Kenyan Archbishop David Gitari was one of the most influential and theologically astute Bishops in the Anglican Communion. His sermons, expounding the Scriptures, combined challenges to personal conversion with prophetic denunciations of local and national injustices.

He held a high doctrine of the authority and power of God’s Word in the Bible and applied it with shrewd and brave political acumen, reading the signs of the times and warning about hinges of history. In 1988 his courageous sermons led the national critique of replacing the secret ballot with voting by queuing up behind photos of candidates. He survived an assassination attempt on his life in April 1989.

At the 1988 Lambeth Conference, he chaired the resolutions committee and gave a paper on Evangelization and Culture; just before the 1998 Lambeth Conference, he received an honorary DD from the University of Kent and the opening Eucharist of the conference was the Kenyan Service of Holy Communion, which he inspired and shaped as the innovative chair of the Liturgical Commission.

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Most of interest to me–“Troubled But Not Destroyed’ the title of the late Dr. David Gitari’s un-released autobiography.”

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The newly constructed St. Jude’s Anglican Cathedral in Iqaluit, Nunavut, may close its doors unless funds are raised to pay the balance of its construction debt, according to the diocese of the Arctic.

The diocese has paid more than $7.5 million toward the cost of constructing the cathedral, but still owes the construction giant, Dowland Contracting Ltd., about $3 million.

The diocese had been paying this debt as funds were raised, based on an “informal arrangement worked out directly with the [company],” said its diocesan bishop, David Parsons. However, in May, Dowland Contracting Ltd. was put into receivership; it filed for bankruptcy protection in July.

The receiver, Alvaraz and Marsal Canada, Inc., is now asking the diocese for immediate payment of the $3 million debt, plus $30,000 per month in interest.

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The 2012 office and working costs of bishops in the Church of England are published today. Figures for individual bishops were first published, for the year 2000, in December 2001.

The costs of their offices and the work of the bishops for 2012 was £20.0 million compared to a cost of £19.5 million in 2011, an annual increase of 2.5%.

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The Archbishops says he will now carefully consider his position….if you take the first part of the resolution – it says the diocese ‘recognises diversity within the diocese of Perth, both in our sexual identities and our theologies of human sexuality’.

“What I said last time is that I thought that this was theologically flawed. I am speaking to you as a human person made in the image of God. I don’t see you or engage with you on the basis of your sexual identity.

“The other big issue for me, with the royal commission [into child abuse] clearly attentive to how we use language and words, what this resolution says is that I must formally accept people with an open ended recognition of diverse theologies on sexual identity.

“I think we have to be very careful there….”

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The death [of the] Archbishop (Emeritus) brings into focus the role of the church in community empowerment and mobilization. In the history of the Bible whenever God anointed a king, he also anointed a prophet; King Saul had Prophet Samuel while King David had Prophet Nathan. These two institutions worked hand in hand also ensuring that the leadership was held to account. Even today, God continues to call leaders into both offices. The late Archbishop Gitari was the Nathan and the Samuel of our time. He was called at a time when the government of the day needed to be put into check.

He did not hesitate to boldly criticize the government from the pulpit along with fellow clergymen such as Reverend Dr. Timothy Njoya, late Bishop Henry Okullu and late Bishop Alexander Muge. He carried the hearts of many Kenyans and was never afraid to speak his mind when the government went wrong. As such he was a true defender of democracy and a man who stood his ground on what he saw as oppressive and dictatorial leadership.

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The Church of England has launched a fierce attack on the government, describing limited resources devoted to training religious education teachers as a scandal that is affecting “an essential part” of every child’s studies.

In an outburst that reflects the church’s deepening unease at the government’s perceived lack of support for the teaching of RE, it singled out the education secretary, Michael Gove, for implicit criticism, calling on him to work with religious leaders to improve the level of teaching in what is a core subject in the national curriculum.

The criticism comes as a damning Ofsted report, published… [recently], finds that more than half of all schools have been failing pupils in their religious education, a subject that the watchdog claims is increasingly important “in an ever more globalised and multicultural 21st century” because of the way it promotes respect and empathy.

