The first one is here; and the second there. The latter includes the following:

“We understand the disappointment felt by all the candidates considered by the Electoral College who did not secure enough support to be elected as Bishop of Llandaff. However we are satisfied that the Electoral College process was carried out properly and fairly.”

“The meeting was confidential and we will not comment on speculation about the nomination and discussion of candidates. However, we strongly deny allegations of homophobia in the process. Neither homosexuality nor participation in a civil partnership are a bar to any candidate being either nominated or elected as a Bishop in the Church in Wales. Moreover, this was made clear to members of the Electoral College by its President, the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon.

“The Constitution of the Church in Wales requires that an electoral college meets for up to three days and that if the college fails to elect, the decision passes to the Bench of Bishops. The Bishops are now acting carefully in full accordance with the Constitution. Unlike the Electoral College process, there is no fixed timetable for an appointment process, however, the Bishops would wish to announce any appointment made as soon as all necessary formalities are finalised. The appointment process is underway and we see no reason to halt it.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury and leaders of the Church of England have offered prayers for those affected by the attack in Westminster as they praised the bravery of police and emergency services.

With areas around the Houses of Parliament in lockdown as events unfolded, Westminster Abbey offered hospitality to MPs, their staff and others.

Meanwhile the Church of England issued a Collect for Peace, led by the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu in a video.

Read it all.

I was once in a meeting of clergy a few years ago, and I can’t remember the precise subject of discussion, but I do recall one minister sighing in weary exasperation as we talked around whatever the issue was before pronouncing: ‘The problem is the elephant in the room – the absence of a shared set of beliefs.’ He later became a Roman Catholic.

Philip North and Jeffery John are – albeit with very different defining convictions – both victims of a church trying unsuccessfully to face in several different directions at once. Some might rejoice that this is Anglicanism’s so-called ‘via media’ or ‘middle way’ between ‘extremes’. But to most people, it looks less ‘via media’ and more ‘via muddle’. And yet, ultimately, I do not despair. After all, it is because we humans tend to make a real mess of things that Jesus came in the first place. And so once again I lift my eyes to him and pray, ‘Lord, have mercy’.

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It’s become fashionable for ‘traditionalists’ to say that the wide support for women priests amongst Anglicans and the population in general has nothing to say to the church. They are wrong. A wider moral shift in society helped Christians to see the implications of their own orthodoxy more clearly than they had before.

From the serious theological explorations which took place over several decades we learned many things. We learned that God has no gender and that feminine language for God is no more inappropriate than masculine. We learned that women played a more central role in early Christianity than Church history had let on, and that what the CofE means by priesthood does not derive directly from the New Testament. We realised that the priest who represents Jesus at the altar and says the words of the Eucharistic Prayer over the bread and wine represents Christ in Christ’s humanity, not in Christ’s gender. And we discovered that there is therefore no reason why a woman may not preside at Communion: when she does so, she represents Jesus, our human High Priest.

The irony which the Philip North controversy has exposed is that it is the so-called liberals who are the ones clinging to orthodoxy and tradition, and the so-called traditionalists who are appealing to liberal principles of freedom, toleration, and equal respect. Lacking a strong theological basis for their position, the defenders of North are behaving like relativists who believe their position must be upheld not because it is true but just because it is their identity.

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If More’s self-fashioned persona was as a Renaissance worthy with easy wit and worldly wisdom in equal measure, Cranmer’s model, as befitting a spiritual rather than temporal magnate, was public monastic self-mortification. According to Ralph Morice, his principal secretary,

he was a man of such temperature of nature, or rather so mortified, that no manner of prosperity or adversity could alter or change his accustomed conditions: for, being the storms never so terrible or odious, nor the prosperous estate of the time never so pleasant, joyous, or acceptable, tothe face of [the] world his countenance, diet, or sleep commonly never altered or changed, so that they which were most nearest and conversant about him never or seldom perceived by no sign or token of countenance how the affairs of the prince or the realm went. Notwithstanding privately with his secret and special friends he would shed forth many bitter tears,lamenting the miseries and calamities of the world.

