In April 2003 Roderick M. Hills, then-head of Chiquita Brands International Inc.’s audit committee, went to the Department of Justice with other Chiquita representatives with a stunning admission: The company had been making illegal payments to a violent Colombian group that the U.S. branded as terrorists.

In years past, the admission might have been enough to get Chiquita off the hook. Companies and their executives who reported wrongdoing and agreed to cooperate often have enjoyed lenient treatment. Many received a “deferred prosecution” in which no charges were filed unless they committed additional crimes.

But things didn’t work out that way for Chiquita — or for Mr. Hills and some colleagues. In March of this year, Chiquita pled guilty to engaging in transactions with a terrorist group and agreed to pay $25 million in fines, the first time a major U.S. company was charged with having financial dealings with terrorists. Now Mr. Hills, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, faces the possibility of personal criminal charges. A federal grand jury is looking at his role, and that of other high company officials, in continuing the company payments for almost another year after the meeting with the Justice Department.

The investigation illustrates the recent posture taken by U.S. authorities to prosecute aggressively even when companies turn themselves in for breaking the law. Critics say that strategy could cause difficulties if companies decide they suffer no worse by waiting to get caught. “This case will make companies think twice about self-reporting,” says Stetson University law professor Ellen Podgor.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

For many years I had to teach two periods of General Divinity defined as ‘theology for non-specialists’, to sixth formers. Rowan Williams’ most recent book, Tokens of Trust, started life as six talks about the Creeds given at Canterbury Cathedral during Holy Week 2005 to a mixed audience, some of whom, as he tells us in the introduction, were ‘regular churchgoers’ and others who ‘were fairly new to it all’. So here we have theology for non-specialists, the Archbishop’s General Divinity lesson. But Dr Williams proposes for our consideration another, more important, sense in which this is a work of general divinity: ‘I shall be suggesting that Christianity asks you to trust the God it talks about before it asks you to sign up to the complete system.’ So according to Dr Williams, Christianity is first of all a general belief in God (‘trust’) before it is specific doctrine such as the Creeds contain.

General divinity

We might see here an echo of the older sort of general divinity which recommended that catechesis should begin with arguments for believing God to exist before moving on to the credal propositions about him. But the question of God’s existence does not really interest Dr Williams. He writes disarmingly: ‘You won’t be surprised to hear that I haven’t found the decisive new argument that will prove once and for all that there really is a God.’ And he seems to regard the traditional arguments for the existence of God as not much better than themes for the school debating society: ‘When people argue against the existence of God, it helps to have some points you can make to counter the idea that belief is just completely irrational’ But according to Dr Williams, they do not go to the real issue, which is trust in God.

He is right when he remarks that ‘the number of people who come to a living personal faith as a result of argument is actually rather small’ But that criticism would seem to apply to Tokens of Trust since it is towards the ‘God who can be trusted’ that Dr Williams wants to argue his reader. Traditional general divinity was aimed at demonstrating the existence of God and said nothing about his attributes. This was not something that divines in the older Christian tradition believed their general arguments about God could settle. Their ‘living personal faith’ was not general, but specific. It was in the God specified by the articles of the Creeds.

Their position was really the opposite of Dr Williams’: it was ‘the complete system’ in which trust was to be placed. There was, properly speaking, no faith in God outside it because the Creeds defined what it meant to have faith. In contrast, Dr Williams wants to persuade us that it is possible to speak in general terms about faith in God. My argument here is that Dr Williams’ account of God as One Who Can Be Trusted rather than as He Who Is (the title of one of Eric Mascall’s books of traditional general divinity) is deficient both logically and exegetically

Maker of heaven and earth

‘We can trust the maker of heaven and earth,’ writes Dr Williams, ‘precisely because he is the maker of heaven and earth.’ From looking at the world around us, we can conclude that ‘God is to be trusted as a loving parent.’ He is unselfishly concerned for the welfare of his creatures: ‘The love that God shows in making the world…has no shadow of self-directed purpose in it; it is entirely and unreservedly given for our sake.’

But of course the difficulty with this position, as Dr Williams himself points out, is that accidents happen. Writing of the tsunami, he comments: ‘Does this mean that God makes a risky world? Clearly yes, as we see it; anything that is less than God is exposed to risk.’ But then can we continue to speak of God as ‘a loving parent’, the maker of a world ‘entirely and unreservedly given for our sake’?

In fact, we soon find Dr Williams qualifying this claim on God’s behalf. He tells us that we should not think of the world as made for us after all: ‘Things in

the universe exist in relation to the Creator before they exist in relation to us, so that a degree of reverence and humility is appropriate when we approach anything in the created order.’ We are also told that if it is to be a world at all then it has to be ‘really different from him’, but why does it have to be so different? Couldn’t God make a world in which natural disasters did not happen?

