The former bishop of Chester, Victor Whitsey, is being investigated 30 years after his death over allegations of sexual abuse in the latest scandal involving high-profile figures in the Church of England.

A lawyer representing four of the alleged victims has claimed the abuse was covered up by the C of E and has called for a independent review.

The allegations date from the late 1970s when Whitsey was bishop of Chester, and in the 1980s after he had retired and was living in the diocese of Blackburn.

The C of E said it had supported a police investigation into allegations of sexual offences against children and adults. The police told the church that, had Whitsey still been alive, he would have been interviewed in relation to 10 allegations. Whitsey died in 1987.

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Anglicanism claims to be an expression of Reformed Catholic Christianity, but the Canterbury [Partial] Primates Meeting held earlier this month shows once again that the Anglican Communion is in urgent need of a new reformation. I and a number of brother Primates (representing between us over half of practising Anglicans worldwide) did not attend as a matter of conscience. We cannot ‘walk together’ with those who have abandoned the teaching of the Bible, but that is what the Communiqué issued from the meeting encourages us to do. The painful truth is that the authority of Scripture is being replaced by the authority of Canterbury.

There is no mention in the Communiqué of Lambeth Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference where the vast majority of the Communion’s bishops reaffirmed the Bible’s teaching on marriage and sexuality, including the clear statement that homosexual practice is contrary to Scripture.

Same-sex ‘marriage’ is referred to merely as a difference of understanding while the only call to repentance is to those who have crossed provincial boundaries to support orthodox brothers and sisters unchurched by leaders who have rejected God’s Word.

The Conference also affirmed the LGBTI community and their lifestyle, while unequivocally disowning the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), an orthodox Anglican Province.

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Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, GAFCON Chairman, responds to Primates’ Meeting Communiqué – read it all: https://t.co/pKIBCUDBaD #Anglican pic.twitter.com/r5uaHriA5W

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) October 18, 2017

More than a million people are being reached every month with the Christian message on social media, a year after the Church of England adopted a new digital approach, new figures show.

Videos, podcasts, blogs and images including prayers are reaching an online audience of 1.2 million a month through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, according to the statistics from the Church of England digital project.

During Christmas 1.5 million were reached through the Church’s award-winning #JoyToTheWorld campaign featuring short films. A further 2.5 million were reached during Lent, the season before Easter, through the #LiveLent project.

The report has been released as new Mission Statistics showed average Sunday attendance over October 2016 at Church of England services stood at 780,000 people, a lower figure than in 2015, in line with a long-term trend.

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From 11-16 October 2017, twenty-eight Anglican Archbishops and Bishops of the Council of the Church in East Asia including the Obispo Maximo of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, met in Yangon, Myanmar with the theme ‘Living and Sharing Jesus-Shaped Life’ (Colossians 2.6) hosted by the Archbishop and Primate of the Church of the Province of Myanmar, The Most Reverend Stephen Than Myint Oo. Joining them were their spouses and clergy who are members of the Executive Committee of the Council of the Church in East Asia. The delegates were from Japan, Myanmar, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia.

The theme is inspired by the call to A Season of Intentional Discipleship and Disciple Making issued by the Anglican Consultative Council in 2016. The meeting reflected on four aspects of the theme: Church Responses to Global Extremisms, Church Responses to Peace and Reconciliation, Church Responses to Global Warming and Disasters and Church Responses to Intentional Discipleship. The speakers included Bishop Danilo Bustamante from the Episcopal Church in the Philippines, The Reverend Saw Shwe Lin from the Myanmar Council of Churches, The Reverend Michael Teh from the Diocese of Singapore and The Most Reverend Datuk Ng Moon Hing, Archbishop of the Province of South East Asia.

Besides reflecting on the theme of the conference, delegates also shared from the contexts in which their churches are ministering so that there can be mutual encouragement and prayer for the work of the churches across East Asia. The delegates were also given the opportunity to worship with local Anglican churches in the Yangon area and were greatly encouraged by the devotion of the congregations and their warm welcome.

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The Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury have given their backing to the launch today of a project aimed at mobilising the Church of England’s 12,000 parishes in the battle to eradicate modern slavery.

