unanimously said no to the rezoning application. Two extensions in spite of the feelings of the neighbours who want the church to remain a church and in spite of the hopes and prayers of local congregations who are longing for usable worship space. Preserve a church as a church? Why do that when you can reap an extra million dollars by selling to a developer who specializes in high-density construction?

The words of Bill Mous, spokesperson for the Diocese, ring hollow to anyone who has a stake in the neighbourhood surrounding the church property. The Diocese “cares deeply for Guelph”? This community does not feel cared for.

Read it all.

Evidence suggesting senior clergy tried to cover up sex abuse by an Anglican bishop has been uncovered by the BBC.

Two priests raised concerns about Peter Ball but were urged to keep quiet or saw no action taken, it has emerged.

And a couple who worked for now-jailed Ball, former bishop of Lewes and Bishop of Gloucester, said they also tried to raise concerns but were ignored.

Ball’s offending is the subject of an independent review and a national inquiry is looking at Church abuse.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Hiltz also said that after his meeting with Welby, he came away “encouraged by his [Welby’s] clarity in terms of what the Primates’ Meeting is and what it’s not.”

The Primates’ Meeting “is not a decision-making body””it’s a body for people that come together to pray and discuss and discern and offer some guidance. We don’t make resolutions,” Hiltz said.

Since it was announced that Archbishop Foley Beach, the leader of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), would be present for the first part of the meeting, Hiltz said there has been concern in some quarters over whether or not attempts will be made to confront The Episcopal Church (TEC) over its decision this year to allow same-sex marriages. But Hiltz said Welby was quite clear that the meeting would not exclude any of the primates of churches that are members of the Anglican Communion.

“His principle is one of full inclusion of all the primates. I think he will encourage, and if need be, challenge, the primates to uphold that principle,” Hiltz said.

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A spokesman for the Winchester Diocese said: “Canon Jeremy Davies made an application earlier this year for permission to officiate in the Diocese of Winchester.

“Due to the Church of England’s position on same sex marriage, as set out in the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance, Canon Jeremy Davies has been informed that his application has been unsuccessful.”

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Forward in Faith has published a new book entitled Fathers in God? Resources for reflection on women in the episcopate.

The Chairman of Forward in Faith, the Rt Revd Tony Robinson, has commented: “To some our theological case is well-known, but others say not just that they disagree with it but that they do not understand it. It is over nine years since the General Synod briefly debated the theology. In the Church of England at large there is at least one generation to whom it has never been presented. We are committed to upholding all of the Five Guiding Principles. In publishing this book we are not seeking to re-open what the second Principle calls the Church of England’s ”˜clear decision’. But the fourth Principle bases provision for us on the fact that we hold a legitimate Anglican ”˜theological conviction’: we therefore feel obliged to articulate what that theological conviction is. And the third Principle locates the Church of England’s decision within a ”˜broader process of discernment within the Anglican Communion and the whole Church of God’: this book contributes to that process.”

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The Right Reverend Martyn Snow (aged 47), studied at Sheffield University and then trained for the ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He served his first curacy at Brinsworth with Catcliffe and Treeton in the diocese of Sheffield from 1995 to 1997. He worked for the Church Mission Society in Guinea, West Africa from 1998 to 2001.

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The author of the blog “Ten Tips for a Man-Friendly Christmas Eve Service”, which was removed from a diocesan site after an “unedifying” online debate, has defended its content.

The author, the Vicar of Stanford in the Vale with Goosey and Hatford, and Diocesan Missioner (Unreached Men), the Revd Paul Eddy, advised the employment of “masculine imagery and language”, the use of a video clip from an action film “as a metaphor”, and the presentation of “Christ the man rather than Christ the infant”.

Churches should “focus teaching on Christ’s power and mission”, he wrote, “rather than just his meekness and gentleness.”

The reaction online to the blog was mixed. Some described it on Twitter as “sexist” and “patronising”; others found the tips helpful.

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The Church of England could agree to the genetic modification of human embryos, its medical ethics adviser has suggested.

The controversial method known as germline editing could be used to cure inherited diseases and treat infertility. There have been concerns, however, that the changes are passed on to future generations.

Critics of the technology, who include several European governments, have called for a global ban on the ground that it could be unsafe and might lead to “designer babies” genetically enhanced to have greater strength or intelligence.