Of course this is ‘the problem of evil and suffering’ which every essay in general divinity encounters sooner or later, and I am not blaming Dr Williams for not having solved it! But I am suggesting is that it is especially a problem for his thinking about God because he wants to make a general connection between ‘the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth’ and the idea of trust. In other words I agree with my sixth form sceptic in finding the sentence ‘We can trust the maker of heaven and earth precisely because he is the maker of heaven and earth’ to be a non sequitur. From the sheer existence of the universe, it does not follow that we can trust its maker.

Dr Williams seems to admit as much himself in drawing our attention to people – Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish writer who died in Auschwitz, and Job are mentioned by name – who ‘right up against the worst of suffering find it possible to live honestly with God.’ He quotes Job’s ‘If he kills me I shall still trust him’, adding ‘We can still hear people say something like it today; I don’t think we can just ignore them.’ I agree. But this is to say that we can trust God because Etty and Job think he is their maker, which is rather different from saying we can trust him because he is the maker of heaven and earth. The latter is a statement of general divinity while the former belongs to what we might call specific divinity, that of the Jewish people.

This tension between Dr Williams’ general divinity and the Jewish kind emerges very clearly in what Dr Williams has to say about answers to prayer. He prefaces his remarks with a statement of general divinity: ‘I have been trying to suggest the picture of a God whose almighty power is more of a steady swell of loving presence, always there at work in the centre of everything that is.’

Perhaps ‘steady swell’ is an unfortunate phrase in view of the reference to the tsunami a few pages earlier. Still, on the face of it, this idea of prayer as helping ‘things come together so that love can come through’ seems preferable to the view that prayer works ‘because God likes some people more than others or because some people know the right strings to pull or buttons to press, or because God can be battered into submission by a heavy campaign of praying.’

However, in chapter 1 of Tokens of Trust, Dr Williams reminds us of two stories of Jewish people praying which suggest that those three things are indeed true about the God who answers prayer. The stories of Abraham and Moses interceding with God on behalf of the Sodomites and Israelites respectively (Genesis 18 and Exodus 32) show that God can be ‘battered into submission by a heavy

campaign of praying’, and that he does like some people (Abraham and Moses) more than others (the Sodomites and other Israelites) even perhaps because ‘they know the right strings to pull or buttons to press.’ Certainly this interpretation of those stories from Jewish divinity is more faithful than the one Dr Williams offers from his general divinity perspective, in which the intercessory role of Abraham and Moses is downplayed as a mere literary device, ‘the most vivid way of expressing what [the writers of the stories] understood about God.’

This leads Dr Williams to misread the theological significance of the story. He writes: ‘what would you do faced with the wicked city, faced with the disastrous stupidity of the people of Israel in the desert? You’d be very tempted to annihilate them, wouldn’t you?’ And he continues: ‘Well, that’s the difference between you and God’. But that cannot be quite right, because in the stories God is indeed tempted – and rightly so – to destroy the Sodomites and Israelites. And in the case of Sodom he is not only tempted, he gives in to the temptation, if that is the right expression. The city is annihilated.

Pace Dr Williams the difference of character highlighted by these stories does not really lie between ‘you and God’ but between ‘you’ and Abraham and Moses. They seek God’s mercy, are blessed by him, and through their intercession others, the Sodomites, at least temporarily, and the unfaithful Israelites more permanently, are able to receive God’s mercy and blessing, despite the sins for which they are justly condemned.

The attentive reader will have noticed that Abraham and Moses in these stories are types of Christ. In next month’s New Directions I shall argue that in Dr Williams’ general divinity, the claims of Christian divinity, specifically those made in the Creeds concerning the divinity of Christ, are also diminished.

–This article appears in the July 2007 edition of New Directions

The age of exploration on our planet, which many assumed had come to an end, seems to have found a new lease of life. Last week, a small fleet – which comprised a scientific research vessel, two mini-submarines and a nuclear ice breaker – set sail from the Russian port of Murmansk. After the ice breaker carved a 125-metre by 10-metre opening in the thick pack ice near the North Pole, the two submarines descended into the freezing waters. Yesterday, one of those submarines planted a Russian flag, in a metal capsule, on the seabed two and a half miles below the Pole. The Russians are comparing the achievement to that of man walking on the moon for the first time.

In terms of audacity and technical skill, it may bear comparison with the 1969 moon landing….

Read it all.

Some will wonder if I have new health concerns, and others will ask if I am angry at the Anglican Church. The answer to both questions is no. I am well and I love our Church. I am an Anglican and hope to always minister in accordance with the grace and mercy of Christ our Saviour.

An electoral Synod will be held at All Saints’ Cathedral, Edmonton on March 8, 2008. To begin the preparations for that Synod there will be a special Executive Council meeting on August 14th at 7:00 pm at the Cathedral. The Chancellor is writing a memorandum on what needs to be done to ready the Diocese for the electoral synod next year.

Read it all.

A judge ruled Tuesday against a Humanist who said his constitutional rights were violated when he had to vote in a Catholic church adorned with religious icons and anti-abortion posters.

Jerry Rabinowitz claimed he felt uncomfortable when he entered a polling place decorated with various crucifixes, a sign that read “Each of us matters to God” and a pro-life banner.