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The Church of England today welcomed the decision by the Scout movement to keep a “Duty to God” in its core promise introduce and to introduce an additional alternative promise for those without a religious faith.

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The Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Accra, Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel S. M. Torto, has condemned excessive alcoholism among Christians, especially Anglicans, in public.

According to the Who Health Organisation (WHO), the harmful use of alcohol results in 2.5 million deaths each year, and 320 000 young people, between the age of 15 and 29, die from alcohol-related causes, resulting in 9% of all deaths in that age group.

Alcohol is the world’s third largest risk factor for disease burden; it is the leading risk factor in the Western Pacific and the Americas, and the second largest in Europe.

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The Commonwealth Bank has frozen several of the Bathurst Anglican diocese’s accounts as it moves to recover as much of the $36 million debt owed as possible.

The sale of the Orange Anglican Grammar School and the Macquarie Anglican Grammar School in Dubbo, finalised last Monday, “crystallised” the amount of debt hanging over the head of the troubled diocese, according to Bishop Ian Palmer, but has left it in a “very difficult place”.

“I am unable to see clearly what the diocese may look like in the future,” Bishop Palmer said in a letter read out to parishes across the diocese.

“[The debt] is large and we cannot repay the bank in full.”

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The church synod voted by a two-thirds majority to call for legal acknowledgment of civil unions between people of the same sex.

Rector of Darlington-Bellevue Anglican parish, the Reverend Chris Bedding, presented the motion to the synod.

“We presented a motion saying that the Anglican Church and the Diocese of Perth would like to acknowledge that legal recognition of same-sex relations can coexist with legal recognition of marriage between a man and a woman,” he said.

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The Roman Catholic Co-Chair of the Third Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC III) has expressed his personal view that, seeing how in 1993 certain relaxations were made in the Vatican’s rules on eucharistic sharing, further relaxation is possible.

Speaking last week to the Gazette editor following a joint session of the National Advisers’ Committee on Ecumenism of the Irish (Roman Catholic) Episcopal Conference and representatives of the Church of Ireland’s Commission for Christian Unity and Dialogue, at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the Most Revd Bernard Longley – Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham and ARCIC III Co-Chair -referred to the changes in “specified circumstances” set out in the 1993 Ecumenism Directory.

He commented, “Given that that represents a change, and a very significant shift away from the impossibility to the limited possibility, then I could imagine and foresee one of the fruits of our ecumenical engagement as moving towards a deeper understanding of communion and a deeper sharing, a deeper communion between our Churches which perhaps would lead to reconsideration of some of the circumstances.”

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Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, bishop of the diocese of Kaduna in Nigeria, said he believes there are extreme conservatives and liberals within the Communion, but a majority of about 70 per cent of Anglicans are in the middle and want the Communion to hold together.

Idowu-Fearon, in speaking about the Communion’s instruments of unity””the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council””offered suggestions for making them more effective, including creating a commission to decide whether the Lambeth Conference should be designed for talk or decision-making; giving the Archbishop of Canterbury direct oversight of the Anglican Consultative Council; and the idea that each primate could come to the Primates’ Meeting, accompanied and advised by both a liberal and a conservative on controversial issues.

“I think, as Anglicans, it is about time we stopped running away from the fact that we are two groups””the liberal and the conservatives,” Idowu-Fearon said. The primates might not agree, but there is an opportunity for building understanding, he said, adding that recommendations from the Primates’ Meeting could then be taken to the Anglican Consultative Council, like a synod. “If this Communion has a mission, which is to unite the church, we must learn to accommodate one another,” he said. “The conservatives have been very arrogant, the liberals have been very despotic, and I believe we both need to ask the world for forgiveness”¦”

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A radio advertisement for a prayer vigil at St Paul’s Cathedral has been rejected because it is too “political”.

Premier Christian Radio planned to run a brief commercial advertising the vigil, which takes place next Monday.

