A Church of England bishop has accused the Government of penalising stay-at-home mothers and carers by discriminating against families in the tax and benefits system.

The criticism came after an inquiry by a Christian charity to be launched on Tuesday found that that married couples with only one earner keep less of every extra pound they earn in the UK than in any other country in the developed world.

Last month, church leaders including 27 Anglican bishops condemned the Coalition’s welfare policies for causing hardship and hunger, and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said its benefit cuts were “a disgrace”. Now the Government is under attack for being “anti-family” in a study carried out by the charity Christian Action Research and Education (CARE).

Read it all from the Independent.

A new good practice document on the appointment and training of clergy who manage curates and readers – training incumbents – has been published by the Church of England. The “critical” role of training incumbents is to look after the continuing development of more than 1500 clergy and readers who are training each year as part of their ministry to the church.

The report Good practice in the appointment and training of training incumbents was showcased at an event held in Sheffield for Diocesan representatives with a presentation by the Bishop of Doncaster, Peter Burrow.

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Robed in a flowing, full-length purple cassock, the Rev. Canon Melissa Skelton stood with her back to the crowd of over a thousand people in Vancouver’s Convention Centre last Saturday and faced her inquisitors: fifteen bishops of the Anglican Church. She answered each of their questions in a clear, confident voice.

The slim, grey-haired grandmother was about to be ordained as Vancouver’s first female Anglican bishop. Formerly a brand manager for Procter & Gamble, Skelton is also the first businessperson — and first American — to be made Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster, headquartered at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver.

As a Roman Catholic, I attended Melissa Skelton’s investiture partly out of curiosity and partly in solidarity. It was the first time I’d participated in an Anglican service and I was struck by the similarities with my own tradition; the prayers and responses were practically identical.

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The man responsible for the Church of England’s £6bn endowment has defended plans to increase its investment in hedge funds, arguing that not all of the industry has “devil’s horns”.

Andreas Whittam Smith, First Church Estates Commissioner, told the Financial Times that the Church’s own ethical watchdog sanctioned short selling, providing it was done in a responsible way.

He added that the group “does not have ethical concerns about short selling per se as an investment practice,” and “did not make an ethical distinction between seeking to profit from a rise in the value of a security as against seeking to profit from a fall.”

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Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, was filled to capacity on Sunday, March 2 as the Very Rev. Doctor Logan McMenamie was consecrated bishop in the church of God and installed as the 13th bishop of the diocese of British Columbia.

The Most Rev. John Privett, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and the Yukon presided and was the chief consecrator.

The Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, was the chief celebrant of the eucharist. The Most Rev. Caleb Lawrence, assistant bishop and diocesan administrator, and the newly consecrated bishop, the Rt. Rev. Logan McMenamie, assisted him.

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Despite ”” or perhaps because of ”” their long, shared and often tortured history, there is a curious fondness between some Britons and some South Africans. Two events this week, far-flung and disparate, illustrated some of the ambiguities, too.

Indeed, it almost seemed as if South Africa’s Jekyll-and-Hyde soul was weaving itself anew into the relationship, offering the conflicting visages that make any definition of Africa’s 20-year-old “rainbow nation” so elusive, particularly in a land that has, in turn, been its invader, its overlord and its champion.

Here, in the soaring, august confines of Westminster Abbey, 2,000 congregants, including Prince Harry and Prime Minster David Cameron, assembled Tuesday for a memorial service to Nelson Mandela, who died in December. It fused liturgical solemnity and Anglican pomp with the light and sound of a Soweto gospel choir, feting the inclusive Mandela legacy in rousing renditions of both nations’ anthems, “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” and “God Save the Queen.”

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#WithSyria is a global coalition urging world leaders to end the violence and suffering of millions of Syrians. The Church of England has joined the campaign and opens the call to provinces across the Communion.

March 15th marks the third anniversary of the crisis. #WithSyria wants to make sure this year is the last. They said:

“After three years of violence, we must show our leaders that we will not give up on the people of Syria, that they must act to bring an end to the bloodshed and to get aid to all those who need it.”