In the November 2006 suit, filed against the county supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, Florida, he testified that the religious displays amounted to the government’s unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

A district court judge disagreed, citing the plaintiff’s own claim that he “did not equate the religious icons and messages at his polling place with the defendant’s endorsement of the Catholic faith.”

Read it all.

Words fail, so one watches in silence and prays.

FAIRFAX, Va. (August 2, 2007) ”“ The churches of the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV), an association of Anglican congregations in Virginia, responded to the public announcement made today by the current Episcopal Bishop of Virginia to depose the approximately twenty clergy who have transferred their canonical residency to other branches of the Anglican Communion.

“We are sorry that Bishop Lee would seek to make such a public announcement when the clergy are no longer under his jurisdiction. The clergy he seeks to depose include a bishop-elect in the Province of Uganda, as well as a number of other ordained men and women who have faithfully carried out their pastoral duties as priests in the Church,” said ADV Vice Chairman Jim Oakes.

“This announcement from the Diocese of Virginia is like an employer trying to fire someone who has already quit. Our clergy have remained steadfast in their faith, and have fully embarked on their journey with the worldwide Anglican Communion by joining ADV and the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. We should remember the unanimous message that the Archbishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion made at their February meeting in Tanzania clearly expressing that it is the Episcopal Church that is out of step not only with us, but with the majority of Anglicans around the globe,” Mr. Oakes said.

After nearly a year of conversation with the bishop and his representatives in the Diocese of Virginia, the Bishop of Virginia endorsed the Diocese of Virginia Protocol for Departing Churches, providing a pastoral and charitable way for congregations to vote their conscience and remain Anglican, including the clergy.

“We were shocked when the bishop suddenly cut off negotiations following the vote and inhibited our clergy. But we must remember that he does not have the authority to depose clergy that are no longer under his jurisdiction. In spite of these continued acts of intimidation, ADV churches continue to move forward serving Christ by proclaiming His gospel, supporting and strengthening families, and serving communities at home and abroad,” Mr. Oakes said.

ADV members are in full communion with constituent members of the Anglican Communion through its affiliation with CANA, a missionary branch of the Church of Nigeria. ADV members are a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, a community of 77 million people. ADV is dedicated to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples while actively serving in three main capacities: International Ministries, Evangelism, and Strengthening Families and Community. ADV is currently comprised of 19 member congregations, 15 of which are under the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of CANA, The Right Reverend Martyn Minns, and four of which are ecclesiastical members under direct authority of other Anglican Archbishops, strongly supported by ADV members.

Update: An ENS article on the matter is here.

Obviously Rome’s ecumenical lexicon remains a stumbling block to many Christians””presumptuously authoritative hence annoyingly authoritarian to most mainline protestants; misguided hence largely irrelevant, albeit praiseworthily “clear,” to many Orthodox and evangelical protestants; and by turns agonizingly attractive and repulsive on varying points to many catholic-minded Anglicans and Lutherans, among others. And in every case it is a struggle to listen to Rome’s soundings with at least a measure of equanimity, if not gratitude per se. For she teaches without being asked, as it were, supposing that she has a brief that extends to the whole of the Christian world, and beyond.

I would argue, however, that the Roman Catholic Church rightly adopts this posture precisely on account of its commitment to visible catholicity; whence the message is a gift, albeit at times a painful one”” not only to receive, but, we should presume, to offer. For the avowed end of Catholic teaching is communion-in-love, a goal and a vocation that is irreproachable on gospel grounds. Who, then, would fault our Roman friends for attempting to lead all of us together?

Read it all.

Texas students will have four more words to remember when they head back to class this month and begin reciting the state’s pledge of allegiance.

This year’s Legislature added the phrase “one state under God” to the pledge, which is part of a required morning ritual in Texas public schools along with the pledge to the U.S. flag and a moment of silence.

State Rep. Debbie Riddle, who sponsored the bill, said it had always bothered her that God was omitted in the state’s pledge.

“Personally, I felt like the Texas pledge had a big old hole in it, and it occurred to me, ‘You know what? We need to fix that,’ ” said Riddle, R-Tomball. “Our Texas pledge is perfectly OK like it is with the exception of acknowledging that just as we are one nation under God, we are one state under God as well.”

Read it all..

By George Conger

POISED to fracture over the thorny issue of institutional loyalty towards the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion Network (ACN) emerged from its annual council meeting with a degree of unanimity and confidence not seen since the aftermath of the Gene Robinson consecration in 2003.

As the Sept 30 deadline for the US House of Bishops to respond to the Dar es Salaam communiqué approaches, the ACN voted not to take precipitous action and to wait upon the direction of the Primates of the Anglican Communion.

The Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables challenged the delegates ”˜not to hold back’ challenging them to choose between a ”˜Christian church or a comfortable church.’

He said he had ”˜dealt eyeball to eyeball’ with the leaders of the American church and had ”˜no illusions’ left. But encouraged their resolve saying, “It ain’t us who left it. We are the Anglicans.”