Alexander Alesius, one of Cranmer’s ‘secret and special friends,’confided to Elizabeth I that those tears were shed on at least two occasions by severe setbacks for his Gospel of justification by faith, namely, the death of Anne Boleyn and the Act of Six Articles. While More hid the intense traditional piety of his mortifying hairshirt under the fine robes of his high worldly status, Cranmer wore mortification on his face to hide his hopes and fears for the new piety that had captured his heart.

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The Dean of St Albans, the Very Revd Dr Jeffrey John, has accused the Bishops of the Church in Wales of “anti-gay discrimination”, after he was informed that his name will not be taken forward as a candidate for the See of Llandaff.

The president of the College of Bishops, the Bishop of Swansea & Brecon, the Rt Revd John Davies, wrote on Friday to Dr John to assure him that “neither homosexuality nor participation in a civil partnership were a bar to any candidate being either nominated or elected”. In his reply to the Bishop, made public this weekend, Dr John rejected this assurance as “hypocritical and untrue”.

The appointment of the next Bishop of Llandaff fell to the Bench of Bishops — comprising the six diocesan Bishops — after a meeting of the Electoral College in February ended with no candidate receiving enough votes — two-thirds — to be declared Bishop-Elect. In addition to the diocesan Bishops, the College comprises six members elected by each diocese (three lay members and three clergy), and twelve members elected by the diocese to which the Bishop is being elected. Its proceedings are confidential.

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This leads to a third surprising comment. On the one hand, the new teaching document will explore what is possible ‘within current arrangements’, and that prohibits the offering of public prayer which would give the appearance of a blessing of a same-sex sexual relationship. Yet on the other hand, Bishop Stephen cannot see any reason why ‘prayers of thanksgiving for these relationships – perhaps a Eucharist – cannot be offered.’ It seems strange to me that any bishop should feel so relaxed about contradicting the current position of the House of Bishops, without offering any account of this—and why he does notice that it is, in fact, contradictory.

But perhaps the most astonishing and surprising comment comes earlier on. In reflecting on the relationship between sexuality and missional engagement, Bishop Stephen makes this startling claim:

As I have said before, I am not sure the church has ever before had to face the challenge of being seen as immoral by the culture in which it is set.

For some reason, Bishop Stephen sees the issue of the Church’s teaching on sexuality as a unique turning point in relation to culture, as if we have never experienced this sense of being out of step with prevailing morality and criticised, on moral grounds, because of it. I cannot really make sense of this statement, since even a moment’s reflection on some current areas of debate illustrates how implausible this is.

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He wrote to the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon – the Right Reverend John Davies, who is currently the church’s senior bishop – after an electoral college of bishops, clergy and lay people failed to reach a decision about who should replace Dr Barry Morgan as bishop.
It is understood Mr John received a majority of the votes, but not the two-thirds required by church rules.
He said homophobic remarks had been made at the electoral college meeting.
“Much more importantly, the only arguments adduced against my appointment – in particular by two of the bishops – were directly related to my homosexuality and/or civil partnership – namely that my appointment would bring unwelcome and unsettling publicity to the diocese,” he wrote.

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Jeffrey John's strongly worded letter came after this was sent from the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon:
The latest: https://t.co/QE6T7V8ZaC pic.twitter.com/ru6G1OBE86

— Harry Farley (@HarryFarls) March 19, 2017

Yes, you described yourself as “same-sex attracted.” What do you mean by that?

The debate was limited to just three minutes per speaker, so I only had time to flag certain things up without the opportunity to properly explain what I meant by them.

When I describe myself as same-sex attracted, what I am saying is that the only sexual desires and feelings I have ever experienced are toward other men, rather than women. I’m not justifying those desires or seeking to validate them. The Bible says that as sinners all our desires are disordered, so it’s actually the case that all of us are fallen and broken in our sexuality. For most, that fallenness will be manifest in an opposite-sex direction; for me (and not a few other believers), it is seen in same-sex attraction.