Theresa May welcomed the Clewer Initiative, a three-year programme to help the Church of England’s 42 dioceses work to support victims of modern slavery and identify the signs of exploitation in their local communities.

The project was being launched today at Lambeth Palace at an event attended by representatives from Church of England dioceses and other denominations, along with MPs and charities involved in work to combat modern slavery.

In a statement of support for the launch, Mrs May said: “Modern slavery is a barbaric crime which destroys the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our society. I value the work that the Clewer Initiative will be doing to enable the Church of England dioceses and wider church networks to develop strategies to tackle modem slavery.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has warmly welcomed the announcement by 10 Downing Street that the former Bishop of London is to be made a life peer.

Bishop Richard, the 132nd occupant of the see, retired in March of this year after almost 22 years in the post. He will sit in the House of Lords as a crossbench member.

Archbishop Justin Welby said: “It is wonderful to hear that Richard Chartres will be returning the House of Lords. His deep wisdom, experience and integrity were greatly valued during his two decades on the Bishops’ benches, and I pray that this new role will provide Bishop Richard with a fresh opportunity to offer those gifts in service to our national life.”

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About 80 people attended a community service of reconciliation held at All Saints Church in St. Andrews Oct. 1. The Anglican Church of Canada’s first national Indigenous bishop, Mark MacDonald, was the guest preacher.

The ecumenical service saw participation from a wide range of community churches and members, including All Saints parishioner Judith Moses, who is a member of the Delaware Nation.

The service began with a smudging ceremony led by Cate Akagi of the Passamaquody Nation. She opened the service with prayer honouring the four directions.

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People who feel their work is integral to their lives and identity may actually find it difficult to sustain productivity over long periods of time, new research from Kings Business School suggests.

According to Dr Michael Clinton, who studied the working lives of 193 Church of England ministers, people who view their career as an intense calling are less able to successfully disengage from work in the evenings which limits their energy levels the following morning.

One would assume that these people would dedicate more energy to their work. However, Clinton has discovered that having an intense career calling motivates people to work longer hours which directly limits their psychological detachment from work. In turn reducing sleep quality and their ability to focus.

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From here:

The Scottish Anglican Network is grateful to the GAFCON primates who gave courageous leadership by not attending the meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion this week. We are thankful too for the GAFCON Primates and others who did attend and who robustly supported the complementary nature of biblical marriage.

The Scottish Episcopal Church now faces the same consequences as The Episcopal Church (USA). Although these consequences are very mild indeed, they indicate that the SEC has departed from the faith once given, and that many provinces are now in seriously impaired communion with it.

We know that, “Godly sorrow brings repentance” (2 Corinthians 7:10a). We hope that the intention of the Primates’ meeting, despite the Scottish Primus’ clear determination to not turn back from the decision of his province, is to allow the Scottish Episcopal Church time to repent of the damage it is doing by its schismatic action. The sad alternative is that this is poor leadership hoping that the problem will somehow go away.

We pray that the Holy Spirit will convict the leadership of the SEC of this need to repent and that the Primates of the Anglican Communion will continue to uphold the orthodox understanding of marriage.

(Gafcon) The Anglican primates Are Not Walking Together https://t.co/hsyYQELgqQ #partialprimatesmeeting2017 #uk #spin #media #brokeness

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 5, 2017

Archbishop Ntagali, the Primate of Uganda and Vice-Chairman of Gafcon has said, ‘if we are not walking in the same direction, how can we walk together?’

In no way can these leaders, with the Archbishop of Rwanda, be said to be ‘walking together.’ They have chosen to witness to the truth by their absence.

The presence of the Primates from Canada and the United States and the absence of Archbishop Foley Beach whose Church is recognised by Anglicans around the world, is a further testimony to a Communion in which the leaders are not walking together.

Several of the other primates who are attending the meeting are equally concerned about the divisions over the authority of scripture within the Communion, but intend to remain in defence of the Gospel. The Primates are not walking together. At best, they say, “they are walking at a distance.” At worst, they are walking in different directions.