While the conservative group’s financial position remains precarious and its members face increasing legal and canonical pressure from hostile dioceses and the national church in New York, the factional differences that seemed ready to split the coalition were overcome and a late night compromise reached between those seeking to stay and those seeking to quit the Episcopal Church.

The meeting opened with a somber presentation from the ACN’s moderator, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan on the state of the Episcopal Church. Seventeen ACN leaders, including four bishops, had quit the Episcopal Church in the past year he said.

Speaking at times directly to the video cameras broadcasting the proceedings to viewers watching on the internet, Bishop Duncan argued that the Episcopal Church was bound for Hell.

He also chided the Archbishop of Canterbury, saying Dr Williams’ efforts had been ineffectual.

The crisis of faith and order within the Church had ”˜tested’ the Anglican Communion, he said.

Some had concluded the Anglican Communion was ”˜finished’, but he believed the ”˜vision of the Anglican Reformation’ was still possible but ”˜requires new ecclesiastical structures.’

The ”˜American Province’ of the Anglican Communion “is lost, and something will have to replace it,” the Pittsburgh Bishop said. The Episcopal Church’s property litigation campaign showed ”˜they were taking their stuff to Hell.’

“Never ever had Dr Williams spoken on behalf of the orthodox,” Bishop Duncan said, adding that his ”˜voice has not been used for the things of the Communion.’

A ”˜cost of this ecclesiastical revolution’ could very well be ”˜his historic office,’ he concluded.

Bishop Duncan acknowledged the bishops of the ACN were divided, saying the ”˜principal disagreement is a tactical disagreement’ of how and when to proceed.

During the afternoon business session Dallas Bishop James Stanton expressed unease with proposals before the meeting to form a “Common Cause Partnership” with groups outside the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Stanton argued it was ”˜problematic’ to proceed with changes to the language of the ACN charter that could be interpreted as placing the Network outside of the Episcopal Church. The meeting agreed to postpone debate to the next day, and to address structural changes and the proposal for formal alliances with non-Episcopal groups at the same time.

While the public proceedings were cordial, behind the scenes the ACN’s various factions pushed their agendas. Those who had quit the Episcopal Church sought an immediate pull out, arguing that there was no likelihood the US House of Bishops would comply with the Primates’ demands.

Against this, representatives from the dioceses lobbied to work with the Primates’ time line and take no action until after the Primates’ deadline. Proposals for a precipitous withdrawal from the Episcopal Church prompted Dallas to suggest it could be forced to withdraw from the ACN if it adopted a secessionist agenda at the meeting.

However, a compromise was proposed that the ACN would retain language pledging to ”˜operate in good faith within the Constitution of the Episcopal Church’ while adopting a bylaw that affirmed that Network affiliates outside the Church were not required to submit to its constitution.

The compromise was accepted unanimously, and the meeting went on to adopt the partnership agreement and to elect Bishop Duncan to a second term as moderator.

–The Church of England Newspaper, August 3, 2007, edition, page 5

Bush wanted to fund social services whose key ingredient is faith, either in the program itself or as part of the treatment. Congress never signed off. So federal officials reached out to church groups and explained how to apply and win federal funding by keeping their services “faith neutral” or free of proselytizing.

And that’s the hitch. If a program promotes one faith to its clients, the government cannot fund it given the First Amendment ban on congressional “establishment of religion.” But if such a program sheds its religious character to qualify for public money, how important was that faith in the first place?

There is a solution. Addiction and mental-health programs can assess new clients for their spiritual and religious histories and interests and then tailor treatment accordingly. Courts have ruled that so long as a program offers a client “a genuinely independent choice,” religious freedom is preserved. In March, the federal Bureau of Prisons recognized this distinction when it revised a proposal for private operators of “life skills” training programs. Those that offer a religious track would now have to provide a secular one as well.

Read it all..

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee ”” and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” ”” all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.

More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known.

Read it all.

There were points where the group would be asked to look at its work again. Reservations centred largely on section 6, which sought to articulate the sort of commitments that arose out of an affirmation of the Instruments of Communion.

The task of the Design Group would be to produce at least two more drafts in a process designed to listen to all the points made around the Communion.

For decades, Anglicans had been wondering whether increasing diversity might force the provinces apart, and had asked what held them together. The days of undefined affection were sadly over; “yet this is also not a time when proposals which are brand new could win a broad consensus across the Communion. . .

Read it all..

Cherie Wetzel of Anglicans United has very kindly sent us files of all three transcripts of ++Greg Venables’ Bible teachings to the Network Council meeting. Note these transcripts are in some cases more complete than what we posted yesterday.

Monday Afternoon: {filedir_4}Abp_Venables__1.doc
Scripture: Genesis 12. Theme: The Example of Abraham. Leaving his land, giving up Ishmael, willing to give up Isaac.

Tuesday Morning: {filedir_4}Abp_Venables__2.doc
Scripture: Joshua 1. Theme God’s Commission to Joshua.

Tuesday Afternoon: {filedir_4}Abp_Venables__3.doc
Scripture: 1 Peter 4:12; James 1:2; 2 Cor 11:21 ff; Mt. 11:25-30. Theme: Count it all joy.