The station condemned the decision by the RACC, the commercial radio advertising clearance body, as a “gross perversion of reality flying in the face of basic freedoms”.

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…this is also the time of the year when the party conferences are finishing and it seems to me that this year something similar has been going on between the conferences. As one follows another the language and the atmosphere of political passion has been picked up and has spilled over from one to another so that this year, instead of the more usual bland speaking to the middle ground, the distinctive fruit of each of the parties begins to ripen and become clearer. As we head towards a general election in a couple of years’ time this clarity of choice might well be good for democracy, although I hope that we can avoid personal attacks on party leaders, and at the moment we also have a warning from America of what happens when political parties become so distinctive that they won’t talk to one another ”“ shut down.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that he was ”˜moved to tears’ to welcome recently-released Nigerian archbishop Ignatius Kattey and his wife, Mrs Beatrice Kattey, to Lambeth Palace yesterday.

The Most Revd Ignatius Kattey, who is Dean and Archbishop of the Niger Delta Province, and Mrs Kattey were kidnapped on 6 September near their residence in the southern city of Port Harcourt. Mrs Kattey was released a few hours later, but Archbishop Kattey was held for more than a week.

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One of the myths about this Diocese in Europe that is very frustrating to put to rest is that we are a basically a religious club for English people living abroad.

While many of our over 300 congregations have many, or even in some cases mostly English members, particularly in areas of the Diocese where a number of British people have retired, it is simply not accurate to describe our Diocese as the “Brits Abroad”. We are a home for all who wish to worship with us, and that includes not just the English (and certainly not just Church of England folk) but English-speakers from a host of countries around the world. There are also some of our congregations which worship in languages other than English….

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On church affairs, the Bishops agreed to an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Niassa in northern Mozambique in response to strong church growth, and took decisions on problematic issues within the Dioceses of Pretoria and Umzimvubu.
Provisional accreditation of courses at the church’s seminary, the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown was welcomed.

They also warmly welcomed the announcement that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, with his wife, will attend their second ”˜Anglicans Ablaze’ conference in July 2014.

Speaking after the meeting, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba, said ”˜this was a very encouraging time. Within a deeply prayerful context, we tackled a very broad agenda, from church governance through to global faith and political issues. In a short time we made significant progress on a number of matters. God is God of the whole world ”“ and he will guide us in our calling to lead his people in every walk of life, and follow the example of all the saints who have gone before us.’

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THE decision by the Church Commissioners to join a new banking consortium marks a new hands-on approach to investment, the Commissioners’ Secretary and chief executive, Andrew Brown, said this week.

Mr Brown spoke to the Church Times after the banking giant Royal Bank of Scotland…announced that a Commissioners’ backed consortium had been selected as the preferred bidder for 314 of its branches, which will be spun off from the bank to comply with European Union state-aid regulations. The plan is for a new ethical bank under the old Williams & Glyn’s brand.

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What comes into your head when you hear the word “pilgrim” ”“ not, admittedly, a frequent occurrence these days? For some it may be the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower, but for many it must be: “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend/Shall him dispirit”, or some other lines from John Bunyan’s great hymn ”“ “Who would true valour see/Let him come hither”¦”, which actually has an alternative first line, “He who would valiant be”¦” Anyone brought up in one of our Protestant churches will have sung that hymn, To Be a Pilgrim. As a child I always used to belt out the hobgoblin and foul fiend line, albeit tunelessly. Even today it’s a favourite, and sometimes appropriate, funeral hymn.

Now, a group in the Church of England is so concerned about the seeping away of our inherited Christian culture that, alarmed by the discovery that even the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments are unfamiliar to many, it is offering parishes what it calls “the Pilgrim Course” to teach “the basic tenets of Christianity”. “Give us each day our daily bread”, as you might say.

This seems an excellent idea, whether you are a believer and practising Christian or not.

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‘When I say I’m a church recorder, people often look blank,” says Adrian Parker. “Others,” he adds with a chuckle, “seem to think I’m some sort of senior judge.”