Surely public statements need to reflect reality rather than mere wishfulness.

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Found there:

“We welcome todays detailed update on the investigation into the Anglican Church in England and Wales focusing on the Chichester case study to be heard in March 2018. The Inquiry acknowledged and welcomed the contributions from all core participants in responding to its detailed request for information.  It is clear that there will be a real focus on learning to make the Church a safer place for all and we will continue to work cooperatively with IICSA. First and foremost our commitment must be to listen to survivors who take the courage to come forward and who will play a vital part in the Inquiry.”

Bishop Peter Hancock, Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop

Gavin Ashendenen, the Anglo-Catholic priest who was a chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until he resigned earlier this year, was consecrated a bishop in 2013 while he was still a chaplain to the Queen, Christian Today can reveal.

Ashenden was consecrated in secret as a missionary bishop to the UK by Archbishop Theodore Casimes of the Christian Episcopal Church, which is not part of the Anglican Communion.

Although the consecration was announced earlier this month by Archbishop Casimes, in fact it took place four years ago, a year after he ended his 20 years service as a member of the General Synod of the Church of England and after he took a post-retirement post at St Martin de Gouray in Gorey, Jersey.

He currently lives in Shropshire and resigned his orders this year as a Church of England priest in protest at what he sees as the church’s liberalising trend. Earlier, he had left his post as Queen’s chaplain in January following a row over a Quran reading in Glasgow Cathedral.

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Watch it all for those interested.

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Most people genuinely want to do good by others. The church, though, has stopped providing them with the means to do so because it has lost faith in itself. In the resulting vacuum people have turned instead to secular ideologies such as multiculturalism, feminism, egalitarianism and so on.

These, though, are all utopian ideologies aimed at perfecting human nature and the world. Utopia is an impossibility. Throughout history utopian creeds have led directly to cruelty, tyranny and mass slaughter.

It is that tragic combination of the desire to create a kinder, gentler society with ideologies producing the precise opposite which has resulted in a society articulating the highest ideals while often acting with indifference or cruelty.

If the archbishop wants to create a kinder society he should do something really revolutionary. He should start robustly upholding and promoting the values and beliefs on which his church is based.

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For churches struggling to get people through the doors on a Sunday morning, letting them stay overnight may be the answer.

As champing, basic camping in disused churches, has become increasingly popular, a new Church of England scheme seeks to profit from providing a more glamorous alternative. Instead of bedding down on an uncomfortable pew, guests will be invited to stay in luxurious oak ‘pods’ which sleep up to six.

For up to £890 a week, guests can enjoy their own state-of-the-art kitchen, flat-screen televisions, free wi-fi, wood-burning stove, under-floor heating and private bathroom. All a far cry from the frosty facilities church-goers in rural areas might be used to.

Those who hire the pods will enjoy exclusive use of the church during the week, but their stays will have to be tailored so they do not clash with weddings or Sunday services.

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One of the participant’s in Scotland’s first church gay wedding thas been revealed as Anglican Consultative Standing Committee member Alistair Dinnie. On 29 Sept 2017 Christian Today reported Mr. Dennie had wed Mr. Peter Matthews at St John’s Episcopal Church in the first same-sex wedding conducted in a church. Mr. Dennie was the Scottish Episcopal Church’s delegate to the April 2016 meeting of the ACC in Lusaka and was elected by the delegates to its standing committee.

On 1 Aug 2017 the Rev. Markus Dünzkofer, rector of St. John’s, reported that he had officiated at a wedding at a hotel for an American couple, “Mark and Rick”. “This was not some pretty, fancy occasion,” he said. “They wanted a religious ceremony and they wanted it to be a nuptial Mass,” he wrote on Facebook.

On 16 Sept 2017 Fr. Dünzkofer officiated at the wedding of Peter Matthews and Alistair Dinnie at St. John’s, making it the first same-sex Anglican church wedding in Scotland. Since the Matthews/Dinnie wedding same-sex marriages have also been celebrated in Glasgow and Moray.