These are Microsoft Word Documents that you can either open and view online, or download to your computer. Note these files contain only the transcripts of Venables’ teachings. Other commentary on the meetings has been deleted.

Enjoy. And do read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest these wonderful teachings! We’ll post another update when Kevin K. has the cleaned up versions of the audio files posted.

P.S. Yes, Gregory Venables’ official title is Presiding Bishop. I’ve not edited Cherie’s transcripts or her file names where she uses the title Archbishop. Sorry. Better things to do with my time.

When it comes to the Republican presidential campaign, some conservative Christian voters say they ain’t seen nothing yet.

That is, none of the top-tier GOP candidates is addressing the issues that these Iowans care passionately about, and few exhibit the moral values they want to see in the leader of the free world.

“Morality is the No. 1 issue with me,” said Ken Rogers, 62, of Altoona, a member of Central Assembly of God Church in Des Moines. “If a person can’t live by the Ten Commandments, how can he lead the nation?”

Evangelical Christians have traditionally been a strong factor in Iowa Republican politics. They were credited with helping to push President Bush to victory in Iowa in 2004.

As the Aug. 11 Republican straw poll approaches – the candidates’ first test in the nation’s leadoff caucus state – it’s unclear whether conservative Christians will be able to find a candidate to rally around. Republicans Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo and Tommy Thompson have all worked to appeal to conservative Christians.

Read it all.

Teaching authors how to write, sell and promote works toward change is the focus of Grace Cathedral’s first writer’s conference.

“Writing-For-Change,” sponsored by Grace Cathedral and the San Francisco Writers Conference, will be held August 24-25 in the Wilsey Conference Center on the lower level of the 100-year-old San Francisco, California cathedral. Organizers plan to hold the event annually.

Read it all.

Archbishop of York John Sentamu has been quoted as saying, “”¦I haven’t found that in Ecusa (sic) or in Canada, where I was recently, they have any doubts in their understanding of God which is very different from anybody. What they have quarrelled about is the nature of sexual ethics.”

John Sentamu hasn’t looked or listened hard enough. The battle, at least in North America, is over core doctrine and belief: who Jesus is and what authority Holy Scripture has. Although in a brief article there is not ample space for a full-length dissertation on the extent of the problem, let some of the North American and especially Episcopal Church leaders speak for themselves.
In an interview with TIME magazine, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori remarked, “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him (Jesus) as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.” When CNN questioned Jefferts Schori about an afterlife, she opined, “What happens after you die? I would ask you that question. But what’s important about your life? What is it that has made you unique individual? What is the passion that has kept you getting up every morning and engaging the world? There are hints within that about what it is that continues after you die.”

Bishop John Bruno, Diocesan of Los Angeles, in my presence and speaking to a church gathering said Jesus was a savior, his savior, but not the only one and other religions had their own way to God. His predecessor, Bishop Frederick Borsch had said much the same thing, also in my presence, cautioning that people in other religions had their own way to God and should not be evangelized with the Christian Gospel.

Bishop John Spong, retired Bishop of Newark remarked, “I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his son.” From Canada, Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminster predicted “The next battle will move beyond sexuality to focus on the exclusivity of Christianity and the need to recognize Jesus as a way, but not the only way.” The problem for much of the Episcopal Church leadership is they do not hold an ancient and Anglican view of Jesus Christ.

On the topic of Holy Scripture, the Bishop of Pennsylvania, the Rt. Rev.Charles Bennison has remarked, “We wrote the Bible and we can rewrite it. We have rewritten the Bible many times.” The Episcopal Diocese of Utah stated, “Judgments about ethics by appeal to the Holy Scriptures alone are foreign to our Anglican traditions, which have always included other sources of authority in their deliberations”¦ There is no single biblical morality”¦”

Some may wish to say that these voices are isolated instances but not representative of the core leadership of TEC. The remarks here included are from the Presiding Bishop of TEC, a bishop of one of the largest Episcopal dioceses and his predecessor, a retired senior bishop of TEC, a bishop of a major east coast TEC diocese, and a former dean of the officially established TEC seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hardly voices on the margin of TEC, their voices and other leaders who have said similar things have gone unchallenged from the main body of the Episcopal Church. Not only that at General Convention 2006, the House of Deputies refused to consider Resolution D-058 which declared the Episcopal Church’s “unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved,” and which acknowledged evangelism as “the solemn responsibility placed upon us to share Christ with all persons when we hear His words, ”˜I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6).”

The Episcopal disdain for absolute and historic beliefs about who Jesus is and what he accomplished, together with views on Holy Scripture that contradict the Anglican formularies is carried over into other areas where liturgy and practice are built on these views. Most of the liberal/progressive Episcopal dioceses tolerate on a wide scale fully open communion to all present, regardless of being baptized or not, and regardless of whether they are Christian, Jewish, agnostic, animist, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. There is a pervasive disbelief in sin and the need for atonement, disbelief in the unique and essential person and work of Jesus Christ, the wide spread unease in using the historic Trinitarian formulary or ”˜Lord’ because it is seen as narrow, sexist, and exclusive. Formularies such as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer substitute for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The mantra of faith for TEC is openness, toleration, inclusiveness, and progression into new ideas and new ways of looking at God. So what about the orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church that Archbishop Sentamu assures us of? One of their own leaders puts it very well. The Very Rev. William Rankin, former Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, remarked about heresy, “Heresy implies orthodoxy, and we have no such thing in the Episcopal Church.”