Some wonder how it is possible to be a Christian and yet experience these things. My answer is that any inappropriate desire is a form of temptation that needs to be fought. Temptation is different to sin. Jesus tells us to pray we’d be delivered from temptation but be forgiven for our sin. Temptation itself is not sin. It is striking that the Bible nowhere promises that temptation will be completely removed in this life; simply that God will enable us to stand faithfully under it.

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The Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Revd Tony Robinson, who helps lead the traditionalist Catholic group The Society, said that the House of Bishops, led by the Arch­bishops, needed to “restore confid­ence” in what was agreed two-and-half years ago.

“It’s important for the Church that we are clear about [the House of Bishops’ Declaration and Five Guiding Principles],” Bishop Robin­son said on Sunday on Radio 4.

Bishop North’s withdrawal did not have to mean that traditionalists would be blocked from diocesan appointment from now on, he said; but “We have to enter into some dis­cussions with others in the Church about what this means, and about how we can restore some confidence into what was obviously agreed.”

The chair of Women and the Church (WATCH), Canon Emma Percy, who had been opposed to Bishop North’s appointment as a diocesan, said that she also believed that the Five Principles and the whole women-bishops agreement should be looked at again.

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The Right Reverend Douglas Milmine, who has died aged 95, was a missionary in South America for more than 30 years and the first Bishop of the newly-constituted Anglican diocese of Paraguay from 1973-1985.

It was a challenging assignment, partly because of the political situation at the time – when the country’s ruling dictatorship was suspicious of western influence and criticism – but also because Protestant congregations in a strongly Catholic continent were thinly scattered and widely dispersed.

The diocese is one of six in what was then the Province of the Southern Cone of America (now the Anglican Church of South America), ministering between them to approximately 25,000 members throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

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…though I am proud to confirm that all of us, whatever our views on this matter, are united in our condemnation of homophobia, we must also acknowledge that it is of little comfort to young gay or lesbian members of our Church to know that while prejudice against them is abhorred, any committed faithful sexual expression of their love for another is forbidden. In fact it is worse than this, our ambivalence and opposition to faithful and permanent same sex relationships can legitimise homophobia in others.
None of us are content with this situation.

This issue is, therefore, one that must be dealt with in a number of ways: theologically, ethically, pastorally and missiologically. We must let the insights and experiences of each of these responses shape our overall response. As with the challenges of previous ages, it is the refining fire of the questions the culture poses that reveal new depths to the gospel we proclaim. Also we must acknowledge that the culture itself has to a large extent been shaped by those Christian virtues of tolerance and acceptance that we hold dear. It is therefore not sufficient to say, ‘Oh if only we could stop talking about human sexuality and get on with the real business of preaching the gospel!’ This is the real business of preaching the gospel: it is about what it means to be made in the image of God and of the new humanity God has won for us in Christ. It is about finding the legitimate boundaries
within which Christian people can legitimately disagree.

Nor can we simply ignore the biblical passages that pertain to this debate. They are part of our storyand our inheritance. But what we can do is recognise that what we know now about human development and human sexuality requires us to look again at those texts to see what they are actually saying to our situation, for what we know now is not what was known then. Of course this isalso an area where conclusions are conflicted (even the rules that govern our biblical hermeneutics) but it does at least demonstrate that we are all seeking to be faithful to scripture and how weinterpret it within the contexts we serve.

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The roots of the row were sowed in 2014 when the Church of England voted overwhelmingly to enable women to become Bishops in the Church of England.

Since that time the Church has appointed 10 women as bishops with women making up fewer than 10 per cent of the Church’s senior leadership within three years.

However, part of the deal meant that those who took a more theologically catholic view – reflecting the wider global church, that Bishops had to be men – were given assurances that they too would be able to flourish at a senior level within the church.

