A Rochester diocesan spokes­person said on Tuesday: “Open and honest debate and discussion is part of the life and tradition of the Church of England, and there are many formal and informal networks and groups within which this takes place.

“These discussions often reflect the wide range of theological and spiritual perspectives within the Church of England. In relation to discussion around human sexuality, there is a continuing national process involv­ing the General Synod as well as the College and House of Bishops.”

The news was welcomed by the GAFCON UK Task Force, which replaced the Fellowship of Con­fessing Anglicans (FCA) UK & Ireland Executive earlier in the sum­mer.

A spokesman said that the Task Force was “in the process of getting set up” and that a website would shortly be launched.

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He was asked by a member of the audience who is to be civilly partnered what anniversary he thought she would get to before the Church would bless their relationship. In a thoughtful and considered response he said this issue, along with the safeguarding of children, were the two issues that he “lay awake at night thinking about and have the least capacity to find a good way forward.”

He said: “I am constantly consumed with horror at the way we have treated LGBTI people and constantly consumed with an urge to find a way of changing that in the right way but I don’t know what that is yet.
“We have to find a way to love and embrace everyone who loves Jesus Christ without exception and without hesitation. But that includes those who feel same-sex relationships are deeply, deeply wrong, or live in societies that do.

“The inclusion of LGBTI people in the church is essential. We cannot pretend that inclusion from the point of view of someone from a same-sex relationship that falls short of the blessing of the Church is going to feel like inclusion. We’re conning ourselves if we think we can do less than that and it will feel like inclusion. But when you do that, if you do that, it will feel like exclusion to other people.”

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Concluding his own polite but critical review of “That was the Church that was”, theologian Andrew Goddard makes the following assessment:

“The key question the book raises for me is in what sense, if any, those committed to two such contrasting understandings of the church can genuinely walk together in the same institutional structure. Might it not be the case that, if either is to flourish, each needs to grant the other a distinct ecclesial space and identity to pursue two very different, probably irreconcilable, visions of”¦the church”¦”

This is significant, because Andrew Goddard has for many years been at the forefront of influential leaders within the C of E who hold to an orthodox evangelical understanding of Christian faith (particularly in regard to sexual ethics), but who support solutions to the problems of disagreements over doctrine and ethics based on institutional unity rather than confessional separation. So for example, Goddard was one of the leading advocates for an “Anglican Covenant” and always opposed GAFCON, saying that it was contributing to the divisions in the Anglican communion.
More recently, Goddard has been a supporter of Archbishop Welby’s “good disagreement” policy; he was one of the first to convene a day of discussions on sexuality between revisionists and conservatives before the official “Shared Conversations” began; and co-edited a book of essays exploring how “grace and truth” can be maintained together in a divided church.

Archbishop Justin Welby has said many times that the unity of the church is a given, and no-one has the right to “chuck out” those family members with whom one disagrees. Goddard’s article says clearly, contra Welby,

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A kindhearted Muslim man volunteered to help a Christian student who was mobbed for alleged blasphemy in Zamfara State, Nigeria. Radical Muslims ran amok and set the man’s home on fire, killing eight people.

The anger of the Muslims led to a riot in the Abdu Gusau Polytechnic in Talata-Mafara, Zamfara State, a local church leader said to International Christian Concern (ICC). The radical mob of Muslim students destroyed Christian campus offices, after which they proceeded to wreak havoc in the town proper.

“When I heard this from my pastor and one of my members, I immediately called some security officials because the radicals went on rampage in town,” said Rev. John Danbinta, Anglican Bishop of Zamfara, in an interview with ICC.

Read it all from the Christian Times.

This post is to highlight what has mostly been missed in all the intense heat and noise of the same-sex-blessing feud: ironic though it may seem to some, the actual teaching of our church forbids the marrying of divorcees whilst it appears to allow bishops to authorise the blessing of committed same-sex couples in their jurisdiction.

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Read it all and see also there.

The only colour image of what worship in Westminster Abbey looked like on the eve of the Reformation has been plucked from the miles of shelving in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and shown to the world, or at least to the readers of that excellent periodical The Westminster Abbey Chorister.