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We recognize that there is a spiritual vacuum caused by the silence and even compromise of much traditional leadership in the West and it is not surprising that new leadership should emerge. Our preference is that it will emerge from the highest level of cooperation and collaboration between these initiatives, so that those who uphold ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 4) work together as far as the integrity of their church polity allows. Nonetheless, we pray that the ministry of Bishop Ashenden, and all Christian leaders who love the truth, will bear much fruit for the gospel.

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Why invest time in reading a book about controversies and divisions within the Anglican denomination?

With this question, the editor of Faith in a Time of Crisis opens a book that is timely, essential reading. The answer to this question is, of course, that in the controversies and divisions the gospel is at stake. It is no longer reasonable to assume that the bloodlines of British politeness that run through Anglicanism will hold the Communion together.

The fractures caused by the actions of some Anglican leaders over the past two decades have exposed the reality that at least two different gospels are being preached and believed in the Anglican Church across the world. With this in mind, Roberts and Jensen write to encourage, urge and compel us to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

In typical Roberts style, the book is surprisingly short, easy to read and filled with engaging illustrations and sharp pastoral challenge. Several questions were added to my “discuss with staff” list as I read the five chapters that unpack the True Gospel, True Sex, True Love, True Unity and True Faith – the last written by Peter Jensen.

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The statistics, published on Wed­nesday, show signs that the drive to nurture vocations to the ordained ministry — a central plank of the Renewal and Reform programme — is having an effect. Overall, the number of those entering training is 14 per cent higher than last year (476 candidates).

None the less, the C of E must reach its target of 50 per cent more ordinands by 2020 if it is to reverse the overall decline in clergy num­bers. At the present rate, people are not entering the ministry at the same rate as others are retiring.

Another Renewal and Reform target is to recruit younger and more diverse candidates. Ordinands are younger than last year: 28 per cent of this year’s intake are under the age of 32, compared with 23 per cent last year. At the other end of the age range, 16 per cent are aged 55 or above, compared with 20 per cent of last year’s intake. The overall number of new ordinands under the age of 39 rose by 39 per cent, from 109 to 151….

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One of the principal tasks of a leader is to communicate reality to those who wish to take his or her lead, and the reality that I observe all around me, not just in Church but in every sphere of life, is a mood of impatience with other points of view, of an increasing narrowing of vision and of a drawing back from the sort of commitment that creates sustainable and worthwhile communities. It is hardly an exaggeration to call these developments the triumph of individualism and I sometimes think that the word “individual” should be banned from Christian conversations and replaced by a word like “person” to reflect the complexity and value which each of us has – what we share as much as what we need.

This individualism which is so prevalent in our world and sometimes in our parishes is the enemy of reasoned debate and very far from the spirit of Anglicanism. Over the past ten years or so a new and very revealing way of opening a conversation or a debate has entered into our way of talking. “Speaking as an X.” somebody will say, whatever X might be. Speaking say as a woman or speaking as a progressive or speaking as a traditionalist or speaking as a unionist or as a republican – whatever it might be. But the intention of that way of opening a conversation is not to engage in an equal conversation but to establish some sort of privileged position. “I am X and you are not, so you couldn’t possibly understand.” It is an attempt to set up a wall against questions and it turns conversations into an encounter about power. The winner of the argument won’t be the person who has the strongest reasons but the one who has the morally superior identity and can express the greatest outrage at being questioned.

The key word to look out for is “offended”. Other people’s arguments aren’t weak or illogical – they are offensive. What replaces argument is a series of taboos rather like in the old paganism where only a small number of people, like the Druids or the shamans, were permitted to speak on certain matters or do certain things but nobody else not of that caste could interfere. Propositions become pure or impure, not true or false. Ask any of your children who have been to university recently about the matters which people simply aren’t allowed to debate any more or the beliefs which are denigrated because they are outside a certain limited range of reference.

As you may have guessed by now I believe that the antidote to this strange perversion of the liberal spirit is the smallness and the diversity of the parish. It is what I meant when I said last year that the parish is the place where we create local significance in a globalised world.

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Gavin Ashenden, the former chaplain to the Queen who earlier this year resigned from the Church of England over its ‘liberalising’ trend, has been consecrated a bishop.