It is a confusing moniker. When I first heard it, it conjured up an image of recorder players lining up alongside the choir in the church stalls. “I suppose there are worse titles,” concedes another of their number, Matt Smith, “but at least it intrigues people and that gets them asking more about what we do.”

Parker and Smith are both church recorders in the King’s Lynn area of north Norfolk. What they actually do is volunteer one morning a week to go along to a local historic church (of which Norfolk boasts more than its fair share) and compile for posterity a complete inventory in words and pictures of its fabric and internal furnishings.

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If you can hear church bells ringing in Manly on Sunday night, the NRL premiership trophy is likely on its way back to the northern beaches.

Reverend Bruce Clarke from St Matthew’s Anglican Church in Manly has cancelled his regular Sunday night service and will transform the house of God into an Eagles nest as a live viewing site for this year’s grand final.

More than 300 people are expected to flood into the church to watch the Sea Eagles do battle against the Sydney Roosters. It will be the second time in three years the church has cancelled its Sunday night service for a Manly grand final.

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‘Capitalism With A Human Face’ was the title of a well-known book written by Sir Samuel Brittan, a leading economic commentator, shortly before the year 2000.

Sadly, the financial calamities of the first decade of the 21st century have revealed that ”“ sometimes at least ”“ capitalism has a very far from human face. Indeed, more than occasionally it has seemed to have the countenance of a monster.

But now, under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it looks as though the Church of England is attempting to give capitalism the opportunity to develop a new appearance ”“ even a Christ-like face.

The start of this month has seen the news that Justin Welby is hoping to draw up a ten-year action plan with the aim of forcing payday lenders such as Wonga out of business.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has sent a message of support to an anti-human trafficking conference organised by the Christian organisation Hope for Justice.

In a message sent to the Hope Conference 2013, which took place last Friday and Saturday in Leicester, Archbishop Justin said that trafficking was ‘one of the greatest scandals and tragedies of our age’. He prayed that the conference ‘might help to transform awareness, as the world urgently needs to wake up to the scale of human trafficking that is modern day slavery’.

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A new Christian discipleship course for church congregations and groups of all traditions was launched yesterday at Lambeth Palace.

”˜Pilgrim: A course for the Christian journey’ is part of the Church of England’s focus on spiritual and numerical growth. It is the first national discipleship course to be commissioned by the House of Bishops.
The programme ”“ which promises ”˜participation, not persuasion’ ”“ seeks to reach parishes that have never run courses of this kind, as well as to offer additional approaches to churches to already running programmes such as Alpha.

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The dawn chorus always used to be accompanied by the distinctive chink of bottles being collected from doorsteps.

Now most of us buy our milk from supermarkets, so deliveries are fast becoming a thing of the past.

The number of glass bottles of milk delivered annually has fallen from 40 million in the early 90s to just two million today.
Going to church

Only 15% of us go to church more than once a month. In 1968 around 1.8 million people attended, but by 2007 that figure had almost halved.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is preparing a “ten-year plan” to put payday lenders such as Wonga out of business.

A Church of England task force will, in collaboration with the Church of Scotland, make church buildings available to credit unions and recruit expert churchgoers as volunteers to help to run them. A leading financier is to meet the archbishop this week on whether he would lead the task force, which will include academics who, it is hoped, will produce a radical new theology of finance.

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Archbishop Justin said today: “David Gitari was an Archbishop of great courage who preached the Word of God steadfastly, both in season and out of season. He was a gifted and committed servant of the church who served our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully. He had an enormous vision for development and for social justice and was not afraid to promote change, always reminding the church to retain a critical distance from political power. His concern for prayer and promoting love and harmony has continued to the end of his life through his welcoming of so many to the Philadelphia Guesthouse near Mount Kenya. He will be remembered with much affection and admiration around the Anglican Communion. His family and the whole Anglican Church of Kenya are in our prayers.” – See more at: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5146/archbishop-justins-tribute-to-archbishop-david-gitari-1937-2013#sthash.YOCA3vdC.dpuf

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