Britain is running several pioneering gene therapies, and ministers have hinted that they could allow scientists more scope to carry out fundamental research on embryos.

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Some much-loved Christmas songs add things to the narrative which aren’t all together helpful. ”˜Away in a Manger’ is one such culprit ”“ how do we know Jesus didn’t cry? And don’t get me started on ”˜Little Donkey’. I mean, a little donkey, carrying Mary, following a star? Really?

I know some of you will be fuming by this point, and I’m being deliberately provocative, but take a moment to think it through. The Bible Christmas story has no donkey, no innkeeper, no kings apart from Herod. What it does have is God’s promised saviour come to live with his people. It’s a life-changing story, one that promises eternal life.

What I’m getting at, in my roundabout, ranty way, is this: we have reduced the greatest story we can tell ”“ the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ ”“ to a series of clichés and non-Bible sentiments. The world is crying out to hear this story of salvation, so let’s tell it with all the shock, surprise, joy, drama, grief, happiness and life of the biblical account. This awesome, powerful story doesn’t need a donkey or a badly acted innkeeper. It needs people willing to share the good news and the difference it has made to them.

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Speaking as the Church of England’s lead on the environment, Bishop Nicholas has welcomed today’s agreement at the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris. After two weeks of talks, participants have committed to hold the increase in global temperatures to ‘well below’ 2-degrees above pre-industrial levels, alongside clear rules on transparency and reviews of carbon emissions every five years.

Speaking about the COP21 agreement, Bishop Nick Holtam, said, “is good to have an ambitious agreement about the aspiration. What matters now is that governments actually deliver a low carbon future – the transparency of accountability and process of review will be what ensures that happens. This looks like real progress – there is now a much more positive spirit about what now needs to happen than after Copenhagen six years ago, but we are still at an early stage on the journey.”

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There was a time not so very long ago when the most common complaint about Christmas was that it had become too commercial and that its Christian significance was being forgotten. Since then the decline in religious belief in Britain has grown so much that the secularity of Christmas is taken for granted. It is effectively a pagan festival now. According to the Church of England, only about one million people, or around two per cent of the population, still attend church on Sundays (though about twice that number do so on Christmas Day). The Church is in a bad way, and it is only natural that it should seek, as it has always done, to recruit new members by proselytism: hence its decision, in the run-up to Christmas, to use modern media for the purpose and screen a 60-second commercial in cinemas featuring the Lord’s Prayer.

I haven’t seen the commercial, but it sounds jumpy and irritating in the way that most cinema advertisements are. It reportedly shows the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, reciting the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, with the other lines being said in succession by different groups of people including schoolchildren, refugees, policemen and weightlifters (why weightlifters?).

It may well be irritating, but certainly no more so than all the other advertisements for such things as motor cars, watches, drinks, deodorants, or Jeremy Clarkson advertising his new paymaster, Amazon. But it has been banned by Britain’s biggest cinema chains on the grounds that it would offend cinema audiences. Digital Cinema Media (DCM), the company that handles most of Britain’s cinema advertising and is owned by Odeon and Cineworld, announced very late in the day, well after it had been approved by the appropriate authorities, that the C of E’s commercial should not be shown because it had a policy of not screening religious commercials on the grounds that advertisements reflecting personal beliefs risked ”˜upsetting or offending audiences’.

Read it all from the Spectator.

The Anglican Diocese of Niagara is giving community groups a two-month window to come up with a revised development proposal for the patch of land at 171 Kortright Rd. W.

The Diocese made the announcement in a news release on Wednesday.

Earlier this year, HIP Developments made a conditional offer on the property that was formerly the St. Matthias Anglican Church. When residents and community groups complained about the proposed six-storey, 325-resident condominium geared toward student housing, the developers offered a plan for stacked townhouses instead.

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The court found that the Bank had a contract with the Diocese, as represented by the Bishop in Council and that there was a real guarantee made to honour the loan. Further, the court found that the BiC has an obligation to promote the necessary ordinances to levy the funds required (i.e. general diocesan assets including, if necessary, church buildings and properties should be sold to make good the debt).

This obviously puts the diocese in a dire position. It is widely acknowledged that it will be unable to meet these debts and continue to function in any general sense as it currently does. So where to from here?