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Thank you for your news story on Monday entitled “Church ready to split from England on Homosexuals.”

I would like to make a very important clarification, and hope you will publish this clarification as widely as you did the first story, because the story paints a very misleading picture of the Church of Uganda’s actual relationship with the Church of England.

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…We are all over stimulated. Blessed Lent, the sad springtime of the Church’s year is the time when we support each other as believers in simplifying our lives; removing fuel from the fires of rage and fear; facing a little more of the shadow world within by laying aside some of our usual comforters…

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Channel Islands churches could stop paying money to the Diocese of Winchester and instead pay it into a shared fund.

Lay members of the Anglican Church in Jersey have brought forward the plan.

Bruce Willing, a lay member, says paying the money into a shared fund will help if they decide to become a separate diocese.

The Channel Islands split from Winchester in January after a dispute over how abuse complaints were handled.

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The Church of England is ramping up the exposure of its £6bn endowment to alternative investments such as hedge funds and private equity in a move that will cement its position as one of the UK’s largest single investors in these types of assets.

The Church Commissioners who manage the endowment will meet next month to decide on the fund’s allocations and are set to increase its exposure to alternative investments, which also include residential property and farm land, according to a Church spokesman. Alternatives already account for almost a third of the fund.

Read it all (if necessary another link may be found there).

Ashes to Go is a national movement that aims to allow as many people as possible to participate in the start of Lent.

Canon Paul Rattigan, Liverpool Cathedral’s Canon for Discipleship said:“Ashes to Go provides the opportunity for people to take part in the Lent tradition even if they can’t get to a service. You can call in to the cathedral in your lunch hour or whenever you can during the day.”

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A gathering of church representatives from around the country have set out plans for a sports conference to be held in a number of dioceses, where sports advisers will link churches with local sporting opportunities.

The national event was convened by the Bishops of Barking and Stepney, in Chelmsford and London respectively – the host dioceses for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games – in partnership with Christians in Sport.

Churches were successful in engaging with the London 2012 Games in all the places where they took place and can continue to build on this Olympic legacy and use sport to serve their local communities and increase their witness across the country as a whole.

Read it all.

The Church of England is launching a year long project on Twitter to tell the story of the Church of England through the eyes of its people, providing a daily insight into modern faith in action.

The Project – @OurCofE – will be launched on 3rd March 2014 where over the course of a year, bishops, clergy, chaplains, youth workers and churchgoers from around the country will be given a week each to tweet about their life inside the Church of England.

The project is inspired by similar twitter accounts such as @sweden which was set up by the Swedish tourist board who invited people to take turns in tweeting their life in Sweden for a week, each with their own unique view of the country.

Read it all and Kate Reynolds has comments there.

Hamish Ogston pledged the money to the Anglican Church shortly after the February 2011 quake and, after seeing nothing had been done with the building, has reiterated his offer.

Mr Ogston says there is only a $15 million shortfall after his pledge, other offers and insurance money.

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1. Is new life downtown becoming an Anglican Church?
No. New Life Downtown is a parish of New Life Church. Your giving goes 100% to New Life Church. I am “sent” as an Anglican priest to serve New Life Church. As such, I continue to be under Pastor Brady’s covering and authority, along with the elders of New Life Church. While New Life Downtown does not come under any Anglican authority, I personally hold a “dual citizenship” of sorts, with Bishop Ken Ross as my covering in the Anglican world.

2. What do Anglicans believe?
Anglican theology is, to put it simply, Protestant theology. Their central document is the Bible — they are committed to the Bible as the Word of God — it is God breathed and it is the truth by which we order our lives. They also believe that Jesus is the unique Son of God — that salvation is found only in His sacrificial death and resurrection. This faith in what the Bible reveals is summed up in the historic statements of belief such as the 39 Articles and the Nicene Creed.