–Church of England Newspaper, August 3, 2007, page 8

The discussion thread on Dr. Ephraim Radner’s resignation from the Network is closing in on 200 comments. You can catch up on it here.

Of particular note: Dr. Radner has left a comment here

This elf also found Terry Wong’s comment here highly worth reading and considering, for a perspective from a Global South leader.

The Rev. Tanya Vonnegut Beck, senior associate for cathedral ministries at Christ Church Cathedral on Monument Circle, said the bishop was extremely compassionate and always available to the priests and laity.
“He remembered your name and also something about you. I don’t know how he did that. He cared about the human condition and he spoke to it. He was very supportive of women’s ordination as priests,” she said.

Beck also recalled “his delightful smile and sparkling eyes. When he walked into a room, he had an exciting presence. You smiled when he came in.”

Read it all.

The climate is changing, and there is now a very high confidence by an overwhelming majority of scientists that human activity is a significant part of that change. The global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased markedly since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values. Much of this is due to fossil fuel use, changes in land use, and agriculture.

The effects of global warming are increasingly well known. Changing weather patterns such as hurricanes and floods; the melting of the glaciers; the softening of the permafrost; the melting of the polar ice-caps and the ice on Greenland; more intense and frequent heatwaves; the growth of the deserts and consequent likelihood of famine in some areas; the rise in sea levels; the death of the coral reefs. Countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh may disappear under water. There will be a huge movement of migrants from these countries to more habitable parts of the world.

Climate change is real, is growing, and has potentially very dangerous consequences for the well being of the planet and for human life – and the people most affected will be in the poorest and most disadvantaged parts of the world. There is therefore a strong moral imperative to do all we can to avert the danger, reduce the likelihood of global warming continuing at the present rate, and prepare for its likely consequences. There is a moral obligation also on the present generation not to do things which will significantly damage the planet’s capacity to provide a home for our children and grandchildren. There is a further moral obligation to live within our means. At present rates of energy use and consumption in Britain, we need about three planet earths to sustain our current way of life.

But global warming is changing more than the climate.

Read it all.

6. It strikes me that your remarks about the future of dioceses and parishes within TEC and the Mark Lawrence affair provide an example of just such a prophecy. The fact is, however, we do not know the outcome of that affair. Further, we will not know what the future of what are often called “orthodox parishes and dioceses” will be if the Primates back their admonition with sanctions. I confess I agree that if nothing is done to inhibit TEC’s outrageous claims to autonomy our parishes and dioceses will be picked off one by one. I also believe that we will find ourselves in a state of anarchy within our Communion. The point, however, is that we do not know as yet this particular part of our future under God, and it seems to me rash to think that we do.

7. It is in the light of this remark that I wish to comment on your call to the Network Bishops not to wait for “Windsor Bishops” but to unite under the leadership of Bob Duncan in fellowship with one another and with Common Cause Partners. It is a source of constant sadness to me that the Bishops within our Church who do not support the direction taken by its current structure have often been either too cautious to speak and act or too quick both to declare defeat and to begin constructing what appears to be an escape pod. However, once again you anticipate the future in ways that seem to me uncalled for. Your primary reason for despair is the sad history of attempts to organize among our Bishops a credible opposition to the progressive juggernaut that controls the structures of TEC. This is a sad history indeed, however, its baleful quality has more to do with problems of relationship among these Bishops (many of whom are in the Network) than it does the machinations of the progressive clerisy that governs us. That being said, it remains the case that the Windsor Bishops will meet again in August, all Network Bishops have been invited, and (most of all) these Bishops will face a clear choice. Are they willing to stand and be counted, as neither the Windsor Bishops nor the Network Bishops nor those involved in Common Cause were when last the House of Bishops met? This question means concretely are they now willing to give public support to the proposals made by the Primates; and are they willing themselves to seek ways to address the pastoral crisis of our Church that has provoked the multiplication within our midst of other jurisdictions. In short, the question is whether or not the Windsor Bishops (whose number includes the Network Bishops) are willing in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury to show that there is within TEC an alternative presence to its current structure. I am unwilling prematurely to declare all hope for such eventualities to be no more than a chimera.

Read it all..

Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.

Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.

That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.

Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.

Read it all.

They argued so much. That was my overriding impression of the early church when I saw the book of Acts on a movie screen for the first time. All churches have disagreements, they always have. But when the arguing turns to strife, watch out.

Two recent experiences brought this to mind. The first was when something I said was met with criticism (say you are shocked). But it wasn’t the disagreement that surprised me; it was the sharpness of it. There seemed little charity and instead harshness and even enmity. It was out of all proportion to both the words and the context.