It’s less than 24 hours since the judgement was passed down but I’ve been able to canvas a range of responses from senior and informed figures in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Amongst many there is a genuine sorrow for the diocese which is now facing a major crisis, and also for Bishop Ian Palmer who is not in perfect health. But options are limited. This will now be a test of the national church’s understanding of its own mutuality. To what extent should other dioceses get involved to help out? What role should the Primate or the General Synod take? When the crisis first developed a financial advisory group went to meet with then Bishop Hurford. They were, it’s fair to say, sent packing. More recently at a General Synod Standing Committee meeting one member urged the Standing Committee to “either send a condolence card or stand shoulder to shoulder”. But which will it be?

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Imams and rabbis in the House of Lords; non-Anglican representation at the next coronation ceremony; the abolition of the requirement for schools to hold an act of worship; less selection of pupils by religion for faith schools; and humanists on Thought for the Day are among the recommendations in a new report on religion in public life, published on Monday.

The 104-page document Living With Difference: Community, diversity and the common good makes dozens of recommendations, and suggests an overhaul of British institutions and culture, from the BBC to counter-terrorism strategy, to ensure that the diversity of religious belief in the UK is properly represented.

The report is the result of two years’ work by the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, which was set up by the interfaith Woolf Institute. It has heard more than 200 submissions since summer last year

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“There’s no question in my mind that on the agenda will be the subject of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and its place in the life of the communion, the place of Archbishop Foley [Beach] with the primates,” Hiltz said in an interview.

Beach, head of the breakaway conservative group ACNA, has been invited to attend the first day of the gathering, but Hiltz said some primates might insist on his full attendance.

“I have a sense, though, that there will be some that will exert some pressure on [Welby] with respect to wanting to have Archbishop Foley continue to stay for the meeting,” Hiltz said. “I am hoping to get a clearer picture”¦of what he [Welby] sees as the dynamics around our actual gathering, and our actual staying together for the course of the whole meeting.”

Hiltz said he had heard “rumblings here and there” that some of the more conservative primates might refuse to participate in the meeting if Beach is not allowed to attend. He said, however, that he believes it is still possible for a good meeting to be had if it is organized properly.

Read it all from the Anglican Journal.

For me the money paragraph is this one:

Perhaps inevitably, the report seems largely concerned with institutions rather than with individuals: how, for example, do you encourage “more structured dialogue between those who are religious and those who are not”? [6.35]. Such an encounter would not be between the Joe Bloggs in the pew and the Joanna Bloggs who wouldn’t be seen dead in one ”“ it would almost certainly be between senior members of faith communities and senior members of organisations such as the BHA and the NSS. That is not to belittle any of those organisations: merely to query the degree to which “faith leaders” necessarily represent the people whom they claim to lead. Part of the problem with the current situation, it seems to me, is that what faith and community leaders (of all faiths and none) decide on moral and ethical issues sometimes fails to trickle down to their wider communities.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Read it all (104 page pdf). From their own pr:

Politicians need urgently to overhaul UK public policy on religion and belief, to take account of the increasing impact of religion globally, set along side the less religious, less Christian and hugely more diverse nature of our society here in Britain.

That is the key conclusion of Living with Difference: community, diversity and the common good, a major report published today (Monday 7th) by the Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life convened by the Woolf Institute and chaired by Baroness Butler-Sloss. Amongst the report’s most striking proposals are:

Representation in the House of Lords to be opened up to other faiths, offsetting the number of bishops, and the next coronation to become a pluralist
A reduction in the percentage of admissions on the basis of religion by faith schools
Re-focusing anti-terror legislation on promoting, not limiting, freedom of enquiry, speech and expression, and engagement with a wide range of affected groups
The creation of a new bottom-up Magna Carta-style statement of values for public life, as an alternative to the Government’s approach to defining so-called ”˜fundamental British values’.

You can read the full pr if you wish to as well.

I ask, on that basis, who are the archbishop’s heroes? From whom in history does he draw his inspiration? One name stands out. Revealingly, it is not an obvious name that sends a popular signal, but a figure obscure to most, not an Anglican celebrity but a Catholic martyr, not a European mover and shaker but a voice from the developing world, not a power in any land but a suffering servant.

”˜Cardinal Van Thuan spent 13 years in a communist prison after the fall of South Vietnam. He was in solitary confinement. But he led his torturers to Christ. He converted, taught, and ordained priests in prison. He breathed in the presence of Christ.’