It is a wonderful picture, taken from the mortuary roll of John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, who died in 1532. He was important in the world and also stood for the dignity of the abbey of Benedictine monks. So his funeral was impressive.

The picture shows a part of the Abbey well known from royal weddings: the high altar against the screen that hides any view of the sacred chapel of St Edward the Confessor. On state occasions the altar is usually laid with huge bits of gold plate, like a sideboard.

It is quite otherwise in the Islip picture, being bare but for two candlesticks and a service book.

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We are not told which officials in which diocese have issued this warning, but it is advice which needs to be ignored. To heed such guidance is to surrender to fanatical Islamists; to conceal one’s Christian faith out of fear of the consequences; to hide one’s light under a bushel in order not to provoke some hot-headed Muslim extremist to combat.

Easy for someone to say who’s not in danger of being a target, you may say. But what have we become if we relinquish the vestments of our national faith out of fear of the adherents of another religion? What is ceded? Who is appeased? Where is the victor and who is the vanquished?

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But now what happened in North America is being repeated elsewhere. If not effectively challenged, false teaching is contagious, especially when it is well funded. At the recent meeting in Kigali of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), the London based Anglican Communion Secretary General, Josiah Idowu-Fearon commended the relief and development work of the Anglican Alliance, but new research by the Institute for Religion and Democracy shows close links between this organisation and TEC. Even now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is contemplating the overturning of Scripture by legitimising the blessing of same sex unions in breach of Lambeth Resolution I.10 of 1998, despite reaffirming it at the recent meeting of the Council of Anglican Churches of Africa in Rwanda.

However, the greatest cause for concern continues to be the British Isles. The Scottish Episcopal Church has already opened the door wide to conducting same sex ”˜marriages’ while in England, Salisbury Cathedral has become the latest of a growing number of cathedrals which publicly support and even bless ”˜Gay Pride’ marches. Chichester Diocese has issued a statement commending those of its churches ”˜with open doors to celebrate all that the Pride Festival stands for’ while the website of the Church of England’s Diocese of Europe celebrates the ”˜truly joyful occasion’ of the same sex ”˜marriage’ of a member of one of its congregations conducted by the Lutheran Bishop of Copenhagen.

I am therefore encouraged that seventy two members of the Church of England’s General Synod have written an open letter to the English bishops ahead of meetings planned later this year calling on them not to compromise by adopting practices that are contrary to Lambeth Resolution I.10 and warning that to do so ”˜could set the Church of England adrift from her apostolic inheritance.’

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A spokesman for Anglican Mainstream said: “This is not an initiative organised or directed by Gafcon.”

But he said there were many similarities between them and Gafcon.

“This is a local initiative designed to send a clear message: we hold to the unchanging truths of the Gospel and the formularies and teachings of the Church of England. We oppose the relentless slide towards revisionism in the Church of England structures. We will take action to protect our congregations and our mission.”

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The Church of Nigeria’s Bishop of Gusau, the Rt. Rev. John Danbinta Garba (pictured) reports a sectarian riot erupted last week at the Abdu Gusau Polytechnic in the city of Talata-Mafara in Northern Nigeria after a Muslim mob attempted to lynch a man who had converted to Christianity. On 21 Aug 2016 a newly baptized Christian was describing his conversion to fellow students when Islamist militants began to assault him. The penalty for apostasy from Islam was death, they said, and attempted to lynch him. Christian students intervened and rescued the convert and a Muslim bystander drove the injured man to the hospital. The mob then turned their sights upon the Muslim good samaritan — they marched to his home and set it ablaze, killing eight people inside. T

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A 100-year-old church in Porirua is scheduled to be sold and removed, but its angry congregation will fight to the last to ensure its survival.

The blink-and-you-miss-it St Philip’s Church, opposite Paremata School, is a well-used and welcome haven to its 27 members.

That’s why they were shocked when a parish review, carried out by the Anglican Diocese this year, recommended St Philip’s be sold.

Read it all from Stuff.