The second came when I chose to reascend the great mountain of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Like all truly great works, it always repays greatly upon its rereading.

One scene from The Inferno struck me more than all the others this time. It is a harrowing portrayal of a disagreement gone wrong.
When he gets to near the very bottom of hell, Dante meets a man whose name is Ugolino who tells him his story. He was the city manager of Pisa, placed there by Ruggieri, the archbishop. Ugolino was a Guelf, and Ruggieri was a Ghibeline. The Guelf-Ghibeline battle was literally devouring Italy at the time, and the two formed a secret alliance from opposite sides.

The deal was simple. Ruggieri the archbishop would name Ugolino as city manager of Pisa, and in return Ugolino would undermine the Guelf control of the area from the inside and gain authority for the archbishop. It was a plot to seize power and betray the city of Pisa.

What happened is a devastating story of betrayal, counter-betrayal, and treachery. Almost immediately after Ruggieri gives Ugolino his new position, the archbishop realizes he has made a mistake. He then seeks to undermine the very person he has just named to his new position. Ugolino recognizes what is occurring and retaliates.

The brutal battle gets so bad between them that eventually Ugolino is captured by the archbishop and, along with his descendants, imprisoned in a tower. Then one day, at the time when they normally receive their food, Ugolino hears the door of the room being nailed shut. He now knows he and his offspring will be slowly starved to death.

As time wears on Ugolino starts eating his hands out of hunger, and his offsping offer to allow him to eat them instead. In agony he refuses. After four days, one son throws himself with outstretched hands at his father’s feet begging for help. Ugolino then tells us what happens next:

There he died; and, as thou seest me,
I saw the three fall, one by one,
between
The fifth day and the sixth; whence
I betook me,

Already blind, to groping over each,
And three days called them after
they were dead;
Then hunger did what sorrow could
not do.

What did hunger do? Dante depicts here a man who in total desperation devours his own children’s dead flesh so as to sustain himself just a little while longer. In the context it is clear that as he is eating, his life has become nothing more than focusing on his hatred of, and desire for vengeance upon, the archbishop who betrayed him.

And what is Ugolino doing when Dante meets him in hell? He is gnawing upon the head of Ruggieri. Both men are encased in ice up to their necks.

Beneath every disagreement is the possibility of enmity and strife that can kill. Saint Paul knew that, which is one reason he pleaded for his readers to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Dante knew it too, which is why he provides his shocking portrayal of Ugolino and Ruggieri in hell.

I am praying that we may relearn it so as not to become encased in icy hearts seeking to devour others.

— The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and Convenor of this blog

My home church, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, is on its sixth pastor, and he is a gem. But the path to him was rocky. We gathered, just 25 of us, in the community room above a firehouse when I was 12 years old. My young father had died suddenly, and my mother had taken it as a sign to get right with the Lord. Running up the stairs every week past shiny red trucks and perfectly aligned yellow coats felt like home.

The founding pastor was a gentle shepherd who communicated peace and safety to this fearful girl. Then a few troublesome congregants ran him off and replaced him with a star who had served with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. What had been a casual, hippy-era church was then infiltrated by old-school Baptists. Tension between traditionalists and innovators gnawed at the ministry.

One day, when I was an 18-year-old new convert and the pastor at the time was 60-something, he took me out evangelizing with him. Afterward, we went back to his house for ice cream. I dished it out, and he suggested I come snuggle with him on the couch. Having seen the unholy mingle with the holy in each of my first two pastors, I should have expected to see it again. Instead, my naiveté continued.

Read it all.

The earliest worshippers brought their gifts to the altar from the tangible fruits of their labor ”“ be it crops, sheep, or cattle. Coins came later, then paper money, followed by checks. Now, as society moves toward an era of “digital money,” houses of worship are scurrying to keep pace with the times.

The collection plate won’t disappear any time soon, but many churches have begun offering electronic-giving options, including automatic deductions from bank accounts and payment by credit or debit card. A few are even experimenting with a “giving kiosk” in the lobby.

This shift away from just dropping cash into the weekly collection got an extra nudge this year from the Internal Revenue Service, which is mandating receipts for charitable tax deductions.

For houses of worship, the main impetus toward electronic giving has been to respond to churchgoers’ changing lifestyles. But churches themselves are benefiting from the regularized giving and the often increased contributions that come with expanded giving options.

Read it all.

The federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the banking and credit card industries have failed utterly to keep pace with deceptive and unfair practices that have become shamefully standard in the business. As a consequence many hard-working Americans who pay their bills are mired in debt ”” and in danger of losing whatever savings they have, and perhaps their homes. Congress, which sat on its hands while the problem got worse and worse, needs to rein in this sometimes predatory industry.

The scope of the problem was laid out in Congressional hearings this spring held by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrat from Michigan. According to testimony, one witness exceeded his charge card’s $3,000 limit by $200 ”” triggering what eventually amounted to $7,500 in penalties and interest. After paying an average of $1,000 a year for six years, the man still owed $4,400.