There aren’t many contemporary Christian leaders who are both energetic in their condemnation of the crimes of communism and robust in their analysis of the evil of Islamism, but Justin Welby stands out. There is something special about him. And his candour, commitment and kindness are gifts in which all can share this Christmas.

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A young boy has been killed and two people injured after an armed gang attacked a church in the Burundian capital Bujumbura. No motive for the attack on St Mark’s Church, Ngagara, is known; but it is believed to be part of ongoing violence that has left more than 240 people dead since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced in April that he would seek re-election for an unprecedented third term. President Nkurunziza won July’s election and survived an attempted coup.

“This kind of attack is common in the capital here,” a spokesman for the Province of Burundi told ACNS, “but it is the first time that a church has been attacked. Ngagara is one of the places that is often attacked. Often there is gunfire and shootings in the place.

“It was an attack by a group of people. One person has been killed and two other persons have been injured. One is the wife of the assistance pastor of St Marks and [the other] his child.”

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Anglican bishop for Upper Shire Brighton Malasa has squarely put the blame on Malawi leaders for the problems facing the country.

Malasa said in an interview that Malawi leaders do not have plans for Malawians whenever they are getting into government.

“Yes, we have some misguided civil servants who steal money from the government but largely our leaders are to blame,” said Malasa.

President Peter Mutharika has blamed the cashgate and donors pull out as the major reasons for the economic turmoil.

However, it had to take the opposition, civil society g

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During its six-year insurgency in northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and displaced millions in its bid to realize its fundamentalist vision of an Islamic caliphate. In that quest, it has persecuted Nigeria’s Christian population and sought to exterminate Christian clerics, including Hassan John, an Anglican pastor from Jos, central Nigeria.

John, 52, is used to living with the perpetual threat of Boko Haram. “Every Christian cleric anywhere has the same bounty on his head,” says John, who is currently studying at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics in the U.K. “If you are a pastor or a priest, from Jos all the way to Maiduguri, you do have a bounty on your head.” The price of John’s life, according to the militant group, is 150,000 naira ($754)””slightly more than the going rate for an iPhone 6s in Nigeria. The bounty, however, has not stopped him from reaching out to Nigeria’s Muslim community in order to build bridges burned down by Boko Haram’s violent actions.

The Anglican pastor is currently studying in Oxford, but will return to his hometown of Jos in July, where he works with Muslim communities. Jos, the capital of Plateau state, lies in the central belt of the West African country. Nigeria is roughly 50 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian, but the vast majority of Muslims are concentrated in the north””the epicenter of Boko Haram’s insurgency””while Christians tend to live in southern states. Jos, as John describes it, lies on “the fault line between the two forces.”

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Read it all from the Church of Ireland.

On the eve of the Paris summit on climate change, St James’s Church Piccadilly highlighted the perilous state of the polar ice caps by hosting a giant melting ice sculpture.

The artwork entitled ”˜Her floe-fall lament (COP21)’ was created by artist and placemaker Sara Mark.

The installation, which lasted less than a day, was created by a column of frozen water, on top of an oil steel drum melting into the cavity below. The steel drum was burnt and was made as hot as possible before installation, and then surrounded by wood ash, not only to separate the sculpture from people who might touch, but to suggest that destruction of trees are not helping the environment.

The work, placed in the centre of the nave, to disrupt normal church proceedings, was an accompaniment to discussions on the end of days and looking to Christ for hope, which is central to the Advent message. After the evening service, everyone processed around the sculpture, to a fire in the courtyard of the church, which cemented the idea of the delicate balance in the environment of heat and cold, which makes up the world.

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A priceless collection of historic treasures including the execution papers of Mary Queen of Scots and a prayer book recovered from the body of Richard III is to get a new home in the first new building at Lambeth Palace for 180 years.

The palace’s library ”“ the largest collection of religious books and manuscripts in Europe apart from the Vatican ”“ is to be moved into a new multi-million purpose-built building in the palace grounds amid concerns its current home could not preserve the reassures to modern standards.

Proposals are at an early stage but the Church of England’s financial arm, the Church Commissioners, has announced that it has chosen the London architects’ practice Wright & Wright ”“ run by a husband and wife team Sandy and Clare Wright – to develop the plans.