A group of parishes is preparing what could be the first step towards a formal split in the Church of England over issues such as homosexuality, with the creation of a new “shadow synod” vowing to uphold traditional teaching.

Representatives of almost a dozen congregations in the Home Counties are due to gather in a church hall in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, later this week for the first session of what they say could eventually develop into an alternative Anglican church in England.

Organisers, drawn from the conservative evangelical wing of Anglicanism, say they have no immediate plans to break away – but are setting up the “embryonic” structures that could be used to do so if the established church moves further in what they see as a liberal direction.

Read it all from the Telegraph.

People from all faiths, backgrounds and traditions have come together today as a show of solidarity at a multifaith service at the Anglican Parish of Gosford.

The service was led by Central Coast Anglican Archdeacon Rod Bower and also featured the Islamic Grand Mufti of Australia Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, local Buddhist leader Gen Kelsang Dawa and Newcastle Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson.

It was organised as a response to the protest by a group of right-wing extremists from the Party of Freedom who posed as Muslims and stormed a sermon by Gosford Anglican priest Father Bower recently.

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The need for “new leadership, new vision and ideas” are reasons behind Archbishop William Brown Turei’s decision to retire after 65 years as a priest.

Archbishop Turei has announced he will resign as Bishop (pihopa) of Tairawhiti at the end of this year and as Bishop of Aotearoa ”” leader of the Maori arm of the Anglican Church ”” from the end of March in 2017. He has planned his resignation in two stages “to allow Tairawhiti and Waipounamu to elect new bishops and have full representation in place before the election for a new Bishop of Aotearoa is convened”.

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Police…[this week] apologised to the bishops of the Church of Uganda for failing to provide security to them while touring church land in Ntawo, Mukono, where they survived a mob.

Police on Tuesday rescued the prelates led by Archbishop Stanley Ntagali from an irate mob that attacked them while coming from a tour of the one-square mile land that belongs to the church.

The land under contention at Ntawo in Mukono is being developed by the Uganda Christian University (UCU) on behalf of the church.

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A hired mob attempted to lynch the archbishop and bishops of the Church of Uganda on Tuesday, but were foiled when police arrived and drove off the attackers. On 23 August 2016 the Most Rev. Stanley Ntagali, Archbishop of Uganda and 34 members of the House of Bishops were inspecting a parcel of church owned land in Ntawo in the Mukono District when the attack occurred.

Sources in the Church of Uganda, who asked not to be named as they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the bishops, reported that at the House of Bishops’ Meeting held before the start of the 23rd Provincial Synod the bishops discussed a ten-year development plan for the church. One of the issues under discussion was the status of a one square mile parcel of land donated to the church in 1940.

Held by the church in trust for Uganda Christian University, a portion of the land has been leased to the government’s National Agricultural Research Organization, with the bulk of the land remaining undeveloped. Under former Vice-Chancellor Prof. Stephen Noll, the university proposed building a commercial housing estate on the site to provide income for the church as well as an agricultural research station for the university.

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Preparing to marry at the Church of Our Lady, the Lutheran cathedral in Copenhagen, this month, Nigel Rowley had felt nervous that its vast space would feel a little empty. When the doors opened, he saw the pews full of people, including many from his church, St Alban’s, there to support him and Mikel Lindbæk, who is now his husband. He felt “ecstatic”, he said this week.

Having attended St Alban’s, the Anglican Church in Copenhagen, for 30 years, he decided to get married in the Church of Denmark, where gay marriages have been solemnised since 2012. A member of both the deanery and diocesan synods, he felt that it was “very important” that he marry in church, “not just a blessing, but . . . the full works”. The service was conducted by the Bishop of Copenhagen, the Rt Revd Peter Skov-Jakobsen, and the choir of St Alban’s sang alongside the cathedral singers.

There is “no doubt” in Mr Rowley’s mind that the Church of England should permit same-sex marriage in its churches.

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

The retired Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya and former GAFCON Chairman, together with leaders of All Africa Conference of Churches to South Sudan has urged the political leaders of South Sudan to preserve lives of citizens instead of struggling for power and wealth in the country.