Ashenden has been consecrated as a missionary bishop to the UK in the Christian Episcopal Church, one of the continuing Anglican churches that emerged in the United States in the ongoing disputes in The Episcopal Church over the ordination of homosexuals and women.

In the UK, he will work closely with Bishop Andy Lines, also recently consecrated a missionary bishop to work with conservative evangelical churches.

Ashenden told Christian Today that he believed the Philip North affair, where North withdrew as Bishop of Sheffield after a row over his opposition to women bishops, showed how difficult it will be for traditonalist Anglo-Catholics and orthodox evangelicals to ‘flourish’ in the Church of England.

‘You can only function as an Anglican if you have bishops you can trust,’ he said. He said the Church of England had ‘not been very generous’ in providing conservative or traditionalist bishops.

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The number of people entering training to become priests in the Church of England is at the highest level for a decade with women making up more than half the total, according to new figures released today.

A total of 544 men and women are starting training for ordained ministry this autumn (known as ordinands), an increase of 14% on last year and the highest figure for 10 years, according to statistics from the Ministry Division of the Church of England.

Women make up more than half of those entering training, or 274 ordinands, the biggest intake of female ordinands for a decade, and an increase of 19% compared to last year. At the same time, the number of younger ordinands, in the under 32 age group, rose by nearly two fifths, and now accounts for 28% of the total.

The figures, covering the period from 2008 to 2017, are published alongside Ministry Statistics for 2016 showing the number of women serving in ordained ministry in the Church of England rose by 7% from 5,310 in 2013, to a record high of 5,690 last year.

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Number of women in ordained ministry at record high: https://t.co/bfCPCreS1l pic.twitter.com/oXtRFi3CH8

— Church of England (@c_of_e) September 27, 2017

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England’s vicarages and parsonages are almost as iconic as its churches. But campaigners say they may be all but gone after a 70-year process of selling-off which began after the Second World War and has seen thousands of vicars ejected from the historic buildings and moved into private houses.

What’s more, they have raised concerns that many modern priests have no interest in living in the properties – leaving them vulnerable to being sold.

Campaign group Save Our Parsonages estimates that 8,000 such houses have been sold by dioceses since the Second World War, causing the Church of England financial loss because of the growing value of property.

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Throughout his life, Wilson suffered from spinal weakness. “God threw me on my back so that I could look up to him more,” he quipped. It was during one of these bouts of poor
health that the 26-year old Wilson began to read a book entitled Grace and Truth by Dr WP Mackay. He later described how he came to faith: “At the beginning of the chapter I was
a rank outsider. Before I got to the end, I had thrown myself at the feet of Christ and cried ‘My Lord and my God!’”

In 1870, Wilson married Flora Vickers, with whom he had five sons. He was ordained a deacon in 1880. Shortly after, he became curate at St Mary Abbots in Kensington, where he preached to one of the most fashionable congregations of Victorian London. By an ironic twist of fate, he would shortly become, as nicknamed by the then Bishop of London, the ‘Archbishop of the Gutter’. Church services were considered by the working people of the time as the exclusive preserve of the privileged. Since the working class refused to step foot inside a church, the enthusiastic young preacher began holding small, open air services at the time of day when coachmen, valets and grooms would be taking their evening stroll…

Wilson regularly suffered brutal physical assaults and even stonings during his open air missions. His outdoor work drew such huge crowds – and complaints – that he was
ordered to stop….

Read it all from the Church Army Magazine ShareIt (begins on page 4).

Today we remember Wilson Carlile, Founder of the @ChurchArmy https://t.co/vrmQHCVP7N pic.twitter.com/TKbvVLS5po

— Church of England (@c_of_e) September 26, 2016

More than 10 Anglican churches a year are closing Wales, figures have shown.
Data from the Church in Wales showed 115 churches have closed over a 10-year period, about 8% of the total, with 1,319 still in use.
There are currently 11 properties advertised for sale on the church’s website.
The Church in Wales said closures were a “significant issue” and while the sale rate had stayed steady, it was unlikely to slow down.

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