Read it all.

I remember very vividly, some years ago, that the question which perplexed me as a younger Christian (and some of my friends as well) was this: what is God’s purpose for His people? Granted that we have been converted, granted that we have been saved and received new life in Jesus Christ, what comes next? Of course, we knew the famous statement of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever: we knew that, and we believed it. We also toyed with some briefer statements, like one of only five words ”“ love God, love your neighbour. But somehow neither of these, nor some others that we could mention, seemed wholly satisfactory. So I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth and it is ”“ God wants His people to become like Christ. Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God.

So if that is true, I am proposing the following: first to lay down the biblical basis for the call to Christlikeness: secondly, to give some New Testament examples of this; thirdly, to draw some practical conclusions. And it all relates to becoming like Christ.

Read it all.

“This is a fight we are engaged in and we will see it through to the end. We are determined to see that the Anglican Communion ends up on the right side of the debate” over homosexual practice.

So West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez declared outside Washington, D.C. Saturday, drawing a standing ovation from a sizeable gathering of orthodox believers during a day-long Festival of Faith at St. Luke’s Church, Bladensburg, Maryland. The event also featured retired Quincy (IL) Episcopal Bishop Donald Parsons.

Gomez assailed opponents for characterizing fidelity to the consistent witness of scripture on homosexual practice as homophobia, bigotry, and fundamentalism. He said that he and co-religionist Anglican leaders would keep the Communion in line with the 2,000-year consensus of Christianity on same-sex relations, holding that the issue relates to “God’s ordering of life.” It is therefore – contrary the recent declaration by the Anglican Church of Canada – a matter of “core doctrine.”

Read it all.

During a press conference after the Anglican Communion Network’s two-day council meeting, the Most Rev. Gregory Venables of the Province of the Southern Cone challenged the notion among some Episcopalians that the primates are claiming curial powers for themselves.

Because Anglicans worldwide are led by locally elected bishops, he said, “Common sense and biblical concepts would say that the primates are at that highest level of authority, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

The Rt. Rev. Jack L. Iker, Bishop of Fort Worth, said the primates’ increased authority is in direct response to Resolution III.6 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. That resolution said, in part, that the primates’ meeting should “include among its responsibilities positive encouragement to mission, intervention in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces, and giving of guidelines on the limits of Anglican diversity in submission to the sovereign authority of Holy Scripture and in loyalty to our Anglican tradition and formularies.”

Read it all.

There is an update to this post here: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/4825/
All THREE talks are now available as Word Files for downloading.

Woohoo! This elf is very pleased and excited to see that Cherie Wetzel of Anglicans United has given a MARVELOUS gift to all of us orthodox Anglicans who did not spend the last 2 days in Bedford, Texas at the Network Council Meetings. She has got transcriptions of Abp. Venables Bible Teaching online. Thank you Cherie, what a wonderful service!

Now, time for this elf to be my sometimes very bossy self! Go read them!! Do more than read them. [b]Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them![/b] And that’s an order 😉

Archbishop Gregory Venables Bible Study Monday – transcription

Anglican Communion Network, Archbishop Venables Final Post

Here is an excerpt from ++Venables’ Tues. afternoon teaching:

I see people under incredible spiritual attack. I remember that moment in the end of the Screwtape Letters and the man the demons are trying to win is killed in the air raid in London. As he is departing this world, the man sees who has been dogging him for so long. He finally realizes what has been happening to him. It was a poignant moment.

We are not fighting flesh and blood. Read Ephesians 6. This battle is Big. Because it is about God’s honor and God’s name and God’s Word. It is not your battle, dear people. It is God’s battle. Let that comfort your hearts. Let that settle your mind.

I see people burdened and weighed down. Some of you are carrying very heavy burdens indeed. And I see people suffering grief. Grief in the sense of loss: bereavement. Something precious and that means so much to us is “going down the tubes”. That creates grief. It is heart breaking. Don’t go into denial. Don’t be British. Stoicism is not good. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and carry on, but not for long. Recognize the grief and deal with it. Don’t deny it.

Let me give you a few words from Scripture. 1 Peter 4:12: “Beloved do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.”

When you stand up for Jesus, this is what happens. At the end of the day, it isn’t Anglicanism you are standing up for. It is Jesus. That’s why Anglicans do what we do. Rejoice that you have been thought worthy. You must be getting something right or you wouldn’t be in this battle. […]

James 1:2 “Count it all JOY my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.”

Be careful of fear. God will put you there again and again so you have to look at it and bring it up close and then you will see who He really is. Count it all joy. Read Paul’s account of what it was like to minister for Jesus. 2 Corinthians 11. Paul had a sense of humor, didn’t he. That’s what Paul got for serving Jesus. Not a Harry Potter world, not Tolkien world; the real world.

Are you getting it? If you really want to follow Jesus and serve him, this is what happens. I know a lot of you here are not surprised. Count it all joy and a privilege to show that Jesus is still Lord. To be on this world stage – With your smile and your joy and your forgiveness of all of “them”. Show them that Jesus is still Lord.