However some people didn’t get the memo about “mutual flourishing” and the announcement of Bishop North’s appointment led to a sustained campaign for him to be removed by those who felt the Church shouldn’t “promote” people with his views.

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On 8 March, the Rt Rev Philip North, Bishop of Burnley, announced his decision that he felt unable to take up the nomination as Bishop of Sheffield; he commented that the news of his nomination had elicited a strong reaction within the diocese and some areas of the wider Church, and included highly individualised attacks upon him. The announcement from No 10 stated: “[t]he Archbishop of York will in due course submit the name of an alternative candidate for this diocese”. In view of the complexities involved in the appointment of diocesan bishops, it would be unwise to read too much into this gobbet of “civil servant speak”; this post examines what is, and what is not known of the next steps in the appointment of a bishop in the See of Sheffield….

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Let me be clear: as someone who has received massive amounts from women in leadership, I was a passionate campaigner for female bishops. I think Phillip North is wrong to oppose the ordination of women. I think the Bible is in favour of women in leadership. Yet, there’s more to the picture than that. North is a committed evangelist, social justice activist and great friend of many women clergy (including his fellow bishop, Libby Lane).

The legislation which made it possible for women to become bishops also made North’s position a legitimate and tenable one within the Church. If that has now been changed, de facto – not by debate, but by a concerted campaign from outside (and inside) Sheffield Diocese, we are in trouble.

The whole basis of the Church’s decision to opt for female bishops could now be called into question. As CofE legal expert Gavin Drake said on Facebook: ‘The legislation passed ONLY because a package of measures was agreed to provide for the mutual flourishing of women clergy AND of those whose theological convictions opposed them. That package of measures has just, effectively, been ripped up.’

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The Elvis-inspired service featured the rock’n roll hits Blue Suede Shoes, All Shook Up as well as gospel tracks Take My Hand Precious Lord and How Great Thou Art.

Upon seeing the church was packed to the rafters – and there actually were rafters – Reverend Hoey indicated that the church could maybe repeat the event, but change the theme.

“It’s proven so popular, who knows what’s next? Maybe Johnny Cash.”

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Proposals to make changes to Canon 31 of the Scottish Episcopal Church’s canons have now been discussed by all the diocesan synods. A very clear majority of the synods voted in favour of change – 6 dioceses voted in favour, whilst one (Aberdeen and Orkney) voted against change.

The changes that are proposed would allow some clergy to be nominated to be able to conduct marriages for same-sex couples. If the changes are approved they would also remove the ban on clergy and lay readers entering into same-sex marriages themselves.

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A letter from Lambeth Palace has said that a church service after a same-sex marriage can be “almost indistinguishable from a wedding”.

The letter was written to Dr Richard and Matthew Edwards, who married last year in Birmingham Register Office. Both are members of the PCC at St Paul’s, Birmingham. Dr Edwards is the treasurer, and Matthew Edwards the vice-chair and a churchwarden. They have been together for five years, and got engaged in 2015. Before they married, they wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury for guidance.

The letter they received in response, written by the Archbishop’s correspondence secretary, Andrew Nunn, demonstrates the Church of England’s ambivalence on the question of same-sex marriage. He states: “marriage in an Anglican church is not an option for you.” On the other hand, he describes the practice of having a blessing in church after a civil ceremony. “The church ceremony can be arranged so as to be almost indistinguishable from a wedding, but without the legalities.”

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Hidden gems from London’s ecclesiastical past – and present – are uncovered through a new project exploring the capital’s Anglican chapels through the eyes of a unique chronicler of church buildings.

London’s Unseen Chapels: From the Notebooks of Canon Clarke, a Heritage Lottery Fund-supported project, will leaf through the pages of Canon Basil Fulford Clarke’s (1907-78) notebooks.

The project uncovers the ways in which institutions such as Temple Church and Charterhouse Chapel provided spiritual care to those from all gradations of society, and continue to do so successfully today.