Because Anglicanism is not a denomination with a solitary authority figure””it is a communion of bishops””the diversity within Anglicanism worldwide is rich and varied. The majority of Anglicans are in the global south””in Africa and Asia”” where Christian orthodoxy and missionary zeal are combined in ways reminiscent of the early church. The majority of them are Evangelicals who affirm the authority of Scripture and embrace the work of the Holy Spirit.

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Last week, sitting in a little pub in Dorset and about to sip my pint of Doombar, I was approached by the local vicar. He’d officiated at my daughter’s wedding last year and knew I was a Green, although he probably doesn’t know I’m an atheist.

He asked me if I had heard of the Diocese of Salisbury’s initiative called “Carbon Fast”, which aims to encourage parishioners to reduce the carbon footprint of their households but also their churches, by 40 per cent during the 40 days of Lent.

I hadn’t, but looked up the website, which says: “The result? Better stewardship, enhanced worship and witness, and new disciplines for the future. In response to globally recognised ecological concerns, dioceses across the South West are challenging a destructive culture of ease and wastefulness.”

Read it all.

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On the eve of [Melissa] Skelton’s consecration, I caught up with her for some questions:

Q. How do you explain your strong showing in the vote for bishop?

A. I’ve wondered a lot about this very thing. All that I can imagine is this: it had to do with the fact that I’m a woman and that I’ve had significant experience in developing congregations and assisting them to grow spiritually and numerically.

Q. Since Bishop Ingham was a controversial figure in the 70-million member global Anglican communion, how will you handle his legacy?

A. I intend to listen and learn a lot about what this experience has been like for the diocese ”” the positive parts of this and the more difficult parts. I’m trying to come to this with a real beginner’s mind, not making assumptions about people’s experience. By the way, I’m fully supportive of offering blessings of covenantal relationships between same-sex couples in the Anglican Church.

Read it all.

For Anglicans considering how to observe Lent this year, the Anglican Church of Canada is offering two online resources””one, a study of the Gospel of John and the other, a study of baptismal identity.

Love life: Living the gospel of love is a Lenten video series produced by the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) for the Anglican Church of Canada. Those who subscribe will begin receiving daily emails starting on Ash Wednesday, March 5, which will include short videos and a thought-provoking question to ponder during the day.

Read it all.

The Bishop of Leicester, Rt. Revd. Tim Stevens and the Bishop of Birmingham, Rt. Revd. David Urquhart, have released a joint statement today in response to the draft child poverty strategy issued by the government.

The Bishops said: “We welcome the Government’s firm commitment to ending child poverty by 2020. The measures announced in this paper are a step in the right direction, though much more will need to be done to enable us to come close to achieving this very ambitious target. As the economy recovers we encourage the Government to pursue policies to ensure that the proceeds of growth will be shared by low income families with children, and by other groups that have been most adversely affected by the recession.”

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst call thy servant David to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries for the people of Wales: Mercifully grant that, following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

Dr Macneil’s Public Teaching
During a series of lenten sermons in 2013, whilst preaching on the parable of the Prodigal (Luke 15), Dr Macneil stated the following:

Although we tend to hear [the parable of the Prodigal] as a parable highlighting God’s welcome to all sinners, expecially those who have lurid pasts, like the younger son, its placement in the Gospel of Luke aims it straight at the religious authorities – the goody two shoes upholders of the faith. Will they join the party? Or will they stick to their rigid adherence to the Torah, tithing even the herbs in their cupboards, but neglecting mercy and compassion?

We can ask where it is that we are working within rules that neglect mercy and compassion.

Is it the Anglican Church of Australia’s reluctance to allow the ordination of gay people in same sex relationships?

While this is a rhetorical question, the intended meaning is transparent. Macneil is advocating for the ordination of people in same sex relationships as something that is good and godly “mercy and compassion”.

In a sermon at St Luke’s Enmore, Sydney, in October 2010, Dr Macneil gave a clear description of Penal Substitution and then labels it as ‘mechanistic and grim’.