The five member delegation of religious leaders from All Africa Conference of Churches led by Retired Archbishop of Kenya, Eliud Wabukala comprised of Rev. Dr. Jesse Macharia Kamau, Rev. Dr. Lydia Mwaniki, Ms. Afiwa Allahare and Mr. Daniel Wang’ombe Kiriethe have come to encourage Christians and Christian leaders in South Sudan to pray and work towards peace in the region.

Speaking exclusively to Juba Monitor after prayers for peace in South Sudan at All Saints Cathedral Mobil, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said leaders of South Sudan should not give up engaging each other as they face challenges of nation building in South Sudan.

“What they are going through is part of nation building and therefore they should not give up even in sharing and engaging each other,” he said.

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The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, will retire next year after nearly 14 years at the helm of the Church in Wales and 24 years as a bishop.

Dr Morgan, who is the longest serving archbishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion and also one of the longest serving bishops, will retire on his 70th birthday at the end of January. He will also retire as Bishop of Llandaff after more than 17 years service, having previously been Bishop of Bangor for nearly seven years. He will continue his work and engagements in both roles as normal until then.

Paying tribute to his ministry, the Archbishop of Canterbury described Dr Morgan as an “extraordinary servant” who would be “deeply missed” while the First Minister of Wales praised his “vast contribution” to Welsh life. Wales’ senior bishop, the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, praised his “courageous leadership” of the Church in Wales.

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Let me tell you a story. This is an incident which occurred on this day some 950 years ago, during the night of 23-24 August, in a year some time between 1060-1065. The setting is the cathedral church at Canterbury, and our eyewitness is a little boy, who was singing in the choir alongside other boys and the adult monks.

A young girl came to the city of Canterbury, a maiden devoted to God by the grace of prayer. From her birth this poor girl had never seen the light of this world, but she was always seeking eagerly after the light of eternity.

It happened that the feast was being celebrated of St Bartholomew the Apostle and of St Audoen, the confessor of Christ, both of whose relics, along with those of many other saints, lie within the church of the Saviour at Canterbury. The girl asked the custodians of the church if she might have permission to keep vigil that night, which they readily granted her because of her devout way of life. She placed herself in the church near to the tomb of the blessed father Dunstan, and all night she kept vigil and prayed.

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Quoted in the ACNS story is Della Wager Wells, identified as an “Anglican Alliance intern” working with the local diocesan development office “to explore the incorporation of Church Community Mobilization/Umoja approaches to development”.

Wells, a corporate lawyer with the Alston & Bird law firm, is a first-year student at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, where her husband serves in the administration. The attorney has deep roots in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and serves as lead legal counsel and board member of the Compass Rose Society. The society raises funds for the ministries of the ACC, designates contributions for mission projects approved by the secretary general (Idowu-Fearon) and builds “a community of Anglicans that enthusiastically supports the mission and ministry of the archbishop and the ACC”.

Among the Compass Rose Society’s mission partners are dioceses in West Africa (Ghana), Southern Malawi, Jerusalem, Southern Africa (Highveld), Mexico and Brazil ”“ jurisdictions in close relationship with the Episcopal Church. The Compass Rose Society supports Continuing Indaba, a program pairing Episcopal dioceses from the United States with those in the Global South “to wrestle with differences concerning issues such as human sexuality and theological interpretation”. The program has been criticized by the American Anglican Council and other traditionalist groups as a promotion of revisionist views that conflict with a mainstream Christian view of marriage and sexuality.

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A group of gay Church of England clergy are set to reveal that they have married their partners, defying the official line taken by church leaders on same-sex marriage.

A dozen gay ministers are to sign an open letter that also urges the church to allow clergy to carry out blessings for parishioners entering into same-sex marriages.

Half the signatories have already declared themselves to be in a gay marriage, including Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who was one of the first priests to openly defy the ruling.

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St Alban’s Diocese is seeking to attract a wider range of applicants by issuing guidelines on inclusive language.