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Many Muslim parents send their children to church schools because they prepare young people for “life in modern Britain”, a senior figure in the Church of England has said.

The Rev Nigel Genders said that church schools offered a “deeply Christian” education yet were attractive to families of other religions because they took faith seriously.

Mr Genders, chief education officer at the Church of England, which has about 4,500 primary schools, said that they would never drop their religious character even though more children from non-Christian families were attending them.

Read it all (requires subscription).

It took three and three-quarter hours to travel by TGV from Brussels to Lyon, far enough to be in a different climate, where the crocuses, primroses and even some daffodils were in bloom. We checked in to a family-run hotel close to the magnificent Place Bellecour, in the heart of France’s second city.

There was just time to change before leaving for Mass, where chaplain Ben Harding and I were guests of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin. He gave me a gracious introduction and invited me to read the gospel. The temperature inside the splendid cathedral was icy, and we were glad of our coats.

Read it all and enjoy the pictures.

I once had the honor of spending time in Newman’s rooms at the Birmingham Oratory, which are much as the aged cardinal left them at his death in 1890. Over the altar, which occupies one side of the room, are tacked-up notes by which Cardinal Newman reminded himself of those for whom he had promised to pray. In the sitting room, a tattered newspaper map, also tacked to a wall, bears silent testimony to Newman’s interest in Kitchener’s efforts to lift the siege of Khartoum and rescue General Gordon from the Mahdi, a 19th century jihadist (Gordon died with Newman’s poem, “The Dream of Gerontius,” in his pocket). Perhaps most touching are Newman’s Latin breviaries, which he began to use as an Anglican, causing much controversy about such popish practices.
It is as a man of faith that the Church beatified John Henry Newman, however: the kind of man of faith who could write the following (which I take from another prayer card I’ve had for years, given me by Catholic Worker artist Ade Bethune):

God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught”¦Therefore I will trust Him, whatever I am”¦He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me””still, He knows what He is about.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us and for the unity in truth of Christ’s Church.

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At the end of the recent General Synod when an alliance of orthodox Christians and pro-gay progressives defeated the Bishops’ report on Marriage and sexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a rallying cry to a perturbed and divided Synod and whatever part of the wider Church was listening in.

It had three elements:

1- “We need a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church.

2- “It must be based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.”

3- “The way forward needs to be about love, joy and celebration of our humanity; of our creation in the image of God, of our belonging to Christ ”“ all of us, without exception, without exclusion.”

The problem these words present, is that they involve a distortion of Christianity. They preference a non-Christian ideology that gives us a sub-Christian or even perhaps an anti-Christian version of the faith.

That is a very serious charge to make. Because if it is true, it challenges the authority of an ancient office and both the direction and integrity of the Church of England.

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From the Latimer Trust

(The Bp of Western Sydney, Thomas Lee: SydneyAnglicans)

Bishop Lee spoke from the book of Matthew, chapters 9 and 10 about the calling of the disciples and Jesus’ famous phrase ”˜The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few’.

The bishop, who underwent treatment for cancer in the past year, recalled an incident from his university days. “I was sitting down having a chat with the Anglican chaplain…we were in the chaplaincy building looking out the window and the conversation went something like this: “Ivan, what do you see?” I looked out at the huge numbers of students going back and forth, and I said, “Uh, I don’t know, students, trying to get to their lectures on time?” And he said back to me, slowly and with great sadness in his voice, “You know what I see? All I see are hundreds and thousands of lost souls, young people who need to know about Jesus.” That one moment has had a lifelong effect on me, so that to this very day, whenever I look upon a crowd, which is pretty much every day, I see lost souls, without God in their lives.” Bishop Lee exhorted the ordinands to have the same motivation. “I’d like to say to the ordinands, if your heart is not truly broken, not grieving for lost people, then ministry will become a profession, and church growth a KPI, a key performance indicator!” Bishop Lee said. “But what really matters to Jesus, and ought to matter to us, is lost people and the spiritual need all around us.”