It is clear from the gospel [Luke 10:1-9] and from Acts that Luke is not thinking of salvation and atonement in terms of what we now call penal substitution. This view uses the logic of retributive justice and argues that it was Jesus’ death on the cross that saved us from our sins and brought us into right relationship with God. A debt had to be paid for human sin and disobedience in order to satisfy God’s demands of justice. This is what made Christ’s death upon the cross necessary. In his great love for us, Christ is therefore said to had taken the punishment deserved by all humanity upon himself.

This rather mechanistic and grim understanding of atonement, prevalent not so very far from here, was not part of early Christian thought and clearly not part of Luke’s thought world. Nor does Luke regard Jesus’s death as a sacrifice or as an expiation for sin. His focus is more on Jesus’ life and on the wholeness that is brought to humanity through contact with the suffering Messiah.

There is no doubt in the gospel that Jesus is the Messiah, no doubt that he will suffer and die, but the wholeness that comes to people because of him, comes from their encounter with him.

Jesus’ presence is what brings life, peace, forgiveness of sins and right relationship to God

This same redefining of the atoning death of Jesus, is expressed in her Sermon for Christmas 2012:

Of course, some would argue that this is irrelevant – that Jesus’ sole purpose was to provide our passport to salvation, a mission he fulfilled very effectively, if somewhat mysteriously, by dying. He was, in short, a man born to die. If we believe that he is God, then everything will be OK. In this way of seeing things, the focus really belongs on his death and resurrection. The events of the 33 years or so between birth and death were pretty irrelevant really and just show us that he really was the long expected chosen one of God.

But I want to argue a very different kind of line. For I believe that the birth of Jesus as a human child, as one of us, has a much richer significance than that and is indeed infinitely more challenging. The incarnation is not some sort of crazy rescue plan; it is a systematic and timeless revelation to humanity about what it is to be human and about our relationship with God. Jesus’ life is not so much to show us who he is but rather to show us who we are, and who we are in relationship with God.

What Dr Macneil responds to here is a false dichotomy (that those who teach the atoning death of Jesus insist that his life is irrelevant), the same movement away from Jesus’ atoning death to an exemplar life, as she attempted to do at St Luke’s in 2010, is clear.

How Dr Macneil’s teaching conflicts with Anglican formularies and the Scriptures…

Read it all from here

Anglican priests in Enugu State on Thursday blocked the entry gates of eight primary and secondary schools, preventing academic activities.

The schools are located within an environment known as Women Training Centre. They include Urban Anglican Girls Secondary School, Metropolitan Anglican Secondary School and City Anglican Secondary School, as well as five primary schools.

The clerics were protesting an alleged directive to authorities of the schools by the state Ministry of Education that they should cease dealing with the Anglican Church on the ground that government had repossessed mission schools.

Read it all.

The simmering dispute between the Anglican Church and the Enugu State Government deepened on Thursday, leading to a shut-down of activities at some parts of the state.

The latest crisis followed moves by the Enugu State Government to reclaim some schools owned by the church.

Before now, the leadership of the Anlican Church in the State had consistently accused the Chime-led government of having some bias against it.

Read it all.

There will be some notable absentees when history is made in Grafton tomorrow.

The Right Reverend Sarah Macneil will attend a ceremony in the Grafton Cathedral to be consecrated as Australia’s first female leader of an Anglican diocese.

But she says some senior figures in the church will not be attending…

Read it all.

The Archbishop of York, Dr Sentamu, has described the House of Bishops’ pastoral statement on same-sex marriage, which he signed a fortnight ago, as “Anglican fudge”.

The Bishops have also been challenged over the accuracy of their guidance, issued on 15 February. In it, they reiterated the ban on same-sex marriages in church, and stated that clergy may not enter into gay marriages… Several priests have publicly declared their intention to defy the Bishops.

Dr Sentamu, speaking at a meeting of Jewish and Christian students in Durham in the middle of last week, said that the Church of England’s position was that “a clergy person has a right, an expectation, to live within the teaching of the Church, but for lay people and others they should be welcomed into the Church.

Read it all.