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It is a report that accurately reflects the anxiety and uncertainty about national identity that many now feel over how rapidly the UK has changed over the past 30 years, although it may well perhaps irritate both secularists and Christians who feel their voice has been marginalised.

What is indisputable is that we are now part of a globalised, interconnected and increasingly unsettled world in which the disputes within and between religions in other nations – from the Middle East to Africa and Asia – are reflected back into the UK, sometimes creating or exacerbating tensions between different communities here.

The commission’s conclusion is that how the UK responds to those changes will have a profound impact on public life, with education at all levels and dialogue between faiths and those of no faith both crucial components of that response.

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This column is presented as an open letter to Michael Bird, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Niagara.

On behalf of the Citizens for Community and all the residents of Guelph, I would appeal to you not to renew the Anglican Church’s conditional purchase agreement with HIP Developments for 171 Kortright Rd. W. Yes, you have the legal right to sell the St. Matthias church property – and to the highest bidder. That’s all you have though. You don’t have the moral right. The land is community space ”“ for the people of Guelph.

You represent the Anglican Church. People expect higher moral standards of churches, not lower. If you sell the property, zoned “institutional” for a much higher “residential” or “high density residential” amount, in the middle of a single home family neighbourhood, the Anglican Church will be held responsible. You will have failed morally.

You can do better. The Anglican Diocese bought the land in 1981 for $110,000. It was zoned “institutional” and for a reason. Communities need lands zoned “institutional” for different faiths, hospices, nursery schools, service clubs, seniors’ centres, not-for-profit housing, and a host of other organizations. To buy land zoned for “institutional,” and then turn around and sell it for “residential” or “high density residential,” at a much higher profit, and to not accept fair market offers from other churches, is immoral. The word on the streets of Guelph is greed. People also aren’t interested in money reinvested in Guelph that is more than the value of the property as “institutional.” That would be tainted money. It would be totally unjust for Anglican ministries to be financed at the expense of the McElderry neighbourhood and their families.

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In their annual joint Christmas greeting posted on YouTube December 4, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and Bishop Susan Johnson, national bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, urge church members to “give an extra gift” in support of refugees.

The message begins with Hiltz’s reflection on the story of the birth of Jesus, focusing on the rather negative light in which we often see the innkeeper.

“As I read the Christmas story I’m always taken by the way in which we portray the innkeeper as the one who said to Mary and Joseph, ”˜No room here,’ when in fact he did provide them a warm and safe place for the birth of the holy child,” Hiltz says. “Yes, it was a manger, but for them it was a warm place, and a safe place.”

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Almost 1,500 years after St. Augustine of Canterbury founded England’s first Christian church in 597 A.D., the British people have been told in no uncertain terms that they’re no longer living in a Christian country.

A sensational report released this week by the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life challenges this country’s time-tested moral and public values system. In language that raises eyebrows ”” and tempers ”” the report says the United Kingdom should cut back the Christian tone of major state occasions and shift toward a “pluralist character.”

Events such as coronations should be changed to be more inclusive, it says, while the number of bishops in the House of Lords should be cut to make way for leaders of other religions.

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…Fanaticism is real and nightmarish, and if we can’t tell the difference between sane and mad religion, we have lost a significant skill. Equally, if we treat one another as infants who can’t cope with actual disagreement about cultural and moral matters, we do no one any favours.

The happy result of the ban on the Lord’s Prayer advert has been, predictably, that an impressively large number of people have watched it online. It’s an ill wind. But the fact of the ban brings into focus one of the least sensible and helpful aspects of the way a lot of people today think about religion.

Such people forget what religion ”” specifically Christian religion ”” has made possible, despite its historical failures and scandals. And they nurse the dangerous illusion that the values of a majority (or rather the values of the feverish and prosperous minority who dictate what we have to watch before Spectre or Carol begins) are the right ones, never to be challenged.

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Did you ever wonder why the world is the way it is? Or what your purpose in life is? Or what good is the church? Or why there are so many religions? Or whether things will be okay?

People have been asking big, existential questions like these for a long time. Members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue of Canada (ARC Canada) are asking them again””and offering some responses””in a new ecumenical common witness initiative called “Did You Ever Wonder”¦”: Small Answers to Big Questions.

“With this project, our national Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue is attempting something new: how can we witness to our commonly held faith together?” explained Anglican co-chair Bishop Linda Nicholls.

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