Read it all and you may find the Cathedral website there.

In the lead up to the vote there was nothing short of furious campaigning on all sides. The liberals’ campaign was clear to see from bodies such as the newly-amalgamated “One Body, One Faith” who urged their supporters to vote against the motion and to call their General Synod reps to do the same.

Within the conservative camp there was also an inclination by many to vote against the motion for the reasons outlined above. Those I spoke to in the days leading up to the vote took no pleasure in this position but were resigned to a split in the church as being inevitable and longed for the bishops to stop papering over the cracks. As a result we began to see an unprecedented move by more conservative bishops to encourage a “yes” vote as (it was explained) a last-ditch attempt to hold everything together. There was a great danger, it was explained, that if the take note vote failed then the fissures would rupture with not a small number of bishops being prepared to take a contrary position in future. It has to be said that this argument appears to have been somewhat successful if the noises key conservatives were making in the last 24 hours were any indication.
…..
..there you have it. A split Church of England which has voted against taking note of the bishops’ report, thereby ensuring it cannot be further debated in this current synod (until 2020). The bishops will now go back and, presumably, prepare another report that may have a different flavour.

But that’s not the half of it. If the conservative bishops’ warnings are correct we can now expect to see the collegiality of the House of Bishops begin to fracture well beyond the isolated crack that is Alan Wilson in Buckingham. To Wilson’s credit he at least had the chops to say what he believed. At the moment we have a set of bishops, some of whom are by conviction opposed to orthodox teaching and yet who continue to (at least nominally) support it. No wonder the liberals are frustrated. But they may now break ranks.

One last thought. The bishops really can’t complain about this result. It is they who are ultimately responsible for recruiting, training, ordaining, supporting, leading and (if necessary) disciplining their clergy. That there has been a more laissez-faire approach by them in recent years on these matters is now well-documented. While there have been some occasions where discipline has been carried out, there are many more moments when they could have stood up and spoken, withheld Communion, said no to ordination and so on. But they didn’t. Blessings of same-sex unions are allowed to pass with not so much as an irritated tut. Bishops attend and endorse services that promote either explicitly or implicitly a rejection of orthodox teaching on marriage. Clergy who hold heterodox views are promoted to higher office. Put simply, there has been a concerted effort by revisionist clergy to put “facts on the ground” and the bishops appear to have not resisted the move with many of them effectively supporting it. As Sam Allberry put it so well in his contribution to the GS debate, we want bishops who genuinely believe that what they wrote in the report is good news to be proclaimed to everyone.

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..Trying to avoid ”˜taking sides’ in the debate, the document inevitably failed to reconcile diametrically opposing theological understandings. It even attempted to spiritualise this conflict as if it were a form of creative diversity mysteriously pointing to the Kingdom of God.

This is why we did not share the optimism of some that an orthodox view of marriage would prevail in the proposed ”˜teaching document.’ The committee responsible for such a document would have been composed of representatives of both sides in the debate, resulting either in impasse, further theological muddle and confusion or, as occurred with the Pilling Report, majority and minority views.

As the Synod debate was introduced, Bishops made clear that the proposed retention of the historic teaching of marriage, or the ban on liturgical blessings of same sex relationships, was not a ”˜stake in the ground’ beyond which the church will not move. To the contrary the Bishops saw it merely as a description of where the church is at the moment from where we would then ”˜move forward’. This was a clear encouragement to innovations led by the loudest voices.

Our view was that orthodox believers could have no confidence either in the Report or in the process it was intended to initiate. Whichever way the vote went, there would be no happy outcome. The Church of England now finds itself in disarray.
…..

After the very expensive ”˜holding operation’ of the Shared Conversations and the production of GS2055, the inevitable crisis in the C of E is now upon us; one that cannot be covered up by more platitudes about reconciliation and unity.

There is a better way. We would like to suggest seven principles to guide orthodox Anglicans as they start to envision and plan for a better church future:
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