The Bishop’s Palace at Wells was discussed by the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners at its meeting last Tuesday (25th February). This was the first meeting of the Board since it made its decision at the end of November last year.

At the meeting the Commissioners were given an opportunity to read the correspondence received and examine the petition recently presented to the Secretary to the Commissioners. They were also provided with a report of the public meeting attended by Sir Tony Baldry MP.

During their discussion the Commissioners discussed the views of those opposed to their decision and acknowledged the strong feelings that the decision had aroused within the diocese. It was noted that there were also voices of support for the decision.

Read it all.

One of the marks of bold leadership is clarity. The faith we proclaim is the truth as it is revealed in Holy Scripture, not a human invention, and it presents us with a choice between two ways. One leads to life, the other to death. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls those who would follow him to enter by the narrow gate, not the wide gate that leads to destruction, (Matthew 7:13,14) and I believe it is significant that his warning about false prophets follows in the next verse. This is what false teaching in the Anglican Communion today is like. It is the wide gate that accommodates secular permissiveness and breaches biblical boundaries in doctrine and morals.

After the praise that greeted the news that Oxford University is to honour the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States with an honorary Doctorate in Divinity, it was helpful to be reminded of the sober facts in the Statement issued by the Global South Primates Steering Committee last week. It was recognized that ”˜the fabric of the Communion was torn at its deepest level as a result of the actions taken by The Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church in Canada since 2003’ and the Communion’s London based institutions were described as ”˜dysfunctional’.

The breadth of the wide gate can be dangerously appealing as an easy choice, avoiding the need for theological discernment and church discipline. This is why I have already written a response (http://gafcon.org/news/a-response-to-the-statement-by-the-archbishops-of-canterbury-and-york) earlier this month to the Statement of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York about pastoral care for people who engage in same sex relationships.

Sadly, the lack of clarity in that statement about the biblical understanding of such relationships has been repeated in the pastoral guidance issued subsequently by the Church of England’s House of Bishops as same sex ”˜marriage’ becomes legal in England and Wales next month. While the Church’s official teaching on marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman is affirmed, it is effectively contradicted by the permission given for prayers to be said for those entering same sex ’marriages’.

Read it all

As Prime Minister David Cameron enters into tortuous negotiations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the future shape of Europe; and as Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson threatens to resign over certain secret assurances given to Irish Republican terrorists classified as “On The Run”; and as the Ukraine descends into a bloody civil war about historic matters of ethnicity, identity, religion, and whether or not Russia is more Christian and free than the EU; and as Syria (remember that?) pours out a vast sea of destitute and diseased humanity, where Christians are beheaded and mothers die in childbirth; spare a thought for Church of England as it continues to agonise over the House of Bishops Pastoral Guidance on Same Sex Marriage.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to move on (with an ecumenical focus on social action projects), but the Bishop of Oxford has written a letter to his clergy in which he pours out his anguish and sorrow over the House of Bishops’ statement, and explains his personal torment and the torture deep within his soul over the limbo caused by the statement. For Bishop John, civil partnership is not and can never be the same thing as marriage, and he has long trodden a narrow path which has pleased neither wing of the sexuality divide. It is not so much a question of sheep and goats, as which pasture is most conducive for spiritual grazing and where the theological grass is greener. But the inadequacy, ambiguity, obfuscation and internal contradictions contained in the Bishops’ Dog’s Breakfast Pastoral Guidance would do Sir Humphrey proud. For some, it comes as a great relief; for others, it is cruel and absurd. God reveals Himself in His Word, which requires exegesis, interpretation and a grasp of its fundamental Sitz im Leben. But the Bishops cloak Him in shadowy puzzlement and shroud the Word in smog. Doing theology in this context is nigh impossible.

This guidance permits the Church of England to begin the facilitated conversations that were advocated in the Pilling Report. There is no predetermined outcome, but the distrust and suspicion on both sides clouds understanding, makes prayer a profound spiritual struggle, and fellowship a depressing hassle.

Read it all.