The style guide, titled ”˜What language should we use?’, is a guide for parishes writing parish profiles and patrons and Archdeacons preparing advertisements.

The Rev Jeannette Gosney and the Rev Lucy Davis wrote the guide, which sets out words and phrases to attract a wide range of applicants for clergy posts.

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The Maiduguri diocese of the Church of Nigeria Anglican communion on Sunday laid the foundation of an ultra modern trauma centre for displaced victims of Boko Haram insurgency.

The centre, according to the Bishop of the Maiduguri Diocese, Emmanuel Mani, who performed the stone laying ceremony, is expected to discharge post trauma services to thousands of persons around its locality.
The Bishop said though the centre belongs to the Anglican communion, its services will cut across all religions and denominations.

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Soldiers and protesters clashed in an Anglican church in Nigeria on July 28, leaving five people hospitalized, two of whom are in serious condition.

The violent clash happened at St. John’s Anglican Church in Amukpe in Southern Nigeria’s Edo State in the Niger Delta. Protesters sieged the church, calling for the resignation of Rt. Rev. Blessing Erifeta, the Bishop of Sapele. Soldiers previously guarding an oil pipeline were called on by the vicar of the church to instill order as bishops had started a synod inside the church.

Protesters surrounded the church, waving their placards and even prevented some delegates to enter the church and taking part of the synod. The soldiers arrived and violently disrupted the protest; four women and one minor were hospitalized in the process.

The protesters were calling on for Archbishop Nicholas Okoh to force Bishop Erifeta to resign. They claimed that the bishop is guilty of “financial recklessness, maladmin­istration, disrespect to elders and embark[ing] on incessant trips abroad with the diocese funds.”

Read it all from Christian Daily.

It is more than 130 years since Nietzsche declared that “God is dead”, and forecasts of the demise of organised religion in the UK and elsewhere have been a regular fixture ever since.

But new figures from Britain’s longest-running and most important barometer of general public opinion suggest that reports of the imminent death of Christianity at least may have been greatly exaggerated.

As-yet unpublished findings from this year’s British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA), seen by the Sunday Telegraph, show decades of decline in religious affiliation appearing to level off.

The overall proportion of Britons who described themselves as Christian actually rose one percentage point in the last year from 42 per cent to 43 per cent.

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When it comes to raising money through enterprise, Chris Henderson has one word of advice for the Anglican Church of Canada: think of projects or partners that will be in line with your values””otherwise, it won’t work.

“You’ve got to be true to mission,” he says. “Not being true to mission means you’re almost writing a cheque for failure.”

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Churches in the UK are setting an example of how to combat hate crimes and racist abuse within their communities, after the divisive EU referendum vote.

The Community and Urban Affairs division of the Church of England highlighted some of these programmes in a new document, Hate-busters and Neighbour-lovers, published last week.

It lists statements, hashtags, welcome events, training, and worship as examples of ways in which dioceses across the country are promoting inclusion, and tackling racism in their communities.

The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, wrote in an open letter in June that, despite “some deep divisions to emerge in our nation” since the UK voted to leave the EU, the diocese would be “keeping the values of welcome, inclusion, and international friendship at the heart of our communities”.

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The Anglican Church, which comprises about 71,500 worshippers, will hold a series of emergency meetings in light of reports of a threat being issued to Christians by a Trinidad and Tobago national sympathetic to socalled Islamic State. Bishop Claude Berkley yesterday told Newsday upcoming statutory meetings of the church, which had been due for the second week of September, will be brought forward in order to treat with the security issues that have arisen in the wake of publication of the claims made in an ISIS propaganda publication which features Shane Crawford calling on supporters to destroy “Christian disbelievers”. The details of the meetings will be finalised in coming days, Berkley said.

Crawford, who was detained during the 2011 State of Emergency, also appears to confirm that former prime minister Kamla Persad- Bissessar was a target, saying it would have been “an honour” to attempt an assassination. However he denies his group held that objective but, instead, opted to kill others.

The Bishop yesterday said there was a need for an “intense and serious discussion” on the rapidly changing security landscape.

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